I do find all this chat about fire/fire now being not a good power set any more odd, only in that only a few months ago everyone was shouting from the roof tops in how over powerd they were and how ice was a joke.
Seems to me that all thats happened and will happen with i7 is all other tank power sets will be better and poor old fire may as well be forgoten.
But to add to this i have a lvl 50 fire/fire tank and to be fair he is one of the best tank power sets ive played, i can stand in a fight sometimes longer than invn/ss tank,
Imo with fire its all down to sloting and power picks i have accrobatics,tough and weave on my tank and when there all running i never get knocked back combind with plasma and fire shields, comsume, fire sword circle,combustion( i could go on) you have one nice tanker.
Regarding secondaries, I like Fire Melee, high damage + the two AoE's really help with gauntlet-taunting.
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But the fact that you need to take Acrobatics (+CJ+SJ) and Tough & Weave (+Punch/Kick) to be able to do that shows a huge flaw in the powerset.
The lack of knockback protection was supposed to be a balance for the offensive power of Burn. Burn has now been rendered all but useless unless you're Fire/Ice but the rest of the powerset has seen nothing but nerfs. Personally, I'd resent being forced to take 6 pool powers just to have a functional tanker.
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that's the problem ^^
but with tough and weave you've got a tank which is more resistant than an invul (it's my impress), and fiery embrace is a really good power, so even with a non secondary fire, you can make good damage even with only 3 or 4 attack.
But this set need some love from dev ^^
not cos it's a weak power set, but cos it's a silly set now 
But while an invuln without Tough and Weave can still tank and hold his own, if said invuln picks tough and weave aswell he can out-tank you big times , a fire tank without them it's more squishy than a DA scrapper..
a fire tank without tough is possible, but in this case i see him more like a scranker than a tank
and that's not a so bad idea for this tank if people don't want to took all the pool power need for a real fire tank.
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succesfull thus boring.
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Ooooh uh! Boring is NEVER good! 
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Depends how you play, you can stick on Heroic all the way to 50 and cruise through with just about anything.
If what you actually want is a high damage melee based AT I would go with a Scrapper with a reasonably tough secondary like Dark or Regen. Tanks in CoH seem to be designed as a kind of melee controller where most of the 'control' is directing aggro at yourself.
As far as stone melee goes it's a fun set to play. The breakdown Lonelyshade posted missed out 3 of the best attacks Heavy Mallet, Fault and Seismic Smash (he didn't say what level that was supposed to be). One of the funniest toons I've seen recently was an Ice/Stone tank, seen him a couple of times in Siren's "Cro-Magnon Man" he seemed to do alright and made me laugh (Chilling Embrace is scarily effective in PvP, I found out).
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But while an invuln without Tough and Weave can still tank and hold his own, if said invuln picks tough and weave aswell he can out-tank you big times , a fire tank without them it's more squishy than a DA scrapper..
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all depends on the enemies ur fighting, being a fire tank on infernal mission these days is alamost as good as old school invul tanking
but like someone said earlier fire is all about fiery embrace
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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
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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 ^^
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Well, as a fire tank, the first thing I will say is that I'd like to see the Ice tank who can out tank me! I'd also say that while my numbers may be a little lower than on their toggles, the entire build together works perfectly.
I run all the defences from the tank set and also tough. I have the self heal 6 slotted and find it a LOT more sueful than those on some of the other sets. No point having a HP bonus if it's gone after a couple of hits and you're waiting on the recharge while I'm just using my very quick recharging self heal at will.
I've also seen mention of end problems? I'm not sure how they have toggles slotted but you'll only have end problems if you've made a mistake there, other than that consume will cover any end drain even when on full offence.
And then we come to the reason I consider fire tanks to be the best tanks, rather than the weakest... Fiery Aura. Nothing holds aggro like it when slotted correctly and coupled with taunt, makes them so much more effective at aggro management than other builds.
On the route to deciding on a fire tank, I tried both Invuln and Stone. With stone, I failed to see how I could tank from the front when I couldn't even keep up with the team and with invuln, I just found the set not as diverse as fire.
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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
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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 ^^
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Well, as a fire tank, the first thing I will say is that I'd like to see the Ice tank who can out tank me! I'd also say that while my numbers may be a little lower than on their toggles, the entire build together works perfectly.
I run all the defences from the tank set and also tough. I have the self heal 6 slotted and find it a LOT more sueful than those on some of the other sets. No point having a HP bonus if it's gone after a couple of hits and you're waiting on the recharge while I'm just using my very quick recharging self heal at will.
I've also seen mention of end problems? I'm not sure how they have toggles slotted but you'll only have end problems if you've made a mistake there, other than that consume will cover any end drain even when on full offence.
And then we come to the reason I consider fire tanks to be the best tanks, rather than the weakest... Fiery Aura. Nothing holds aggro like it when slotted correctly and coupled with taunt, makes them so much more effective at aggro management than other builds.
On the route to deciding on a fire tank, I tried both Invuln and Stone. With stone, I failed to see how I could tank from the front when I couldn't even keep up with the team and with invuln, I just found the set not as diverse as fire.
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Oh man, don't make such persuasive posts as that. Now I actually have to think about what would suit my playstyle now that they've all been pretty much justified. Damn.
Were you talking from a fire/fire perspective?
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Fiery Aura. Nothing holds aggro like it when slotted correctly and coupled with taunt, makes them so much more effective at aggro management than other builds.
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I take you never tried Chilling Embrace..
That's the best taunt aura you can hope for, the foes are aggroed for an astounding amount of time, it's by far the best taunt aura you can hope to have. If you add to that that in the set there's _another_ taunt aura(Icicles) you'll see that at aggro grabbing there' nothing like Ice Armour.
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Well, as a fire tank, the first thing I will say is that I'd like to see the Ice tank who can out tank me!
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*waves*
Against anything other than Fire damage and up to +2/3 mobs, I'll see that challenge.
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And then we come to the reason I consider fire tanks to be the best tanks, rather than the weakest... Fiery Aura. Nothing holds aggro like it when slotted correctly and coupled with taunt, makes them so much more effective at aggro management than other builds.
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I refer you to my earlier statement
Edited because I bollocksed up the quoting.
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Were you talking from a fire/fire perspective?
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He's Fire/Ice.
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Fiery Aura. Nothing holds aggro like it when slotted correctly and coupled with taunt, makes them so much more effective at aggro management than other builds.
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I take you never tried Chilling Embrace..
That's the best taunt aura you can hope for, the foes are aggroed for an astounding amount of time, it's by far the best taunt aura you can hope to have. If you add to that that in the set there's _another_ taunt aura(Icicles) you'll see that at aggro grabbing there' nothing like Ice Armour.
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Agreed. No tank grabs aggo like Ice. Period. I cannot see how anybody could argue this, and Ive tried all tank primaries. I went back to ice because the others are nowhere near as good at aggro grabbing.
And IMHO:
A good tank is not merely a function of how "hardy" there are: The value of a tank is:
HARDINESS MULTIPLIED BY AGGRO ATTRACTION
If you are just one or the other, you are no good.
If you dont have taunt, IMHO you can forget it.
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Fiery Aura. Nothing holds aggro like it when slotted correctly and coupled with taunt, makes them so much more effective at aggro management than other builds.
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I take you never tried Chilling Embrace..
That's the best taunt aura you can hope for, the foes are aggroed for an astounding amount of time, it's by far the best taunt aura you can hope to have. If you add to that that in the set there's _another_ taunt aura(Icicles) you'll see that at aggro grabbing there' nothing like Ice Armour.
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Chilling Embrace + Icicles = the best aggro retention ever. Add Energy Absorption every 30 seconds for your end recovery and addition defence and aggro grabbing and you have a cool combination.
IIRC The only advantage Fire have over Ice in aggro grabbing is the range of the Blazing Aura is bigger than Chilling Embrace(10ft) and Icicles(8ft). I think Blazing Aura may be 15ft but I could be wrong. This can be over come with a bit of mobility. However on the flip side Blazing Aura is not auto hit.
@Unthing ... Mostly on Union.
I think BA has a 10ft range, as Chilling Embrace, 15 ft is the range of Combustion and Footstomp and I don't think it's _that_ large.
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I think BA has a 10ft range, as Chilling Embrace, 15 ft is the range of Combustion and Footstomp and I don't think it's _that_ large.
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Well bizarrely Sherksilver's Hero Builder puts it at 8 ft, which seems a bit small, so I'll just shut up.
@Unthing ... Mostly on Union.
Does anyone know if combat jumping would increase the aura effect?
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Fiery Aura. Nothing holds aggro like it when slotted correctly and coupled with taunt, makes them so much more effective at aggro management than other builds.
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I take you never tried Chilling Embrace..
That's the best taunt aura you can hope for, the foes are aggroed for an astounding amount of time, it's by far the best taunt aura you can hope to have. If you add to that that in the set there's _another_ taunt aura(Icicles) you'll see that at aggro grabbing there' nothing like Ice Armour.
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Chilling Embrace + Icicles = the best aggro retention ever. Add Energy Absorption every 30 seconds for your end recovery and addition defence and aggro grabbing and you have a cool combination.
IIRC The only advantage Fire have over Ice in aggro grabbing is the range of the Blazing Aura is bigger than Chilling Embrace(10ft) and Icicles(8ft). I think Blazing Aura may be 15ft but I could be wrong. This can be over come with a bit of mobility. However on the flip side Blazing Aura is not auto hit.
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Not only that but unless I'm completely mistaken, Fire is the only Tank primary with a Taunt aura that doesn't auto-hit. The taunt component of Mud Pots, CE and Invincibility certainly is, but I don't think that's true for BA as it's purely a damage aura with no debuff component.
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Howler Monkey
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But the fact that you need to take Acrobatics (+CJ+SJ) and Tough & Weave (+Punch/Kick) to be able to do that shows a huge flaw in the powerset.
The lack of knockback protection was supposed to be a balance for the offensive power of Burn. Burn has now been rendered all but useless unless you're Fire/Ice but the rest of the powerset has seen nothing but nerfs. Personally, I'd resent being forced to take 6 pool powers just to have a functional tanker.
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Out of interest, what Tanker primaries do you think can tank acceptably without taking pool powers to fulfill that role? Ice and Inv Tanks still seem to take the Fighting pool and I've never seen a succesful Stone without Swift and Hasten - and a very large number look on Teleport as a requirement too.
By my 50s shall ye know me:
Tundra, DVM, The Late, Neutrino Ghost, Sir Clanksalot, End Of Days, Prof. Migraine
Howler Monkey
The way I understood is that he ment a Fire tank CANT tank with out Acro/tough theyre just to weak so have to dip into these pools just to survive where as certain other tanks namely stone dont necessarily have to obviously i wouldnt reccomend a stoney not to pick to hasten but it is possible to tank with out it just not so well.
Spad FYI i find weave is useless on my fire tank and just have tough, this may not be wise numberwise i have no idea but my tank performs well enough without it.
I can still tank without running Tough - sure it makes heavy S/L mobs a bit harder, but it's not like it's "+RES All" or anything - in fact I can often tank better because not having to run Tough saves me a lot of endurance.
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Out of interest, what Tanker primaries do you think can tank acceptably without taking pool powers to fulfill that role? Ice and Inv Tanks still seem to take the Fighting pool and I've never seen a succesful Stone without Swift and Hasten - and a very large number look on Teleport as a requirement too.
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I would say that Ice seems to perform reasonably well without pool support, certainly well enough to carefully run around fighting in hazard zones or fight brickstown prisoners. Where it is lacking is when fighting higher levels but that will be fixed in I7. However I have taken both Combat Jumping and Hasten so that does count as one extra pool support power, ( the other is a travel prerequisite ). Must have power count is 6 powers from the primary. No extras if you go for the speed pool. If you take the fighting pool, of which Tough and Weave both help, it would be a 6 + 3. Similarly the medicine pool is an option for 6 + 2.
Inv can leave out the Passives and pick up the Fighting pool and tank well. So that means the same number of powers as from the primary but more slots. Must have power count is 5 from the primary, 3 additionals from the Fighting pool or the passives.
Fire really needs acrobatics and tough, which is 3 extra powers as you need kick or boxing to get tough. It does limit the travel power selection to leaping though. Must have power count is 4 from the primary and 3 extras.
Stone may need swift for mobility and teleport as a travel power, but everyone gets the fitness pool anyway. Hasten is the only extra for a granite. Must have power count for a perma granite is 5 from the primary with one extra power.
To me it looks like Inv is possibly the worst off and maybe Ice too. Fire suffers from not having enough pool powers to help it's power light primary. Stone in perma-granite has the most powers to spend in their secondary but not by much.
@Unthing ... Mostly on Union.
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Stone may need swift for mobility and teleport as a travel power, but everyone gets the fitness pool anyway. Hasten is the only extra for a granite. Must have power count for a perma granite is 5 from the primary with one extra power.
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I agree with most of what you've said, but if Fire needs Acrobatics, Stone needs TP just as much, for mobility not for travel. Granite has no Knockback protection and Swift is nowhere near enough to allow mobility in GA + Rooted.
You say everyone takes Fitness anyway, and I realise that's true, but no other primary needs it to tank in the same way, it's just useful. In the same way, Provoke is helpful for getting around the -Recharge of GA, but not actually needed.
By my 50s shall ye know me:
Tundra, DVM, The Late, Neutrino Ghost, Sir Clanksalot, End Of Days, Prof. Migraine
Howler Monkey
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.
One thing tankers don't get is the same edge of the seat feeling that blasting gives you.
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Terra Volta respec trial. Two mobs get aggroad, you jump in the second so the team can finish the first mob. Your hp is disapearing faster then you'd like to admit, while the team is still fighting off the first. Strategic use of dull pain, hoping whirling hands disorients a couple and yes, the team can trun to your mob. I can asure you, I was on the edge of my seat
You are right tho, things like this don't happen all the time and most missions can be abit less intens/stressful but the live of a tank isn't without it's 'edge of seat' moments and like you said, theres nothing boring to tanking in a team.