...on a technicality, a tank. Semi-tank. Tank light.
If I made a tank with no defenses whatsoever, no auras, no way to get aggro from more than one target at a time (punch punch punch - Whohoo! I'm a damage dealer! Fear me!) - Yes, technically it is something tank-ish.
It would allso be a disgrace to the real tanks out there. False advertising, I belive the term is?
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Wow, these threads still going eh - Right click > Info > Check archetype. Does it say Tanker? Well, it's a Tanker then. How said Tanker chooses to play is up to the Tanker and the Tanker alone, he is, always has, and always will be, a Tanker.
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True.
Maybe we need a word for a character who can hold aggro properly then?
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Maybe we need a word for a character who can hold aggro properly then?
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ther allready is: Blaster ;-)
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Maybe we need a word for a character who can hold aggro properly then?
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ther allready is: Blaster ;-)
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Blasters can hold aggro fine, they just don't want it and can't handle it.
I think the nearest word for an aggro holder is a tank ( for example from a wikipedia search 'A Warrior is a class in World of Warcraft that excels in melee combat and playing the role of a tank' ), rather than a Tanker, the CoH archetype.
By choosing the name Tanker for the archetype, Cryptic put the class directly into the role of MMO tank, which is not really very appropriate for the superhero genre. Most superhero hard guys are the hardest hitters and the toughest, they don't do what Tankers do and act more like Brutes.
@Unthing ... Mostly on Union.
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Tankers without taunt are not upto much tanking mobs with a +2 or +3 AV in them and cant possibly achieve such a mob without a death involved or most likely a teamwipe (regardless of team make up - by that i mean no specific type of hero required but ok in i7 the whole team can pop lucks).
Scenario: Antimatter slaps his enervating field on the tanker but the tanker has to stay close to antimatter to keep aggro and affect the scrappers - cool (thats knowledge:P)
My point is this tankers without taunt are limited in their tanking skills. They can barely consolidate aggro of more than 10 foes.
After writing a post about unstoppable i cant see why taunt aint great to have with unstoppable, hibernate, rise of the phoenix and lack of recharge and mobility in granite. As taunt is the longest taunt duration power a tanker can offer and can help grant instant recovery at range with no endurance cost.
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Antimatter is a lvl 43+ AV, by lvl 41 any tanker has access to ranged powers in the EPP's.
... anyway, I don't see what's the big deal with his EF. I guess I could stay at range and use only fireblast, but why? The only thing hitting the scrappers is Irradiate, which is DR and isn't strong enough to kill a scrapper.
Btw, auras can aggro up to 17 bad guys, not 10. I think what you're seeing is people slotting only one ACC, or don't slot at all, since they don't see the "miss" message ; so they miss 30% of the time against red/purples and don't hold aggro.
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The tankers auras can only effect upto ten at a time the only aura that can miss with its taunt is blazing aura, the rest dont miss. Its nothing to do with acc unless its blazing aura and even then with 3 accs in any of the tankers attacks it wont mean a tohit calculation will go in the tankers favour, there is always a chance to miss. So staying at range with your fireblast or anyother ranged epic, with or without good secondary effect duration not to forget its poo gauntlet duration wont guarantee nothing unlike taunt.
Enervating field is -dam and -res i'd say that aint good. If the only aoe from antimatter was irradiate id say you were lucky.
The most a tanker can attract to follow is about 17 total thats with or without the aura because thats the aggro cap and it wouldnt matter what else you did taunt wise the only way you can gain seemably more attention is through damage but only seemably, it can look like 19 foes aggroed. If anyone attacks those 17 with the aura on with a 16 hit aoe, 6-7 will easily leave and go for the attacker not to mention only the amount that can fit into the area of the aura will stay or can be affected by the aura.
To get 17 foes inside of my aura i went to rikti island because without stacking it isnt straight forward and i perfectly bunched them around me, my friend raziel d-x and his orbiting death came with me to pull the monkeys off me with damage. To do this proper we had to clear the beach so we couldnt gain any extra aggro through perception or the fact that any remember us in passing in order to do this right.
After clearing the beach all that we were left with was 17, my taunt aura is 3 slotted 50++ taunts and against level 50 blue threat monkeys thats just great. Raz ran in and pulled rikti monkeys from me until i was down to 10, once i was at 10 he could pull no more no matter how often he repeated. Its not the first time i have done the test either.
The damage component of damaging auras are definately a 10 hit maximum therefore blazing aura can most definately only taunt upto ten because it certainly isnt an autohit taunt aura. Icicles can also hit 10 max and the damage component of mudpots can only hit 10 max.
I got my ice tanker out and achieved the aggro cap of 17 and got myself tightly surrounded by the mobs with 8 foes actually stacked (skills from drecking:P) and the rest completely surrounding me and i stood still for a few secs to not be mislead. The stacked mob of 8 and the 2 foes (1 either side of the stacked mob) had chilling embrace on them and the rest despite being close enough around me had nothing, i counted 10 effected by CE using tab.
but please feel free to check out what this site says about the tankers auras:
http://www.nofuture.org.uk/coh/powers/
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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Maybe we need a word for a character who can hold aggro properly then?
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ther allready is: Blaster ;-)
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Blasters can hold aggro fine, they just don't want it and can't handle it.
I think the nearest word for an aggro holder is a tank ( for example from a wikipedia search 'A Warrior is a class in World of Warcraft that excels in melee combat and playing the role of a tank' ), rather than a Tanker, the CoH archetype.
By choosing the name Tanker for the archetype, Cryptic put the class directly into the role of MMO tank, which is not really very appropriate for the superhero genre. Most superhero hard guys are the hardest hitters and the toughest, they don't do what Tankers do and act more like Brutes.
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following this example (which i totally agree with) look at other games that have 'tanks' the one i'm most familier is daoc, they have paladins and armsmen in the albion realm, the armsman does whopping damage and has the best armour, plus high hitpoints, however its the paladin who has lower hit points, really rubbish damage and the same armour that is the primary aggro tool, tehy really are the meat shields of albion, its they that everything hits and kills.
both armsmen and paladins require healing all the time to be effective, what they do is consolidate 99.9% damage incoming onto them and must have constant help from the team to work.
however superheroes they aint, hence it doesnt really work like that here (plus the aggro models a lot more simple here, which is a shame, but by design i think).
the second point, totally agree, i think out of reading comics every month for the last 3 years i've seen supes take fire for the team because he can all of maybe 2 times. it just doesnt happen, almost all heroes handle their own aggro, certainly bats the non super doesnt expect supes to come and taunt the mob thats kicking his behind and give him a breather. in fact i think he'd be insulted.
@ExtraGonk
I dont think cryptic are using Marvel or DC comics as a guidebook. One day though apart from with defenders and masterminds perhaps you maybe able to start almost all ATs from either the hero side or villain side as opposed to simply going rogue.
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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For keeping aggro a taunt aura is far far more important.
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Sorry for resurrecting this thread but I needed to vocally agree to this and add a couple of things.
A tanker with a good aura can control the agro as much as necessary. Remember, every team member has a responsibility to manage their own agro, it's not ALL down to the tank. A blaster can't go flinging AoEs left, right and centre and then blame the tank for his inevitable faceplant on the tanker not having taunt.
Whilst there are plenty of scrankers out there who have no intentions of fulfilling the traditional tanker role, the presence or absence of taunt in their build isn't enough to tell one from other.
I went through 50 lvls with a fire tank who never took taunt and there rarely an issue. When some of the mobs started banging on the squishies, I, the scrapper would go take care of it (my belief is a scrapper's job is to catch the overspill from the tanker's taunt).
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(O.O) Bunny: Our time is coming
(> <)
So many kittens dead ...
@Unthing ... Mostly on Union.
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So many kittens dead ...
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*comes out of (EKCR) Experimental Kitten Cloning Room, at Crey Industries*
UREKA-KA-KA-KA-KA!!
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For keeping aggro a taunt aura is far far more important.
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Sorry for resurrecting this thread but I needed to vocally agree to this and add a couple of things.
A tanker with a good aura can control the agro as much as necessary. Remember, every team member has a responsibility to manage their own agro, it's not ALL down to the tank. A blaster can't go flinging AoEs left, right and centre and then blame the tank for his inevitable faceplant on the tanker not having taunt.
Whilst there are plenty of scrankers out there who have no intentions of fulfilling the traditional tanker role, the presence or absence of taunt in their build isn't enough to tell one from other.
I went through 50 lvls with a fire tank who never took taunt and there rarely an issue. When some of the mobs started banging on the squishies, I, the scrapper would go take care of it (my belief is a scrapper's job is to catch the overspill from the tanker's taunt).
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i agree about the scrappers but you dont always have to have a scrapper, controllers can deal with overspill too, i dont like overspill however but say if some fire controller for example with all the ranged controls of the fire primary still comes and stands next to you with hotfeet and doesnt have cinders or firecages controlling all of the mob then overspill happens. Any repel like power like that means you cant get a a long enough aura taunt tick on all the foes at once to regain control i then see taunt as a good thing. People do use powers with knockback, repel, fear and repel causing foes to leave an aura and be in a very short time untaunted. At least with taunt you can create a long enough taunt on 5 foes whilst doing your best to cover as many other foes as possible, not always easy when foes are running in all directions and you are visually checking for "immediate threats to the team".
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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People do use powers with knockback, repel, fear and repel causing foes to leave an aura and be in a very short time untaunted. At least with taunt you can create a long enough taunt on 5 foes whilst doing your best to cover as many other foes as possible, not always easy when foes are running in all directions and you are visually checking for "immediate threats to the team".
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Again, each player is responsible for their own agro. If you knock a mob out of the tankers taunt aura then I don't see it as being the tankers responsibility (primarily) to get them back into it.
My point being is that, yes, a tanker needs some way to taunt mobs, but with a competent team a taunt aura is perfectly sufficient. If it's NOT then it's pointing to the team being incompetent MORE than the tanker not having a "proper" tanker build.
When my scrapper was running through the lvls with the fire tank we tried to educate people (especially blasters) that if they found themselves in the situation where they were drawing too much agro then they should run in, or at least through the tank's aura which would pull the agro back off them.
I'm assuming that's an extremely difficult concept to grasp, given the number of people who failed to heed the advice 
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(O.O) Bunny: Our time is coming
(> <)
to say it easy..a tank can tank without taunt...brutes can better have it if they are planning on tanking:P
Haven't read the whole thread.
If it can hold aggro, yes it is a tank.
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People do use powers with knockback, repel, fear and repel causing foes to leave an aura and be in a very short time untaunted. At least with taunt you can create a long enough taunt on 5 foes whilst doing your best to cover as many other foes as possible, not always easy when foes are running in all directions and you are visually checking for "immediate threats to the team".
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Again, each player is responsible for their own agro. If you knock a mob out of the tankers taunt aura then I don't see it as being the tankers responsibility (primarily) to get them back into it.
My point being is that, yes, a tanker needs some way to taunt mobs, but with a competent team a taunt aura is perfectly sufficient. If it's NOT then it's pointing to the team being incompetent MORE than the tanker not having a "proper" tanker build.
When my scrapper was running through the lvls with the fire tank we tried to educate people (especially blasters) that if they found themselves in the situation where they were drawing too much agro then they should run in, or at least through the tank's aura which would pull the agro back off them.
I'm assuming that's an extremely difficult concept to grasp, given the number of people who failed to heed the advice
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What you say is true but I feel that any idiot can tank with a taunt aura, honestly it takes little skill. Good tanks need bad teams to shine. If all the enemies are getting knocked around all over the place (lets say a energy blaster, a storm defender who doesn't have a clue, etc) and the tank is bouncing around and somehow keeping all the aggro, that is a good tank.
My point? Any noob can tank in a great team but only good tanks can tank in bad ones. If you educated everyone then there wouldn't be much point in good tanks any more 
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Tank is a tank. While a tank can hold aggro without taunt, having one offers for greater flexibility and chance to save your teammates with a quick taunt. Plus you'll want taunt for tanking in PVP. (note: not just for playing PvP, MAx thunder did ok in 3vP without taunt iirc )
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My point? Any noob can tank in a great team but only good tanks can tank in bad ones.
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I think that is a good point, many a good team don't even need a tanker but having said that there are extremes of good teams and extremes of bad teams and a tanker with an aura and taunt simply has a much better range of competence between the two.
I am not one for recoveries like i used to be myself, i aim to learn and educate now rather than things continue to go haywire for no reason. On 2 different days i could be "why am i having to make these pointless recoveries and why do i bother herding in the first place, after a year of play people should know not to do certain things" to "i fancy a little bit more of a challenge today and i am feeling generally more forgiving", as for minor errors and noob moments we all have them.
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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I am not one for recoveries like i used to be myself, i aim to learn and educate now rather than things continue to go haywire for no reason. On 2 different days i could be "why am i having to make these pointless recoveries and why do i bother herding in the first place, after a year of play people should know not to do certain things" to "i fancy a little bit more of a challenge today and i am feeling generally more forgiving", as for minor errors and noob moments we all have them.
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Sometimes haywire and recoveries is fun, that pretty much summed up my gaming last night, whether playing my flying Fire Tank in Striga or later on when I played my scrapper.
I sometimes have days where I really can't be bothered to be proactive and just run in and hit things with the aura on, taunting when appropriate. Other days I will be more proactive ( bossy? ) and drag spawns to prearranged points allowing maximum safety and the best use of AoEs.
I have found that being proactive is certainly more effective, but the teamwork and organisation is normally much more hassle.
PS I feel like I shouldn't be continuing this thread. It has gone on long enough.
@Unthing ... Mostly on Union.
Wow cant belive this post is still going, imo the answer is simple yes a tank is a tank with no taunt as long as he can hold agro and lets face it even though taunt can now only effect up to 5 bad guys now i think it still makes the job of holding agro much less of a pain than a tank with no taunt.
Still each to there own id never be without taunt on my tank as i feel due to the role ofmy tank in the team i should have it even though i have blazing aura on all the time it can be tricky to hold the agro, to quote a famous super market "every little helps"
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Wow cant belive this post is still going, imo the answer is simple yes a tank is a tank with no taunt as long as he can hold agro and lets face it even though taunt can now only effect up to 5 bad guys now i think it still makes the job of holding agro much less of a pain than a tank with no taunt.
Still each to there own id never be without taunt on my tank as i feel due to the role ofmy tank in the team i should have it even though i have blazing aura on all the time it can be tricky to hold the agro, to quote a famous super market "every little helps"
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I'm pleased about what you have said. The Fiery auras taunt relies on accuracy which can be nerfed to the floor against foes and the autohit taunt will go along way to reducing the negative effects on the team during the situation.
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.
Evil Evil thread... the OP should be shot...
Ok.. hands up who checks tanks build when they team with them.
Lets assume they have taunt aura... Hands up who feels that little bit more reassured when the tank has taunt?
(/em handup)
I think the theme that divides the populace here, is that the title should have read "Is a tank without taunt a tank without taunt?".
In which case, yes it is.
The more divisive issue is "Do you feel safer when a tank on your team has taunt?", which will be down to people's opinions and experience and can be argued til the cows come home.
I'm sure some tanks can be effective without taunt, I'm sure taunt makes some tanks more effective. I'm sure some tanks think they're effective without taunt when in fact they're leaking aggro left right and centre and I'm sure that some tanks with taunt could probably drop it and still do enough to keep their teams safe.
Feh.
DON'T eat muffins while I'm developing you.
Pants! Turkey Magnates! A man in a box! Rogue AI! Come one, come all, to arc ID 10107 - It's [i]'Not as long as some other arcs'[/i]!
I usually only ever really check stone tank builds as it's the only one I know much about. They pretty much never differ tho. Whilst i do feel a little better if they have taunt, I reserve judgement until I see them in action.
*remembers back less than a week to the tank that thought he needed granite AND rooted on when facing -1 mobs and the two teamwipes (except the tank) in 5 minutes that followed...*
Hey, you didnt answer the question! come on! own up!
Wow, these threads still going eh - Right click > Info > Check archetype. Does it say Tanker? Well, it's a Tanker then. How said Tanker chooses to play is up to the Tanker and the Tanker alone, he is, always has, and always will be, a Tanker.
DON'T eat muffins while I'm developing you.
Pants! Turkey Magnates! A man in a box! Rogue AI! Come one, come all, to arc ID 10107 - It's [i]'Not as long as some other arcs'[/i]!