Insert generic 'pick what you like', 'best is subjective', they can all do the job' lines.
From the sets you listed, pick a primary, pick a secondary, and you've got a solid tank that can deal damage. Inv/DM and Shield/SS are two of the tankers I'm running right now and both are incredible in their own ways.
Inv/DM - Very solid. Inv is a great set that is really only missing a fast recharging heal. DM has a fast recharging heal. Along with piles of utility powers (fear, endurance recovery) and good damage.
Shield/SS - great damage, quite sturdy. Shield Charge + Footstomp makes you the life of the party, at least until they all die.
Finally, I'll also recommend the good old Inv/SS. The most popular tanker, he's all around solid.
From the sets you listed, you won't get a bad tanker.
One caveat: tankers mature slowly, and can be quite frustrating until the twenties, or even thirties. Stick with it.
They ALL float down here. When you're down here with us, you'll float too!
@Starflier
General rule: The Best= Stone
But since that isnt up there, Inv/SS is a solid choice, you'll perform well with that, Ice/DM is supposed to be a great build, never tried it myself, but lots of defense coupled with -to hit for enemies...SOUNDS great.
You can't go wrong with the stuff you have up there.
<QR>
INV / SS is s solid teaming and solo choice.
DM has the benefit of ToHit Debuffs, and is the only Tanker Secondary with both a Self Heal and an Endurance Drain / Recharge.
Willpower is considered a very strong Primary, somewhat better regarded than Invulnerability. Ice Armor is seen as weak, as it is a Defense based set, rather than Resistance (I enjoy it, but I build for concept and rarely build for "peak performance.") Shields is still being figured out by folks. Some like it, some don't. It will be stronger as part of a team then it is solo.
New story arcs coming soon (ARC IDs will be aded when I finish the arc):
So, you want to join the Hellions? (level 1-14 Villainous arc)
Sparks & Steel (level 5-20 Heroic arc)
and
So you want to join the Skulls? (level 1-14 Villainous arc)
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General rule: The Best= Stone
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Stone, while running Granite, is the toughest tank. Not the best. Especially since you do about as much damage as a four year old with a whiffle bat. Stone Armor itself is nothing overly special or fantastic aside from its tier 9.
They ALL float down here. When you're down here with us, you'll float too!
@Starflier
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(Energy Melee also has a Self Heal)
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Uh, no it doesn't.
They ALL float down here. When you're down here with us, you'll float too!
@Starflier
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Hey everyone.. I just started playing CoH a couple of days ago, and after some playing around I've decided on making on Tanker. While I am new to the game, I have been a tank for pretty much my entire MMO career. I played and main tanked WoW's endgame as a Warrior, a Paladin, and a Death Knight for almost 4 years. I love to tank, and I understand what tanking is and what it involves (in a general sense, of course).
I did have a few questions regarding Tanking and power sets in CoH before I fully committed though.
For starters, I was looking for a combo that would be good for tanking yet also allow for decent leveling/soloing/small group stuff. I always see people saying "just pick what sounds fun", but fun for me is not using sub-par skills/abilities.
Right now I'm using Inv/SS which seems pretty decent, but I'm still undecided. WP, Ice Armor, and Shield also all look interesting as far as Primary sets go. Same with Dark Melee in Secondary.
So really, I'm undecided as far as the following:
Primary: Inv, WP, IA, and Shield.
Secondary: SS and DM
Are there any combinations of those sets that people might consider "the best"? I'm aware that there might not be a "best", but I'm really just looking for some general strengths/weaknesses of certain combos in different situations.
Thanks for any tips or suggestions. 
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Inv/SS is the "classic" tank build and also is probably the one that stands up the best all around per your criteria. Stone will get you higher defenses more easily, but I find the -recharge, -dmg and -run/jump thing incredibly annoying.
Like in WoW you get 2 builds, so you can make a solo build (Inv/SS/Pyre is excellent in this regard) and a team build (or PvP build). Inv/SS was my first Tanker and still my fave.
WP is an excellent set and (imo) the easiest to slot for. It's the easiest (or at least, the funnest imo) to level as well. You *will* be squishier then an equally built Stoner or Inv Tanker however, but you still can Tank any part of the end game. I have a WP/Stoner that I've done ITFs and LGTFs with (haven't done an STF on this guy yet tho) with no problems.
SD is the shiney new toy ... it can be hit or miss tanking wise since it depends on Defense (much like Ice) where you're at the mercy of the random number generator but Shield Charge is a blast! I have an SD/DM Tanker and the combination (I think) is the best all around combo for SD (the heal in DM really makes it shine).
I have an Ice/Eng Tanker that does fairly well and I enjoy the go power of it more then the end drag that SD can be sometimes. However it also suffers from random number syndrome (being a defense set). Energy Melee is a little annoying however (overly long animations).
All the holes in any of these sets can be accomodated for with decent IO set builds.
Hope that helped.
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(Energy Melee also has a Self Heal)
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Uh, no it doesn't.
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Abosultely right, don't know what I was thinking, fixed post.
Sorry for any confusion. 
New story arcs coming soon (ARC IDs will be aded when I finish the arc):
So, you want to join the Hellions? (level 1-14 Villainous arc)
Sparks & Steel (level 5-20 Heroic arc)
and
So you want to join the Skulls? (level 1-14 Villainous arc)
I think the biggest thing youll find is the number of different ways to "tank".
You've got the brick ****house of Stone Armor.
Can't touch this from Ice Armor.
Tanktrolling with Dark Armor.
"Soak damage? I deal damage!" Fire Armor tanks.
Bend but dont break from Willpower.
"I thought this was WoW" Shield tanks.
and then Invuln... yeah.
Anyways, there are many ways to tank. Fire Armor is probably the best early on with its extra damage and great self heal, but late game it wanes with lower resists and lack of KB and slow protection.
Stone Armor post L33 (need to slot Granite) is the mid game bridge tanker.
Ice Armor is the epitome of suck suck suck awesome, becoming a beast late in the game but iffy through the first 40 levels.
And I havent even touched on secondary synergies.
Welcome aboard.
Tanker Tuesday #72 Oct 5 @Champion
"I am not sure if my portrayal of being insane is accurate, but damn its fun all the same."
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General rule: The Best= Stone
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Stone, while running Granite, is the toughest tank. Not the best. Especially since you do about as much damage as a four year old with a whiffle bat. Stone Armor itself is nothing overly special or fantastic aside from its tier 9.
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It has a great 'dull pain-esque' heal
a fantastic taunt aura that slows immob's and damages
A generic passive that a-la RPD provides S/L res.
A very nice regen + mez protection power
So there we have 4 out of 9 powers that I think are pretty great right off the bat... 5 if you count the tier 9... and rock armor is a great tool for when your out of granite. So... you have 6 out of 9 powers that are pretty good... that sounds like a nice set to me. No question the remaining 3 are total crap, but a lot of sets have that.
To the OP... Having played a lot of WoW myself I can tell you that CoX isn't really following the same paradigm. The fun is in the leveling and creating a character, where in wow the fun is in getting a single character to max level so you can do end game content or pvp.
That is why the answer is try it and see in CoX and isn't tried and true as it is in WoW. If you don't like an AT it's pretty easy to just start another one up, and not only have you lost nothing, but you also now get to try out a second set. Almost everyone who plays CoX is an alt-aholic.
The answer is really what do you want...
Do you want a challenge? I'd recommend DA (but most definitely not for a first tank).
Do you want to ease your way into the game? I'd recommend Inv.
Do you want an immovable object with some major penalties for being unkillable? I'd recommend stone.
Do you want to hold enemies to you no matter what happens? I'd recommend ice.
Do you want to deal damage? I'd recommend shield or fire.
Do you want to be the jack of all trades master of none? I'd recommend WP.
Some of these are glaring oversimplifications (as I'm sure someone was about to comment on how bad one of my generalizations were) but you get the gist.
It really is up to how you want to play the game.
Thanks for all the replies everyone. =D
As for similarities to WoW, the main reason I quit was because I couldn't stand the endgame anymore. The reason I had so many characters at max level was because I'd get one to 80 (or whatever the level was at the time) and then get bored and level an alt.
So I'm looking forward to CoH/V.
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Thanks for all the replies everyone. =D
As for similarities to WoW, the main reason I quit was because I couldn't stand the endgame anymore. The reason I had so many characters at max level was because I'd get one to 80 (or whatever the level was at the time) and then get bored and level an alt.
So I'm looking forward to CoH/V.
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I was trying to avoid taking a stance on the game in case you still played it, but that was the exact reason I left as well. Glad you landed where I did and hope you find the same experience as me.
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Thanks for all the replies everyone. =D
As for similarities to WoW, the main reason I quit was because I couldn't stand the endgame anymore. The reason I had so many characters at max level was because I'd get one to 80 (or whatever the level was at the time) and then get bored and level an alt.
So I'm looking forward to CoH/V.
[/ QUOTE ]
I switched to WoW at one point and got a Hunter to 80. I just didn't like the whole raiding endgame things and tried to make a few alts, but got bored way to fast there. I came back here because I enjoy making so many characters and I can redo the content more than once without getting tired of it.
Go with shield/ss OP, I have one that just hit 50 a week ago and it's a lot of fun.
Great area damage, cool custom shield options, and two nice self damage buffers.
Have fun on whatever you choose. :]
As someone who's main tanked a lot of top end content in other games... COH is embarrassingly easy to tank in. Or perhaps I should say embarrassingly simple, lest I wake the tanker trolls. The game is a lot of fun, but most of the tanking skills you've developed, you won't need.
As for sets, I'd recommend stone melee and willpower for a fun, solid starter.
early tanking is tough without slots and its hard on end
but like g said later on the high end is cake walk... but thats why i like tanks
my def and blasters cant take it as easy..my tank runs through it all.
All of those you mentioned as being of interest to you are quite solid in any combination you choose. I started out Inv/SS 4 years ago and that character is mostly finished, but I still grind from time to time to get her stuff to improve with.
If you're used to tanking in WoW you will have a lot more fun here. And a lot less "challenge"; which really means less "tedious choreography, boredom, frustration, and blame". Here, unless they're running on invincible, an endgame tanker can get into nothing, literally nothing, they can't solo. And a well built tanker needs nobody to control mobs or heal themselves. Any 8 characters can run any mission and almost any task force at a reasonable pace, without a tanker or a "healer". Join pick up groups. You won't have to wait around for the right combination before you can do anything.
Of the two secondaries you mentioned as being of interest -
Super Strength - the name alone brings them in; what else are you going to play in a comic book game? One of the better AoE sets, but the good AoE doesn't come into play until level 38, which is fairly late in your career. Consistent damage and a little bit of control, mostly knockdown, some hold.
Dark Melee - the single most utility in any secondary. All sorts of control, including unusual stuff like fear. Almost every attack has a to-hit debuff attached, which makes it ideal for mixing with defense based primaries. And all of those primaries are defense based to some extent - Ice Armor and Shield, especially.
Any combination of any of those sets is quite playable. Shield (and Fire) are to some extent our Fury spec, though.
<《 New Colchis / Guides / Mission Architect 》>
"At what point do we say, 'You're mucking with our myths'?" - Harlan Ellison
If I was looking for a challenge, I'd be online playing FPS's against some guy that lives in his parent's basement and puts in 20 hours a day ganking noobs.
I play Tanks for fun, durability, and the ability to handclap mobs off the catwalks and into the lava below on the Ernesto Hess TF.
They ALL float down here. When you're down here with us, you'll float too!
@Starflier
I was a end game tank in wow on both a warrior and a DK. I tank becaue it's what i'm good at be it solo or in a group.
Of the sets you mentioned I throughly suggest givng /DM a shot, until i really knuckled down and gave it a worthy play (on a ice armor tank) i thought it was mediocre and quite frankly sucked. But now it's actually my favorite melee set and i'm even playing threw it again on a stalker and will likely eventually make a x/dm tank with x being any primary i feel like since the tools in DM can make any set better survival wise.
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(Energy Melee also has a Self Heal)
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Uh, no it doesn't.
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Sure it does. It's just that the heal is so massive that its numerical value wraps around and goes negative!
Blue: ~Knockback Squad on Guardian~
Red: ~Undoing of Virtue on [3 guesses]~
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(Energy Melee also has a Self Heal)
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Uh, no it doesn't.
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Sure it does. It's just that the heal is so massive that its numerical value wraps around and goes negative!
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The worst part of energy melee for me are the stuns. I actually like the heavy hitting, long animating attacks, but I freaking despise stuns.
They ALL float down here. When you're down here with us, you'll float too!
@Starflier
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As someone who's main tanked a lot of top end content in other games... COH is embarrassingly easy to tank in. Or perhaps I should say embarrassingly simple, lest I wake the tanker trolls. The game is a lot of fun, but most of the tanking skills you've developed, you won't need.
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*lurches out from under a bridge*
Not to get into an argument, but I would change "Tanking is easy=simple" to "holding aggro is easier than other MMOs because of better tools: Taunt, Taunt auras, and gauntlet" else there wouldn't be any talk of bad tankers who are timid and slow, don't contribute damage, don't group mobs effectively, allow stray aggro to kill/mez teammates, etc...
...and blasting, and scrapping are waaaaaaaaaaaay simpler than tanking 
<QR>
I'm going to second the suggestion for Dark Armor, as it provides something that's somewhat of a rarity in armor sets in this game (Psionic damage protection), as well as a very handy debuff resistance in resistance to endurance drain and recovery debuffs. Its only real issues are lack of Knockback protection (obtainable through the Pool Power Acrobatics, or various IOs like Steadfast Protection, Karma, Blessing of the Zephyr, and Kinetic Crash), and a few endurance issues (mainly from Dark Regeneration's 33 end cost). Once both of these are plugged, it's a *very* sturdy tanker due to its layers of control, resistance, and one of the top two self-heals in the game. In addition, for when things do go south, its Tier 9 is a self-rez that deals an auto-hit, Mag 30 stun to everything in the vicinity (but only works if there's at least one enemy in the area, and restores endurance and health proportionally to how many are there).
I don't remember where the numbers are, but I believe that Arcanaville (she's the CoH forums' resident math-geek and numbers-cruncher extraordinaire), when running the numbers on Tanker armor sets when Dark Armor was first given to them, found it to easily be a top contender for survivability, even when compared to other sets' Tier 9 "godmodes".
It's not an easy set by any stretch of the imagination, but it's a very rewarding and powerful set when you learn to leverage its tools.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Back Alley Brawler
Did you just use "casual gamer" and "purpled-out warshade" in the same sentence?
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In response to this:
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and then Invuln... yeah.
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and this from Starflier...
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Inv is a great set that is really only missing a fast recharging heal.
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I've not really complained about Invul since the changes. I fought and scrapped and whined at Castle and Invul got changes. That being said, I'm going to continue not complaining, but I don't feel that should exclude me on commenting on Invul.
In my opinion, as it is Invul suffers from two things really:
The first is Willpower being slightly too good. Willpower gets a lot survivability for the amount of utility it has compared to both other sets in general and to Invul specifically. It does more on fewer powers than Invul does. WP's main advantages (Psi protection, high regeneration and recovery)are ones you can't get as easily from pool powers as you can Invul's main ones (S/L resistance, ToHit). Invul and WP are quite similar sets, and being so similar, it's easy to compare the two and find Invul lacking in more than a couple things players value more than the advantages Invul has.
The second is that Invul is an old set. It was designed for another game, a game without ED. It was designed in a time when having +ToHit in Invincibility meant you didn't have to slot Accuracy in your attacks, meaning you could slot for more damage or endredux. It's from a time when six slotting the passives was a viable build. Excluding slotting for specific IO bonuses, this is no longer the case. Many of the advantages Invul had were diminished over time as the game changed. It also has had a complicated history when it came to the devs trying to balance it properly.
To Starflier, yes I would agree a faster heal would help the set. Reducing Dull Pain's cycle time would accomplish this. I also think adding some (in combat) regeneration to the set in some way wouldn't be unreasonable.
But all in all, after the more recent changes it's a solid set. Solid, but not stellar. It's not king of survivability in many situations by any means, nor does it have a strong theme (survivability should be its theme IMO) nor do I feel it's optimized for today's game as well as it should be. But honestly, I'm happy it got looked at, and I'm happy enough with how it is now. Let someone else fight for a fast self heal. I'm working on getting Tankers some teeth.
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I'm going to continue not complaining
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I feel like I should make this my signature or something. J_B stating that he not only doesn't complain about something... but will continue to do so. (which is funny because in the very next sentence he goes right on to complain about it).
I guess "not complaining" is relative and that one was pretty mild for Mr. J_B.
Hey everyone.. I just started playing CoH a couple of days ago, and after some playing around I've decided on making on Tanker. While I am new to the game, I have been a tank for pretty much my entire MMO career. I played and main tanked WoW's endgame as a Warrior, a Paladin, and a Death Knight for almost 4 years. I love to tank, and I understand what tanking is and what it involves (in a general sense, of course).
I did have a few questions regarding Tanking and power sets in CoH before I fully committed though.
For starters, I was looking for a combo that would be good for tanking yet also allow for decent leveling/soloing/small group stuff. I always see people saying "just pick what sounds fun", but fun for me is not using sub-par skills/abilities.
Right now I'm using Inv/SS which seems pretty decent, but I'm still undecided. WP, Ice Armor, and Shield also all look interesting as far as Primary sets go. Same with Dark Melee in Secondary.
So really, I'm undecided as far as the following:
Primary: Inv, WP, IA, and Shield.
Secondary: SS and DM
Are there any combinations of those sets that people might consider "the best"? I'm aware that there might not be a "best", but I'm really just looking for some general strengths/weaknesses of certain combos in different situations.
Thanks for any tips or suggestions.