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About a year ago I started a little personal project. I wanted to level every tank primary and secondary to 50 using as wide a variety of content as possible.
I am now about 24 levels from reaching my goal. I will then have a total of 500 levels of tanking, covering every shred of blue side content, every possible team composition, and nearly every power available to a tank.
I intend to start composing a tanker guide soon to catalog my experience and share what I have learned along the way.
If anyone out there in forum land has any specific topics or questions they would like to see covered, now is the time to drop a line.
The plan is to finish the final alt in a month or so and put out the guide soon thereafter.
In the meantime keep on tanking.

Joe

How to keep an Inv/SS at godly levels of defense and resist without unstop, but still pump out scrapper like damage?

Will the guide address non-standard build decisions, like trying to go without Stamina on a Fire/Dark Tanker (using end reduction, Consume, and Dark Consumption)?

IMHO one of the limitations of many guides is when the author says "I don't like building x way" or "I never tried this power but I hear...".

It's a trap I fall into myself; making a new character just like I'm used to making the old ones; so I try to step outside my comfort zone occasionally and try new things.

You of course should write the guide your own way, but after going to so much effort to be comprehensive, it would be nice if the guides addressed more than just one standard approach.

Will you be showing SO builds as well as IO builds? Keeping in mind that new players may be the most frequent visitors for builds, SOs may be all they can get.

Also, how about showing secondary builds for those who might exemplar down for TFs. Maybe a build with being level 20 with the potential for full slotted powers. Being in RO, I'm sure you've had a decent amount of experience in Posi and Synapse TFs. It would be nice for some of us looking to build up our merits to know what builds would be helpful for such occasions.

Joe,

I would if I were you decide on how your going to format the guide, then slowly develop it with the rest of the tanking community within this tanking section before putting it within the guide section. Place it in the guide section once your thoughts and other peoples thoughts are combined. You could be then the main contributor who had an open mind to what other people can also offer. By the time it goes into the guide section it could then be inarguable.

You're not alone on numerous tanks.

I'll say this early also Joe that, if your guide is useful in giving people a simple basic idea to get going and competently keep going with still a lot of unanswered stuff then it is a good guide.

A bad guide would be so damn good that a person wouldn't need to play one or work anything out for themselves. I have with another game seen such a guide that made me think well I don't need to play it now. For me A to B stuff is cool but the B to C stuff should be left open for people to discover for themselves.

First off thanks for the input everyone.

My initial thought was to break it up as follows..

1.Backround of the project
2.Brief synopsis of each powerset. likes/dislikes, not terribly technical since that ground is well covered other places in the forums.
3.Different build approaches. Common goals, good synergies, tips for how generally to build for certain foci. Choosing the sets that match your goals.
4.Playstyle notes. Small team tanking vs large. Large spawn vs hard targets. Meatshield vs skranking. Single target vs aoe. That sort of thing.
5.Content as it affects tanks. Street sweeping, radios, arcs, TFs, AE, farms (no pvp sorry its been several issues since I made any serious attempt there).
6.Common issues. Taunt and aggro control. Damage output. End Management.

I will readily admit up front I will not be posting huge blocks of hard numbers trying to prove my views. This is more a subjective seat of the pants guide based on my ingame experience. Folks will either believe me or not. Mainly I'm hoping that it gets folks to try new tanks, and gives them a rough idea to help them get past any rough spots they might encounter.

Oddly enough thats why I enjoyed DA in the low levels. Lots of mitigation and utility by Posi/Synapse levels.

A little bump since I finished this project last night. I will begin roughing the guide together so I will be checking here the next couple days in case there are any other requests or suggestions.

Hey, can you make a guide to an ice/EM tanker, and also what is another good combo for a pvp tank? The Ice/Em tanker will be for pvp. So i guess a guide to an ice/EM pvp tanker

Gratz, thats a huge feat. Good luck on your Guide.

Just remember that the game is supposed to be challenging and imo it was better when you were the one working things out rather than being the one carried by all the fotms who have been there and already done that. It doesn't have to attempt to answer everything and the key thing also would be to not rule out anything as impossible. Avoid words like "Need" as you would probably be talking out of your butt as well as finding other people read "Need" in a literal sense.

EVIL MONKEY: Aside from a few comments regarding combos I tried, and a few I wish I had I'm not really going to be writing a build guide per se. There are literally thousands of combos and build foci that would be functional. Rather than try to cover that many bases I am hoping to give a prospective tanker an idea what they will face and some of the main options they have for addressing those challenges.

New Dawn: point well taken. One of the reasons I undertook the challenge was that I found fotm builds and high handed proclamations that such and such a power is useless to be uninformed. I also have a personal tendency to take the road less traveled and explore the limits of what an AT can can do. Good input though, thanks!

When you get it roughed out, Joe, I'll be happy to contribute my experience - 27 Tankers, but only one 50.

One thing I noticed is that Most Tankers don't really 'need' their primary defenses for the first 6-7 levels and after that, to the low teens, Mez protection is even more important - vs CoT and Clockworks, for instance. However, after that, pumping up the defenses becomes critical. With Willpower, for instance, I've put off Mind over Body to L20-22 without too much suffering.
That is, unless they are working SK'd to a higher bracket, or expecting to Primary Tank for large teams. Solo and small teams are no trouble, though.

Actually, you might want to make a point of the Differences between the tactics and build and experience of a Solo Tanker vs. a Small Team Tanker vs. a Large Team Tanker vs. what we might have to call an 'Extreme Tanker'.
Consider the implications of the new Difficulty settings and SSKing... I start out at +1x2, sometimes x3, but in my 30s I can go nuts! Ran an older mission at +4x8 that had me wading though crowds of +1 & +2 Lts and Bosses - hella fun!

Different Challenges for different Powersets, though!

Anyway, looking forward to reading it.

Be Well!
Fireheart