The Wall of Fire and the Four Rules of Tanking

Hello, fellow Tankers. At long last, I have finished my guide to tanking, Wall of Fire style. The main part of the guide is to address tanking with Fiery Aura and Fiery Melee, but the last part of guide goes a bit more general and advocates following my four rules of tanking.

I figure it will be of much help to the frequent questions I hear about Fiery Aura, and also Tanking in general. Please check them out and let me know what you think in this thread, or the guide thread (linked above).

Interesting guide, but regarding Burn you didn't mention that it is Fiery Aura's only inherent source of immobilization protection, and that protection is perma out of the box.

Keep up the good work

I like it, but I think the tanking tactics area can be expanded.

One example: Dealing with mob positioning and knockback:

Tanks have an enormous power in this game in that they can place enemies where they can best utilize the team's strengths. One tactic I see from tanks fairly commonly (particularly in the lower levels or tanks not built for a lot of mitigation) is the corner pull.

Specifically, the inside corner pull. Tanks love this move, and for good reason. Pulling around a corner causes the AI to stay bunched, but it creates a narrower line of enemies. The problem with the inside corner pull is that knockback users often are put in a bit of a bind: the knockback into that interior corner causes the mobs to spread as they bounce around that corner. That often makes teammates angry. Because of this, many knockback powers aren't used in teams.......their users would rather a happy team than to utilize those powers. It is a real shame, but one that can be avoided with good teamwork.

A tanker with positioning in mind can help this in two ways:

1) Pull further around the corner instead of stopping just past the corner. This gives the knockback user a flat wall to shoot against, limiting spreading.

2) Take the mob into the exterior corner. Many tankers don't naturally like this option because it greatly exposes them to enemies......the reason they liked the interior corner pull in the first place was to limit that! However, with a knockback user funneling bodies into that exterior corner, it creates mitigation for the tanker. Bodies on the floor burning in flames makes for happy tankers! It also helps create more mitigation and/or damage for the team, making them happy as well!

Very nice.

I am glad you put the bit on positioning. This seems to be somewhat of a lost art on recent tanks, and even other team members. A few times I have had to tell squishes not to follow me and stay out of the AoE/Cone range. Worse is on a team with two tanks and the other guy turns the mobs back at the team after I get them positioned.

One note, Temp Protection, for all it's flaws and recent buffs, makes some of the lower levels a bit easier. If you plan on running the Hollows arcs, with all of the fun Outcasts, I recommend it early in a build.

Slows are pretty much present everywhere. The Outcasts can slow you, the Council can (I grew to hate, hate, HATE marksmen and galaxies on my Peacebringer), psychic attacks can slow you, etc. It really does make a difference on Fiery Aura to pick up some defense and Temperature Protection.

Positioning is indeed something people do not think about. That example is true from a series of teams I was on fighting Nemesis. I would have defenders and controllers standing right next to me as we were fighting 1-3 mobs at once, being defeated, and then complaining that I wasn't taking the aggro. They quieted down when I told them to stay away from me and they'd be fine (and once they realized they weren't dying all the time away from me). But it was quite silly that I even had to say it.

I should probably add some to the positioning section for more than one tank. I was a Blaster on a Dr. Kahn TF with two tanks, and I was dying all the time. I was doing a lot of carnage, too, but I should have been very safe. The problem was that both tanks were bunched together all the time, and did nothing about the many outlier mobs that were out there (there is one room in a 5th Column base that was terrible for this: we certainly had over the aggro cap for both of them in that room, but they didn't have up to their cap on them... they had maybe 20 on them in the middle, while another 30 or so were around the room, merrily dropping us squishies, no matter how many we dropped).

Your builds don't seem to have posted properly. They've all got all of their slots empty.

Just thought you'd like to know before too many people read the guide.

The forums were being cranky about putting my Mid's builds in, but I also don't want to take up too much room (a long post with builds is more daunting than a short one you can click on to get more details). So I have a minimal listing in there now for each, but you can at least see what sets I'm putting in each one.

Working on updating the positioning section for working with another tanker effectively, as well as positioning for your teammates.

Yeah, I updated it so you could see the sets.

And what the heck... you could click on the data links before and have Mid's open up for you. Now you can't. That is just... weird. Mid's and the new boards need to learn to play nice, I think.

There are nights when I just ignore bad tactics because they really aren't making a difference. But if the team is suffering for it, I will say something.

The bit on "team chemistry" in the positioning section is kind of why I put this in. People tend to get a little bit to stiff in their ways, either ordering people around, or taking offense at minor suggestions for improvement. I have had some obvious Tanker newbies react positively to comments like "I see you aren't running Fire Shield: you really should do that so you can take more hits while we're fighting all these Outcasts." Whereas other ones say "play your own AT, I know what I'm doing." Like all I ever play was the one character I was on, or something.

I actually had another Controller get sulky and quit the team when I asked if he would not use his AOE immobilize when my Controller had already used Earthquake, as it was hurting the effects of Earthquake (Knockdown). He left, even after I and the rest of the team kept insisting that he not leave, that it was just a suggestion to coordinate tactics. Ugh.

So yeah, I just don't bother making suggestions in game unless the team is suffering for it.

Nicely done.

I may just end up living with Ninja Run forever at 50 and picking up Temp. Prot and RotP as my 47 and 49 powers. Does not look like either would eat slots, and slots are at something of a premium on the Fire/DB build I am making.

I know that Ninja Run is not all that great for master runs. But I have other tankers for that.

<《 New Colchis / Guides / Mission Architect 》>
"At what point do we say, 'You're mucking with our myths'?" - Harlan Ellison

That's the funny thing... powers that don't require slotting are actually pretty nice, especially in an IO set world. Used to be I could one-slot Taunt and I'd be good, but the Taunt sets have good enough bonuses that I usually want to slot it up a bit.

So I actually like having a few one slot powers, it helps out. RoTP is good enough at one slot (though I wishing for more recharge on it on that unlucky STF run the other night), as is Temp. Protection.

Calash, I didn't think of all the elemental damage the Outcasts do at those levels, other than their slows. I can see how that would help out. I should run GP through those via Orobouros to get a feel for them: I think he's mostly just done Posi and the Cavern of Transcendence at that level.

Nicely done GP, great guide!

Thanks, I'm glad to see people like it! I would have hated to spend all that time on it for it to not be helpful, heh.

I'm debating if I should put in a couple of notes for Scrapper variations on Fire/Fire. I think a Brute would probably benefit from the same approach I put into my Tank version (though Cremate does make Fire/Fire more ST oriented), but Scrappers may be a little different. I just started working on a Fire/Fire Scrapper, so I'll see how that goes.

Hmmmm, probably. You would probably need to plan a little better with who you had buffing and debuffing, but I highly doubt it would be an issue as long as you planned well. For Master's runs, you have to have people that can control the damage well enough that the team can survive. The three TFs available for a Master's are different enough that you might want to change your makeup for each one a bit.