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Statesman
Here is my two cents. Your basic answer is correct, the tank has to be able to jump in and grab aggro long enough for others to act without fear of instant death (what happens if most other ATs start a fight). From what I have seen most tanks (granite excepted) can only do this succesfully on a team that has at least one defender or controller who can somehow buff, heal or take aggro away from the Tanker. Now MOST big teams have a person to fit this bill. However, it is possible to end up on a team (particularly a midsized one 4-5ish) with an excess of blasters and scrappers, and no one who can help with the alpha strike problem. This happens more than occasionally, since these are two of the more popular ATs. The upshot is things are not horribly broken, but you can run into intractable situations. One possible solution is to add some combination of +def, DR or healing to a tank for each team member over 3.
THz
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What I see here is that you want a Tanker to perform equally well in a team of Scrappers and Blasters as they would in a team that consisted of a variety of ATs including Defenders and Controllers. The problem with that is Defs and Conts would no longer be needed at all. If further CC and damage mitigation are not necessary, why recruit an AT that is going to be useless and/or bored in your party?
The ATs and the entire game is balanced so that everyone has a purpose. If you are in a team that consists of a Tanker, Scrappers, and Blasters then look at the LFT list and find a Cont or Def to add to your team. That's what they are there for.
Build your teams in the same way that you would build your character. Ask yourself what you want to accomplish and what do you need to gain/lose in order to get there.
Well jack, being that you ran an invulnerable tank and said you noticed your health get pretty low pretty often Id say you've at least learned one thing : the team your on might not be helpful to your survival. for what ever the reasons, your listed teammates appearantly didnt know what they were doing and left you to rely on dull pain, because they were busy dirt napping.
In such situations where your team cant nessiccarily keep you alive, i would not attribute it to any fault of theirs (unless it involved aggroing more spawns). The issue is that our resistances to non smashing / lethal are a bit too low. With the current motto of only 3 slots per power, our resistances hit 28%.
Now Im of the belief that we need at the very least, 38% ( our pre ED resistances) but ill settle for 5% resistance and 5% defense. You can do many things to get those numbers but id honestly prefer that you improve Resist elements and resist energies by 2.5% each then improve tough hide by 5%.
Right now our survival depends on the mobs around us rather than our own skill. Our resistances are too low to depend on and the same goes for the current version of tough hide. that leaves us with invinciblity's defense, which is based on mobs around us. And unlike the example play session you gave, we cant nessicarily avoid our current weaknesses, which is everything that isnt smashing and lethal damage.
Our given weakness is psionic damage, because none of our powers give us protection from it. However energy, negative energy, fire,toxic,and ice are all practically kryptonite to us and we have no way to handle it because of Enhancment diversification. It basically ganked our primary, because it is essentially undiversifiable. Trying to compensate with secondary effects from our attacks is not always possible, and even when it may help some it isnt enough.
we should not be forced to run and hide from non smashing/lethal damage dealing criminals, nor should we require a defender/controller joined at our hip.
You have wronged us in the name of balance and in doing so weakened us, it is only right that you fix what you have broken however the spirit of many of our fallen tanks is unrepairable and many have left because of it.
You'll never get that back, but you could try to patch a few holes in our leaking defenses.
I am an ebil markeeter and will steal your moneiz ...correction stole your moneiz. I support keeping the poor down because it is impossible to make moneiz in this game.
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The ATs and the entire game is balanced so that everyone has a purpose. If you are in a team that consists of a Tanker, Scrappers, and Blasters then look at the LFT list and find a Cont or Def to add to your team. That's what they are there for.
Build your teams in the same way that you would build your character. Ask yourself what you want to accomplish and what do you need to gain/lose in order to get there.
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Well that really is the problem. Many of us feel that the tank has no well defined purpose in which she can excel. What non-perverse situations can you come up with where a team would be best off with a Tanker rather than another AT of equivalent level and build level? Currently I see none beyond a few situations were tanks are little more than bags of HP and Buff Holes.
The secondary of the controller was empathy I see.
If you didn't have a pocket healer on the team how would you have done?
Stateman says:
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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.
Should a skilled Tanker be able to corral EVERY mob? With a lot of skill, it should be possible - but it's certainly not required to be a good Tank. As long as the Tanker can hold onto aggro so that his teammates are facing less than they'd normally face (i.e. 3 minions), then the team has an advantage. Namely, each teammate can quickly eliminate his opposition...and then come to the Tanker's aid at the end.
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i want to start out by saying i'm fine with this definition of Tanker role. but i actually feel this is the way i've played all along - i bet many of us feel this way, and yet still have completely different ideas what this means :-)
Tom says
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With the resources we have at the present time, can we fulfill that role?
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To fulfill the role, we need to be able to take some amount of aggro and survive long enough for the rest of the team to take care of 1.) those we're not aggro-ing and 2.) those we are.
So, step one is "Get the aggro", and we do have a lot of tools for that. I suppose you could argue they aren't all that unique. Everybody has access to Provoke, and Scrappers have some of our same powers or slightly limited versions of them. I still think most folk don't want the aggro, so we're better off than we think. However, the important part isn't just managing aggro, but being able to manage it in combination with surviving it.
And now i'm going to sound like a broken record, because this is where I think it gets trickier ... can Inv hold aggro for 8 even-cons that primarily do S/L damage but only 6 who do mixed-type? Does the number drop to 4 if we're talking about fully non-S/L foes? Do we have the aggro tools to make sure we get 8 when we're fighting S/L foes but only 4 when we're fighting non-S/L? If that Empath on the team manages to give us 3-slotted Fortitude (which is the equivalent of 9 foes in melee range of Invinc), can we now survive 16 S/L, 12 mixed-type, and 8 non-S/L? and how do we manage to get that much aggro but not more?
i don't want to exaggerate this, because as i've said before, i don't think this variability is introduced all the time. i think its an 80/20 kindof rule, or maybe even 90/10.
but is this variability limiting for tanks? do the other defensive/team-oriented AT's suffer from the same problem? A controllers holds either hit or miss. Yes, there's variability ... but there seems to be a limited number of parameters that affect that variability. For the most part, the behavior of their powers seems to fall within a small range of possibilities from mission to mission. Same with Defenders. Empaths don't suddenly heal less damage because it was caused by Fire. Sure, i'm willing to believe i'm exaggerating the variability, but i have personally experienced many situations where i could not perform the same way in one mission i could in the previous mission and it wasn't at all immediately clear why that was the case.
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Hagis hit the nail on the head IMO
My Ice/Axe tank keeps groups safe by keeping dangerous boss mobs on their [censored] for the majority of the fight, I can't tank the whole spawn but do I really need to tank Minions?
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So, if Scrappers are the Dev-appointed Boss-killers, then the Tank's role is to protect the Scrapper so that he can do his job?
Hands up, any Scrappers in the audience: do you need a bodyguard to kill a Boss?
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Well, if a Scrapper couldn't do that, he wouldn't be able to fulfill HIS team-role 
Question is: "could the scrapper reliably hold the bosses aggro while killing him?"
Because on a team, that's a much bigger question than "can the scrapper kill the boss?"
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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.
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Well, honestly, Statesman, that's incorrect.
I can surpass any tank's available defense with a few Luck inspirations. Cheap, readily available, even free most of the time.
And rapid-fire healing is equivilant to nearly unlimited hit points, which is possible for any Defender with a self-heal, or anyone who takes and slots Aid Self with 3 recharges, actually.
The tank's only saving grace at this point, since they don't do more damage than defenders, is their higher base hit points, which allows them to take harder hits.
Aggro management? Controllers can lock down most or all of a spawn. No aggro, so that's good management. Debuffs, slows, holds, pets, any number of means exist to "manage" aggro, for most of the ATs. People can even take the Presence pool and slot heavily if they want, and tank well enough as long as they can stay alive.
Oh, and since tanks can't keep aggro off the heavier damage dealers, they aren't able to manage aggro sufficiently.
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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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So what point is there in playing a tank if you only have one purpose? I'll stick with my defenders and Kheldians, who can do many things, most of them just as well as a tank.
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Should a skilled Tanker be able to corral EVERY mob? With a lot of skill, it should be possible - but it's certainly not required to be a good Tank. As long as the Tanker can hold onto aggro so that his teammates are facing less than they'd normally face (i.e. 3 minions), then the team has an advantage. Namely, each teammate can quickly eliminate his opposition...and then come to the Tanker's aid at the end.
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That theory fails to account for the ATs without sufficient damage output to "quickly eliminate" enemies, which is a very stark reality in this game. These ATs are inherantly slower at defeating enemies, and as such, cannot meet the requirement you set for the team (quick elimination of 2-3 minions). You also don't account for aggro lost to the ATs with higher damage output, which increases their risk and requires them to concentrate less on helping their defender/controller teammates and more on staying alive. Then the defender/controller has to switch focus from those 2-3 minions that you're expecting them to handle and try to keep the blasters (and possibly scrappers) alive. The advantage quickly turns to the enemies favor, it seems.
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End result? Well, no one was that familiar with their builds.
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Was that an excuse for allowing the controller and Kheldian to be defeated, or were you pointing out that this is what you expect on a typical team of new players or players trying out alts with powers new to them?
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The Controller was defeated by getting too close to another spawn.
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It happens, not a big deal. However, a few months ago, when it did happen, you really got a chance to see some great heroes in action (click my sig). Now, you just lie there and wait to see if everyone else goes down or survives the next few minutes and has a rez available, sadly.
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The Peacebringer carelessly tossed off attacks and ended up aggroing too much.
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Now, let's be sure you're clear on this.
The Kheldian filled his/her function in the group, that being dealing damage, and was defeated when you lost aggro and therefore were not filling your function in the group, and this is perfectly acceptable? Working as intended? Perhaps you feel that Kheldians should perform a different function in the group, and if so, would you care to enlighten the readers as to what that would be?
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After those two defeats, we settled down and functioned fine.
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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If the combat went on long enough for you to have to use DP "several times", you need to take a long, hard look at something in the game, because even with 3 recharge reduction SOs, it takes a good while for it to come up on my Invuln/SS tank, and that implies that you and your team were either performing very poorly overall, or the game has been slowed down to a veritible crawl when teaming, in which case, you can expect even less teaming overall when people get tired of simple missions taking far longer than they have to dedicate to them and task forces/trials requiring multiple days to complete.
Oh, and Statesman, if you ever do find yourself roaming around Pinnacle, please DO NOT offer to team with me. I'd rather avoid the debt.
Statesman, your description of my role is not only disappointing, but shocking. I'll just let my thoughts trail off into the ether along with the time I've put into my "tanker."
In a painful attempt to remain positive, I guess my new role is to tank AV's (not psionic of course!) and absorb the alpha strike.
Sentinel
What other role is there for tanks???
Effective tanking POST ED now means taking FULL Advantage of any terrain benefits you can get. Moving around corners, essentially forcing the aggro'd crowds to bunch up.
It's even more critical that team members FULLY understand what the tank/tanks are going to do, and WHEN to launch their attacks. I single blaster can ruin a mob cluster and virtually get the entire team killed if the mob scatters.
For me - my Fire/Ice tank = using BLZ Aura to get aggro, find my corner or pillar or other hiding spot (inside crates being best) then ice patch to lock the mob down, then BURN!! They 'try' to run from burn, but Icepatch keeps em close. If the blasters..etc..etc.. wait until my first burn runs for a few seconds, their AOE's will often take out the majority of the group.
Getting to the 'hiding' spot is definitely more dangerous without the damage res. Damage output is JUST enough to try to maintain aggro... but.. squishies still die around me all the time.
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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.
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Well, honestly, Statesman, that's incorrect.
I can surpass any tank's available defense with a few Luck inspirations. Cheap, readily available, even free most of the time.
And rapid-fire healing is equivilant to nearly unlimited hit points, which is possible for any Defender with a self-heal, or anyone who takes and slots Aid Self with 3 recharges, actually.
The tank's only saving grace at this point, since they don't do more damage than defenders, is their higher base hit points, which allows them to take harder hits.
Aggro management? Controllers can lock down most or all of a spawn. No aggro, so that's good management. Debuffs, slows, holds, pets, any number of means exist to "manage" aggro, for most of the ATs. People can even take the Presence pool and slot heavily if they want, and tank well enough as long as they can stay alive.
Oh, and since tanks can't keep aggro off the heavier damage dealers, they aren't able to manage aggro sufficiently.
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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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So what point is there in playing a tank if you only have one purpose? I'll stick with my defenders and Kheldians, who can do many things, most of them just as well as a tank.
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Should a skilled Tanker be able to corral EVERY mob? With a lot of skill, it should be possible - but it's certainly not required to be a good Tank. As long as the Tanker can hold onto aggro so that his teammates are facing less than they'd normally face (i.e. 3 minions), then the team has an advantage. Namely, each teammate can quickly eliminate his opposition...and then come to the Tanker's aid at the end.
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That theory fails to account for the ATs without sufficient damage output to "quickly eliminate" enemies, which is a very stark reality in this game. These ATs are inherantly slower at defeating enemies, and as such, cannot meet the requirement you set for the team (quick elimination of 2-3 minions). You also don't account for aggro lost to the ATs with higher damage output, which increases their risk and requires them to concentrate less on helping their defender/controller teammates and more on staying alive. Then the defender/controller has to switch focus from those 2-3 minions that you're expecting them to handle and try to keep the blasters (and possibly scrappers) alive. The advantage quickly turns to the enemies favor, it seems.
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End result? Well, no one was that familiar with their builds.
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Was that an excuse for allowing the controller and Kheldian to be defeated, or were you pointing out that this is what you expect on a typical team of new players or players trying out alts with powers new to them?
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The Controller was defeated by getting too close to another spawn.
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It happens, not a big deal. However, a few months ago, when it did happen, you really got a chance to see some great heroes in action (click my sig). Now, you just lie there and wait to see if everyone else goes down or survives the next few minutes and has a rez available, sadly.
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The Peacebringer carelessly tossed off attacks and ended up aggroing too much.
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Now, let's be sure you're clear on this.
The Kheldian filled his/her function in the group, that being dealing damage, and was defeated when you lost aggro and therefore were not filling your function in the group, and this is perfectly acceptable? Working as intended? Perhaps you feel that Kheldians should perform a different function in the group, and if so, would you care to enlighten the readers as to what that would be?
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After those two defeats, we settled down and functioned fine.
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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If the combat went on long enough for you to have to use DP "several times", you need to take a long, hard look at something in the game, because even with 3 recharge reduction SOs, it takes a good while for it to come up on my Invuln/SS tank, and that implies that you and your team were either performing very poorly overall, or the game has been slowed down to a veritible crawl when teaming, in which case, you can expect even less teaming overall when people get tired of simple missions taking far longer than they have to dedicate to them and task forces/trials requiring multiple days to complete.
Oh, and Statesman, if you ever do find yourself roaming around Pinnacle, please DO NOT offer to team with me. I'd rather avoid the debt.
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I disagree with one point here...stating that you can imitate defense levels with insp's isnt very valid. A tank can pop insp's too. To increase damage output as well as increase defenses.
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What I see here is that you want a Tanker to perform equally well in a team of Scrappers and Blasters as they would in a team that consisted of a variety of ATs including Defenders and Controllers. The problem with that is Defs and Conts would no longer be needed at all. If further CC and damage mitigation are not necessary, why recruit an AT that is going to be useless and/or bored in your party?
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so, let me turn your argument around a bit ... should an Empath only be able to heal half as much if they're on a team without a Tanker or Controller? should they be able to perform equally well in a team of Scrappers and Blasters as they can in a team that consists of a variety of AT's including Tankers and Controllers? personally, as somebody who has a number of Empaths, i don't think i've ever found a team i couldn't contribute to, regardless of composition.
there's a world of difference between "needing" a certain AT on a team and "gaining benefit" from the inclusion of an AT on a team. there are some tankers who right now feel they can't even fill their basic role without needing a certain type of teammate. personally, that's not my experience, tho it _is_ my experience that there are circumstances where that's true. i know there are folk out there who don't even feel that's the case. that's part of why the debate is so heated right now.
but, maybe i'm putting words in the OP's mouth, but i don't think its wrong to say the objective of the post was to find a "baseline" role that Tanks should be able to fill in I6 regardless of who they are teamed with. teammates should certainly contribute in their individual way to making that role easier or strengthening the role, but there has to be a neutral starting point.
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I disagree with one point here...stating that you can imitate defense levels with insp's isnt very valid.
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Isn't it? If I have a power that can debuff enemy accuracy by 33%, and the defense I can acquire via powers and inspirations is capped at 65%, I've still managed to surpass a tank's maximum defense potential.
And even if accuracy debuffs aren't available, other powers are just as effective. Powers that slow recharge times effectively give you higher defense (defense lowers chance to hit, reduced recharge times lowers the number of times that an attack can be made, end result is the same), holds/sleeps/confuse give effectively 100% defense versus how-ever many are held/slept/confused, and pets can be used to grant a brief 100% defense by simply using them to tank/take aggro briefly. Heck, one of the first powers available to a Force Field defender/controller is Personal Force Field, which is a better defense than tanks can get without buffs.
Resistance? The lower-tier inspirations are pretty useless, but enough of them, or a few of the better ones, can get you up to a reasonable level of res. Couple that with some damage reduction powers (like Trick Arrow's Poison Arrow or Dark Miasma's Darkest Night/Twilight Grasp), and, again, any AT can beat a tank's res.
So yes, it is possible to equal, or even surpass, tanks' defenses. I do apologize for not clarifying that players do have to use powers, or be in teams with powers, that assist in hitting or passing tank def caps. Without at least some other means of increasing def/res, you are correct, other ATs can't quite reach tank-level def/res.
Something else just occured to me while I was posting in another thread. I'll just add it here, because I think it's something Statesman, or someone at Cryptic, might want to respond to.
I never actually stopped to count when I was playing my tank, but based on Cryptic's usual "3 enemies to 1 hero" response, I'd figure that should come to around 7 (3 enemies/hero, 7 in the team, 21 total, 1/3rd of which would be 7).
That's even more worrisome and shameful than I'd originally realized. He was "worried" while tanking 7, leaving 14 for his teammates to deal with, and had to use Dull Pain "several times" in order to complete the battle.
Let's be a bit more generous, though, and presume that there were as many as 30 enemies in the spawn. That would still only be 10 that Statesman was tanking, leaving 20 (yellow-con, definitely, and more likely orange-con, due to how the game scales enemies for teams, even at Heroic) for his teammates to deal with. That works out to some having 3 enemies to defeat, others having 4, and the requirements for those defeats being harsher than normal (again, standard Villain/Hero ratio is 3:1, even-con).
Not good. Even worse for team members with slow damage output or low hit points, and players who can't or don't want to play at levels of difficulty that pit them against +1-3 foes.
You're very right, Tiffany, that's the point I'm trying to get to. Is there a role, independent of the other ATs or team members that the tank can fulfil now?
If so, what is it?
If not, why not?
For those of you who criticized Statesman's test, I have to say that he performed about how I would expect most INV tanks to do considering he's at level 32 sk'd to 49.
At that point, there's only been one level of three-slots I believe, and the two last powers from the Secondary are missing.
A post-ED, 15-level sk'd INV tanking Red and Purple Carnies, not being defeated and only having a couple deaths in the first encounter or two? Seems like a pretty good job to me. Not sucking up, just trying to give the devil his due.
There has been some excellent discussion here, and really, considering the fact that States posted it's pretty damn flame-free.
Let me try and sum up some of the things that we've talked about before I leave for the night. Please remember that I am not vouching for the veracity of any given opinion. This is a summary of the things that were said, not a defense or denial of any of them.
Tanks can still solo pretty well, but of course are diminished both in their defense and offense.
There are Primary Powers in the other tank sets that allow non-INV tanks to act in a Controller-like manner (whether this is good, like Ice, or bad like Fire.)
The test that Statesman ran showed that while an INV can help in a large-team mission, he is in perhaps an unacceptible amount of danger, and would probably have much more trouble if either he did not have Dull Pain or if the DEF from Invincibility was reduced.
Statesman *did*, for once and for all define what the DEVs see as the role of Tanks.
While this role agrees with what some tankers believed it to be, in other cases people thought:
1) It was too limiting
2) It depends on too many other things besides the tanker primary
3) It is not a well-enough defined role that it cannot be done better by another AT consistently
4) Primary weakness does not allow the tank to fulfill that role sufficiently under normal circumstances. i.e. The tank draws so much aggro that he is defeated before the team can defeat the enemies.
The suggestion was made that Tanks use more flexibility in their tactics since there are no longer one or two tactics that works all of the time.
The counter suggestion is that Tanks split into two roles, one concentrating on their primary and one concentrating on their secondary and fulfilling two different roles, depending on the tank.
Once again, in both cases, points were made that other ATs may be able to consistently fill both of those roles in teams.
Thank you for your rational and measured responses so far in this thread. I think that this has been pretty constructive so far.
Mr. Lithuania
Jessica to Nathan in bed: "I'm not really bad, Isaac just drew me that way."
In my post I5 playing trying to Level up my defender Psiberia. Almost all the PU teams were scrappers and defenders. For spice we might have a Controller maybe even a blaster. Occasionally there was a tank already on the team when i joined. What made for the best tank was one +2 to the mission level and everyone else.
When the one +2 tank dropped the team wanted another tank but we found a Controller first and we were just as good or better (secondary Buffs).
We needed more damage output not tank like aggro control. We needed Controler holds and Defender buffs more. Yes we did Carnie missions Train missions.
Pinnacle
Arch light L50 INV/SS
Psiberia L50 Kin/Psi
Screaming Mentallica L50 Sonic/MM
Infinity
Arc Voltinator L50 SS/Elec
Mind Fire Kinesis L50 Fire/Kin
Flaming Screamer L50 Fire/Sonic
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I would much rather hear Cryptics explanation of our intended role and how they see us accomplishing it. Since we have obviously been wrong by their direction, I would really like for States and company to tell us what we are supposed to contribute to a team, and how that contribution stands out beyond all other AT's.
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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.
Should a skilled Tanker be able to corral EVERY mob? With a lot of skill, it should be possible - but it's certainly not required to be a good Tank. As long as the Tanker can hold onto aggro so that his teammates are facing less than they'd normally face (i.e. 3 minions), then the team has an advantage. Namely, each teammate can quickly eliminate his opposition...and then come to the Tanker's aid at the end.
I just played a Tanker with the following group (actually, at the request of a PM)...
Inv/Fire tanker (32, SKed to 49)
Level 50 Elec/Elec Blaster (it was his mission, set on Rugged)
Level 32 Peacebringer (SKed to 48 or so).
Level 48 MA/Inv scrapper
Level 50 Fire/Kin controller
Level 35 Earth/empathy controller (SKed up to 48)
Level 49 Energy/energy blaster
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.
End result? Well, no one was that familiar with their builds. The Controller was defeated by getting too close to another spawn. The Peacebringer carelessly tossed off attacks and ended up aggroing too much. After those two defeats, we settled down and functioned fine.
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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I dont play a high level tanker, but this thread is very interesting to me...as most of my friends do. And they are all 'doom and gloom' about the future of the tank AT...and I think one is about to quit 
SO I am here trying to find SOME way to convince him and some of my other firends to stick around. Then I saw your post Statesman...
I have seen you say several times that 'tanking is just fine in our internal testing' and other posts like the one above on how you were able to still tank. Thats great BUT....
What is y our build? How are you slotted? My friends (a 50 fire/ice tank, a 36 invuln ss tank, and a 35ish fire/fire tank) are saying that they are getting owned...even agains even con spawns. They say ther are completely inneffective now that ED has hit. So what kind of slotting do you (or anyother successful post ED tank) have? Can you share it? Maybe with some tweaking they can be effective again?
States says that no other AT is as good at managing aggro. But a good part of the game (3 zones anyway, and soon to be a 4th) is PVP, and in that situation, rhe Brute with his single target taunt attacks is much better at it than us. Can we have our punchvoke power work in PVP or an autohit taunt so that we may continue our role in PVP as well as PVE?
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Something else just occured to me while I was posting in another thread. I'll just add it here, because I think it's something Statesman, or someone at Cryptic, might want to respond to.
I never actually stopped to count when I was playing my tank, but based on Cryptic's usual "3 enemies to 1 hero" response, I'd figure that should come to around 7 (3 enemies/hero, 7 in the team, 21 total, 1/3rd of which would be 7).
That's even more worrisome and shameful than I'd originally realized. He was "worried" while tanking 7, leaving 14 for his teammates to deal with, and had to use Dull Pain "several times" in order to complete the battle.
Let's be a bit more generous, though, and presume that there were as many as 30 enemies in the spawn. That would still only be 10 that Statesman was tanking, leaving 20 (yellow-con, definitely, and more likely orange-con, due to how the game scales enemies for teams, even at Heroic) for his teammates to deal with. That works out to some having 3 enemies to defeat, others having 4, and the requirements for those defeats being harsher than normal (again, standard Villain/Hero ratio is 3:1, even-con).
Not good. Even worse for team members with slow damage output or low hit points, and players who can't or don't want to play at levels of difficulty that pit them against +1-3 foes.
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Luminara, from measuring spawns on teams like this, the total number of enemies in the spawn was more like 16, with 10 of them being minions, 4 or so lieutenants and a couple bosses. They would not have been yellow to States, but red and purple under normal circumstances since the mission belonged to a level 50, with a team of 7, the difficulty would have been kicked up by +1 and it was run on rugged for another +1. The minions would have been orange for the mission holder, with them being +3 to States's tank.
You have to remember that a team of 7 would normally spawn 21 enemies, but that bosses and lieutenants count for more than one when they calculate it.
Nowhere near 30 and at a much higher level than you're thinking, in other words.
Mr. Lithuania
Jessica to Nathan in bed: "I'm not really bad, Isaac just drew me that way."
How can people not be familar with their builds when the team is around 49th level? Even with respecs and E.D. people at that leve should be able to adjust rather quickly.
Yawn...
Is that all you have to say about the role of a tank Statesman? Is that our role?
To hold a third of a mob and selct the ones that we can handle damage from best...???
I agree with a lot of other posters in this thread. Exchange the tank for any other AT and the team might probarly do better.
And quite frankly, if you where playing on Rugged with that team I expected the team to breeze through the mission. Your tactics seems strange and I cannot really imagine how that tactic would benefit the team...
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How can people not be familar with their builds when the team is around 49th level? Even with respecs and E.D. people at that leve should be able to adjust rather quickly.
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That sort of threw me, too. On the other hand, that would make a difficult mission harder, not easier.
I get the feeling that States doesn't push a button while playing the game without thinking about why he's doing it.
I believe I've done similar missions while we were testing I5, and for many teams, Carnies are worth more than a yawn.
Mr. Lithuania
Jessica to Nathan in bed: "I'm not really bad, Isaac just drew me that way."
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so our role by your own experience is to take the initial aggro, to tank 1/3 of the group eventough by your own admission you went to 1/3 in the red even with an emp and a kin on team long enough for the rest of the team to do it's job. So what is it you were doing that a buffed scrapper and he would be buffed with a kin controller with pets and emp on team would not be able to do plus he would be adding damage to the team which you were not. Is this really your impression of tanking is? that someone even as knowledgable and skilled as you could only contribute handling 1/3 of the spawns? what if you were EM,SS with only one AOE unlike fire is 1/3 too high of a standard then?
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Nicely put. Basically what Jack's example comes down to is this. "A tanker is a bag of hitpoints to absorb the initial alpha from the mob. After that the team goes on as normal."
Quite a job description for an entire AT huh? I was kinda wondering how he handled the Carnie bosses that should have been spawning, didn't see him mention them. Would also be interesting to see how he does against AV's like Anti-Matter or any other non Smash/Lethal exclusive AV.
I like that Jack came here to tell us how he see's the AT and how they should perform. A description with a bit more scope would be nice though. Want to make sure I'm having fun the right way at all times for now on.
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Heh, I find it funny how people go from "Statesman knows too little about his own game!" to "Statesman knows too much about his own game!" 
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Sword, these people are exactly right.
Of course he understands HIS game. He doesn`t understand OUR game. And there are thousands and thousands of us and he really should be accommodating us.
The problem is he doesn`t understand why we dig CoH and our chars so much.
He thinks it`s all about challenge = fun.
I have an issue in the unimaginitive third rate way they dumb us down to give us challenge. When they could have just as easily ramped up and diversified the content to really get us going.
But he doesn`t understand that the buzz for us is seeing our Chars really rock in action.
He just doesn`t get it. And he never will. It will always be numbers and balances for Jacko. He doesn`t understand what`s really at the heart of this game.
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The suggestion was made that Tanks use more flexibility in their tactics since there are no longer one or two tactics that works all of the time.
The counter suggestion is that Tanks split into two roles, one concentrating on their primary and one concentrating on their secondary and fulfilling two different roles, depending on the tank.
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okay, to be reasonable, the first suggestion is entirely fair. i still think there's some difficulty in doing this, because i think its hard to recognize what tactics apply when - but i'm also arrogant enough that i think i know a decent amount about Paragon City. i'd be begrudgingly willing to be told otherwise! :-)
that said, i still like the second idea. in fact, i've felt the approach to "fixing" tanks in I5 and I6 was too restrictive. i.e. the very fact that tanks were over-powered in I3/I4 accommodated a wide range of tanker playstyles. it really feels like I5/I6 took the same tactic for "fixing" all tanker AT's (i.e. strong in some situations, not so strong against others, varying the strengths between the primaries), essentially eliminating a lot of those playstyles. i'd love to see some effort made to develop primaries that supported different tanker playstyles (e.g. skranker vs meatshield) rather than just allowing different tanks to tank in different circumstances. i'd even be okay with a promise that a future AT would look into this and its too late to support that kind of variety with the Tanker AT as it stands! or to be told its just not possible.
on that note, humour me on a strange tangent - i really hate sitting at the airport at a gate looking at the departure time at the desk showing 10:30am when its already 10:45am and there's no plane at the gate. if there's bad news, i'd rather just know ... it may be frustrating to hear "tanks will never be able to do that" or "we can't balance the rest of the AT's around giving tankers X and Y". heck, even "our analysis just doesn't show that tankers aren't being defeated more than than Z" would be better than "tankers are performing the way we want right now". it just sounds too much like "your flight is still scheduled for an on time departure".
Here's my view on the new role of tanks.
1) They are the conduit for the healer to focus on in the team. We are dead without healing, but...drawing aggro onto ourselves allows us to be the "center" for healing.
2) We cannot effectively hold all aggro anymore, much less survive it. Taunt is an optional as ever considering we are no longer expected to be the end-all meatshield of every minion.
3) Our taunt-auras and punch-voke should make us hold plenty of aggro. Our goal should be to charge in first, take the intial first wave of hits, and proceed to attack the highest priority targets (e.g. mezzers & bosses). We cannot hold all the aggro, but we offer mez protection to the team by drawing those enemies onto ourselves.
4) In my experience, you should have a tank for every 3 other ATs to effectively survive. Therefore, a team of 6-8 should have two tanks if they are expected to hold aggro. If they don't, don't try. Just hit as many as you can hold and let the team do the rest. You're not the end all savior anymore, you're just a member of a team.
5) Defenders are more crucial than ever. If you don't have healing or SIGNIFICANT buffs/debuffs, don't bother trying to team. I always search for DEFs first when team-building. I grab 2-4 DEFs every time I build a full team. If I find empaths, I stop at 2. If I find only buffers/debuffs I grab 3-4. Tanks generally only have 20-60% dmg resistance and cannot substitute for the power of instantly healing 1/4 of someone's HP as an empath can. Defenders are crucial.
6) Tanking is still fun, but takes more tactics than ever now. I often use simple tactics like taunting and turning a corner, a sort of soft damage mitigation. They can't attack me till they turn the corner and won't attack anyone else until the taunt wears off. When teamed with anyone with slows or immobilizes this works like a charm.
There are my tips. Good luck out there.
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