SD/Axe....Whoa.

Iv been leveling up my SD/Axe Tanker recently and Scrappers and other Tankers are stopping to ask me questions about my Tanker.

The following is not a stretch of the imagination, nore is it fluff and guff at all.

Iv been running at +0/8 w/bosses Solo for Radio missions and just recently dinged 31.Some times ill team, other times ill duo instead of solo.

When I jump into a mob like any Tanker should, and aborb up some +Damage from my aura.I trigger off Whirling Axe, which commonly does between 90 and 130 damage depending on the +damage saturation and what im fighting.No big deal there.

Then ill trigger Shield Charge and commonly hit the entire clumped mob for 300 to 350+ damage.Again these numbers depend on what im fighting and the saturation of my Aura.

Iv been capable of keeping up with some Blasters and Scrappers for damage.(not all of them though)

Other Tankers stop mid mission to tell me just how immpressed by the damage I do, and if SD/? would do what my Tanker does.A couple litterally told me they where logging out to make a SD Tanker just because they saw what I was capable of.

I shutter to think of the massive mayhem ill be causing when I reach the levels that Cleave and Pendulum are available to this Tanker.I almost wipe entire mobs in 2 attacks as it is.

Im estatic that iv found another Tanker build that matches my Fire/Fire.

Anyone else have a SD/ Tanker they are very happy with?

I've got a shield/mace that's getting almost to those levels, and I can't wait to start laying out the AoEs too. Mace basically has all the same stuff as axe, and it's looking really quite juicy from my perch at level 25.5. She already hits pretty dang hard in ST, and once my attack chains tighten up I'm gonna be dishing out a heck of a lot of carnage. And I find it funny to be looking forward to fighting council robots for a change.

SD in general is pretty dang amazing on tanks. I personally find SD on scrappers or brutes a bit squishy for my tastes as I don't have the resources to bling them out, but SD on tanks can hit the softcap with practically no investment and lay out damage like there's no tomorrow to boot. Only drawback is the build can be tight, but it's not insurmountable, and a small price to pay for this much awesome.

I made a SD/Axe as one of my first shield characters. My thought was to experiment with knockdown, since Axe does so much KD and Shield Charge also does KD.

I liked it so much I ran him right up to 50. I bought just enough defense from set IOs to soft-cap him, which wasn't really necessary, since he does enough knockdown to really help a non-softcapped defense. The rest of his slots are frankenslotted with cheap IOs around the levels the powers became available -- I haven't bothered to plan out set bonuses beyond the little bit of defense.

He's quite a lot of fun. WHOOM, and everything falls down.

Mace has better area than Axe (wider cones, and notably, Pendulum from Axe only hits 5 targets, Mace's equivalent hits 10) , but Axe has more consistent knockdown and I get the impression it does just marginally more damage on a few of the heavy hitters. (For example, Axe's Cleave is 122 base damage at lvl 50, vs 101 for Mace's Shatter, although Shatter has a wider cone.)

Either set will be keen.

Weirdly, Axe lets you get up to 10 enemies with Cleave. It's a tiny narrow cone, so that seems all but impossible. But with a little kiting, I occasionally have gotten six with one blow, which I guess technically means I'm taking advantage of its ability to hit more than five. :P

Yeah, crowd control gets a 1 foot deeper cone and 5 more max targets than pendulum, at the cost of only being DS 1.6 instead of 1.9 - although crowd control does have a 100% chance for knockdown instead of 50%. Shatter has a 'shadow maul' cone (45 deg, 8 ft) vs cleave's 'headsplitter' cone (20 deg, 10 feet), but is only DS 2.28 instead of 2.76. That said, whirling mace is inexplicably DS 1.12 compared to whirling axe's 1.0, which is odd since the powers are identical otherwise.

I decided that mace would probably be slightly better AoE overall, and I thought the faster recharges would likely be enough to offset the higher damage, since I'm not going to IO her out to the point where the DPA on the aoes becomes super important. The differences really are pretty minor though. Mostly I just wanted to hit things with a big beatstick.

Wow.....

I am currently sitting at level 39, and dish out some of the ugliest damage iv ever seen on a Tanker.The only tanker iv got that can trump its damage over time would be my Fire/Fire Tanker, but it cant beat my SD/Axe's Burst Damage.

Iv got Ninja Run, so I skipped my Travel pool and took every Armor Power on the Primary except for Grant Cover.Not sure ill need it, and I took every melee power in my Axe Secondary.

The only additional Pool iv taken has been the Fittness Pool.Swift, Health, Stamina.Iv yet to feel the need to take the fighting pool at all for Tough or Weave.The 2-3 Mobs I can handle at a time right now are constantly on there butts, so those additional defenses just dont seem needed.

I acctually took the nerds approach to the Stamina issue Axe creates for the build.I Slapped 1-2 Endurance Reducers in every Axe Attack power.It massivly helps the end drain, and because I have so many attacks, Hasten isnt needed, nore is the need to any Recharge Enhancers for the attacks.I am constantly swinging.So there would be no point.

My Armor Toggles have 1 end reducer in them, and draw hardly any End as it is.I have the optimal 3 Defense SO's in my defense toggles, and in Phalanx Fighting as well.I have the optimal 3 Damage SOs in all of my attacks.

At my current level of 39.I can run in, BU up, let my AAO abosorb the presence of the baddies in the mob, hit Whirling Axe for around 140 damage, then Pendulum for 300 damage on the 5 targets it can hit, then if iv got it lined up good enough, I commonly hit 2-4 with Cleave for around 380 damage, and last but not least.....Shield Charge....BOOM!400-500 damage baby!

The best part of these attacks.Is that the mob falls down and has to get back up.Iv fought Bosses using only ST attacks when iv already cleared the rest of the mob like a Tank from the Freakshow.It would res, and id keep him KD the entire time and he would die without getting a attack off.Glorious!

I really do feel that Shields was ment for Tankers, and thats why it makes a Tanker a God when played right.

On a diffrent subject.I feel Dual Pistols was ment more for Corr's and Defenders then it was for Blasters.Think about it.Change Ammo would benifit the debuffing ability of a Corr and Defender very well.In the same way I belive Shields is really ment for Tankers, but they gave it to Brutres and Scrappers so they wouldnt Cry.

I constantly solo at a 8 man level with this tanker and have yet to need any outside help at all.I do however Dou with another Player at times, just because I get lonley.

On a full team setting.People abused the fact I could roll the mission easly on my own, and went nuts like I was a EMP.They decided to do there own tanking.I say thats great!Just dont exspect me to heal you or hand you a wakie when you rush ahead and get sailing back KO'd from that Alpha you just took.(Thats another issue about stupid and reckless players ill leave alone.)

Anyhow.This Tanker is nuts.Hail to the king baby!

Fire_Minded would you mind posting your Build on here?

SD/SS = love.

Im tempted to make a SD/Mace Tanker simply because everyone says its better, and I have yet to ever see one.Mace does have better specs then Axe does, but The Ritki Axe that iv still not obtained yet is what pushes me to stay on this route.

Yeah, axe does get much more interesting weapon customizations than mace does. I still wish there was some sort of energy mace, the tech mace looks more like a piece of modern art than a weapon to me. I just want something that glows to match the rest of my tanker's costume.

I wish they'd get a talsorian/vanguard axe that's double sided. I hate the one bladed version there is now.

Muon, I'd recommend two changes in your build. First I'd use Obliteration in Shield Charge instead of Multi Strike so it recharges in 42 seconds instead of 54 seconds, to keep the soft cap all around I'd slot Deflection with 3 LotG and 3 Aegis. You pick up a little recharge, HP, and regen that way, and you lose a little accuracy bonus. In my build I dropped the Kismet +6% Accuracy in Phalanx Fighting. (OK, make that 3 changes )
Check out those changes in Mids and see how you like them.
Other than those suggestions I really like that build, I think I'll give it a try myself.

Theres no Ritki Maces, thats for damn sure.Would be cool if they made one.The design wouldnt be very hard.

Eislor, I would indeed prefer to use sets such as obliteration, etc. The problem is that, looking at the market, a level 31 obliteration set seems to be running about 45 million *before* salvage and crafting. Add in another ~20 mil for the LoTG, aegis, and kismet, and you get 65 mil, which is about 4 times more (at least) than I've spent on my entire build so far.

If money were no object, I would certainly make use of sets like Oblit, LotG, and similar powerful sets. However, I made 40mil before this character was 20 by buying, crafting, and reselling a few IOs, and I expect that to be enough to fund her entire build, less perhaps the perf shifter proc. Having such a build means I don't need to worry about making money, which I prefer.

Getting in a bit late, and I love my SD/Axe tank, but don't kid yourself: Axe has pretty lousy AoE damage on its own. In fact, all the "Whirling" powers (Axe, Mace, Fists) have awful DPAs, and Whirling Axe is the worst of the lot. Pendulum does make things a bit nicer w/the wide arc (Cleave is nonexistant, really), but it doesn't totally make up for the suck of WA. Mace's cones are much better. Fire, ELM, SS, Ice & DB all have far superior AoE capabilities. Oh, and Axe is all lethal.

Now, before you think I'm bashing Axe, I'm not--Axe has good ST damage and mitigation through KD/KUs, plus plain looks cool. My SD/Axe is sporting the talsorian (vanguard) set and he does kick a lot of booty, but to be 100% honest, a lot of that booty is being kicked by SC. Even w/fully soaked AAO, WA does such crap damage that I treat it like an aggro & mitigation tool than anything that's going to wipe out masses of enemies. In fact, on 3 mobs or less, it's actually more effective to use Swoop+Gash+Chop on 3 separate mobs than use WA once on them all (4+ mobs, of course the AoE wins). That's just sad.

I have a Axe/SD Brute that just hit lvl 18 today and got his whirlin' Axe on. didn't have much time to use it before logging to go to work, just let one off to see it, but the radius doesn't look as large as whirling hands from EnM/ that I'm used to seeing on my main. Is it the same? And is it the same for Tankers too?

My apologies if that classifies as a threadjack, it's still regarding Axe, just a different AT. Axe FTW!

I know others have said this in the past, but Axe is a fun set. The first character I got to 50 was an Inv/Axe tank, way back in issue 7 and he blew past other characters I had that were already high.

I took axe melee for both concept and function. All that knockdown is great soft control, which not only helps you, but also your teammates. It also had a good variety of attacks, wide cone, narrow cone, AoE, single target, perfect for different situations.

I have since built up a Shield/Axe tanker on another server who is about to hit the big 50, i've already started building him up with defense set bonuses. Again I found that soft control and really, just the hilarity of it, to be another boon to playing an axe character again, combined with shields , well shield charge and a damage buff, its just the icing on a yummie cake.

Now you'll never be a damage power house, thats not why I originally went with the set but it's great for teamage!
My old axe tanker collected the Rikti, Vanguard, Roman, Rularuu, and a bunch of other axes, this one will be the same. (some are still calling for a guitar xD ) All I can say is...

Happy Ka-Chunkin!