Best Tanker primary for Tanking

Your tank obviously doesnt know what he is doing. With 2 Taunt Auras it is best aggro bot Period. 2nd I have personally tanked every AV on an MoSTF run with my Ice Tank.

Your experience is second hand and with players who didnt know what they had.

I'd have to agree with this... while I don't personally have an Ice tank I have teamed with many and as long as they're well built and well played they are perfectly capable of handling anything... and they're aggro monkeys par excellence.

Like ALL defense sets they do struggle early, and if they aren't built right then yes, they can be squishy. A good build in the hands of a competent tanker can handle anything. Actually, I'll go ahead and say that any tanker with a good build and a competent player can handle anything. Some require more work than others and some require more player skill but I have yet to find a tanker primary that can't do the job with the right person behind the controls.

I've main tanked the ITF with my BS/Shield SCRAPPER... if a soft capped Scrapper can handle it then for damn sure an Ice tanker can if he has any kind of decent build and isn't a total idiot. Now it did help that a Shield scrapper does have a very nice aggro aura for that job, something like an SR scrapper would survive just fine but have problems holding aggro.

Silver, do you have any lvl 50 tankers, who are not Ice/ primary?

Someone better let tell all those Ice Tanks out there running high level TFs successfully before they go out there again! We got someone's opinion!

Originally Posted by Shadow Ravenwolf My favorite combo is Faceplant/DebtCap with the TeamWipe Ancillary

Originally Posted by Dispari Yeah, I like Blasters too.

Although its true you can get to softcap with just SOs and the use of EA, it's very hard to keep EA totally saturated and recharged enough with just SOs. You can sit at softcap for a little bit, but I hardly remember a time that I was able to stay at the softcap indefinately on just SOs. It's just easier to IO to the softcap because its relatively cheap.

And yes Hoarfrost and Hibernate almsot make me feel like I'm cheating lol. Once you reach the softcap Hibernate sits in your tray gathering dust until the ceiling fan is hit with excriment and its like a 'Do Over" button. It's very helpful that your taunt is still effective while you sit in Hibernoob so that your teammates can pick them off with no danger to anybody.

How about an SD/Fire tank? huh? and even then /fire's biggest AoE in damage ends up at about 1/2 Shield charges damage making it fall behind say an SD/Elec in damage.

Not arguing whether Ice tank can run tf, pretty much run every tf there is with my ice tank (Arctic), what i am saying is post IOs Ice tank are inferior to other tank sets simply due to the resistance hole. What do i mean? Ice tanks gain very little from IO set bonuses my tank is at 48% S/L def. There is way too much positional IO def set bonuses which in other hand greatly help my Fire/Shield tank or my /Stone brute. Till the devs address this and give more resistance bonuses i stand by my argument.

The devs have said repeatedly they are not going to balance the game around IO's. If that is the core of your argument why "ice sucks" (which it doesn't) you might want to think of a better argument.

You underestimate, greatly, the power of +HP and regen. Build for those in your Ice/, get your accolades, and you're good to go. If the fit hits the shan, then Hibernate. You won't need it that often. LRN2IO.

This of course, is just talking about the primary. Any number of secondaries can greatly increase your survival as an Ice/. Add in recharge bonuses, and you only further that increase. Ice/ has no disadvantage with IOs.

Have perma HF and on top of that have base 2.6k hp. At 50 when you have AVs that can easily for 2k i would much rather prefer my Fire tank because of its resis or my Shield.

Well, if you're talking about what you prefer, there's no argument. You prefer what you prefer. If you're going to say Ice/ can't handle AV's like other tanks, then you're just plain wrong. Ice/ may not work for you, but I can assure you, it works great for many other tankers. You're opinion doesn't change the fact.

Well look at the numbers, for example my lv 48 Shield Tank (a work in progress) without even Tier 9 has 43% pos. def where as the ice tank while soft cap on L/S/E/NE def still has huge def holes to psi/fire and ice. On top of that shield as 20% resistance to all

Chilling embrace has a much larger debuff component than against all odds (edit: of course it's of debatable value against an AV). The ice tank will sustain larger average hitpoints than the shield tank, with the heal portion of hoarfrost being an added bonus. Not all psi damage checks against positional defenses, so that's a minor plus for the shield tank.

Listing ice defense as a hole for the ice tank undermines your credibility on the subject, honestly.

Yeah, Shield Charge is a bit out of whack. From a recent thread, it was revealed that Shield Charge's numbers are higher than they should be (but no word on what will happen with that... even if they were lowered, the power would still be very good). In the same thread, Castle said he would look at Fiery Aura again when he had time, which is great.

Still, Fire/Fire is an AOE powerhouse. Shield/Fire is as well, but it does offer a very different playstyle and setup. I would say both are plenty viable for good damage for a Tank.

Ice has pros and cons like all the other sets. It has heals and +HP that Shield can't match, with lower resists. Fire's fast heal and resists offer a different variety of pros and cons. The point still stands that any Tank set can tank.

Ice def does play role against enemies like malta which have holds that can stack if it hits and in pvp (OT). As for CE iirc its 15% dmg debuff not sure the numbers on EBs/AVs which resist them.

I have Fire/Stone i like it i think it shines post IOs thanks to +def and +recharge set bonus. Healing flames seems to be up nearly all the time.

Shield is by far the most damaging tank primary. I have a 50 fire/ice and a 50 shield/ice and ran the same mission sets in AE, using SO only builds for both. The missions were five defeat alls on the Striga cargo ship map. The average time for the shield/ice was 6 minutes and the average for the fire/ice was 9 minutes. I ran the missions many times to remove anomalies, such as missing a spawn which would add another 40 seconds or so to find.

shield charge + AAO > burning aura + burn + FE

AAO has a constant damage buff, which is greater than the buff of FE. FE only being up every 90seconds (with three slots), for 10 seconds of damage is much less over time than a constant buff from AAO. The damage from Burning Aura does not add enough to compensate.

Burn is not comparable to shield charge in any way. Shield charge affects 16 and Burn affects 5. Spike versus DoT, which with burn causes fear and they do not receive the entire amount of damage.



Ice compared to Dark and Fire on aggro... Ice wins. Chilling Embrace is auto hit and a debuff. Ice can also add in Icicles for more win if wanted.

There are certain instances where more buffs are needed on an Ice tank, but the same buffs are needed on Fire and Dark as well. STF comes to mind. I have not had any problem tanking anything else with my Ice tank, and with proper buffs, it is not a problem either. I prefer to run my ice tank on LGTF just because of how well it performs. (My ice/stone was my best tank for a long time. Now I have a fully IO'd stone/fire which is my best tank period. My shield/fire is my most damaging. My fire/ice has the most badges... which is why he still exists....)

FSC is up more than twice as fast as Lightning Rod. I guess it makes sense for it to do half of the damage... but I dunno.

My ice/stone is superior to my fire/ice with or without IO's. Before IO's I used Hibernate periodically, and after IO's it was up quite often. (I dunno now since the change and I rarely play the Ice/stone.) When I added Weave to the ice/stone... it was all win, even before IO's.

Please explain how positional defense helps a /stone brute? Typed is a bigger bonus to help with /stone armors. My stone/fire tank has really good typed defense with just regular armors and only uses Granite when needed. The movement penalty and recharge penalty are gone with IO's, so being in Granite is only a damage penalty.

i think you think every tank is slotted evenly.you can sit and say this is better then this and so on.

but at the end of the day it really is about slotting.not every tank can be slotted perfectly.maybe in a one time chain combo some things are better then others.but what can be damaging in one chain can be weaker overall.recharge of powers and slotting are keys to what makes something "more powerful"

I meant to say "too much IO set def bonuses" not just positional def bonus. For my /stone brute unlike stone tank you have to pick up some IO sets Kinetic combat and thunderstrike to soft cap S/L/E also i worked to negate the movement (gift of ancients) and recharge penalty.

I have Kinetic Combat and Thunderstrike slotted. The S/L is 39.4% and E/N is 38.1% when not in Granite. (44.9% S/L and 43.6% E/N in Granite.)

It moves at 26mph in Granite, and 66mph with Sprint and Ninja Run. I have Teleport for combat movement when needed. (60 month vet reward) Recharge is 67.5% when not in Granite.

IO's make a strong tank even better. It will not make my fire/ice as damaging as my Shield/fire or my shield/ice however.

Well, looking at the numbers, Ice has +HP that Shields can't match. +HP being another form of resistance, plus the minus damage in CE would be a big bonus for Ice. Not to mention the -recharge debuffs. While defense is great, it's not the only thing to look at.

And an Ice hole? Really? Capped resist is a hole? Have you actually played Ice? Or did you try to play Ice like a set you're used to? Honestly, you sound even less informed than you did before.

If you can't play Ice as well as everyone else on this thread has been able to, you might stop to wonder if it's really you, and not the set.