Best Tanker primary for Tanking

And so we are left with the 'real' question and answer. That being "What is the best AT/Powerset for ME?" To which the answer is "How the heck would we know? Go out and try them all!"

Even if you were to tighten the focus of your question and ask, "What is the best for this particular situation?" the answer would still be "Whatever works for you!"

The ultimate answer is that there is no 'best'. Making one something 'best' would be a stupid tactic for the Devs to take. If they did so, the game would become City of 'Best' - which is the most boring game I can think of. I much prefer City of 'Variable', where the Players are what makes the difference.

So quit looking for a shortcut to greatness and go out and Try Things, read lots of guides, come back to the forums to discuss/research tactics and strategies, and in a year or so, you might be able to answer your 'best' question for yourself.

Be Well!
Fireheart

I didn't ask for the best in general, I asked for the best survivability, and most of you overlooked that and argued the point that there is no best in general

A lot of people seemed to mention the same few power sets which helped me to narrow them all down to

Invun/WP/Stone as being the best for damage mitigation, not many mentioned the likes of Ice.


so I guess my question was valid since there are better tanks which can survive longer than others
and fair enough there are some sets which can do other things better, but all I wanted was some feedback on the best for taking damage. which was a more than valid question


anyways, I settled with WP so you can all stop posting here and arguing etc. you have helped me more than enough =]


thanks!, (and I see I'm no longer Infamous ty again)


/thread for real this time!

I've had a bit of ring time with most of the power sets barring Ice Armor. Some of the sets I've only played in Brute/Scrapper form so a Tank is going to be more sturdy.

Will Power: It has a lot of pluses combining good defense, regen, and resistance. Probably one of the most powerful sets. However while it does several things good it doesn't specialize like other sets. One problem I had was it lacks a reactive/click heal. If you start taking a huge amount of burst damage you need a green or 3. The regeneration paired with either resistance or defense to the dmg types coming at you should serve you very well.

Invuln: A personal favorite. This is capable of doing many amazing things due to the defense boost of Invincibility. However your resists don't allow you to soak any non S/L dmg for very long. Dull Pain is one of the better heals giving you a good heal and a great increase in max HP for a decent amount of time. The Tier 9 Unstoppable is 3 minutes of godhood with a near death experience when the 3 min expires. Amazing if you are used to near death experiences with Scraps, Blasters, Brutes.

Stone: With Granite, Rooted, and Earth Embrace if you get killed you were playing extremely stupidly. There is nothing any other powerset could have done better. The drawbacks of course are the lack of jumping and you don't become nearly impossible to kill until you reach level 32 plus and start slotting Granite.

Dark: It doesn't get a lot of love which is sad considering that it gets very high resistance. Base 30% to all but Toxic and the Psi Resist is 50%. There are mez effects. Opp Gloom with a disorient, CoF with fear, and a stealth power which prevents a lot of things from shooting you. It is vulnerable to Knockback so you will NEED either Acrobatics or IO KB resistance. It has one of the best heals and if you click it in a mob you should always get back full health. Dark Regen needs to be slotted well though because the end cost is brutal.

The ones I skipped.

Shield/Ice: Luck based isn't something I'd use for tanking because you have no control over when you get hit. You can make it so they have to hit high numbers several times in a row but you will get hit several times in a row and have no idea when that will be. When you tank you are rolling the dice so many times you will get hit and it will likely be often.

Fire/Elec: You have to take the damage on the chin hoping you outlive the guys damaging you. Not great but the "Utility" powers are why most players take the sets rather then tanking ability. I am aware both Elec and Fire can tank but there are no sets that can't do the same job better IMHO.

Having raised every tanker there is to 50 except for elec, Id say for agro holding and general tanking ability its invul/fire or dark/fire. Invul pretty much holds all the agro you need in melee range and can take the hits as well, the downside is you have a psy hole in the build but thats easily blocked with psy resists IO's.


Dark, whilst costing a buttload in endurence, has 3 toggles you can use vs melee range enemies, two of which are excellent control/mitigation powers. On top of this you have a heal that will completely refill your hp when used in a mob. Its not the flat out best at taking hits since its a heal reliant charecter against tougher mobs but its heal is amazing and you got a lot of mitigation power plus you have no proper hole in your build.


Fire secondary because it has a 4 PBAoE or AoE powers (inc taunt) which mean your going to keep anyone in melee range and deal damage as well because of gauntlet, slotting a taunt IO in these powers is just overkill.


Ice was the squishiest tank I leveled out of the lot... at the point of getting IO sets im sure its going to be pretty good but at that point everything else is too. Shield is pretty much in the same boat, defence isnt reliable to tank with simple as, your relying on luck to whether you get hit plus autohit powers destroy you in seconds. Fire is squishy for a tanker as well, WP isnt bad really but to me it just seems a more rounded version of invul, in exchange for more regen you lose resists and defence and gain a +rec power, at one point back on union me and a friend compared invul and wp in a +4 mob basically just taunting a mob at the same time and seeing who lived longer with just there primary powers alone. Invul won.

Stone is way overrated... what people fail to mention is without granite active your defence/resists suck more than any other tanker, with it on your speed and damage drop considerably, this usually means you have to rely on hasten and teleport to get around it which not everyone can use effectively. For instance, your trying to hold agro from a tough mob, but with granite on one of these mobs runs off to hit your blaster, what do you do if taunt isnt holding well enough? You cant run at them without granite on because the tougher mob will pretty much flatten you without it, if you teleport theres a good chance you will overshoot on a fair amount of maps, if you move without it your going to take ages to actually get there as well. Whilst stone is undoubtably the best at taking hits, its by no means the best tank at all, tanking is more than being hit in the face and being able to take it and thats what a lot of newer tankers fail to see.


If you wanted sheer ability to take hits though stone/dark with granite on perma is pretty much the best hit taker in game. Ice is over rated and always has been. On +4s my stone/dark tanker barely dropped hp after sets at all if it did you had two heals to cover it one of which is an attack plus you have -tohit on every attack which helps keep your defencive ability at max even against harder mobs.

INV/Dark.

Because giving an Invulnerable tanker a fast recharging heal that also does damage just feels so right.

Seriouslly. At level 32, when solo, I rarely even turn on any resistance power.

Obviously, YMMV and all that, but do you stay at your current fight til every single mob is wiped out? Do you stop before entering a new spawn to make sure everyone is ready, all buffs are cast, etc? This is my threshold for a slow, but somewhat reasonable pace. I'll go considerably faster on my tanks, depending on what the team can handle, but if the tank wants to go at the above pace, I'll go along (for a while anyway, see below).

Now, if you corner pull like 3 mobs at the start of every fight or just refuse to freakin' engage first, well I don't even know why the hell you're bothering to play a tanker at all. I'm assuming you don't do this, and this is the chicken-ish tanker I was referring to above.

Of course every team is different, and the tank needs to adjust his pace to the capacity of the team. This maybe annoys me more than anything, a tank (or anyone really) who can't adapt to situations and does the same thing over and over again. If I'm playing my controllers and everything is locked down within a few seconds of a fight starting and the tank is still spamming his Taunts and waiting until every last (held) minion is dead before going off to the next group... yeah, that's a bit annoying and will get me to move ahead of the tank. Goes the other way too--tanks flying ahead and leaving +4 bosses all over the place in a group full of squishies is also failing.