Stone Armor/? Tank, Needs Help

Hiya, just thought about making a Stone Armor tanker (never gotten one past lvl 8 due to my impatience with it). I'm willing to give it more of a try though, but wondering as to what secondary would be the best? Was going for sort of an Earth god theme, so I'd prefer to stray away from battle axe,war mace, dual blades, and energy melee. Was thinking about Ice Melee, although with granite armor's -dmg I was afraid my damage may be to low, Fiery Melee seemed like a good option also. Anyway if you guys could give me any good suggestions as to what would be the best in terms of decent damage, I'd greatly appreciate it

Provided the enemies stay in it.

[QUOTE=je_saist;3564427]Well, two things here: First Stone's most powerful armor, [B[Granite][/B], has both a 60% recharge penalty and a 30% damage penalty. So no matter what set you take, you are going to lose damage compared to the same slotting on other Defensive Oriented sets.

Second: most of the Tank attack sets are equalized in terms of total damage per activation time per target. Set's like Energy Melee and Super Strength will give you greater single target damage compared to sets like Fire Melee. Some power sets, such as Ice Melee, trade off outright damage for greater soft-controls, although Ice received a buff to it's Tier 9 Frozen Aura attack bringing damage in line with other sets.

Now me, personally, I've taken Dark Melee, Mace, and Fire Melee with Stone Armor. I prefer Mace since it gives a nice balance between Single Target and Mob Attacks.



That being said, hitting Dark Melee's Soul Drain and then popping Arctic Mastery's

Lol true.. and yeah sorry I had to edit, made a few typos on my last post :P. Ok, so bottom line. If I'm looking for moderate damage, good survivability, and a set that compliments Stone Armor, what would be the best to go with Stone Armor if I want to be able to tank well in teams?
-Btw thanks for the tips on Stone Armor, my first time taking a good shot at it, so now I'm trying not to be more of a damage tanker but leaning more on survivability now ; ) (with some still good damage, of course)

Your job as a tank is to hold aggro so the team doesn't die, and stay alive long enough for the team to kill everything. Any damage you do is optional, unless you're solo farming. Dark Melee has a heal in the form of Siphon Life. That adds more survivability to any armor set when tanking AVs than any other melee set can. For regular groups, no power set really outshines the others that much. A taunt aura and an AoE attack are generally enough to keep enough critters distracted that your teammates won't get attacked too much.

If you want to do damage, don't pick Stone Armor. You will likely be spending almost all of your time in Granite Armor, which has some hefty penalties for its superior survivability. If you think you can play out of Granite most of the time, you should realize that you would be intentionally gimping your performance and there are better sets for playing without the penalties of Granite Armor.

I don't have my Granite Armor build templates on this computer. Search these forums for my posts in other Stone Armor threads and you might find my current build as well as an easy template that can be adapted to any melee set.

Or, you can just not use Granite but for rare occasions.

My newest project is a Stone/Elec/Soul tank. Good AoE with Elec Melee, and Gloom is a great single target attack. Soft capped easily to S/L/E/N/P, you have good regen with rooted, perma Dull Pain, and Granite to fall back on if you get into trouble. I would never want to live in that pile of poo. The -Dam and -Rech are too much of a deterant for me (a scrapper player).

I've been toying around with some possible Stone/* options and I haven't quite settled on one. I guess it's a good thing that there are a lot of options, but nothing's really jumping out at me.

I'm kind of leaning toward Dual Blades. Nice AOE (two cones, one PBAOE), plus you get some mitigation from KB and the "build up" power happens to be an attack, so you just keep throwing damage. If you run Granite exclusively, then you can even load up on all the attacks for combo fun and make the most of it despite the recharge penalties.

I have been quite happy with my Stone/Fire Tank, Mickey Mantel (get it? Mantel as in fireplace?). With a few sets of Kinetic Combat, I was able to softcap to Smash/Lethal in Rock Armor, which allows me to save Granite only for when I'm taking a lot of other types of damage. Plus, the Chance for Knockdown proc in my three lowest attacks adds a little bit of mitigation.

By staying out of Granite other than as a kind of "panic button," I don't suffer the recharge and damage penalty. Still, his primary focus is to draw aggro rather than do damage. The combination of Mud Pots, Combustion and Fire Sword Circle is excellent for drawing aggro and doing a bit of damage as a bonus. With Build Up, it wipes out most minions. Another nice thing about Fire Melee . . . only a few types of foes resist Fire damage.

I made a pretty classic build, with Teleport for travel while Rooted, and a bunch of Gift of the Ancient sets with the Run Speed boost. I skipped Brimstone and Crystal armors, but took Minerals late. With the extra powers from inherent Stamina, I could add in Super Speed for when I can travel without Rooted on.

As I understand it, skipping your tier 9 puts you solidly into the worst set of tank armor made. Some people may like it, but you would be far better off going with Invulnerability for instance, a good general all purpose set. Or more specialized sets like Dark or Ice if you have a concept or build direction in mind. Its just that overall, with all tier 1 thru 8, your res/def values fall below what other sets can do for you IMO.

You don't skip Granite, but you don't use it all the time.
And by not using Granite all the time there's just no way you're the worst set of tank armour made.

I consider someone in Granite all the time to be restricting themselves badly because of the -rchg and -damage.

Granite is an excellent armour and works very well as an emergency button vs things which have massive +tohit or hit very very hard. (A few of the AVs, but only a few have ever made me go into Granite.)

To the OP: I'm very happy with Stone/Fire personally.
edit: I posted my build here a few weeks ago - http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...6&postcount=25

I've leveled two stone tankers, one Stone/EM and one Stone/Fire. The Stone/EM has been retired since shortly after the /EM nerfs a couple of years ago... the Stone/Fire is an excellent tanker however. Soft capping S/L def does allow you to spend more time in Rock/Rooted instead of Granite thus bypassing the damage & Recharge penalties unless you need the supreme durability of Granite. If you need it, it's only one button click away and if you don't then why saddle yourself with the extra penalties?

In my opinion /Fire is probably the best pairing with Stone due to it's considerable AOE damage potential, good ST damage potential and quick recharge. As a bonus it's lighter on endurance than many other sets as well; the only thing it lacks is any mitigation beyond additional damage. If you're in the soup that deep that the lack of mitigation in the secondary becomes an issue then Granite's available. There's almost nothing in the game that's that threatening to a tanker in Granite + Rooted making Fire's lack of mitigation a moot point.

To add on the granite or not, doing the Trial yesterday, there you have serious no chance running outside Granite. Biggest issue there are the psi mobs, wich u could counter with your normal armors but all the SL/E damage comming in, but you have no where near the defenses to take such beating (apart the fact psi mobs also do fear).

Additionaly, rooted is one of the worst mez-toggles around, accidently using any power that removes rooted and you're fooked.

The everlasting perma vs 'stone' discussion will never go away, i've always been a perma and as long they never change the power.. i will remain one.