Brute as a Tank?

Recently I've been noticing that my character list does not include a good tank. I have several Tankers I'm working on but I find myself getting bored with their low damage numbers. So now I'm trying to figure out what I can make to serve as a good Tank and still deal good damage. The Brute seems to be the natural solution to my problem. I'm leaning towards a StJ/Regen. Would a heavily IO'd /Regen Brute be capable of tanking reliably?

@Rorn ---- Blue Baron ---- Guardian

Regen is bad at tanking some things, such as cimerorans, but quite good at tanking things like AVs, regardless of damage type. When you say you want to be tanky I also assume that you're thinking of tanking for a team, and this is another area where regen is good as it tends to get full benefit from whatever sort of buffs your allies have. Since you mention heavy ioing, I'm also going to suppose that you plan to have 32-45% s/l defense. With that kind of buffer and brute HP, regen is tanky indeed. Still susceptible to debuffs compared to some other defensive sets, yet there aren't many cases where there'll be no way for you and your team to overcome that, whereas regen's unique advantage of ignoring damage type is valuable in many high end circumstances.

My first guess is no, but right when it got proliferated, I made a SS/Reg brute myself just to try it out. Its lvl 47 or 48 right now with almost his full 50 set build and so far it feels surprisingly tough.

If you use your inspirations and MoG wisely, I don't see why it couldn't, especially if you have skilled teammates backing you up.

It can, this is even more true if u get iPowers. You can be soft capped to s/l/e/n almost all the time between Mog and barrier.

You are also running at almost 3k hp and some 80 hp/sec regen. And u still have reconstruction and IH when u need them, oh and at least 30% s/l res and 10% to everything else.

Lets not forget about darkest night as well.

Any brute built properly can tank, regin included.

While all that is true I'd still rather tank with invulnerability or a high defense electric armor than a regen brute. There are less surprises.

Regeneration, outside of moment of glory, is all about dealing with high-but-slow damage. Single hard targets don't pose much risk for regeneration. Tanking is all about dealing with continuous incoming damage, something regen isn't very good at on SOs/Basic IOs.

Once you IO things out and get your defenses into the sweet spot of 32%+ things are a lot better, of course. That slows the incoming damage down to the point where you can go entire missions without using a click.

This is all on paper. Team buffs can get you to that sweet spot easily so in practice as long as you have a - I was going to say 'balanced' team, but really it's any team where people aren't afk - team you'll be ok. Especially if you're not above popping purples as they drop.