Shield/MA vs SR/MA? Aid Self? Skippable attack?

All,

I used to love Tankers but over time I gravitated towards Brutes for damage. However, with SR and MA being new for Tanks, I am kinda thinking about trying it. However, I do long for damage, so I am tempted to go with Shield for AAO and Shield Charge. But conceptually I prefer SR. But I dont want to start and give up due to the damage levels.

So with all that in mind, should I go Shield or Super Reflexes?

Also, do I need Aid Self? I have room for it in my SR build but not in my Shield build.

Finally, unless I drop Aid Self from my SR build, I need to drop one attack. And on my Shield guy I still have to drop one. I was thinking of dropping the one that causes knockback, or maybe the top silly spinny flippy one. Or maybe you would recommend some other power to skip.

If you were to recommend an attack from Martial Arts to skip, what would it be? And why?

Thanks,

Lewis

Quickness in SR recharges the heavy hitters fast, ofc this increases your dps and eps, but other powers, survivability powers can recharge faster too hopefully providing some balance when comparing it to shield. Really have to stretch the imagination to find some balances imo.

In the UK we have a saying "Who Dares Wins" so if I have a concept, that rules.

If you do a build and say would like Aid Self fitted then it might get fitted in. Looking at it could be helpful.

It'll be Crane Kick that's skippable for me, its usefulness to me would be under -rechg conditions.

For SD, CK or CS would be your skippable attack depending on if you want a stun or a kb (they both do the same damage). Since you have AAO, you could potentially skip EC, too.

For SR, the same applies for CS/CK but you could also skip SK since tanker SR can softcap with minimal investment.

As for Aid Self, I'd recommend squeezing it in on either build. Only time I wouldn't recommend it is if you were /DM. Of course you could go without Aid Self and just use greens.

Thanks. I guess I will just have to think on it for a bit.

Should I shoot for the normal defense cap or the incarnate one? My SR/MA build is permahasten, has aid self, and has 60% to 65% defense range, aoe and melee, not counting the MA attack. And this character should really be SR if I am honest with myself about his theme.

Anyway, thanks much!

Lewis

Cool.

Can a SR character even do much with +HP? It doesnt seem to have powers that give you much to build from. I do have decent regen tho, plus I have AidSelf.

Lewis

Cool. I am not near Mids planner right now, but I will check it out tonight.

Thanks,

Lewis

Hitpoints mattered when you could be one shotted, a lvl 52 Giovanna Scaldi could of knocked out a tank in a single attack, nowadays you worry about an AVs attack chain or a groups alpha, both of which can be mitigated. The more you have the better your chances.

Playing around with a pair of Tanker SR/DM builds ... they range from 2656 health with Aid Self on the first to 3295 with Incarnate (Spiritual and Rebirth) on the second (but no Shield Walls which would push both higher yet). Higher health is good not only soaking up spike damage, but it also increases the range over which your passive scaling resists kick in and, of course, regen. More max health and regen are high on my list for what I'm looking for after hitting the defense numbers I'm looking for on my SR scrappers and brutes, a tanker would be no different. My main, a Claws/SR scrapper is sitting at 1953 currently with plans to push to 2023.

I'm going to go ahead and note here that you should never, under any circumstances, skip storm kick for MA - better to skip Eagle's Claw or one of the mid-range attacks.

Storm Kick does more damage per time spent than any other attack, even without counting the defense boost tankers get out of it!

The problem with storm kick's defense boost is that it is positional. The only primaries that will benefit from it are SR & SD (that will soft-cap anyway) and those without defense at all (elec, dark, fire) that can build on positional instead of typed defense.

So as a tanker other primary, it offers no mitigation or control. It has a smaller area taunt the higher level attacks, but that is somewhat compensated by the high rate of activation. MA attacks are fast enough that storm kick is really nothing special for Inv, Ice, Will, stone.

Storm Kicks' defensive bonus is NOT just positional!

That was changed in beta when people complained about it "only being" positional. Unfortunately they never changed the power description text to reflect that change.

Nope.

You weren't the only one.

Crane Kick is entirely skippable now that Cobra Strike got changed from a gauranteed stun to a 75% chance to stun plus identical damage. Crane Kick is now only really useful now for looking awesome and for throwing problem mobs out of the herd so the blasters can focus on them.

The 20% recharge and defense debuff protection in Super Reflexes are great. It's a bit on the defense side of the scale so you won't get the same sort of damage numbers as you would with shield but I don't think it would be enough either way to really be noticeable. My vote would be to follow your concept and not worry about the small stuff.