Second Best tank armor?

With some IO investment I would rank Invuln as #2 in raw durability behind Stone; having played Invuln, Stone and Shield all to 50 I can say that a soft capped Invuln isn't all that far behind Stone; and Shield is rather impressive in durability itself. It's not up with Invuln but it 'ain't bad.

In all honesty Stone's durability is really overkill for 99.99% of the game though. I find that anything my Stone tank can do my Invuln can do just as well... it may take a bit more caution or an inspiration or two but it's certainly up for the task. I have yet to find anything that my Invuln can't handle, and it doesn't have the drawbacks of the Stone tank. Both of my Stone tankers were leveled prior to IO's; in today's game many sets can match it in practical durability if you're willing to invest the inf.

Of course with enough IO investment virtually any tanker can become godlike; if you were to, say, soft cap an Electric Armor tank you'd really have a monster. I'm not sure how doable that would be and I'm sure it'd be massively expensive but with enough money thrown at a set it can really get silly good.

Stupid recharge and stupid defence from IOs makes an Elec tank pretty hard to take down. I have a brute, far squishier than a tank, that rocks really decent defence, really decent resists. I have perma energize. With my multiple slotting for regen, as long as I pay attention to energize, I also rock nearly 40hp/s regen. I am slotted a bit weird, going for a lot of those 8 and 10% regen bonuses and a few purple sets in strange places for recharge, but as long as I have my energize up, I have found myself to be damn difficult to take down. I don't play my character as best as probably could be done, but I am happy I can sufficiently tank a wide variety of things at high difficulties, and have speedy enough attacks from all my copious recharge. With Spiritual uncommon, I also max out energize at 100%rech/100%regen/heal, making it a click power of extreme healing when I need it for that. Plus there is surge for those emergencies. Surge, with all that regen and recovery, plus a massive end recovery button, has let me come back from almost 0 health to maximum in some stupid hard fights. While I might not say elec is #2 for tanks, it IS a whole lot more badass than I think it may be getting credit for.

Your thread title and OP are flawed.

Both assume that everyone accepts Stone Armor as being the best tank, and there is no such consensus.

I have lvl 50 Stone Tanker, INV tanker, WP tanker, Ice Tanker, Fire Tanker and I used to use my Peacebringer for Tank-mode in Dwarf-form.

I don't have a lvl 50 Shield Tanker, Dark Armor (only scrapper) nor Electric...yet.
But I do have all the others.


So, all things considered, if you spend roughly the same amount of IOs on each build, with a good player, I would say:

After Granite, the best tanker is WillPower, hands down.
I mean Tanker as in "The guy that doesn't die and grabs the agro, defending the team from any harm". Damage isn't an issue here.
WP has very good defenses, good resistances, good tier-9 power, and AWESOME regen. Regenerating means that the Tanker doesn't really care about what actually hit him, if it was fire or energy or whatever. He's going to regen the same whether the damage is S/L or Psy.
There's NO way that an INV tanker performs as well as a WP tanker. It might perform better on a very specific task, but overall, the WP will out-perform the INV tanker.
(again, let's compare an INV tanker with IOs with a WP tanker with the same IOs. Let's NOT compare an SO tanker with a purpled IO tanker).


The general perceived issue with WP having trouble keeping aggro is a mistake.
It does have a weaker taunt aura but really....that's a laughable "issue" on a tanker.
The player can slot the aura for extra taunt.
But above all, the player that thinks that his taunt aura will do all the job for him is dead wrong. Taunt and AoE attacks should be and must be used, on all tankers.
And both Taunt and AoE attacks (AoE aggro) are not weaker on WP tankers.


At the end of the day, will a WP aura loose agro to, say, an Ice aura? Sure.
But when you play on a team, being the only tanker, the WP aura will work just fine and will keep the agro just fine.
An INV tanker might have taken the agro from the WP, but he'll also be dead a lot sooner.

For those that think Ele falls behind other tanks.

Resistance:
Smash/Lethal : 86.72%
Energy: 90% (more like 118%)
Negative: 54.52%
Fire/Cold: 67.77%
Psi: 79.5% (yeah thats right)
Toxic: 3% (yeah its a hole, but thats what Power Surge is for 90%)

Defense:
Smash/Lethal: 41.96%
Energy/Neg: 22.52%
Cold/Fire: 16.92%
Psi: 16.92%

*Need my gladiator still to soft cap S/L defense and push others up*

Global Recharge: 87.5% (No Hasten)

No powers were gimped in anyway to reach these numbers.
*Mids hates my computer or I would jsut post link*


I think Elec is still getting a bad rap from when it didn't have a heal. It seems to get looked over as a Tanker set compared to other sets. Of course personaly preference plays a huge part. If your not having fun with a set then dont play it.


Ele/DM Tank sounds scary,

Shield/Dark, hands down. I love mine to death, and am almost finished with build #2, which basically swapped the Earth Mastery for Pyre. Melt Armor>Soul Drain>Shield Charge>Fire Ball will more or less wipe out anything below a boss within a fair sized radius. Even Carnies. And I don't have Shield Charge slotted with *anything* yet, not even SO's. And Fire Ball is only half slotted.

Also, I tried Elec/Dark.... It was alright, just a huge endurance hog, and I couldn't force myself to keep playing it until I got Power Drain or whatever it's called (The PBAoE +End thing...)

The OP didn't ask the Tanker people "loved", he asked what was the second best tanker.

Also, justifying the answer with the damage it deals isn't really counting towards Tanking ability, imo.

I always thought stone was second to Invulnerable...

Tankiest tank set?

Bot/traps MM.

40+% to all defense but psi, which has 30+%
45% lethal/smash resistance, plus BG mode which cuts all incoming damage to by 5/7.
44hp/second regeneration
87.5% recharge, without hasten, hasten puts it up to 157.5%
Provoke

I've out tanked stone tanks, invulns, willpower, the whole bunch, and even tanked hami in an LGTF.