Highly Workable Tanker Combinations

Wanting to sample every AT at some point, I am a complete utter novice at tanking. TO that end, I'd like to try something that works really well together. It doesn't matter how easy or difficult it is to play; I want a challenge, and as long as I have a few move combos that work well I'll be fine (I hope ). Besically I want something that is effective and fun.

So, what works well?

For being easy to use and reasonably tough I would go with Inv or Fire as Primary. Stone gets very strong with Granite but has real problems with recharge and especially movement. Ice is an interesting one but the lack of Res means you can get clobbered pretty hard.

For melee I would decide whether you want more control or more damage. Ice is very controllery medium damage, Fire is high damage zero control and everything else is somewhere in between. I've liked Stone a lot since it's a great mix of fun, damage and control. The only two I would be cautious about are the Rubber Mace (almost universally loathed) and Energy Melee - which whilst it is the king of single target damage it doesn't get its two big powers until level 35 and 38, that's a long time to wait since the rest of the powerset is not that great.

One should be aware that in issue 7 and scaling defence, defence powers are going to become far more viable. IIRC, Ice will gain most, followed by Invun, then stone, fire gains next to nothing.

The issue remains that defence still leaves you open to the occassional big wallop (in the case of ice). The damage debuff of Ice's chilling embrace does mitigate this a little. If you choose Ice, grab CE as soon as possible.

I would also add that a tanks job is not merely to survive, but to help the whole team survive. I have seen a great surge of "skranker" builds since taunt become a tier 4 secondary power.

A good tank also needs to grab the lions share of the aggro IMO. A single tank in an 8 man team cant take it all, but in a 4-5 man team you should be grabbing most if not all of it. In this regard, a good tank has taunt, and Ice primary (particularly) and fire secondary are probably the best way of attracting aggro.

Are you serious? The Fire Primary is easily the worst of the tanker primaries at the moment - weak RES, no DEF, no knockback protection and a poor self-heal.

And the issue 7 defense changes will benefit all tankers apart from fire.

Wilst Ice secondary can help out fire primary, I don't think their are and combinations that need to be avoided at all costs. (EM is great BTW). Choose what best fits your concept and looks coolest.

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Are you serious?


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Yes.
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The Fire Primary is easily the worst of the tanker primaries at the moment - weak RES, no DEF, no knockback protection and a poor self-heal.

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Although that made me laugh. Better Res than Ice eh? The heal is a different style to most other tanker heals, depends on your tactics and what you prefer. If you want the best Res go for Stone, pretty obvious, but I'd be aware of the limitations.

I say to the OP to also consider some Scrapper combinations as they might be more interesting to play. Something like Dark/Dark can do a reasonable job at having tank-like durability.

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Are you serious? The Fire Primary is easily the worst of the tanker primaries at the moment - weak RES, no DEF, no knockback protection and a poor self-heal.

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The fire heal is not poor at healing, it is actually a better combat heal than the others. Where the others shine is that they increase your hit points by 60% effectively magnifying all the rest of the primary by 60%, that is their value of them.

Firey Aura is weak because it only has 47% damage mitigation*, compared to about 70%-85% for Ice ( except fire which is still >50% ) and 45%-75% for Inv ( except for SL which is 75%-90% ). Stone has about 40-60% pre granite depending on damage type but has regen to back it up, it has 90-96% with granite.

So as well as being the weakest in pure damage mitigation, it does not have the 60% multiplier.

*Damage mitigation = 100-(100-debuff)/100*(100-resist)*(50-defence)/50

I probably should have qualified my "poor heal" statement with a "relatively". All of the other heals add an HP bonus which is a significant boon for a tanker - especially one depending entirely on RES for damage mitigation.

Whichever way you look it at, Firey Aura is currently the least survivable of any of the tanker primaries.

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Although that made me laugh. Better Res than Ice eh?

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Despite the fact that DEF+RES > RES > DEF, DEF is still better than nothing - in fact in many cases DEF can be better than RES. Ice has pseudo-RES in the form of Chilling Embrace, not to mention that even assuming the flawed 2 RES = 1 DEF, Ice still outdoes Fire for damage mitigation by a long way.

Yeah... while I'd love to have another enthralling episode of debating tanker damage mitigation, I was directing my comments at the question of the original post. Fire and Inv do a good enough job at being 'effective and fun', not that Ice isn't good I just picked two, gee whizz, I could write polls for Cryptic.

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Are you serious? The Fire Primary is easily the worst of the tanker primaries at the moment - weak RES, no DEF, no knockback protection and a poor self-heal.

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The fire heal is not poor at healing, it is actually a better combat heal than the others. Where the others shine is that they increase your hit points by 60% effectively magnifying all the rest of the primary by 60%, that is their value of them.

Firey Aura is weak because it only has 47% damage mitigation*, compared to about 70%-85% for Ice ( except fire which is still &gt;50% ) and 45%-75% for Inv ( except for SL which is 75%-90% ). Stone has about 40-60% pre granite depending on damage type but has regen to back it up, it has 90-96% with granite.

So as well as being the weakest in pure damage mitigation, it does not have the 60% multiplier.

*Damage mitigation = 100-(100-debuff)/100*(100-resist)*(50-defence)/50

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well yes fiery aura is not so worse... the heal can be use every 30s for 581HP for me at lvl 40 (about every 20s with haste)
but the stamina a fiery aura tank use is incredible (at least 6 toggle for correct tanking).
my main problem is not about damage i receive, the problem is that 5 or 6 attack and i'm out of order (and if i need 2 self heal, that's worse).
Consume is really good for recovery stamina, but in looong fight, you use one time consume and that's all, you finish without stamina
the solution i'm going is to take conserve power... i don't see anything else that could chenge this "thirsty" of stamina

and there is fiery embrace that don't boost burn, and burn which is really useful with an ice secondary (ice patch) cos of the fear effect.

and no update soon for fiery tank

sorry for the bad english

PS/ fire primary is a good challenge ^^

Fire/Ice can still be viable imo, because you can compensate the lack of survivability of fire with the Ice Patch and make some use(the ONLY use possible, as of now)of Burn.
But you will need a buttloads of pool powers to properly call yourself a 'Tanker': Acrobatics (=CJ, SJ and Acrobatics)and at least Tough(boxing and Tough) maybe Weave aswell, due to the protection from immobs, wich lacks in the primary.

Otherwise you could go for Invuln, wich is a good mix of DEF and RES, has good mobility and a nice lvl 32 power(compared to a self rez and to a phaseshift, at least).
For secondary I'm liking nrg melee, but I'm craving lvl 35 to get a powerful attack and I loved Super Strength!Stone melee I never tried, but looks good fun and a good support for tanking.

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Fire/Ice can still be viable imo, because you can compensate the lack of survivability of fire with the Ice Patch and make some use(the ONLY use possible, as of now)of Burn.

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I loved Super Strength!

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So what was so great about it, if you don't mind me asking?

Ok, I'm thinking either Invul or stone ATM; stone because... well, If I'm honest, because it looks cool and I haven't got a stone related toon yet, and Invul seems like an efficient and different choice if stone doesn't work for me playwise.

I'm leaving all Fire and Ice stuff for now, as I have a fire and an Ice related toon, and I'd like something different; although I would be prepared to use them as a secondary. Although I am looking for damage primarily; Alot of my toons use control and I want to try a slightly different approach for the tank.

So, the sets I'd like more detail on would be Stone Armour, Invulnerabilty, (apologies if I spelt it wrong; been a loooong day), Super stength... and I guess I'll consider all the other secondaries to (stone and energy above ice and fire) but I'm leaning towards SS and that lovely looking (description wise) rage power!

Cheers guys, keep it coming!

Invulnerability is a solid tanker primary that is a combination of good S/L resistance, poor other resistance and scalable defence but misses one of the key features of tanking early on... a taunt aura. It also is one of the 2 sets that is significantly better when surrounded than others ( shared with Ice ). It is best against S/L damage.

I have never played stone but it has a combination of reasonable defence , poor resistances and moderate regen. The final power Granite gives potentially permanent high resistance and reasonable defence a the expense of mobilty and damage/recharge.

As for the primaries...

Super strength is great for single targets.. It has a pretty lacklustre first power, but the level 4 power ( Haymaker ) is a nice hard hitting attack. It has Rage instead of Build Up, to allow you to permanently almost reach blaster level single target damage output and has a nice whopping great minion one-shotting attack in Knockout blow available at level 20. It's major drawback is no damaging AoE until level 38, which to me is a reasonably large drawback, however if you use Rage with a primary with a damage aura ( Fire, Ice or Stone ), you can make up for that. You feel powerful, but slow....

AFAIK Energy is much like Superstrength but gets it's AoE earlier and has no rage. It has 2 big attacks rather than 1 but you get these late at 35 and 38. Also it has stun rather than knockback as a secondary effect.

AFAIK Stone is like Super Strength but with slower beefier early attacks, however again, no Rage.

Firey Melee secondary is almost the opposite, it is AoE centric. It has a pretty reasonable 1st attack ( Scorch ) that has a long animation time but does better damage than most of the other 1st attacks. At level 4 you can get Combustion, an awesome power with a huge aggro grabbing AoE and decent damage too. Ideal for herding and teaming as yuo will always be surrounded. The set also gets Fire Sword Circle at 28 and so these 2 attacks provide your bread and butter as far as damaging enemies are concerned. The sets major drawbacks are long animation times and lack of control, which might send you dipping into the power pools for help.

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I loved Super Strength!

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So what was so great about it, if you don't mind me asking?

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Well, I loved it because it looks damn cool in the first place(KO Blow and Footstomp are the most cool moves in the game IMO), has excellent single target damage(KO Blow and Haymaker), great AoE damage(Only at 38 with Footstomp but still, it's the second best tanker AoE, damage-wise), lots of soft control tool(knockbacks, knockdowns, stuns, an hold and the amazing knockup from Footstomp)and as icing on the cake, Rage.
Rage goes extremely well along with Invuln because Invuln's taunt aura never 'turns off' due to the Rage crash while the other primaries' taunt aura are all ineffective in the 10 seconds of the crash, due to them affecting the enemy.
So you can keep tanking using your aura and keeping the aggro, while dishing out good damage thx to Rage and not being a danger for the team because of his crash.

Other secondaries are more specialized in the various areas tho, with Fire being the AoE king but zero control, Energy the single target monster post 39, Ice king of control.

Stone and SS are a bit of everything

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As for the primaries...

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Thinking like a Brute Unthing?

If you want to PvP at all and you're thinking either Stone or Inv I would go with Inv because of mobility, there are ways of coping with Stone's limitations but if you like to be fast moving and flexible, Stone Armour isn't it.

For melee, SuperStrength and Stone are quite similar but I found Stone melee more consistently entertaining and effective all the way through the game. The mallet attacks are both great, Fault is a very good Stun power which works well in PvP as well as PvE, and Stone has a killer attack in Seimic Smash which does the same damage as Knockout Blow.

Super Strength has the hilarious Knockout Blow attack which you get pretty early (very similar to Seismic Smash) and it has the Rage power which overall is superior to Build Up. SS has a very good AoE attack in FootStomp, similar to Tremor although FootStomp does more damage and you get it later at level 38. The mezz power Handclap in SS is a good stun but has a pretty huge knockback which can be a problem for a tank, Fault is better as far as this goes. SS's first three attacks are also a bit on the gimpy side, even Haymaker is only as good as the first mallet attack.

Interesting thoughts. Invuls Taunt aura staying on through the uberness of Rage sounds appealing. As does UnthingsPoint in his own thread about ice primary resisting the defence debuff of the crash... Iwas considering Ice primar, but now I am.

Stone melee and SS seem perfect for my style as I like highly offensive sets with some control (just not overloading on it, which is why I'm resisting Ice). Kinda being swayed from Stone armour; not liking the lack of mobility. Of course you become uber resitance wise, but I've never been one whoe likes to sit around.

Lol, Well we've kind of got somewhere: Ice or invul primary, SS/stone secondary. The issue is combos really; things in those sets that'll work particulary well together. Keep it coming please!

This is mega appreciated guys; am an official tanking n00b, but I feel that leveling one up will increase my knowledge of the game, and having a selection of toons for a variety of situations is damn cool to!

Go for Inv/Stone, just because there's only one on the server

Quite alot of tanker sets have a certain 'cool' power. With granite possibly being the best. You'll be slow yes but you'll be very resistant and it looks great.
Inv is nice, untill your enemies pull something else out of their hat (anything not S/L). Looks ok(ish) I guess but I still don't see why a invunerable hero should run around in a rainbow aura .

As for secondaries, I'd go for either stone, ss or em. Steel got energy melee and it's fairly good. You can forget about soloing, it's boring with energy melee. The attacks are nothing like their blaster counterparts. Ofourse, once you reach lvl 35 and/or 38 things will change but it's a long road for an offensive tank (trust me, I know ).

Ss seems pretty strong overal but it only does s/l damage which is more commonly resisted then energy damage.

Then there is Stone melee, seems very cool, with decent controls and good attacks (seismic smash and the mallets).

Stone Melee is more end heavy than SS tho and with Invuln having some end issues already I think it can lead to some problems end-wise, especially fi you want to go for the Fighting pool for Tough and Weave(both worth it on an invuln).

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As for the primaries...

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Thinking like a Brute Unthing?


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DOH!!!!!

Well can only tell from my experience that my invunerable stone tank experiment was succesfull thus boring.
Was able to solo on invincible once she had stamina.
Before was always playing in rugged solo , or invincible teams.
But also able to tank in teams with a average healer , without a healer its more of a pain but still able to do it , just involves more taunt pulling and strategic use of dullpain .

But here is the rundown what i taken from invunerability set

Temp Invulnerability (makes you a tank right away from start)
Dull Pain (makes you reset the alpha strikes)
Unyielding (-5% def does not outweigh all the mezz protection)
Invincibility (def acc buff need to say more)

Stone
Stone Fist
Heavy Mallet
Taunt

Flight
Air superiority
Fly

Fitness
Swift
Health (very usefull especially tanking with dull pain , now where is our REGEN tank set )
Stamina.

Chain attack was Stone Fist ,Air Superiority ,Heavy Mallet.

Now if you consider going for Super Strength , i recommend not taking punch , but going for haymaker and get air superiority as chain attack , AS knockdown is superb for control of bosses and equel to punch damage.

Reason also why i taken Invunerability was that i could skip out on the leaping pool since Unyielding has all MEZZ protection and quite high too , was never hold immobilise or knockedback or stunned even with 3 ruin bosses pouncing on you or 8 Tsoo dragonmen firing off its hold.

Start with Temp Invunerability get Unyielding and Taunt as fast as possible and it allows you tank anything in the hollows already .

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succesfull thus boring.

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Ooooh uh! Boring is NEVER good!

I play a stone melee/inv brute if thats any help to you

If you go down the stone melee route I'd highly recommend fault. Good controllish power, couple with something like air sup and the chance of knockdown with mallets adds to your survivability. As people have mentioned Inv is very good until you meet something non smashing or lethal damage. I'm stuck on a CoT mission at the moment cause its full of spectral demons and their negative dmg

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succesfull thus boring.

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Ooooh uh! Boring is NEVER good!

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I'm not quite sure why he says boring. It sounds like a pretty standard tanker set to me.

One thing tankers don't get is the same edge of the seat feeling that blasting gives you. On the flip side playing a tanker well is deeply satisfying as you feel that you are letting the rest of the team perform better by
- Keeping enemies packed, allowing them to debuff / AoE more effectively.
- Removing risk, allowing them to concentrate on their job rather than trying to defend themselves.