Second Best tank armor?

Hey Dechs, what about my build for my Elec/Kin? *eyebrow waggle*

That guy's gonna be EPIC.

Originally Posted by Deus_Otiosus This entire post should receive some kind of award for being both hysterical and fantastic. Well done.

Hah, you want to pair a stoner on task of LR with the towers? Really? Be real, LR buffed by the towers, will take down a stoner really fast, unless that stoner is healed, buffed or assisted in one way or the other. Sad stoner with no kin will be rapidly chased down by LR and made minced meat. My Ice tanker has done STF and tanked him fine. You show me a Stoner tanking LR with towers on with no help at all, not even insps, and show it on video or it did not happen. Bring it.

Matter of fact, you have a stoner you want to put up vs my Ice/ ?

I have tanked LR without insps on my Stone/Fire tanker unassisted while the rest of the team killed the towers. Yes, I used Earth's Embrace and I have a pretty good build but stone is still the toughest tanker out there. Yes, a kin is always nice to have on any character but I by no means require one on a stone tank. Granite + Rooted on a well built stoner can manage LR on SO enhancements... I did it many times right after issue 9 hit and I had a SO/HO build at that time... it sure as heck can do it with an IO build.

I've tanked him with my Inv/Stone unassisted many times, but I DO use inspirations there. More often than not I don't have any heals when I'm tanking LR, since I can take care of myself and the faster the towers go down the less I have to survive.

I've tanked a fully buffed LR unassisted on my stone as well, but I need 2 small blues to floor his accuracy until the blue tower is down (and then I don't need any inspirations at all). I'm curious to see your build; do you mind posting it?

I'll see your Ice against my Stony *outside of Granite* against +4 Rikti. Any MSR or RWZ challenge. Or Carnies, DE (quartz), Rulaaru, Nemmies (x8, lots of lts giving Veng), basically anything w/heavy psi, +acc, -def, anything w/an auto-hit aura, etc. A well played Ice tank can handle all those, but not as well as an equally skilled Stone tank.

Can you pump up your Psi def w/IOs? Sure, but so can my Invul at 38% psi def, except my Invul has capped S/L resists to go w/his (mostly) capped defenses. And 50%-ish DDR isn't going to hold up long against massed Romans or the like. Again, a well played Ice tank can handle that, but not as well as a good Shields tank w/far higher DDR and higher overall resists to boot, who can also easily pick up Aid Self. Or again Invul or Stone who can fall back on resists even after the def fails.

Ice Armor is great. It also has a lot of holes, much like other sets, but are more obvious and harder to get around. Anyone who can play around them can do so even more effectively on other sets. You're kidding yourself if you think Ice Armor is anywhere near #2, much less #1.

Here's the build for Granite Flame as it currently sits, I haven't had a chance yet to respec for i19. It works very well as a pre-i19 build.

I haven't played him much recently; he's on a server I haven't been playing on much in the last year. Looking over the build with today's game in mind I can see a few changes I want to make; fitting in Weave comes to mind.

As plenty of others have said, yes, it IS possible to Tank a tower-buffed LR on a stone tanker, alone, unaided, unbuffed, without any inspirations.
Is it TOUGH as hell? Does it require a GOOD IO build and player? Definately. But it is possible.


But it can't be done on an Ice tanker. It just can't.
Hell, it can't be done on ANY tanker that I know of, other than a Granite Tanker, with a SOLID build, with a good player. Even an INV tanker can probably only do it while unstoppable lasts and after it crashes, he's dead.

Tell, can you even TRY to tank a tower-buffed LR on your Ice tanker, unaided, alone, without any inspirations, unbuffed? You'll die on his first attack.
I know I do on my Ice tanker, and I am a solid player with a solid build. It can't be done.



Look, like I said previously, I have an Ice, a Stone, a WP, an INV, a Fire and a Dwarf-build Kheldian. My electric and shield aren't lvl 50 yet.
I don't even like my Stone tanker, I prefer playing my WP, my Inv or my Ice.
My Ice was my main for a long time until I rolled the WP.
So, before thinking that I am biased against Ice tankers, I am not. I am merely stating the facts, the truth as I see it.


I'd love that I could Tank LR on ANY tanker that I have (other than Granite Stone Tanker) without any inspirations, buffs, or healing. But I can't. It can't be done without outside help and/or inspirations...unless you're playing a Stone Tanker.


I didn't make the game, I didn't design LR and its towers.
But I don't fool myself. Ice Tanker can't do most stuff that other tankers can, namely Stone Tankers, Inv Tanker or WP tankers.


Again, the OP didn't ask what tanker I prefer to play the most, nor did he ask you what's your favourite Tanker. He asked for the NEXT best tanker, other than a Granite.
Whatever the answer may be (and I think it's a WP tanker btw), I know for sure that it isn't an Ice tanker.

That doesn't mean that Ice tankers aren't fun to play though. It only means that they are not the second best tankers. That's all.

Have to agree with most of this; I'm currently working on an Ice/Elec tanker and at 30 on SO's it's starting to come together nicely and it's fun to play. No way it's going to match the toughness of Stone, Invuln or Shield but it looks to be a good, solid middleweight tanker.

I've teamed with several ice tanks at 50 and it seems to perform quite well provided it's built well... I've also teamed with a couple of icers who couldn't survive ANYTHING. We had a KTF a few days ago with an ice tank who was squishier than the electric scrapper; there must have been something seriously wrong with his build. I spent most of the TF wishing I'd brought CMA in and we ended up failing when the tank couldn't survive Reichsman for longer than one minute WITH an empath... who must not have been overly competent. I went back to the KTF the next day with CMA and had absolutely zero issues with anything. Reichsman was a total pushover, and I also was tanking the add on AV's as they were released. Heck, I had a run at Reichsman with a buddy tanking with his Ice tank and somehow he didn't have problems surviving.

To be even handed I've also seen Invuln tankers who were almost as squishy; I even remember a stone tank WITH granite who was still managing to get himself killed with great regularity on the ITF. I have no idea how he was managing it but he died three times in the first mission alone while running granite AND rooted. I would have expected better durability even totally unslotted but this dweeb managed the trick somehow.

The all time worst bad build tanker I've ever seen though was an Invuln I had the misfortune to team with back in issue 7 or 8. This idiot had, at level 50 mind you, Resist Physical Damage, Resist Elements and Unstoppable from the primary. That's all, just those three powers from the primary but by god he had all four travel powers including Team TP and Group Fly. I've forgotten his secondary but I remember equally bad choices there as well. I tried to mention that he might want to respec and select a few key powers but was told that HE was the 50 tanker there, I was only playing a 45 defender so what could I possibly know about the arcane intricacies of tanking. Unfortunately this was on a TF so I was stuck with the idiot for the duration... I ended up doing all the tanking with my dark/dark defender since he was incapable of surviving if unstoppable wasn't up and couldn't hold aggro at all.

I still even remember his name even though I haven't seen him since. Some things no amount of Jack Daniels can erase...

My guess is that any tanker that can cap resistances to smashing, lethal, and energy (toxic would help also), and has a good heal or strong regeneration, has a chance. Well-built Electric Armor might be able to do it, toss in Dark Melee for insurance and I think well built Elec/Dark would work.

If you're going to try to do it with defenses, then while the buffing towers are up you're going to need 75% defense to LR's primary attack types: Smashing, Lethal, Energy or Melee, Ranged. That's not easy to get, even with inventions and tanker mods, outside of inspirations and ally buffs.

I'm sure Elec/Dark could handle it with insps or buffs, but until the yellow tower dies you're not going to hit LR with Siphon Life with any reliability. I don't remember off the top of my head just what it boosts his +def to but it's certainly enough to floor my tohit on any tanker I've tried.

Even at ~78% S/L resist (about what I recall Elec getting to with Tough) LR will hit like a truck and it'll be tough getting enough def to matter. I'm not sure it's really doable without buffs or inspirations.

I'm not sure either. I've done it easily with small insps, but I don't really want to risk a faceplant that could cause a teamwipe just to prove something. What's the % breakdown of the damage types Lord Recluse deals? If it's really high up in Energy, Elec might be able to do it.

There's a fair amount of energy, but his really big hitter is all smashing, and it hits my Invuln with capped S/L resist for about 50% of my HP bar. I haven't had lots of issues with his E/N damage; yeah it hurts some but nothing like that KOB of his and I only have ~40% E/N resistance.

78% wouldn't be enough. I was thinking inventions could get you within striking distance of 90%, but now that I think about it the only way to do that is to sell out your offense completely and go with Shield Wall + Analyze Weakness.

Or expensive with Gladiator's Strike x5 and a Shield Wall.

One PvP IO is a little expensive. 26 PvPOs is something else entirely. I think it would be cheaper to bribe Lord Recluse to take a dive in your task force.

I didn't say it was probable, just possible.

The other issue is figuring out where to put those Analyze Weakness on a tanker... the only way that I see offhand is to go dual blades on the secondary and pick up four Earth Mastery powers.

I thought it was possible also, I just didn't realize how costly (in some way) it would be when I said it.

I've experimented before with taking electric armor to the resist cap, so I've looked at those particular set bonuses before. (I also did weird things like splitting purple sets, to double up on the 2.52% resist bonuses in things like Hecatomb.)

Just thought experiments, mind - my only electric armor is on a scrapper and a brute.

You don't heal off of Recluse, you use a tower to heal yourself. You can perform a similar thing with Divine Avalanche or Parry to help boost your defense high enough if you use a sword. But even with the healing, the damage may just come in too fast without higher levels of resistance.

<knocks head against wall>

Dangit, I knew about that from using a kinetic to heal another tanker, why didn't I think of it? Tunnel vision I guess since I've always pulled LR back in the corner behind the green tower. Ok, I officially feel stupid now.

Correcting myself - Earth Mastery cannot be slotted for defense debuff.