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All other things being equal the Stone tank will always be worse when it comes to getting and keeping aggro.
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I have a Stone/Ice tank in the mid 30s that will prove you wrong. Between slows, Gauntlet, the taunt aura from Mud Pots and knockdown from Ice Patch he's a certified aggro magnet. Mobility really isn't an issue either, even without Teleport. I've noticed that I can easily start running into a mob and fire off Rooted about halfway there. The -run speed doesn't take effect right away and by the time it does I've closed the distance to the mob and I'm ready to rock, as it were..... 
"I am a Tank. I am your first choice, I am your last hope." -- Rune Bull
"Durability is the quintessential super-power. " -- Sailboat
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I have a Stone/Ice tank in the mid 30s that will prove you wrong. Between slows, Gauntlet, the taunt aura from Mud Pots and knockdown from Ice Patch he's a certified aggro magnet. Mobility really isn't an issue either, even without Teleport. I've noticed that I can easily start running into a mob and fire off Rooted about halfway there. The -run speed doesn't take effect right away and by the time it does I've closed the distance to the mob and I'm ready to rock, as it were.....
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Like I said, if you play well I'm sure you can do fine as Stone. However nothing you've said really argues that you wouldn't have even better tools were you to pick a non-Stone set.
You mention Ice Patch for example. With a Stone tank you're going to need Hasten and/or set bonuses just to keep it up non-stop where a non-Stone tank is going to be able to throw out multiple Ice Patches with the same recharge boosts.
What do you do when your group gets ambushed by more than 5 enemies (I use 5 because that's the number of targets taunt will hit)? If you have mobility and recharge you can, for example, immediately run over and drop another ice patch. Meanwhile the Stone tank might be locked down in a spot and/or not even have the power back up yet.
A Stone tanker is quite capable of handling aggro as well as an Invuln... I've played both to 50 and for pure aggro control either can do the job equally well.
Swift + TP solve most of a Stone tanker's mobility issues... it's a different playstyle true, but it's very effective. You were talking earlier about needing powers to compensate for the drawbacks of Stone; yeah, you do. That's part of the price of being the toughest tanker. With an Invuln you take different outside powers to compensate for different drawbacks; both end up in roughly the same place at the end of the build however.
I won't try to say that Stone is for everyone because it isn't... if you don't know how to deal with and overcome it's penalties then obviously it isn't the set for you. I've been saying since issue 13 that, properly built, an Invuln can nearly reach Granite level survivability. It does require sacrifices though. That Stone tanker also requires sacrifices, it just requires different ones.
Bottom line, in competent hands a well built Stone and a well built Invuln can both handle anything in the game about equally well, and both are completely capable of handling the aggro for an 8 man team. Pick whichever appeals to you but don't try to argue that the other can't do the job.
COH has just been murdered by NCSoft. http://www.change.org/petitions/ncso...city-of-heroes
I guess part of the problem is the level of expertise. I still think Ice > Invuln > Stone in this context, but that's because I'm thinking about how hard I can push an Ice tanker's mitigation, and how Stone has to chase the other two to bring up its aggro-grabbing ability.
In a slower team, or a team who want to aggressively encounter one large, immobile threat (pylon hunters, rikti raids, AV squads), stone might well be the better option, it really might. But I think more of either small teams - duos and trios - where Ice can grab all the aggro that exists, or, in big 8-man sprawls where Ice once more can grab up to its aggro cap and leave barely a breath of aggro left for others - and can keep up a pace.
Stone makes a good leader for slower players, I think.
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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.
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You seem to have misunderstood me. I didn't say Willpower isn't a complete beast; in fact, I called it fabulous. I did say that it's tougher to control aggro with it -- which is true, even if you manage it just fine, it would be easier with one of the other sets and the same skill level.
But more to the point, I said that for pure tanking -- with any set -- it's hard to find teammates who will stand back, hold off, and let you set up the mobs.
Your reply -- "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" -- indicates that you have, or expect to find, teammates who will wait and let you set this up. That's great! Unfortunately, most teams I find these days will not let the Tanker find a group, jump in, set off the slow-animating Combustion, wait for the foes to gather on the tanker, set off Fire Sword Circle, and then look for, tab to, and taunt mobs on the outskirts. Usually by the time my Combustion ticks its initial damage, the Blasters have spammed everything they've got, well before the mobs have clumped up, so they miss a lot of guys, and peel off some of the aggro.
If I had that much set-up time I'd do the same thing you're doing. but I don't find it likely enough to advise people to plan on it.
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
Ice is almost certainly the aggro king, with two auras that really piss things off. Ice is also very tough, but it is a defence set. If you get an unlucky string against an AV, often the Ice simply can't react. Invuln and stone have resists to lessen the burst damage and can often deal with a bad luck streak. Not to say ice is squishy, far from it. A skilled ice tanker can use energy absorbtion to way overcap thier def and keep even Recluse missing.
Expertise is a very subjective thing. Most people here will call fire squishy, yet I tank almost everything without trouble. Rularuu, psi clocks, carnies, whatever group you want to toss at my fire/mace is fine with him. Recluse and GW are really the only two things that can consistently take him down without support. But I've played him for over 4 years, and he's IOd all over the place. A new or inexperienced fire tank can face those things and be eating pavement in no time flat.
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Ice is also very tough, but it is a defence set.
[/ QUOTE ]With drains, slows, and a massive self-heal. It's not 'just' a defence set.
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I guess part of the problem is the level of expertise. I still think Ice > Invuln > Stone in this context, but that's
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for basic IO or SO slotting I agree. with EA, you dont have the endurance problems, and can use attacks to also maintain aggro, plus the 2 wonderful auras.
Heavy IO slotting (key word, heavy), I'd go invul. making up for defense vs resistance, ice is near softcap already. Invul has better resists and can soft cap, esp SL.
ice/ is wonderful tank, esp for a new player. No funky auras (invincibility/RTTC) that depend on foes in melee range, no -speed (in fact you can get 100% slow/recharge resist), which makes KoA and ninja caltrops meaningless.
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
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Ice is also very tough, but it is a defence set.
[/ QUOTE ]With drains, slows, and a massive self-heal. It's not 'just' a defence set.
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Didn't say it was "just" a defensive set, but I'm not here to argue semantics. All I'm saying is I've seen Ice tanks go from full to zero in no time flat. They may not be experienced, but they are still ice tanks. Ice is certainly a good choice for a tank for most everything, but they also have thier kryptonite. Invuln has psi users, as do granite tanks, WP needs to worry about massive alphas, dark has to watch the blue bar, fire needs to watch for damage in general and ice hates high +to hit.
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Didn't say it was "just" a defensive set,
[/ QUOTE ]Didn't say you did. I was just underscoring that the set has more than one string to its bow.
OK, my perspective as a serial tanker.
Stone is toughest post 32, no ifs or buts, WP does not come close, but you might need to do something really stupid to prove that outside of the normal game experience (10 GMs etc).
Pre 32 with SOs only, stone is not the best by a long shot.
Secondary for a stoner, stone or ice are the best from a survivability point of view, but you don't actually need the extra survivability post 32 really, so I'd be inclined to go stone/fire with its extra AoE damage powers for aggro management. Stone/axe or stone/mace should also be in the frame as they don't depend on a single attack for most of their DPS, it's spread through the set, so the -recharge is not so bad. My two 50 stoners are my main (stone/axe) which is wonderful and a stone/DB which was built purely to look silly doing the animations in granite and I wouldn't particularly recommend.
Stone armor is nice in that it works well on a SO or cheap IO build, and as you don't need to run a lot of other toggles with granite, not too bad for end. Mine is not particularly expensively IOd and has capped S/L resists and soft capped defence so can mitigate ridiculous amounts of damage.
Swift with 3 SOs (which doesn't cost you a pick as said earlier, you'll want stamina anyway) and teleport (again, you'd probably want a travel power anyway) are the bread and butter of the stone tank. I find that between taunt and my epic fireball, pulling mobs off team mates is not an issue, mudpots is a fine taunt aura.
It's true. This game is NOT rocket surgery. - BillZBubba
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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.
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Mud Pots is a good aggro aura, I agree. If you succeed at getting the mobs into it, it works as well as any other available in the game. The specific problems Stone has involve:
- getting the mobs into the aura,
- having Taunt up and available to reclaim the attention of outlying mobs, and
- reliance on Speed Boost, which creates problems for anyone trying to position a PBAoE power for maximum effect.
<《 New Colchis / Guides / Mission Architect 》>
"At what point do we say, 'You're mucking with our myths'?" - Harlan Ellison
All of these are invalid concerns.
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- getting the mobs into the aura,
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Not a problem if you build/play the set properly. See more with the next one.
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- having Taunt up and available to reclaim the attention of outlying mobs, and
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Definitely not a problem. I didn't even have this problem leveling before I got any IO's. I don't know if your just spamming taunt 24-7 but I've never needed taunt and not had it available. First of all I think of taunt as more for anything that's outside of my taunt aura range... covering the first item on your list here. That is extremely rare as long as you know what you are doing, and even then, if you are using taunt that much... throw a few recharge reducers in it and you're good to go.
The whole point of the enhancement system is you can customize your powers to fit your play style... if you're play style is taunting a lot (which seems inefficient, but if that's how you play so be it) then make sure it is up enough.
I've seen this problem a lot by stone tanks in the game and I don't know why, but it seems obvious to me. A lot of stone tankers see the -70% and think that adding global recharge is the only answer. Putting recharge reducers into attacks will work just as well, and if you combine the two you will have no problems whatsoever.
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- reliance on Speed Boost, which creates problems for anyone trying to position a PBAoE power for maximum effect.
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Not once was I reliant on speed boost while playing my stone tankers. Was it a nice buff to have if given? Absolutely. But it is quite easy to build a stone tank that doesn't need sb. SB being mandatory for stone is a crutch for players who really don't like playing a stone tank and just want the easy fix instead of actually building to avoid the problem entirely.
I'll take it even one step further. Once I got a few GoTA's and a few other very cheap sets, I got to the point where once I got a speed boost I immediately turned on rooted because I would move far too fast if I didn't, and without the ability to jump that would be far too much on some maps.
No offense here, but you are very much sounding like the player you described being in your first post. Someone who leveled a stone tanker to 50, obviously didn't like it very much, and then never touched it again.
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No offense here, but you are very much sounding like the player you described being in your first post. Someone who leveled a stone tanker to 50, obviously didn't like it very much, and then never touched it again.
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I rolled a stone tanker in i5, played that to 50 fairly quickly at i6, then quit playing regularly for a while shortly after i7 hit, and came back around i9. When the character was made, Stone's liabilities seemed worth it. Now, they seem far less so.
My main issue with stone is the aesthetic annoyance, especially of Granite. If power customization lets us get rid of the Boulder look, I might be a lot more interested in my stone tanker than I am now. Until that day comes, it's going to rank below Ice, Dark, and Fire in the level of interest I can muster in a character that uses it.
My characters on my main server form a collective; we give each other the most useful drops and recipes. But the stone tanker is still mostly running on SOs. I have not tried to IO out that tanker, mostly because of lack of interest. I realize that it's possible to fix multiple issues, including -recharge, -speed, and the endurance problem, with IO sets. But more interesting characters have issues to deal with too.
<《 New Colchis / Guides / Mission Architect 》>
"At what point do we say, 'You're mucking with our myths'?" - Harlan Ellison
If you want toughness and mobility, I suggest (as I have multiple times before) an Invulnerability/Dark Melee character. Read up on soft-capping it (which you can do easily). You'll be tough as nails, have a few ways to heal yourself and regain endurance, and most importantly have the mobility you need to get around.
I've been debating my next tank, and this has been an interesting thread. Right now I have, in their 40's:
Dark Armor / Super Strength
Ice Armor / Stone Melee
Willpower / Battle Axe
I got a DA/Energy Melee tank to the low 40's, then got frustrated with EM's fairly crappy damage and single AoE, and that Energy Transfer combined with Oppressive Gloom killed me faster than the mobs.
I replaced this tank with the DA/SS, and am pleased that Rage perma-buffs Death Shroud's accuracy and damage, and helps compensate for Cloak of Fear's crappy accuracy to hit high level foes. I was hoping Hand Clap and Footstop would help with mitigation while waiting for Dark Regeneration to recharge, and they have, to a certain extent. But the Rage crash only exacerbates Dark Armor's endurance problems. (Side note: The more combinations I try with Dark Armor, the more I'm convinced it was optimized to pair with Dark melee, with Siphon Life being the primary heal and Dark Regen the panic button, and Dark Consumption to keep the blue-bar full, and Soul Drain to buff acc and dam of the inaccurate auras.)
The WP/Axe tank is built after the manner of Heraclea's Amazon guide, and is everything I'd wanted from a Broadsword Scrapper, but tougher.
Ice / Stone is a total blast, with Energy Absorption providing the constant endurance Stone requires, and with all the AoE and auras, aggro management is no problem whatsoever. The only bummer is not having a self-heal outside Hibernate and Hoarfrost. Very tanky though.
For my next tank, I've been debating running an Ice/Dark Melee as a tank-equivalent to a DM/SR scrapper. The build would be less tight, though, taking Energy Absorption over Dark Consumption, and not needing Permafrost for the +Def IO mule, using Tough instead...but I'd still take it for the slow resist.
Or an Ice/SS as a non-squishy replacement for my Dark/SS. I'd have the damage aura, Chilling Embrace as a more universal replacement for Cloak of Fear, Energy Absorbtion to get endurance back after the Rage crash, Hibernate instead of Soul Transfer, etc. Plus, I could sell all the anti-KB IOs to bankroll the new toon.
I dunno what the tankiest Tank is. I'm just glad I have a whole bunch of character slots.
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(Side note: The more combinations I try with Dark Armor, the more I'm convinced it was optimized to pair with Dark melee, with Siphon Life being the primary heal and Dark Regen the panic button, and Dark Consumption to keep the blue-bar full, and Soul Drain to buff acc and dam of the inaccurate auras.)
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Historically, you are quite right. In the beginning, there were four primaries:
Invuln
Fire
Ice
Stone
and five non-weapon and two weapon secondaries:
Super Strength
Fire
Ice
Stone
Energy Melee
Battle Axe and War Mace.
The assumption appears to be that concept would win out over a desire for variety, so that Fire primary tankers would mostly all have Fire secondaries, same with Ice/Ice and Stone/Stone. Invulnerability / Super Strength can probably also be regarded as a matched pair also. Dark Melee went with Dark Armor, as a scrapper set, before both were ported over to tankers.
Shield Defense seems to have been created to make a natural pairing with the weapon sets.
Energy Melee doesn't really go with anything. Especially now. If another primary is added for tankers, please let it not be Energy Aura.
I do want Spines as a tanker secondary - Stones/Spines would probably look weird enough to keep me entertained, and nobody would be rolling one to looik at anyways - and Regen as a brute secondary.
<《 New Colchis / Guides / Mission Architect 》>
"At what point do we say, 'You're mucking with our myths'?" - Harlan Ellison
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Or an Ice/SS as a non-squishy replacement for my Dark/SS. I'd have the damage aura, Chilling Embrace as a more universal replacement for Cloak of Fear, Energy Absorbtion to get endurance back after the Rage crash, Hibernate instead of Soul Transfer, etc. Plus, I could sell all the anti-KB IOs to bankroll the new toon.
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Ugh, forgot about Rage's -20% defense crash; scratch that... unless I plan to make a habit of Hibernating through it. But then I'd want to run HeroStats all the time since I rarely watch for blinking buff icons.
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The assumption appears to be that concept would win out over a desire for variety, so that Fire primary tankers would mostly all have Fire secondaries, same with Ice/Ice and Stone/Stone. Invulnerability / Super Strength can probably also be regarded as a matched pair also. Dark Melee went with Dark Armor, as a scrapper set, before both were ported over to tankers.
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Yep. Although, a lot of primaries and secondaries combine very well, or at minimum, aren't gimped when combined.
With Dark Armor, I've run on Scrappers: Katana, Claws, Spines, Dark Melee. The DM/DA got into the 40s before I tired of its squishiness and decided to try it as a Tank instead, hoping for higher overall resistance.
Seeking mitigation synergy, I first tried it as a DA/Energy Melee, hoping to stack stuns for mitigation, but instead stacked self-death. DA/SS was next, and is a bit more survivable, and way more fun, but still no more durable than the DM/DA scrapper. Eventually I realized DM helps DA more than anything.
DM helps everything, in fact! Hooray for DM!
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I have a Stone/Ice tank in the mid 30s that will prove you wrong. Between slows, Gauntlet, the taunt aura from Mud Pots and knockdown from Ice Patch he's a certified aggro magnet. Mobility really isn't an issue either, even without Teleport. I've noticed that I can easily start running into a mob and fire off Rooted about halfway there. The -run speed doesn't take effect right away and by the time it does I've closed the distance to the mob and I'm ready to rock, as it were.....
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Like I said, if you play well I'm sure you can do fine as Stone. However nothing you've said really argues that you wouldn't have even better tools were you to pick a non-Stone set.
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I beg to differ, Stone/Ice offers a fairly comprehensive combination of tools to grab and hold aggro with little to no work required by the tanker. Enter melee range with Rock Armor, Mud Pots and Rooted running, set Ice Patch to auto fire and you can pretty much walk away from the PC once you're sure you have their full attention. Any tanker that is well played will be a good tanker, Stone/Ice just makes it easier.
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You mention Ice Patch for example. With a Stone tank you're going to need Hasten and/or set bonuses just to keep it up non-stop where a non-Stone tank is going to be able to throw out multiple Ice Patches with the same recharge boosts.
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This is only true if you are going to be running Granite. A Stone/Ice tanker doesn't really need to run Granite except in extreme cases. Between Ice Patch, good defense and with, the right slotting, a fairly impressive regeneration rate a Stone/Ice tanker can handle most situations with ease. I currently have Ice Path 3 slotted with Recharge SOs and the power is up and ready in 17.74 seconds on a level 37 tanker without Hasten. That, IMO, is comfortably within the roughly 20 second duration. The secret is really in Ice Patch, it is the great equalizer. Most things that step on an Ice Patch wind up flopping like fish so it provides a huge amount of damage mitigation for the tanker and his teammates.
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What do you do when your group gets ambushed by more than 5 enemies (I use 5 because that's the number of targets taunt will hit)? If you have mobility and recharge you can, for example, immediately run over and drop another ice patch. Meanwhile the Stone tank might be locked down in a spot and/or not even have the power back up yet.
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Throw out a taunt towards the middle of the ambush, drop an Ice Patch where I'm at and then charge over to the new group to pick up stragglers. With Swift 3 slotted for Run Speed I'm moving at just under 11 MPH. Will I win any foot races? No, but I am moving fast enough to cross the battlefield to grab aggro from an ambush. Other folks like to use Teleport, I do not for concept reasons, and they can move much easier from one group to the next.
Am I saying that there are not other good tanker combos out there? Nope. I have a level 50 Invy/Stone and a level Invy/Axe that are great at team tanking but they are also good for solo and damage so they make good "all around" tankers. They also tend to rely on inspirations when things get tough. Stone/Ice, IMO, is a combo that is tailor made for pure tanking which is what the OP was asking about in the first place.
"I am a Tank. I am your first choice, I am your last hope." -- Rune Bull
"Durability is the quintessential super-power. " -- Sailboat
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Ice / Stone is a total blast, with Energy Absorption providing the constant endurance Stone requires, and with all the AoE and auras, aggro management is no problem whatsoever. The only bummer is not having a self-heal outside Hibernate and Hoarfrost. Very tanky though.
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I've got an Ice/Stone in the 20s right now. After tanking my Invy/Stone to 50 and laughing at attempts to hurt my Stone/Ice tank for 30+ levels I figured I'd see what Ice/Stone had to offer. Glad to hear that it keeps getting better!
"I am a Tank. I am your first choice, I am your last hope." -- Rune Bull
"Durability is the quintessential super-power. " -- Sailboat
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This is only true if you are going to be running Granite. A Stone/Ice tanker doesn't really need to run Granite except in extreme cases. Between Ice Patch, good defense and with, the right slotting, a fairly impressive regeneration rate a Stone/Ice tanker can handle most situations with ease. I currently have Ice Path 3 slotted with Recharge SOs and the power is up and ready in 17.74 seconds on a level 37 tanker without Hasten. That, IMO, is comfortably within the roughly 20 second duration. The secret is really in Ice Patch, it is the great equalizer. Most things that step on an Ice Patch wind up flopping like fish so it provides a huge amount of damage mitigation for the tanker and his teammates.
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But if you're not running granite, you're just a worse version of an ice/ice tank. Less protection, slow and unable to leave the ground if you want mez protection.
It's true. This game is NOT rocket surgery. - BillZBubba
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This is only true if you are going to be running Granite. A Stone/Ice tanker doesn't really need to run Granite except in extreme cases. Between Ice Patch, good defense and with, the right slotting, a fairly impressive regeneration rate a Stone/Ice tanker can handle most situations with ease. I currently have Ice Path 3 slotted with Recharge SOs and the power is up and ready in 17.74 seconds on a level 37 tanker without Hasten. That, IMO, is comfortably within the roughly 20 second duration. The secret is really in Ice Patch, it is the great equalizer. Most things that step on an Ice Patch wind up flopping like fish so it provides a huge amount of damage mitigation for the tanker and his teammates.
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But if you're not running granite, you're just a worse version of an ice/ice tank. Less protection, slow and unable to leave the ground if you want mez protection.
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Having never played Ice/Ice I can't comment on the comparison. However if Ice/Ice is, as you claim, similar to a non-Granite Stone/Ice in survivability then it's a fairly impressive combo. As I mentioned before, Granite is a great panic button but it just has too many debuffs (-recharge, -damage, - run speed, -jump, -fly) to overcome to make it worthwhile to have up all the time. You also wind up running Rooted with Granite Armor for the healing so that slows you down even further.
The debuffs associated with running Rock Armor and Rooted are far easier to overcome and you are still able to actively tank rather than just standing there waiting for your lowered damage attacks to slowly recharge. By slotting Rooted, Earth's Embrace and Health for regeneration and making liberal use of Ice Patch the survivability of a non-Granite tanker is easily up to about 90% of the challenges 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
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As I mentioned before, Granite is a great panic button but it just has too many debuffs (-recharge, -damage, - run speed, -jump, -fly) to overcome to make it worthwhile to have up all the time. You also wind up running Rooted with Granite Armor for the healing so that slows you down even further.
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I run Granite anytime I have more than 3 people on a team (which is virtually guaranteed that I will have more than that unless I'm soloing). I hardly ever run rooted and granite, and when I do it's usually because there is something really nasty that I have to deal with, and the mobility isn't as much of a problem.
In granite, I currently have a positive recharge, positive damage, and can run about 25 mph. That's with a pretty extreme build, but it's actually pretty easy to get workable numbers for a granite build. Before I started going really crazy I think I had cut the -rech in half, and made up the rest in my attacks, and was probably running somewhere around 20 mph.
Granted most of mine are not /ice so I've always felt like I had to go granite to make myself survivable in larger and tougher teams but that also made my agro better.
IMO, stone/fire is the best combo for agro generation and survivability. 2 aoe's, plus good quick charging attacks that also have dots makes it pretty easy. If you build for granite you don't need extra mitigation that ice would provide. I'm not saying you don't have a completely valid playstyle with stone/ice that works well, just that I did it differently.
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As I mentioned before, Granite is a great panic button but it just has too many debuffs (-recharge, -damage, - run speed, -jump, -fly) to overcome to make it worthwhile to have up all the time. You also wind up running Rooted with Granite Armor for the healing so that slows you down even further.
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I run Granite anytime I have more than 3 people on a team (which is virtually guaranteed that I will have more than that unless I'm soloing). I hardly ever run rooted and granite, and when I do it's usually because there is something really nasty that I have to deal with, and the mobility isn't as much of a problem.
In granite, I currently have a positive recharge, positive damage, and can run about 25 mph. That's with a pretty extreme build, but it's actually pretty easy to get workable numbers for a granite build. Before I started going really crazy I think I had cut the -rech in half, and made up the rest in my attacks, and was probably running somewhere around 20 mph.
Granted most of mine are not /ice so I've always felt like I had to go granite to make myself survivable in larger and tougher teams but that also made my agro better.
IMO, stone/fire is the best combo for agro generation and survivability. 2 aoe's, plus good quick charging attacks that also have dots makes it pretty easy. If you build for granite you don't need extra mitigation that ice would provide. I'm not saying you don't have a completely valid playstyle with stone/ice that works well, just that I did it differently.
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Fair enough, with the advent of IOs it is possible to slot around drawbacks for a given power or powerset and any play style that works for you is a valid play style in my opinion. The real gem in Ice Melee for tanking is Ice Patch, it's the great equalizer. One of those powers that changes your play style after you get it. It's also quite easy to make it stackable so that you can keep the mobs off their feet.
"I am a Tank. I am your first choice, I am your last hope." -- Rune Bull
"Durability is the quintessential super-power. " -- Sailboat
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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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So you have to throw two powers and two slots away just to get almost the mobility of another player. That's neglecting recharge of course. One of the best aggro tools that a tank has is his attacks. Lower recharge is going to hurt you a lot when it comes to using those tools. Even taunt will be up less often.
And then there's the fact that some of the other sets are going to get tools like Shield Charge which are going to help a lot with aggro generation above and beyond just a taunt aura (edit: shield charge for example has an AE radius of 20ft, that's 2.5x the radius of mud pots or 6.25x the area -- a quickly recharging shield charge is clearly a far better aggro tool than anything Stone has).
All other things being equal the Stone tank will always be worse when it comes to getting and keeping aggro. Period. A stone tank can do the job just fine but it's always the case that a different defense set would give them better tools to do their job.
You're right that each set has it's strengths and weaknesses. What a stone tank does and does quite well of course, is live through just about anything. For a team tank it's just overkill. If you really want to be a team tank you want something in the middle -- not the best defense set and not the best aggro set.