How much would you sacrifice for your tanker?

Roll a Shield/SS, there wont be much need to sacrifice, either way.

Alternately, a tricked out Stone/Stone crossover Brute, is nearly the finger of God.

So why sacrifice when $$$$$ influence can get you both..

Absolutely. I did list team survival as one of my two goals and my first post specifically mentioned "plus Taunt and some kind of AoE damage or debuff to help me hold aggro". I never said I'm actually AVOIDING taking attacks, just that it's not my top priority.


And this is where it becomes a judgment call on "sufficient" defense.

If you were not, and never were, in danger of being defeated in any task your team is doing, you have sufficient defense.

Once you reach the point where that is true most of the time, you can feel free to devote some energy to building your offensive potential.

I have 2 tanks at the moment, that could not be any more different from each other.

A Dark/Ice tank, who is being designed to be indestructible, and even if he IS killed, he'll be right back up. Between Cloak of Fear, Oppressive Gloom and perma Ice Patch, anything in melee range of him will be hard pressed to do anything at all.

Then there's my Invuln/Dual Blades tank, who is being built for offense. I managed a build that gives him plenty of survivability, and can (hopefully) pump out enough DPS to solo an AV.

It really depends on what your goals are with any particular build. Sure, a tank is "supposed" to take agro for their team, but you don't HAVE to build for that. If ATs had such rigidly defined roles, you'd never see a defender solo a GM. (which has happened, and doubtlessly will keep happening)

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.

I think some points have been raised so far, and there seems to be a large amount of "There's nothing I need to sacrifice" Which is a valid point, on many, if not most of my tanks, I'm not giving up any more than maybe 1 power in total from both powersets, but then some of it also comes down to slotting, and influence.

If I don't want to take Weave, I could get the same bonus to S/L from 4-slotting two attacks. (Using a total of 6 slots) so the trade off ends up being 3 extra power choices (Which could mean a full attack chain) for the slot cost of 6 slots (against 3 used in Weave) but those 4 slots don't provide the ED cap to say Dmg/Rech, those attacks can be fine or their own, or I can add more slots to cap them out (Such as adding 2 of the mako quads) that itself is not much of a trade-off, 8 IOs provide the S/L bonus of 3 power choices, and I can still add more slots to those attacks to make them solid, but in the end the cost comes down to the influence.


Its not really about "What must you give up for your tanker to softcap X typed or X positional" but rather the choices you'd make for personal preference, such as taking Weave so you can almost ED cap for Acc/Dmg/End/Rech in 5 slots (3 crushing impacts 2 makos bites) at a minimal slot-bonus return, or using your attacks to boost your defense with no regards to their enhancements.

Or when will you give up the min/max metagaming for thematics, fun, or "That'd be nice to have." (Not every tanker takes Soul Mastery, when its argued that Soul provides the best benefit to tankers.)
A decent example of that would be adding perma-hasten to a WP/ build, where the only bonus the primary powerset would gain would be if for some reason you wanted to live off a pemanent +tohit and +dmg bonus from Resurgence and letting yourself die every 90 seconds.
Such recharge would only be benefitting your secondary powerset, which would involve slotting several of your powers for recharge bonuses. (My claws/WP brute is going in this direction, but she's more of a scrapper than anything to hold aggro.)

i19 is giving options to builds to either get the most out of the build because you hit your limit (And thus you had to give something up in your slotting/power choices for offense/defense/both.) Or to take something you overlooked because you didn't see the purpose of it useful in your build, and you either what to take it for quality of life or to refresh your boredom in a toon. (Medicine pool, tier 4 powerpool options, etc.)

And lastly its things such as attempting to get all 3 positonal defenses on a Dark/ tank, building an Inv/ tanker in a way thats one small insp off of soft-capping to psi.

Well, I do agree that a Tank has to be survivable and be able to tank for their team, but that "sufficient" defense line isn't so high that you can't devote a good amount of your build to offense. Tanks are heavy defense with decent offense: you shouldn't ignore either one.

People seem to be more okay with Tanks that don't do much with offense, but I really start to see them like healbots: they're ignoring part of what they can do. Survivabilty and aggro control are important, but so is offense (and really, offense is a part of those two).

Again, Tanks are designed as such. They have an offensive secondary, and much of what they can do is tied in with attacking (Bruising, aggro control, debuffing, etc.). And our damage has been buffed before when it has been seen as too low.

Be resilient, yes, but be able to punch effectively as well. It doesn't matter if other ATs have better offense: you don't need ignore what you can do because of that.

Some of that was directed at comments other than Ironblade's as well, FYI.