kyril

Stone Cages doesn't go well with earthquake, or with people who want to knock stuff back. For establishing containment, however, it's nice. My usual combo is Stalagmites, Freezing Rain, Stone Cages, maybe Thunderclap or Volcanic Gases: the stone cages keeps the disoriented mobs from running out of the rain, which they do rather well because of the stun bug that seems to give mobs a speed buff.

With the advent of Inventions, I have found that:

Fossilize gets 4 neuronic shutdowns (health +1.5%, accuracy +7%) and maybe a couple procs, maybe just more IOs. (But Neuronic Shutdown does cap at level 30, so YMMV).

Stone Cages gets 4 Trap of the Hunter (+1.88% health and +9% accuracy)...it's a great way to establish containment, and the Trap proc isn't horribly expensive.

Quicksand I just have two Tempered Readiness in (+1.5% recovery), you could do 4 Pacing of the Turtles or both.

Stalagmites...I have some toons with 5 Stupefys together for the recharge 6.25%, but generally I just do 3 Stupefys (Recovery 2.5%, Health 1.88%) and this time I used 2 Rope a Dopes (6% regeneration) and the razzle dazzle triple for the enhancement value (gasp! horrors!)

I haven't looked at Earthquake yet.

Volcanic gases is getting 4 Ghost Widows (Health 1.88%, END 2.25%) and maybe something else as I slot it more.

Animate Stone has 2 Blood Mandate (1.5% recovery) and 3 Edict of the Master (health 1.5%) and I may get one of the pet specials...not the protective one, he doesn't need it. Plus, Animate Stone got better AI at some point, I think. Certainly he does most of my damage now that I have him, followed by Black Wand and Fossilize.

O2 Boost I have a pair of Harmonized Healing in (1.5% recovery), 2-3 Miracles or Numinas would be great to add to it if I get the $$.

Freezing Rain I need to find something for...several of the new "non power 10" categories may be nice in there, or I could put slow sets.

Steamy Mist I have 2 Impervium Armor (Recovery +2.5%) and I got the Steadfast Protection KB protection as a drop so it's in there too.

Thunder Clap, 3 Stupefys (another +2.5% recovery and 1.88% health)

Health has another pair of Harmonized Healing (Heal and Heal/End for the +1.5% recovery) plus another IO and I still have +88.5% heal enhancement with level IOs.

I went the Leadership route and Tactics (if I don't ditch it for Hurricane or Tornado...I like that this build has relatively few toggles) is probably going to get a To Hit Buff set

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I'm just curious. How many of you use "target Closest Enemy" with a hot key?

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Umm...I use it all the time, it's bound to control-tab by default. No need to bind it. And I too use follow a lot, except when I'm ready to actually fire my assassin strike.

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One of the problems with making first a Defensive tanker and then an Offensive one is that puts them right back in the roles that they were in prior to I5--meatshield and skranker. I think we decided to move past that a couple pages ago.

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As for roles...

My experience with Mr. Latvia, my Invul/Axe, makes me wonder what makes a "scranker", given his damage output is mediocre despite having taken Hasten, all his Secondary powers (except I'm thinking of ditching Pendulum because of the knockback), and about half his Primaries (TI, DP, Unyielding, Invinc, Unstop). He hasn't taken any attacks from the pool sets, but if he's taken his whole Secondary and pool attacks still make him better, something's out of wack.

One thing I'm considering is that the Tanker is more of an "aggro manager" than a controller or a "meat shield": because he can taunt bosses with one hit whereas they tend to require 2 holds, and because he has mez resistance, he should focus on mezzers and high-damage bosses. Statesman says he wants us to have to think more...unfortunately, we don't have a fast-firing one-target taunt and would hate to lose Taunt for it.

(If the folks dealing non-S/L damage aren't mezzers, grabbing S/L aggro first makes sense because he can handle more S/L attackers and the non-S/L hits the squishies just as hard...unfortunately, mobs rarely break down like that. Those that have consistently non S/L damage tend to also be the ones with mezzes, esp. psi.)

Another possible Tanker role is "pocket controller", where the he uses Ice, knockdown (maybe disorient? but it doesn't happen as much), etc. to not just keep aggro but keep mobs from attacking. Invul and Fire aren't any help at that, though Ice is good and Stone at least has mud pots. Axe is good for fairly reliable knockdown; Mace seems to have a poor enough chance of disorient at low levels, and short enough of a duration, that it doesn't seem worth it; many other secondaries have knockdown and/or disorient, usually both. And of course add the Presence pool, and Ice Mastery for the Epic. If you don't need Acrobatics, either use the Teleport pool for TP Foe, or use the Fly pool for Air Superiority and maybe whirlwind.

I may respec Mr. Latvia in this direction, if only because I don't think I can solo sappers without some form of hold/fear power. But I don't like giving up Hasten and I don't know that I want to give up too many attacks either (except Pendulum)... If we were on a team that had the discipline to use a sleep, earth mastery could replace Ice Mastery and you could get Salt Crystals...but such a team is rare.

So anyway, Tom, there's a slightly refined role and a somewhat different role (that, admittedly, not all tankers can even effectively respec to) that may or may not make Tankers more wanted in a team. Personally, I think the first is probably just the smartest a meat shield can play and the second isn't something a Tanker can really do all that well anyway, not as well as an Ice blaster anyway...

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I guess. Reading States he seems to say grabbing a third of the aggro on a 7 man team is doing your part, I guess.

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Maybe a third, but which third? Our aggro management skills need to protect the blaster from the return fire of most of the 16 he fireballed, or the controller from most of the 16 he held (easy) or immobilized (back to the fireball scenario again). Plus we need to keep the aggro of the mezzers focused on our mez resists instead of on the squishies. With the hard aggro cap we may now be able to "split an alpha" among several tough folks, but I imagine that still takes excellent timing and no lag. But we need to give the damage dealers and the debuffers the aggro protection to keep the toggles up and finish mowing down the enemies, and with no aggro management, whichever squishy has more than their share of aggro when the alpha goes off or recharges, gets pasted.


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Also I would say the need for taunt from this veiw is not really much needed. Normal spawn for that team is around 14 to 16 right? So one punch and you have your third almost. Your aura, assuming you have it, should pick up the rest or lacking that one AoE will get you up to 10 way more then third your shooting for.

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If I had a ranged attack, I'd agree with you. But oftentimes I'm not next to the mobs whose aggro I need, e.g. whoever's meleeing the back line or the core of whoever the blaster just fireballed. Thus I have Taunt slotted only with 2 ranges; I may add a recharge if I get rid of Hasten post I6.


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I suppose our roll is to grab maybe boss/lt aggro but then again isn't that the scrappers job, you know to kill boss/lts.

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I think we need to "keep it even" so that not too many mobs overall, and few/no mezzers, are targeting any squishies or anyone else who's dying.

This means our small-team role is more like it was, and our large-team role/tactics need more attention, as I said above, to make sure we grab the aggro that's causing the most trouble when we can't just take it all.

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Our job is to do as we have been only to not over do it I guess. I always thought to be a good tank you needed to know your limits

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This has always been true. And I've started to lobby Statesman for a way to make us able to be tougher at the expense of offense when we're teamed, something Enhancements don't do because slots aren't scarce and are even less scarce with ED...but it needs to be something we can toggle, because we may well solo and team and solo again in the same play session. Guild Wars does a great job with this; CoH/CoV needs to take a lesson. Without the ability to flex, tankers will/must be gimped for large-team tanking, or will/must be gimped for soloing to balance their large-team survivability, or both.


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As far as balance I'm not seeing it much from I6. Some builds got smoked, other saw little change. I think there are those powers now that are far more out of balance then ever and so I do think yet more changes (nerfs) will come. Invinc getting hit will hurt and we are unlikely to get anything for it so that's not a happy thought.

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Tankers have a high proportion of powers that can only usefully slot for one thing. Maybe if there were a powers/slots tradeoff and we could take a power with its builtin slot instead of 2 slots now plus 2 slots later, we could take those passives that suck but seem necessary anyway? Of course, I'd hate to exchange 4 slots in an attack which already does poor damage, in exchange for a poorly performing passive, all the time when I don't team all the time...especially when the benefit isn't much anyway.

[Edit: I'd said AoE when I meant ranged, in the section about why I have Taunt and how it's slotted.]

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Statesman pretty much implies by his example that his performance is as expected. That's fairly sad. Even worse that he knows he's operating with a bugged power that's providing too much buff, and he's still trying to pass off his performance as a good thing.

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It really is sad, Circeus. And being a user of that very same power, I am worried about what will happen to Invul if they think that what we get from Invinc currently is a bug. Ah well, [censored] minus [censored] is still [censored], no matter how you add it up.

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I should add that when I5 hit, I had to pour 4 defense buffs into Invincibility; before I5, it maybe had one. Now if Invincibility gets dropped to 1/3 its current defense, I expect I will once again find myself in the I5-pre-respec position of getting devastated if I try to get close enough for Invincibility to kick in...

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Tankers manage aggro better than any other Archetype. They also have the highest combination of hit points and defenses in the game. Their role is to take the brunt of a spawn's aggro just long enough in order for the rest of the team to be able to eliminate the mobs.

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To other-than-Statesman, I would say that tanker hit points are nothing to sneeze at. Especially with Dull Pain slotted for 3 heals and 3 recharge (and not used until I could get the benefit of those heals!), I could absorb a lot of CoT fire pain with just 5-slotted Unyielding plus whatever else Invincibility and Combat Jumping added to the pot. It wasn't comfortable, and I didn't seek out much more aggro after the alpha unless someone was dying, but I could handle myself with one eye on making sure nobody else was dying and the other eye on my heath bar so I could Dull Pain instead of dying.

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We faced the Carnival of Shadows. Typically, I'd start combat by Taunting any Strongmen in the spawn. I knew that I could handle their damage best. I'd usually catch some other minions and lts. I'd end up with a good 1/3 of the spawn focused on me, while the rest of my group disposed of the others. Whenever I saw a teammate enter the red, I'd either Taunt the mobs off them or hit the mobs to get their aggro.

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To Statesman, a couple things: Why weren't you, with all your magnificent hit points and mez resistance, taunting the illusionists and ring mistresses, who had half the mezzes you were facing? Your only mez-proof teammate was also invul, so lack of Psi defense is no excuse. Damage doesn't keep your teammates from shooting back, and knockdown is quick to recover from compared to mind control. Is it to get the most out of your Primary that you only taunted the opponents you were toughest against? I'm confused here.

Second, when you "saw a teammate enter the red", how could you tell where to target to "Taunt the mobs off of them" or hit them if Taunt wasn't up yet? I usually approximate this by firing off an assist-targeted Taunt, but if they're focusing on a boss while minions are meleeing them to death it doesn't help much...

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Well, no one was that familiar with their builds.

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At nearly level 50, they weren't familiar with their builds? Were they stupid, or were they still reeling from respeccing every issue? Or was something else going on? Can you be more specific about this?

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The Controller was defeated by getting too close to another spawn.

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Now that's odd for a Controller. Much more common for a melee type to melee like he has to, and the adjacent spawn being too close to not aggro when this happens. This is especially an issue for Brutes, who have to make snap decisions about whether to "pull by getting noticed" and waste their Fury bar, or charge the group being attacked and hope the devs sited the next spawns over far enough away that he doesn't get the team killed.

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The Peacebringer carelessly tossed off attacks and ended up aggroing too much.

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Was this an extra spawn he shouldn't have been aiming at? Or did he attack too soon? And either way, why didn't/couldn't the character whose job it is to grab excess aggro--that is to say, your tank--save him?

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Admittedly, my own health dropped down to a 1/3 several times. I'd get a little concerned, but usually I had Dull Pain ready.

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Usually? Meaning it wasn't safe for the tanker, of all people, to go in without all his powers recharged? Of course, sometimes you didn't need dull pain and would've been wasting your team's time waiting for it, and slowed down the leveling and the game experience...and mind you, Rest doesn't improve recharge times, so there's nothing to do but wait. Remember too, with ED the tanker can't significantly improve the recharge speed beyond those three recharges, even if he does want to sacrifice three SO's worth of Heal enhancement.

(As a side note, my tanker took Hasten primarily to speed up the recharge on the occasionally-only powers like Dull Pain or Unstoppable, not for his attacks, which have awfully long animations anyway. Even 3-slotted Build Up doesn't need Hasten to come back faster than I need it.)


One thing I've been thinking of for a while is some sort of a "mode switch", hopefully flexibile enough to let you switch to more offense at the expense of defense, more knockback when you're solo or among shooters and thus not protecting the mobs from your melee types thereby, etc. One thing I forgot to mention in my PM was that Kheldians already seem to have this kind of capability with their squid/dwarf forms, and Parry attacks and Granite Armor can do this to some extent, but we need it more generally. The other thing I should clarify is that we usually--especially post ED!--have the slots to essentially max out both the offense and defense that ED allows us, and what I'm talking about would go beyond that and actually cause a trade-off rather than a choice to improve one or the other.

(And really, the knockback/knockdown thing is probably a different problem anyway.)

One more thing, I should add, is that fortunately the CoV archetypes have few of these issues. They do have the issue of getting the aggro of all the mezzers (esp. the long-duration mezzers) focused on those with the resistance, and with spawns being so close together that you can't melee them without aggroing the next spawn over, and pulling them around a corner wastes a lot of Fury. In fact that one (especially "downstairs" in a cargo ship) is particularly nasty with CoV and Brutes, though Invincibility not working at range gives an Invul tanker a bit of a problem when he has to do the taunt-pull thang.