When Your Team Needs a Tank....

Grey Pilgrim,

It seems to me that a lot of resist based tanks can build strong defense as well though. And tough doesn't really fill that void (it certainly helps though).

I just notice that when my lvl 50 shield/DM scrapper gets into to trouble, it is nasty. I have extra hitpoints, and probably a more expensive build than I'd want with my tank. Still *if* something gets past the shield's defense it seems extremely damaging.

I guess that's where I'm getting my urge to move away from a defense primary set, and get to a set that can still hit some soft caps, and end up with hard capped resists. I don't know if I'm seeing this incorrectly but the way I see it:

Shield counts on not getting hit. When it does though, it probably hurts more than a tank would like.

Resist based sets, can still be hard to hit, but when they do, a very sizable portion of that is mitigated.

Am I wrong?

New Dawn said it right. Moreover, the trust of this topic is poor (I do understand you wanting advice), and after reading the results it has just reenforced the imparative of "play what you like." But building something you dont like and trying to force yourself to play it is bad especially in a *game.* Otherwise you'll be doomed to playing something that may be "superior" by some measure but will just be heck for you to play/have fun with. Much of tanking is picking a tank that you enjoy so that if there is anything to be learned, it wont be a chore doing so. I have Stone/DM and Inv/DM and WP/stone - the stone/dm blows everything away with survivability, but he's so techincal that way he's not really that *fun.* Inv/DM and WP/stone, while not as tough, are way tough enough.

Just tank.

Thanks for that.

I too am starting to think Defense is getting the short end of the stick. In end game as well as future (which of course we are purely speculating on) game.

As far as Willpower, it is tempting. The problem with aggro might be too negative though. Although with each of my last 'test' tanks I have taken the Taunt each time, and spam it. Some blasters will just cause that much aggro that I am used to spamming taunt.

I was just on a mid level team where we had 4 tanks on an 8 man team. Amazingly enough we all had different primaries, but I was the only one who took Taunt. I was able to 'peel' off stragglers that went after squishy types. So I think regardless of primary, I'm keeping taunt, and the larger the team, the more I'll gladly spam it. It also makes for tight formations that I found blasters love for the AoE's.

I am currently building an SO only build (for experiment's sake) to try to save the idea of my Shield/SS tank. As you mentioned, no real problem getting the positional Defense cap, but resistance? The problem is (previously mentioned as well) is the I/O bonuses... well they stack defense easily, but resists are hard to come by.

Typically I start a Mid's build with SO's only, then go back and see what holes have to be filled. I know this is going to cause a bit of a ruckus, but again, I am having trouble justifying a Shield Tank over a Shield Scrapper. The Shield scrapper is subjected to the same defense caps. And the damage advantage is HUUUUGE.

I really like the concept of my Shield/SS tanker but I'm not liking the numbers so far. I know that will bug me later on..... call it a personality defect.

I am going to try another Elec/Elec Mid's SO build, and perhaps... Willpower/Stone or Something?

QR

Just throwing this out there, but it seems like you are focusing more on the primary. Secondaries, and the extent to which they synergize (or don't synergize) make a big difference on your enjoyment of a character. Perhaps moreso than your primary, as your secondary will be the more "active" powerset (in terms of clicks at least). I'd suggest using the character builder screens to go through all of them and see which you like visually, and then pair it with a primary you're comfortable with. Extra mitigation is cool too, if you're worried you might be on the low end somewhere.

In terms of primaries, I think most people would agree that layered mitigation is best. If you can build for defense, resistance, and regen/+hp, you should be golden (2/3 is good too). If you have access to a self-heal, even better. Any primary should have at least one of those, and power pools can get you into another, though IOs are typically used to really get significant amounts of defense on a resistance based set. With SOs, your best bet is probably Invulnerability (S/L resists, defense, +hp, and a heal). Dark Armour is good too, though you will likely have endurance issues on SOs.

Put it together and what do you get? Inv/(fire, ice, war mace, stone?), DA/(fire, ice, war mace, stone?).

For me, personally, when I am not the tanker, I like just about any tanker with two exceptions: willpower - this was more of a problem when WP first came out, but I've found it too easy to pull aggro off of a WP tanker, getting myself, or other teammates killed, while the WP boasted about how tough he was... - and stone armour. Stoners are sooooo slow, the safety they bring to the team sometimes gets abandoned in pursuit of steamrolling. My biases don't stop me from inviting those two to my teams, nor from joining teams led by those two, I'm speaking purely from a level of enjoyment. When I first join a team and see the only tanker is a WP, I get a little nervous and check out the rest of the team to see who will really be getting the bulk of the aggro. When I see a stoner I'm not nervous, just...if there's no +speed on the team, and the stoner isn't IO'd...it will be a long mission. Inv, Ice, Fire, DA, and SD are all excellent at keeping aggro, and setting a great pace. With one of those on the team, I get anxious to get going and see just how good we can be.

YMMV

May I suggest ElA/SM? I don't have it on a tank -- I have a SM/ElA brute and he's a beast. The two sets complement each other well (SM is kinda end-piggy, ElA fixes that. ElA can be squishy on a brute at least, SM's copious knockdown mitigation helps).

Playing an ElA you will never look at carnies or sappers the same way again -- used to hate them on my fire/fire tank or kat/inv scrapper. The ElA/SM brute though? Nom!

For extra fun, if you go dark side long enough to unlock the patron pools, Mu Mastery will help you zero out a spawn's blue bars. Very little is still threatening when all it can do is brawl (though unfortunately I've been noticing a tendency for mobs to cheat on that aspect: I think the enemy squids in ITF -- they can range attack even with 0 end.)

Electric armor should be competent out of the box, and if you have the wherewithal to soft cap at least S/L defense you'll have something highly capable. I've only briefly played Electric armor on a tank, that was during the issue 15? closed beta (whichever issue Electric was ported to tanks anyway) on a level bumped 50 Elec/SS tanker. Since this was a bumped tanker on test I only ran him at 50 and on SO enhancements. It's hard to get a real feel for how a powerset will perform in those circumstances but while I thought it was a bit squishier than a SO enhanced Invuln tanker I could see potential there with IO bonuses.

I've played a Spine/Elec scrapper to 35 and it seems to follow the experience with that tanker on test... somewhat squishy but the combo of Spine & Elec puts out some fairly substantial AOE making it pretty survivable since things died so quickly.

Don't dismiss Shield as defense getting the short end though; with minor IO bonuses a mature Shield tanker is very capable. My Shield/Fire tank has 46-50% defense to all positions and 45% resistance to S/L and 25% to F/C/E/N full time. Hitting One with the Shield before taking a nasty group pushes my resists up to 90% S/L and 59% to F/C/E/N. OwtS lasts 2 minutes and recharges in 6 minutes so it's up 1/3 of the time. Yes, it's less durable than my Inv/Stone tanker but it's hardly on the short end of the stick. I've tanked a MoSTF with it and my only support was my insp tray and a stormy with O2 boost.

On the Electric Melee front I'm working on two electric tankers, one a Dark/Electric at level 24 and the other an Ice/Electric who hit 30 last night. I'm still very much learning the set myself right now but I'm impressed with it's AOE potential although I'd like to see a bit more ST damage. I think once it matures it'll be a solid performer. Jacob's Ladder seems roughly the same AOE as Shadow Maul (or it's vet award clone Sands of Mu); I'd treat it as a ST attack and when it hits multiple targets take that as a bonus. According to Mid's it deals more damage than Havoc Punch and has a 50 degree cone. That's not all that narrow.

Of all the Tankers I've played I can comment on Inv, WP and SD. All paired with SS (I like the set, I admit it).

Inv is a very good, well rounded set. With Tough you can Hard Cap your S/L resistance and you do not need Weave to softcap S/L Defense. It's other defenses/resistances can be raised to a repectable level, but no where as high. It's the second toughest primary tanks have, next to Stone, but without the -rechage and -slows. Dull Pain is also a good heal that boosts your max HP for awhile. On the other hand it offers no Psi defense or resistance, so Rikti and Carnies can give you a hard time.

WP is even more well rounded. Decent S/L and Psi resistance, but most of it's defense is non-S/L. You can STILL Softcap S/L defense on it and get the other defenses up to around 40%, but that does need Weave. With Tough you should be able to get at least 70% S/L resistance (Heard of one person who got out about 80%). It has a very high regen and recovery rate to boot. WP, however, has NO heal, needs a lot of IOing and can't hold aggro as well.

Shield Defense, meanwhile, can be easily softcapped for M/R/A and offers damage boosts and a nice AoE attack if your secondary lacks them. It's resistance is low, 15% to everything but Psi, 30%+ in S/L with Tough. It has good Defense Debuff Resistance and has Grant Cover which offers Defense to nearby team mates making it excellent for melee heavy teams. On the other hand it has no self heal and unlike WP doesn't make up for it with regen (Aside from one +HP power) or recovery.