Ice Armour has, from what I can see, the best combination of survivability tools and aggro-grabbing ones. You might hear some lauding about Stone, but its mobility issues contravene what I see as flexible tanking.
You do not need Challenge or Provoke at all. They're inessential powers when you already have a good, solid taunt in your secondary power pool and two taunt auras.
As far as secondaries go, I like /fire because it gives you Combustion early, which can grab a lot of aggro easily. On the other hand, it has slow animations (like Energy), so you might find that a pain. War Mace has a lot of extra mitigation in it, too, and some good AoEs, which could contribute to the job of grabbing aggro, and surviving it.
no need for challenge and provoke.
Stone is a great secondary for aggro management. (control)
Fire is a great secondary for aggro management. (damage)
Each set has benefits and drawbacks. Depends on what concept and set you are interested in. Also, decide if and what IO bonuses you want to go for.
I am really happy with shield defense atm. It is not as uber as my stone/fire for all situations, but it is really cool. (I have not even messed with the 50 Shield/fire yet. I am jsut going by my shield/ice. Ice is still week damage, but Shield makes up for it.)
Wp/stone or Wp/fire is how i would go if you want wp as the primary.
YMMV---IMO
Ice Ember
Granite tanks are the toughest, easily. Problem is, they have massive penalties to offset that. To me, stone is very booring, way too slow. Like Talen and Ice have mentioned, the difference isn't really worth the -dam/-rech/-speed.
Only thing I would worry about with WP is holding the aggro. Two taunts in RttC apparently locks it down, but I haven't had a chance to test it myself. An AoE heavy attack set also helps to keep the attention squarely on you. Fire and mace are some serious aoe, and stone and axe are no slouches either.
You can certainly tank with WP, but the weak aggro aura makes it a challenge to be a "pure" tanker. You'll want a secondary with some good AoE, and Taunt.
The presence pool isn't generally needed.
Stone is your unkillable rock in Granite form, but I personally don't like the immobility, it's not like you can jump over and smack the critter that's threatening the blaster.
Ice Armor is your choice if you want all the aggro. Invulnerability isn't quite as good at grabbing aggro, but it's as good as anything not Ice, and it's a bit tougher overall.
If you want a secondary that helps keep the team alive, Ice and Stone are great there.
Might be best to go by your concept of what you want the character to be, and how you want to play. Stone is a very resilient powerset once you get to Granite Armor at level 32, but it is also restricted movementwise while you're in Granite (you can't jump and you run slower, though the run speed can be helped by set bonuses from Invention sets). Personally, I couldn't get over the movement issues and no longer have a Stone Tanker.
For pure tanking that is also maneuverable, I'd go for Invulnerability or Willpower for the easiest "tanking" builds, but Fire and Ice are great, too. Shields can be solid, but you really want to get your defense as high as you can with those, and that's easiest done with Invention enhancement set bonuses, whereas the other four I mentioned can be quite solid just with normal enhancements and digging into the Power Pools.
Anyway, once you pick a specific setup for powers, you can post again and get more specific feedback about how to build a solid tank with the powers you took.
Guide: Tanking, Wall of Fire Style (Updated for I19!), and the Four Rules of Tanking
Story Arc: Belated Justice, #88003
Synopsis: Explore the fine line between justice and vengeance as you help a hero of Talos Island bring his friend's murderer to justice.
Grey Pilgrim: Fire/Fire Tanker (50), Victory
I haven't played anything but shields (which does quite fine) and willpower but here's some insights from reading A LOT about tanks.
I assume you're coming from another game so here's some background on things in CoH:
Defense: there are basically two ways to try and be a really hard-to-kill tank: defense and resist. Some builds specialize in one or the other, a couple can do both. Ultimately defense caps out a bit higher in total effectiveness but resist is more robust.
Aggro management there are several ways a tank keeps aggro. The biggest one is probably their "aggro aura" power. Each tank AT has an aura which adds taunt to enemies within a sizable radius. People are saying that Willpower isn't a great choice because it's taunt aura is subpar (basically the "taunt" that it offers has a short duration).
Another way to taunt is just to attack things. Tanks get a big boost in the taunt they create with their attacks. When things get really hairy I find the only real way to make sure that everything is on me is to run around hitting things. People are telling you that Stone might have problems because Stone tanks have to slow themselves down to reach their most defensive state. This can make it a lot harder to gather up the aggro whenever your enemies get a little bit scattered.
Finally there is the taunt power (and you don't really need to consider other powers). It's a ranged taunt. It can be pretty useful for picking up stragglers. Some people think it's magic, it's not really. For a tank with a good taunt aura, it's really just a secondary tool. However it can be pretty useful, it's also a great way to pull (it's one of our few ranged pulling options) and if you want to excel as a tank you'll want it.
Enemies Another thing worth mentioning is that in City of Heroes there are basically two types of enemies you need to consider for tanking. In most cases you'll be in a group fighting big mobs of enemies. The challenge is more about herding these enemies and keeping them close to you where you can lay on taunt. If your tank is built well or your party is decent then you're not really worried about defense in this case. The second case is where you are fighting some really big guy (an Archvillian). In this case you really should never have problems keeping aggro. Any tanker can dish out what is basically unbreakable taunt on a single target. Instead you're more concerned with just staying alive.
...
Having said all that I think pretty much any archetype will do well for you. If I were going to build a tank with (what I think are) your goals then I'd probably do Invulnerability to have something that was pretty strong on defense and then try to pick up a secondary with some good area attacks (which will apply a lot of taunt). Maybe Invulnerability/Superstrength?
Anyway, take all that with a few grains of salt as I'm not an expert on a lot of the tank builds.
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Hello, my name is Alyosha, and I am a meatshield.
I'm a tank, it's what I love. I keep trying other archetypes but every time I heal or back up the tank in a team I feel like I'm in the wrong spot. I love taking the beating, being in the thick of it, taunting mobs off my teammates, maxing out resists, rushing to be the first in and last out. Bring it on.
So how is one a pure tank in City of Heroes? I don't care much about dealing damage outside of doing what it takes to keep the attention on me. I'm first and foremost concerned about staying alive and taking the brunt of it so others don't have to.
Right now I'm looking mostly at willpower/?, but I'm not at all set on it.
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From what you're saying I would NOT recommend willpower; it's by far the worst aggro magnet of all the tanker primaries. For pure durability you can't beat Stone Armor... no other primary can match the raw survivability of Granite. You'll have mobility problems though... your mez protection, Rooted, slows you down to a crawl and makes it impossible to jump while Granite hits you with a double whammy of -recharge and -damage... roughly a SO worth of damage and 2 SO's of recharge. If you can deal with those penalties then you'll be the next best thing to unkillable.
Another choice would be Invulnerability... properly built a mature Invuln can rival a Stone tanker in survivability without the penalties. I've played both Invuln and Stone primary tankers to 50 and both are very proficient aggro magnets... Invuln is a bit easier though since you don't have the mobility problems.
Shield, when mature, can be quite tough... not quite up with an Invuln but not too far below. I haven't played a Shield tank, but I do have a 47 Shield Scrapper who's highly functional and extremely survivable.
Ice Armor is possibly the best aggro magnet with two very good aggro auras and a mature build is fairly survivable... not quite up with Stone or Invuln but it can do the job.
Now let's look at secondaries. AOE's help quite a bit for aggro generation, which makes Fire Melee arguably number one for that purpose. The downside of Fire Melee is that it offers no mitigation... your primary will have to be able to survive anything that comes at you all by itself. The upside is that Fire Melee offers the most AOE damage available to tankers and is the fastest at killing large groups of baddies.
Stone Melee however offers two AOE's and a ton of mitigation... both hammers do knockdown, Fault is an AOE knockdown and stun while Tremor is a damaging AOE with knockdown. Seismic Smash, your level 38 power, offers massive damage coupled with a MAG-4 hold capable of holding a boss. The only secondary that rivals Stone Melee for control and mitigation is Ice Melee and Stone deals far more damage.
Let me recommend AGAINST Energy Melee... it's by far the weakest AOE secondary and the low damage until 35 coupled with the very long animations make it undesirable in my opinion. I say that as someone who has a level 50 Stone/EM tanker... the set was painful to level before the animation changes a couple of issues ago and now it's lost the "carrot" that made the early pain worthwhile.
Based on what you're asking my top recommendation would be an Invuln/Stone Melee tanker with a soft cap defense build (see the guide in my sig)... it's highly capable early and it matures very well. A second choice for an even more durable tank would be Stone/Fire Melee... it's somewhat slow starting and will be a bit squishy until 32 but from 33 on it's awesome. For the record and admitting I may be a bit biased I have both of those combinations at level 50... the Inv/Stone was my very first level 50.
I realize you don't care about damage per se, but a good tanker can be an excellent aggro magnet while also being a solid attacker. Given that it only makes sense to fulfill both roles... sure your main focus is on controlling the aggro of the mobs but since you're hitting them anyway you may as well actually accomplish something 
COH has just been murdered by NCSoft. http://www.change.org/petitions/ncso...city-of-heroes
ice armor (as has been said) is an excellent aggro holding primary. WP, while a great set, does have a weak taunt aura.
not sure what you mean by 'pure tank', but here is a hint: secondary build.
at early levels, your attacks will do more to help the team than your armors or taunt. In fact, I usually dont recommend taunt as soon as poosible, odds are, your not tough enough to survive it (yet).
for secondaries, you cant go wrong. In your cause, just take taunt.
50 Tanks: Invul/ss, Fire/ice/fire, Ice/em, Stone/fire
WP/Stone, dark/dark, shld/mace
50 Other: WS, SS/dark/sc brute, BS/Regen/WM scrpr, fire/fire/force blaster, rad/kin corr, mind/rad ctrl, ill/storm cntrl
Here's my take on "pure" meatshield tanking: it requires your teammates to work with you.
If your team isn't going to stand back and let you set up the mobs -- and few teams need to, so you'll seldom find people inclined to do this and seldom find players mentally agile enough to adjust to it -- you'll need to be mobile and damage-dealing to keep as much aggro as you can in a fluid team environment.
There's no question Granite is the ultimate anvil, but I find my Granite Tanker wanting teams to slow down and let me take some time to get aggro set. It's very hard to be as flexible and fast-moving with Granite (or Stone as a whole, if you consider Rooted) as it is with other sets.
I generally agree with what Call Me Awesome wrote above. Willpower is a fabulous Tanker set, but it's less attractive for meatshield/aggro duty. I personally would extend the recommended secondaries beyond his choice of Stone Melee to include Super Strength, Battle Axe, or War Mace, because of controls in those secondaries. It's too easy to get fixated on setting up combos (and lose track of teammates or aggro in the process) for me to recommend Dual Blades for a meatshield build; Fire has no controls per se, and I have little experience with Ice or Energy Melee, both of which are often cited for low damage (at least pre-35 for EM) to boot.
If we are to die, let us die like men. -- Patrick Cleburne
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The rule is that they must be loved. --Jayne Fynes-Clinton, Death of an Abandoned Dog
I agree with Mace being a good choice, I just haven't played one and don't have any personal experience with it. Super Strength is probably the most popular tanker secondary, and it is an effective one. The drawback is that it's only AOE comes at 38... although it's quite a good one.
Oh, on the speed thing... it's funny but I generally have teams asking me to slow down with both my Invuln and Stone tankers , I tend to always push the pace and I rarely herd anymore... I just jump/TP (depending on the tanker) into the next group, toss a taunt at any mobs my aura missed and position myself opposite the mobs from the team... that way all the baddie's AOE's point at me and away from the team. Once the group we're fighting is dead I immediately grab the next one.
I've found that keeping things moving quickly cuts way down on what I like to call "Bored Blaster Syndrome" where someone decides to aggro another group of baddies while I'm grabbing this group in front of us. If I'm keeping things rolling along the blasters are happy just following and shooting at my baddies. If I wait around then the blaster gets bored and decides to take a potshot at something I don't have the attention of.
COH has just been murdered by NCSoft. http://www.change.org/petitions/ncso...city-of-heroes
Stone/Ice.. hands down the best pure tanking combo out there....
"I am a Tank. I am your first choice, I am your last hope." -- Rune Bull
"Durability is the quintessential super-power. " -- Sailboat
WP/???
If you have the inclination to work towards an IO'ed out build.
I've found it to be just as tough as Granite without the penalties.
Mind you, this is making an IO'ed out WP.
You will want taunt most likely.
For the secondary, alot of good choices. If you don't care about damage so much, WP is a good choice imo. Ice Patch is handy, taking out 5 targets in a spawn.
Not to mention, Frozen Aura just looks that impressive. 
<.< I've been wanting to make a new WP/ tanker sinse Energy Transfere became ugly...maybe WP/ICE...hmmm...xfer all my IOs over *begins planning*.
/Fire, /Stone, /SS, or /Ice would be my suggestions. But then, I don't care for /Mace or /Axe to much (that said, if I cared for Fire Armor/ a bit more, Fire/Axe would be nice imo)...
I digress...WP/ is a great tanking set, but you will want taunt.
I'd grab Combat Jumping/SJ, FIghting Pool for Tough/Weave, Fitness Pool (though I wouldn't force Stamina in by lvl 20).
BrandX Future Staff Fighter
The BrandX Collection
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Here's my take on "pure" meatshield tanking: it requires your teammates to work with you.
If your team isn't going to stand back and let you set up the mobs -- and few teams need to, so you'll seldom find people inclined to do this and seldom find players mentally agile enough to adjust to it -- you'll need to be mobile and damage-dealing to keep as much aggro as you can in a fluid team environment.
There's no question Granite is the ultimate anvil, but I find my Granite Tanker wanting teams to slow down and let me take some time to get aggro set. It's very hard to be as flexible and fast-moving with Granite (or Stone as a whole, if you consider Rooted) as it is with other sets.
I generally agree with what Call Me Awesome wrote above. Willpower is a fabulous Tanker set, but it's less attractive for meatshield/aggro duty. I personally would extend the recommended secondaries beyond his choice of Stone Melee to include Super Strength, Battle Axe, or War Mace, because of controls in those secondaries. It's too easy to get fixated on setting up combos (and lose track of teammates or aggro in the process) for me to recommend Dual Blades for a meatshield build; Fire has no controls per se, and I have little experience with Ice or Energy Melee, both of which are often cited for low damage (at least pre-35 for EM) to boot.
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I have a WP/Fire that's nearly IO'd out and he's a complete beast. I have one taunt in RttC and I have taunt from fire. I jump into a spawn and hit combustion, which has a large radius, then hit fire circle sword after they've gathered on me. Doing that plus taunting anyone on the outskirts keeps the team chugging.
And this sucker is crazy tough against most mob types. Without a huge investment, he's softcapped to s/l and over 40% to the rest, except psi. If the enemy is in melee, he's softcapped to all except psi, which is still > 30%. He's got 70% resist to s/l, but weaker resists to the rest. Add this to 3100 hit points and 600% regen (much higher surrounded by enemies) and this tank is a force. My only issue are spawns with large number of -def attacks, but many builds have this issue.
What exactly do you mean by pure tanker ???
The hard things I can do--- The impossible just take a little bit longer.
If numbers are so much more important than a teammate who is fun to play with, forget about the game altogether and go play with a calculator instead. -Claws and Effect-
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Let me start by saying I'm sorry. I'm not a fan of those posts begging for help from scratch, for the "best über build!" ... but I'm at a loss and would love whatever help you have to offer. That said...
Hello, my name is Alyosha, and I am a meatshield.
I'm a tank, it's what I love. I keep trying other archetypes but every time I heal or back up the tank in a team I feel like I'm in the wrong spot. I love taking the beating, being in the thick of it, taunting mobs off my teammates, maxing out resists, rushing to be the first in and last out. Bring it on.
So how is one a pure tank in City of Heroes? I don't care much about dealing damage outside of doing what it takes to keep the attention on me. I'm first and foremost concerned about staying alive and taking the brunt of it so others don't have to.
Right now I'm looking mostly at willpower/?, but I'm not at all set on it.
From power pools I imagine I need to grab challenge, provoke, combat jumping, stamina(?), health, tough, and weave. I'd consider taking maneuvers from Leadership.
So... any tips on power set combos? Power pools? Ancillary power pools? Any must haves or must skips? If you've got a whole build layout handy that I can use as a reference, awesome. If you have a few tips that I should keep in mind as I build mine, also awesome.
Thanks for your time.
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The purest tank in the game is the Stone/Stone Tanker post L32 (Granite form).
Stone Armor provides the most protection (Granite) while Stone Melee provides you with the most AOE mitigation (Tremor and Fault).
From a pure tanking perspective, this combo can't be beat.
Power Pools: Fitness (Stamina), Speed (Hasten), Fighting (Tough/Weave if you really want to go overboard), Teleport (Port Self, Recall Friend).
I'd stay away from things like Leadership and Presence personally. Leadership drains more end then you get in return for the effects (imo) and Presence really seems superfluous if you already have Taunt.
This is brilliant... much more input than I hoped to get. Thanks for taking the time.
Definitely sounds like Willpower isn't the best way to go for what I'm looking for. Stone sounds like it can take quite a beating, but part of being a tanker - at least as I've always played one - is definitely mobility. As soon as I learned about granite reducing that significantly I knew that wasn't the way I was going.
I especially appreciate all of the info on the mechanics of tanking. I didn't notice the option of adding +taunt enhancements to the secondaries damage powers. Go ahead, you can call me a newb.
I think what I need to do is dive in, and I'm going to go with Invuln/Stone to start. Thanks to Call_Me_Awesome's great guides I'm going to work from there for at least 20 levels to see how it goes.
Again, thank you all for your input.
Good luck with your tanker, the combo is highly survivable and effective. One word of warning, it will be end heavy so plan on slotting your attacks for endurance reduction. With Stone Melee I would get Heavy Mallet at 4, Taunt at 10, Fault at 22 (this one is huge, no damage but massive mitigation from stunning all minions and putting an entire spawn on it's butt, it's usually my lead attack... I guarentee you have the attention of anything you hit with it.) I'd finish up your secondary with Tremor & Seismic Smash at 35 & 38.
Generally I'd say it's a waste slotting attacks for taunt, accuracy/damage/recharge/endurance are more important, and if you're playing intelligently you shouldn't have much problem maintaining aggro. I do slot a taunt duration into Invincibility, but this is a late game thing once slots become plentiful. While I get Taunt at 10 I generally wait until the 30's to add slots to it; in the early going slots are move valuable elsewhere.
Remember, Invincibility's taunt aura will last for 17 seconds unslotted... anything that's been in melee with you will be on you for at least that long after you've moved away. That already outlasts the duration of the taunt in your attacks so I don't see the point in enhancing attacks for taunt.
COH has just been murdered by NCSoft. http://www.change.org/petitions/ncso...city-of-heroes
I would suggest Inv/Dark Melee, Inv/Fire, or Inv/Stone as the best all-round tanking configurations available in the game so far.
I have a level 50 stone tanker. I do very little with the character. I'm not even sure she has ever actually completed the ITF, and last time I logged on to her, she still had base salvage. Stone is the best "tanker" if your ideal tanker is the one character that remains standing while the rest of the team returns from the hospital. That is Stone's forte. The movement and recharge penalties, and especially the annoying -jump that never goes away no matter how many Kins you have, make it less likely that the Stone tanker is going to be able to react quickly to emerging situations.
(And the false belief that Stone is the best team defense only encourages those players who want to play buffing sets to roll up the quite useless and very annoying Kinetics -- and skip Increased Density, the one useful buff in the set -- rather than the Sonic, Thermal, and Force Fields characters that they ought to be playing.)
Invulnerability has its issues. The slow suicide tier 9 has no value to me; I do not take it. On the other hand, it is easy to cap S/L resistance with it, and to stay close to the defensive cap for exotic damage while the mobs are still alive. It has no mobility or recharge issues, only an endurance issue that you will need inventions to fix. It has no aura taunt issue like Willpower. It is second in survivability to Stone, but faces none of Stone's reaction time problems.
Dark Melee helps with the endurance issue. It gives you a small self-heal on a much faster recharge. It gives you some control. Slot for recharge, and it is an entirely adequate AoE set as well. The only real need for AoE is for your own alpha, anyway.
<《 New Colchis / Guides / Mission Architect 》>
"At what point do we say, 'You're mucking with our myths'?" - Harlan Ellison
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Stone is the best "tanker" if your ideal tanker is the one character that remains standing while the rest of the team returns from the hospital.
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This is completely the opposite of my experience playing my stone tanker so I'll fix it for you...
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An extremely poor build for a Stone is the best "tanker" if your ideal tanker is the one character that remains standing while the rest of the team returns from the hospital.
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The movement and recharge penalties, and especially the annoying -jump that never goes away no matter how many Kins you have, make it less likely that the Stone tanker is going to be able to react quickly to emerging situations.
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Or you could actually think about your build... take powers that increase your mobility, and use IO's that help offset the penalties, and then you will be the toughest thing in this game, and yet also still be able to move just as easily as if you were any other tanker.
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(And the false belief that Stone is the best team defense only encourages those players who want to play buffing sets to roll up the quite useless and very annoying Kinetics -- and skip Increased Density, the one useful buff in the set -- rather than the Sonic, Thermal, and Force Fields characters that they ought to be playing.)
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A properly built Stone tank is one of the best team defense. If you don't believe that, let me know and I'll give you a lesson on mine about just how good they can be.
And... great job telling other players what they should, or should not be playing. When you start paying their subscription maybe you can tell them what to do. If you seriously think increase density is the only value from a kin then you have absolutely no idea how the set works. There are a lot of great defender sets, and kin is one of them. With or without speed boost, there are some amazing powers in the set.
To the OP... pick what you think works for you. Any set can be a great tanker in this game depending on how much you want to build your character. Any negatives on any set can be offset with the right build, and any tank primary/secondary can do the job for any group.
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And... great job telling other players what they should, or should not be playing.
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Isn't this what you are doing by saying that Stone "one of the best"? The OP is asking us to tell him what to do after all! Frankly I think that there are a lot of misunderstandings about stone tankers, what they can and can't do, and it's well worth setting the record straight.
He has a valid point. Stone is great at standing up and taking damage but it's a weak build when it comes to mobility and keeping aggro.
Let me put it this way: assume that a tank of any build is going to stay alive (and a well-built tank of any build can probably do that against almost anything). Which tank build is going to be best then for a team? A tank build that has severe mobility problems that can be partially worked around or, say, a tank build that has great mobility, AoE attacks and other abilities that gather aggro really easily?
This is why I tried to give some perspective to the OP about defense versus aggro management in CoX. The thing is, they're very, very different problems. While a Stone tank is very good at one, it's not ideal for the other. There are better overall combos, IMO, for a well-rounded team tanker.
I'm sure your stone tanker does a great job. Most archetype combos are just fine if played well. Still, apart from staying alive through just about anything, a stone build doesn't really offer anything that isn't done better by other builds.
Best pure tanker?
Me
although Kruunch does come in a distant second along with Heraclea and a few others.
[color=gold][b][size=5]♪ Sometimes you feel like a Tank, Sometimes you don't! ♪[/size][/color][/b]
[url=http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=114726][color=black][b][size=5]Moon [color=red]Hazard [color=black]Zone![/size][/color][/color][/color][/b][/url]
I have several tanks.. Ice/Stone, Inv/NRG, Shield/SS, WP/SS and Fire/Fire and built my wifes Stone/SS.. I think any tank if well built will be a tremendous help to any team and will be able to take the punishment.
The hard things I can do--- The impossible just take a little bit longer.
If numbers are so much more important than a teammate who is fun to play with, forget about the game altogether and go play with a calculator instead. -Claws and Effect-
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Isn't this what you are doing by saying that Stone "one of the best"? The OP is asking us to tell him what to do after all! Frankly I think that there are a lot of misunderstandings about stone tankers, what they can and can't do, and it's well worth setting the record straight.
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Thats why I said the following:
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To the OP... pick what you think works for you. Any set can be a great tanker in this game depending on how much you want to build your character. Any negatives on any set can be offset with the right build, and any tank primary/secondary can do the job for any group.
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Any tank will work. BUT the audacity of saying that anyone who is playing a kin is worthless, and that they instead should play FF, sonic, or thermal is pretty over the top.
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He has a valid point. Stone is great at standing up and taking damage but it's a weak build when it comes to mobility and keeping aggro.
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I disagree. Mud pots is one of the best agro generation tools out there and on par with any of the other taunt aura's. Mobility can easily be built around. Take swift... 3 slot it... you're a good chunk of the way there. Take teleport, and add a click macro, and you're the rest of the way there.
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Let me put it this way: assume that a tank of any build is going to stay alive (and a well-built tank of any build can probably do that against almost anything). Which tank build is going to be best then for a team? A tank build that has severe mobility problems that can be partially worked around or, say, a tank build that has great mobility, AoE attacks and other abilities that gather aggro really easily?
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Every tank has some problem or another. There is no one best tanker, there is only a tanker that if built properly you can offset whatever penalties exist in the set to offset any balance points that exist in it.
Whether that is agro generation, survivability, mobility, end management, whatever... every set has problems. Stone doesn't have to worry about survivability, end management or agro generation (IMO) and so you really just have to fix mobility and recharge rate.
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This is why I tried to give some perspective to the OP about defense versus aggro management in CoX. The thing is, they're very, very different problems. While a Stone tank is very good at one, it's not ideal for the other. There are better overall combos, IMO, for a well-rounded team tanker.
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I appreciated what you were saying in the post where you said that, but there seems to be a lot of confusion in this thread that is just putting down the stone set when it has the same problems every other set does, it's just some people dislike the solutions to those problems. That isn't a problem with the set, that is a personal preference.
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Still, apart from staying alive through just about anything, a stone build doesn't really offer anything that isn't done better by other builds.
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I disagree. Apart from staying alive and keeping everything glued to you on par with everything but ice and possibly fire (which I haven't played so not sure) you're right it doesn't offer anything that isn't done better by other builds. But that sure sounds to me like one of the more important team roles for tankers.
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Best pure tanker?
Me
although Kruunch does come in a distant second along with Heraclea and a few others.
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You couldn't tank my dingleberries 
Let me start by saying I'm sorry. I'm not a fan of those posts begging for help from scratch, for the "best über build!" ... but I'm at a loss and would love whatever help you have to offer. That said...
Hello, my name is Alyosha, and I am a meatshield.
I'm a tank, it's what I love. I keep trying other archetypes but every time I heal or back up the tank in a team I feel like I'm in the wrong spot. I love taking the beating, being in the thick of it, taunting mobs off my teammates, maxing out resists, rushing to be the first in and last out. Bring it on.
So how is one a pure tank in City of Heroes? I don't care much about dealing damage outside of doing what it takes to keep the attention on me. I'm first and foremost concerned about staying alive and taking the brunt of it so others don't have to.
Right now I'm looking mostly at willpower/?, but I'm not at all set on it.
From power pools I imagine I need to grab challenge, provoke, combat jumping, stamina(?), health, tough, and weave. I'd consider taking maneuvers from Leadership.
So... any tips on power set combos? Power pools? Ancillary power pools? Any must haves or must skips? If you've got a whole build layout handy that I can use as a reference, awesome. If you have a few tips that I should keep in mind as I build mine, also awesome.
Thanks for your time.