Personally I think the recent change to make the 3rd attack available at level 4 was a huge boost for low level tanks and really helped lots. It meant that you can get a decent attack early enough not to waste a power on a second rubbish one.
I think the best thing to give low level tanks is advice, both in terms of build and what sort of teams to get into.
I tend to avoid the low-level 8 man teams because they are debt magnets. Tank for teams of 2-4 of your current level and you should be okay.
Plan for stamina at 20, which generally mean you should only pick 1 additional attack, one travel power and one travel power prerequisite and then divide the rest between primary powers and taunt ( not essential pre 20 unless you are inv ).
@Unthing ... Mostly on Union.
IMO the only change needed would be to put the DEF and RES enhance in the 8-16-33%(A?) schedule, so that DOs would already make tanking viable and even TOs will help and when you get SOs you won't be overpowered but just a toon with the DEF and RES to survive the aggro you can grab...
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By problems I mean how low level tanks can't really tank and how to stop seemingly a large majority of tanks becoming scrankers?
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The thing is, I would see both of these as problems with the players rather than problems with the AT. They're not even Tankers specific problems - the game also has plenty of Defenders who want to load themselves up with attack powers,controllers who want to concentrate on damage and fragile/trigger happy Blasters and Scrappers. There is (and always has been) a large number of players who don't care about much other than producing lots of big orange numbers and staying alive whilst doing so. They're never doing to make defensively minded team Tanks and no amount of tweaking the AT will change that, but they'll still keep rolling Tanker toons partly because of the comicbook archtypes which can be a bit misleading and partly because being that hard to kill seems apealling.
Tanks can still Tank for a team at low levels - I've teamed extensively with two different low-ish level tanks over the past few weeks (one Stone, one Ice) both of whom were more than capable of holding aggro. So that's one problem out of the way. Surviving the aggro needs some team support, yes, and progressively more support as the size of the team increases. I completely fail to see why this should be either surprising or unwelcome, though. Other ATs also need support in teams - fortunately in all such cases there is a team there to provide it. As a Tank you need to be a bit more proactive about asking for the sort of support you need - be it as simple as "don't attack until I've pulled them around the corner" or asking for specific buffs to plug defensive holes. But say you find yourself on an all Blaster team - that's still support. Things will die amazingly fast and safely as long as people don't get trigger happy. If they do, explain (and demonstrate) the benefits of letting you take the aggro. If they still don't want to listen or wait - leave and find another team, it's not so hard to do.
Also, Stamina at 20 isn't that much of a golden rule if you want to primarly tank - at least not in all builds. Of course it will be useful when you can fit it in, but given that you need, when tanking for a team, to attack very little your End usage doesn't need to be any more than running the necessary subset of your toggles - Taunt being a Zero End cost power (another reason why it's far better than relying on Gauntlet...). There is, for instance, no way on Earth I'd put Ice Patch off until 22 to allow for picking Stamina at 20.
Hmmm... a bit more of a rank than I'd intended - but I'd still maintain that most of the perceived problems lie with the players rather than the AT at this point - the ones who want to Tank still can, for a team that wants a Tank.
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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Also, Stamina at 20 isn't that much of a golden rule if you want to primarly tank - at least not in all builds. Of course it will be useful when you can fit it in, but given that you need, when tanking for a team, to attack very little your End usage doesn't need to be any more than running the necessary subset of your toggles - Taunt being a Zero End cost power (another reason why it's far better than relying on Gauntlet...). There is, for instance, no way on Earth I'd put Ice Patch off until 22 to allow for picking Stamina at 20.
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Yes but I like to be able to solo too, which means I would probably get stamina before Ice patch. However if I was rolling an /Ice I may have a different attitude because they are meant to do the worst damage.
@Unthing ... Mostly on Union.
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Rather than the usual about how to hold aggro, is taunt needed or do our primaries needed a boost, what suggestions do people have to sort out some of the problems the AT currently has? By problems I mean how low level tanks can't really tank and how to stop seemingly a large majority of tanks becoming scrankers?
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My thoughts...
Instead of the tanks attack powers generally consisting of few AOE attacks, how about having only ONE single target attack in the set?
As a consequnce, a scranking tanker cannot help but to pull everything in his direction whether he intends to or not.
Future conversation between 2 new players..
"You going to try those tank ATs? I hear they've changed them a bit."
"..Nah - I got a mate who tried one out. He says that everytime you try and attack something, about 16 other mobs appear out of nowhere and attack you!"
"...Thats sucks.."
"Yeah, and you have to wait until level 32 until you get a single target attack..."
Pause -
"Um,.... lets roll out a blaster? Yeah?"
"....YEAH!"
Amen 
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Also, Stamina at 20 isn't that much of a golden rule if you want to primarly tank - at least not in all builds. Of course it will be useful when you can fit it in, but given that you need, when tanking for a team, to attack very little your End usage doesn't need to be any more than running the necessary subset of your toggles - Taunt being a Zero End cost power (another reason why it's far better than relying on Gauntlet...). There is, for instance, no way on Earth I'd put Ice Patch off until 22 to allow for picking Stamina at 20.
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I got icepatch so i can sit and rest 
. That is right though team tankers can actually put it off a couple of levels and if you have consume then a quite a few more or perhaps never.
On the one hand a guidebook could spell things out for people and on the other it could take the fun of learning from the game.
If those masterminds turn out to be superly uberly hard to kill with the bodyguard thing i'd want my schedule B enhancement slots moved to schedule A and if not then perhaps pre lvl 15 schedule B DO's should be available and cheap.
He will honor his words; he will definitely carry out his actions. What he promises he will fulfill. He does not care about his bodily self, putting his life and death aside to come forward for another's troubled besiegement. He does not boast about his ability, or shamelessly extol his own virtues. - Sima Qian.
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Hmmm... a bit more of a rant than I'd intended - but I'd still maintain that most of the perceived problems lie with the players rather than the AT at this point - the ones who want to Tank still can, for a team that wants a Tank.
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Sort of agree. Like you say, tanks can still tank if they want to but most people don't seem to want to. Back before the changes, tanks were very hard to kill and getting aggro was easy. Aura on, throw a taunt and you were sorted. Of course it was so easy to hold aggro and not die that herding became a problem. Now, people have to put a fair bit of effort into getting all the aggro and stand a good chance of dying when they get it - not exactly an incentive.
Maybe I'm imagining it but two out of three tanks I see at the moment (especially at higher levels) seem to be stone tanks. Stone is a pretty balanced set I think people would agree? Before 32, it's probably a little weaker than most sets and so scranking is quite common. Then at 32 you get a power that lets you take on mobs much higher than most people and barely get scratched. You can also drop half your primary and pick loads of attacks. Teams are used to you scranking and thats all you know as well so why bother learning to hold aggro? I get the feeling that a lot of stone tanks are made by people that just want to get granite and become unkillable rather than be team players.
It's not the stone primary that's at fault, it's the player. Yet the primary is encouraging that sort of play. I think the whole AT has a similar problem. That's why I like Spacedogs idea about AoE's - don't give 'em any choice but get aggro.
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I always quite liked the idea I heard about increasing the damage of tanker attacks but decreasing recharge - making them a bit more like the unstoppable hard hitting but slow powerhouse a lot of people think of when they think of tanks.
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Umm, nope, sorry. Much as I'm all for fixing tanks, this would just make Scrappers obsolete, and probably Blasters too. (What's the point of being squishy at a range when you can maul them faster and safer up close?) Plus, if anything, it would just create _more_ Scrankers, since it would make attack-heavy builds even deadlier.
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How about a temp armour power for low level tankers that increases resistance but decreases damage when active, making them able to tank for teams when needed. Or make it time limited like the cryonite armour you can get.
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The only problem I have with the recent temp powers is that they're a band-aid hack instead of addressing the real problems of the low levels.
See, I have nothing against getting better as you increase in levels, but in most MMOs that's an illusion, really. As your abilities increase, so do the abilities of equal level mobs. Raising in levels on, say, WoW allows you to take on higher level monsters and survive new areas, but doesn't really make you more powerful compared to equal level monsters. My Paladin on WoW didn't have more % damage mitigated at level 35 than at level 1, and my Rogue didn't dodge better at 35 than at 1. If anything, it was the other way around: newbies are given a substantial boost there.
_And_ both of them had a comparable attack chain at low levels. Sure, later you can get more auras or finishing moves, but even at level 1 you don't sit and twiddle your thumbs while your lone attack recharges.
In COH it's exactly the other way around. A level 1 or even 11 Tanker has a laughable damage mitigation compared to what comes in the later levels on SOs, and a level 1-11 SR Scrapper (the best equivalent of a WoW Rogue, I guess) just can't dodge. Both can at most burn endurance at lower levels, rather than actually mitigate any damage. And the Tanker also faces a non-fun stretch of having only 1 or 2 damages if he wants to actually have a tank build.
The percentages based system of COH, plus the whole TO/DO/SO/HO progression and the slots, create a long stretch where you're basically sub-par. You have laughable damage mitigation, you have huge holes in your attack chains, everything sucks huge quantities of endurance you just don't regen fast enough, etc.
It's not made any better by the "mandatory" power picks. As it is, half your power-picks until level 20 are basically reserved for travel and Stamina. Sure, you might postpone Stamina until level 22. (Whop-de-do, that's such a huge improvement. Not.)
It's a system that you can't even balance at one end without it going nuts at the other end. E.g., in I4 it was possible to have a half-way decent damage mitigation at low levels, but then it went nuts at the high end and allowed the herding and PL-ing that were rampant back then. Lowering resistances and defenses in I5 to fix the high end, only kicked newbies in the teeth, as their crappy damage mitigation only became even crappier.
And I wish someone sat and rethought it all, rather than add more band-aid solutions that address the symptoms instead of the problem. COH seems to be an ever increasing
mass of illogical band-aid hacks. And I don't just mean the temp powers, but also stuff like:
- giving healing powers a resistance to toxic instead of rebalancing the stupid Vazhilok already
- the illogical damage resistances in SR passives, so people can survive on those until the 20's (if they know about it, that is) instead of addressing the hideous endurance costs of the toggles, or the fact that neither of them really work before SOs
Etc, etc, etc.
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And what about dropping gauntlet and replacing it with an auto-taunt inherent?
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You mean like the already existing auras? I'm pretty sure I'm taunting the living heck out of everyone around when I have Invincibility or Mud Pots running
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It's not the stone primary that's at fault, it's the player. Yet the primary is encouraging that sort of play.
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Well, that's just the thing. My hypothesis based on playing a lot of online games, is that most people do what works or move to another game if they really don't like what works.
E.g., if a game makes camping more rewarding than anything else, it gets campers. If it makes farming rewarding, it gets farmers. And if Stone is what currently works without going to illogical extremes (e.g., sure, you could almost max your resistances with an Invuln too, but then you'll be taking just defense powers, including Tough and Weave, until the mid-30's), then people make Stone Tankers.
So any game basically gets the players it "deserves", so to speak. Or at least the play styles it encouraged.
You can see this in COH's history too. E.g., the way it started as City Of Blasters in I1, as Smoke Grenade could floor the accuracy of anyone, bosses included. Every second character was a Blaster, because that's what worked. Then it moved through various "flavours of the month", including being basically City Of Fire Tankers in I4. You can see the same pattern, really: people do what currently works best.
So to get to the point of this long rant: IMHO, no, it's not the player, it's the game.
You know, this reminds me though of an idea I've had a while ago. Change the TO/DO/SO progression so it's less useless at the low ends.
E.g., take the majority of them: 8.25/16.5/33. (Or in that ballpark.) Why not make it something like 11/22/33?
It wouldn't create any unbalance later on, but would make life a lot easier in the lower levels. Not to mention for people who didn't transfer a couple million inf from their alt.
Or, since we're talking tanks, the current progression for DR and Def enhancements is 5/10/20. Why not make it 6.66/13.33/20?
Or here's another idea: apply defenses in layers, so each one only gets applied to the damage that got through the previous ones. That way the first layer matters the most (i.e., for new Tankers), while the next ones become increasingly less of an advantage.
Let me illustrate, using the Invuln set just for example sake.
Let's say they'd bump RPD to 20%, once fitted with 3 SOs. (I.e., approx 12.5% base unenhanced.) Let's also bump TI to a generous 50% (again, when fully enhanced.) Let's also give Unyielding a generous 33.3% and while we're at it, let's make Tough a good 25%. (Again, both fully enhanced.)
But here's the trick: let's apply them in layers.
So let's say you get hit by a 100 hp smash attack. Someone who only took TI (and enhanced it) would take 50% of the incoming damage, i.e., 50 hp. Add RPD and it reduces 20% of those 50, i.e. 40 hp damage remain. Let's add Tough too, subtracting 25% from the result, i.e., a further 10 hp, leaving 30 hp getting through. Add Unyielding and it absorbs a further third of that, leaving 20 hp through.
So basically all those powers only add up to 80% damage mitigation at the high end, _but_ a newbie who only took TI would still see a decent 50% defense. Well, ok, about 32%, since it's completely unenhanced yet. Still, not too shabby. They might even tank for a small team with it.
Of course, this lowered the cap at the high end, but there are ways to deal with that.
For example one could bump my numbers higher, since they were only picked as a random example. (Or rather so the example maths neatly involve only integers.) They could easily be tweaked upwards to still allow hitting the 90% DR cap, with the side effect of increasing a newbie's defenses dramatically too.
Or the enemy damage could be reduced, so tanks at the high end could still tank the same enemies.
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So let's say you get hit by a 100 hp smash attack. Someone who only took TI (and enhanced it) would take 50% of the incoming damage, i.e., 50 hp. Add RPD and it reduces 20% of those 50, i.e. 40 hp damage remain. Let's add Tough too, subtracting 25% from the result, i.e., a further 10 hp, leaving 30 hp getting through. Add Unyielding and it absorbs a further third of that, leaving 20 hp through.
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Erm.. 50%+20%+25% = 95% -> cap 90% resist.
100 damage = 10damage with cap resist. You would kinda nerf it. But i got a feeling you are mixing up defence and resist. TI is a resist shield, not a defence shield, unyielding is a def-shield iirc.
I'm play a stone brute on the CoV side, with only tough/rockarmor/stoneskin as armors, not that much resist. yet i am still able to stay alive with 4-5 player teams pretty ok.
I dont think anything seems that wrong with the system, i gues its way more current playstyle and teamsetups. Like a defender can be 2 lvls lower then team easily, having a +1/+2 tanker in the team helps alot too. Yes he might get less experience then the others in team, but you got a extremely effective teamsetup to work with. (like i was 18, rest was 15-17 - less exp, but no deaths). Add the fact people often go for attacks first or take the wrong shields (BA is the end of your endurance), you get these bad situations.
50)Sinergy X/(50)Mika.
(50)MaceX/(50)Encore
Sign the petition, dont let CoH go down! SIGN!
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TI is a resist shield, not a defence shield, unyielding is a def-shield iirc.
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Both are resist shields, TI gives res only to S/L, Unyielding to all but psi and debuffs your DEF by 5%.
Well maybe things would be better if ya can buy schedule B DO's sooner so you get some marked improvement in the shields as opposed next to none buying TO's.
He will honor his words; he will definitely carry out his actions. What he promises he will fulfill. He does not care about his bodily self, putting his life and death aside to come forward for another's troubled besiegement. He does not boast about his ability, or shamelessly extol his own virtues. - Sima Qian.
Mu suggestion for tanks would be to stop thinking that your job is to take damage...You can't take all the damage solo in large teams. The new (I would say always was) primary goal is keeping aggro while your defenders/controllers keep you alive. That was one of the main points of nerfing tanks, you now need backup. In the same way that a good fire blaster needs a good tank to let rip with full AoE, a good tank needs good backup to do their job.
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Erm.. 50%+20%+25% = 95% -> cap 90% resist.
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I probably haven't explained the whole point well enough, then. The point was:
1. A different way to do the maths. I.e., precisely that they _wouldn't_ get just added to each other, but would be a multiplicative system. I.e., taken those 50, 25, 20 numbers, it _wouldn't_ be 50+25+20, but rather a case of 0.50*0.75*0.80. Completely other kind of maths, really.
2. That such a system would allow boosting the current values greatly, for the benefit of those only taking 2-3 of them. (E.g., lowbies.)
The current values in COH, if you look in the Hero Builder, are much lower than mine. E.g., the current RPD is 7.5 unenhanced, versus 12.5 in my example. Unyielding is currently 10% enhanced, or about 16% when fully enhanced, versus slightly more than double that in my example.
That's really the point there: a multiplicative system would allow using much larger values for the individual powers, without screwing up the game at the higher end. It's possible to tweak the numbers to still be able to reach the 90% cap, for people who take all the powers, so noone is nerfed. But the poor newbies who can only afford 1 or 2 before the grind for travel powers and Stamina, would see a pretty big increase in their damage mitigation.
If you will, the idea is that if you plot a sorta curve with your level as X and the damage mitigation as Y, it's possible to raise it at the left end (lower levels) while still aiming for roughly the same point at the right end (higher levels).
I like the multiplicative idea. It means that the silly situation of the fighting pool being really good for Inv and less good for the other tanker sets. It also means that the devs could balance it so that taking all the powers is not overpowered but taking less than all the powers is not completely gimp.
One suggestion I liked that someone suggested ages ago too was rather than having a linearly stacking damage resistance percentage ( as we have now ) was to have a linearly stacking damage divisor, so if you had a damage divisor of 2 you would take half damage.
However I don't think they are going to make any changes of this magnititude as they have less developers as they had when initially developing the game and haven't seemed to have made the game engine extensible ( like when they added toxic damage to the game, they could not add toxic defence ).
@Unthing ... Mostly on Union.
That system will make tankers way to strong at lower lvls. Each AT has struggles at lower lvl, low damage, low resist, less effective heal or not good control yet. Take a step back in difficulty and go with a minor less big team, and most of the time its working perfect.
Doing easy maths becomes quite inpossible using your system.
50)Sinergy X/(50)Mika.
(50)MaceX/(50)Encore
Sign the petition, dont let CoH go down! SIGN!
Actually, I consider Tankers to have the worst time in the low levels.
E.g., for damage dealing sets, you do less damage, yes, but the enemies also have much less HP. An AR Blaster in the low single digit levels kills some minions in 1 shot with Slug, for example. Or a Scrapper in the low levels, frankly out of all I've played the _only_ problem I've had was the endurance... or not even that on Regen scrappers. E.g., if you're a DM scrapper and don't mind going for flight, with Air Superiority you can have the same attack chain at level 6 that you'll use until level 32 when Midnight Grasp fills in the last blanks.
Defense and Resistance sets on the other hand are a whole other class of problem. The effect isn't anywhere near as linear as for damage sets.
The difference between even say, 50% DR and 75% DR isn't just a tweak, it's _halving_ the damage taken. And the difference between 50% and 90% (the DR cap) is no less than 5 times less damage taken at 90%. It's bloody _huge_.
So allowing a newbie tank even 50% DR would _still_ leave them 5 times less effective at tanking than an oldbie who's already reached the cap. And that's not even taking into account that the oldbie also picked some Defense along the way. And frankly, the % of your max hp per enemy attack does not increase 5 times between level 1 and 50, with the sole exception of AVs.
The current situation is even worse. A tank in their pre-SO levels isn't just "struggling", he's just totally unfit to tank the enemies available at that level. He's got not much more HP than the Blasters he's talking for, and the damage mitigation ranges between none yet for some types and "hardly more than nothing" for Slash and Lethal.
It's just not the same kind of "struggle". A Blaster or Scrapper _is_ fit to kill the enemies available at those levels, it just might take a bit longer or involve some resting for stamina after. A Tanker on the other hand is unfit to even survive if he tried doing his job for a large team at low levels.
As for how easy or hard it is doing the maths, I believe the various Hero Builder/Planner/etc programs would still do them for you. Or the Windows Calculator could do them for you. Plus, it's not any screwier than doing Defense maths, if you wanted to find out how much damage _are_ you mitigating with it. And that hasn't stopped anyone from playing a Defense-based AT. (Quite the opposite, if the number of Stone Tankers is any indication.)
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A Tanker on the other hand is unfit to even survive if he tried doing his job for a large team at low levels.
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Incorrect. Unless you think tankers are meant to do their job without the right amount and kind of support and cooperation from the rest off the team.
No guidebook in shops = more clueless builds + more clueless playstyle + more unbalanced teams.
He will honor his words; he will definitely carry out his actions. What he promises he will fulfill. He does not care about his bodily self, putting his life and death aside to come forward for another's troubled besiegement. He does not boast about his ability, or shamelessly extol his own virtues. - Sima Qian.
Yes, a lot of teams are unbalanced, and a lot of time that support isn't forthcoming. A lot of teams have a defender who thinks he's a Blaster (and never even heals _himself_), a melee controller, a Leeroy Jenkins scrapper, a fire Blapper who starts whining for a res... again... after jumping in another group than the tanker and letting it rip with Combustion and Fire Sword Circle, etc. Or the always popular option: the guy who goes AFK for half an hour without even telling the team anything, and then pipes up with "soz, was having dinner" after the mission is done. (Yeah, that provided soo much support to the team.) Etc.
That much is a given if you accept PUG invites ever. That's what every other PUG is about for any class/archetype/whatever-you-call-it, not only for Tankers. So in a balanced game I'd expect everyone to have, you know, roughly comparable chances there.
If Class A can do pretty well even in a bad PUG (even if by falling back to mopping stragglers and refraining from AOEs to avoid too much attention), and Class B needs the perfect group just to survive... then I'll go ahead and say: something is wrong with Class B.
In COH a lowbie Tanker has the hardest time in such a group. Yes, he needs a group that's perfectly balanced, perfectly clued, and which works very well together, and then maybe he can tank for them. And, oh, he can't even solo well when such a group isn't immediately available. The problem is: noone _else_ needs that kind of flawless cooperation. That's the whole issue.
So you're telling me... what? That a Tanker's role at low levels is to sit and twiddle his thumbs in a safe place until those people log on that he already is comfortable grouping with and depending on their support? Or?
I am saying if people had a guide things shouldnt be so bad, your looking at things from the now situation, there is no guide alot of people who even have 50's dont even know what a tanker does.
I have tanked from low levels with every tanker but has to be said my invuln was lvl 10 when she got taunt whilst my others were level 4, its a case of being bossy, asking for cooperation, telling people what they can expect from me, asking them not to use certain powers that compromise things and making the best out of what i can get. We have even gone and done missions with no defender, basically on the back of: if i get all aggro, no one else needs their insps and can give them to me. Popping 2 lucks works wonders.
I dont stand around, i'll log on and build a team for myself so i know i am gonna get the right support and not have someone else who has only the point of view of a blaster build one or lead one for me.
I also wont have anyone dictate for me how i tank through how they play. (I didnt mind doing it once though with my firetanker to remind myself why its a bad idea and to see why new people have it in their heads the cant be done attitude, i died first in every mob!).
I do see guides as a good thing to give people an idea of how not to build and how not to play. I dont like the words "cant be done" and "its impossible" its an "i cant do it, no one can" mentality.
A guide bought in the shop with the game may help make a situation where people (through their little extra more knowledge) can start upping their settings because they build and play better in teams.
As it is people just go PuGs *spit* and kick off with more soloable builds and less team orientated builds that would of provided ample support. I know i've been tanking +3 at lvl 6 purely because the defender had a great build of the bat (which is rare i know and thats part of the problem) and i kept aggro so no one needed their insps and gave them to me instead. No debt then so great fun.
If i log on and cant see how i can build a balanced enough team together i do have other slots for other toons. My fire, ice and stone have tanked every step of the way so far since birth after ED but thats because i am pretty much past needing a guide.
In lower levels people dont build as supportive a build as they could which puts tankers at risk and play in ways well some people just have to go and kill the anchor first.
Due to the lack of guideness a calculation change to make it easier for new players playing tankers and to team as a tanker with new players perhaps should of been in place. I am sure the DEVs can make a lvl 5 team and play on settings other than heroic quite easy.
He will honor his words; he will definitely carry out his actions. What he promises he will fulfill. He does not care about his bodily self, putting his life and death aside to come forward for another's troubled besiegement. He does not boast about his ability, or shamelessly extol his own virtues. - Sima Qian.
Things are always a little quiet here on the tanker forums so thought I could kick off a bit of discussion.
Rather than the usual about how to hold aggro, is taunt needed or do our primaries needed a boost, what suggestions do people have to sort out some of the problems the AT currently has? By problems I mean how low level tanks can't really tank and how to stop seemingly a large majority of tanks becoming scrankers?
I always quite liked the idea I heard about increasing the damage of tanker attacks but decreasing recharge - making them a bit more like the unstoppable hard hitting but slow powerhouse a lot of people think of when they think of tanks.
How about a temp armour power for low level tankers that increases resistance but decreases damage when active, making them able to tank for teams when needed. Or make it time limited like the cryonite armour you can get.
And what about dropping gauntlet and replacing it with an auto-taunt inherent? Being the biggest and most difficult to take down member of a team, bosses tend to charge straight at you. Lt's are a little more reluctant but will come and have a go and minions will give you a swift kick if they see you on the floor but otherwise tend to stay away. Not sure how you'd do it - maybe some sort of automatic damage level aggro which varies for bosses, lt's and minions. Would be fairly easy to outdamage and pull a minion off but distracting a boss could be much harder.
Please note I've not put much thought into these, I'm just bored at work and flinging out vague ideas.