Tanking iTrials

Hello tankers!

Since my recent return to the game, I've semi settled on an ill/rad controller with which I'm having a blasty blast. Having enjoyed that though, I also wanted to make a melee and tankers seem not only the most useful, but also relatively smallest in population so I decided on that AT. My question is about what power set(s) to choose if the intention is tanking current and future iTrials eventually.

I've read the guides and think I've got a fairly good understanding of the sets themselves and what their strengths and weaknesses are, my question is more practical in nature. I know, for example, that inv is a great set, but the idea of blowing up instantly when faced with psi damage made me uncomfortable. At the moment I think ela looks like where I'm leaning, but how bad is having no ddr? I know people post a lot about that as a failure theoretically, but how is it in practice? Assuming you cap at least s/l/e resistance and softcap (or close) s/l/e/n defense, do you often find the lack of ddr to cause defense failure and if so, do you find it makes you not survivable enough overall?

I'll admit, I've mostly been considering resistance sets instead of defensive ones as they seem the most survivable overall, but if I'm wrong let me know!

Side note: For secondaries I kind of dislike weapon sets due to finding redraw annoying. If needed i could roll one, but have been trying to conceptualize builds without parry, defensive sweep, etc.

Thanks in advance!

I have tanked many Itrials on both res tanks, and def tanks it all boils down on how u play your tank, and the how u build them. My SR tank has no res but has high def and I hardly die with it, but once in awhile they do get that lucky shot in where I do have to heal my self. But it is like flints said every tank (or AT for that matter) has a hole in there armor sort of speak.

SHIELD is your answer!

I love my Shield Tank, he Tanked all the I-Trials as they came out and I was never disappointed.

Shield has a great mix of Defense and Resistance, Tough and Weave complement it perfectly.

You can cap out your Defense and have over 50% resistances.

And Shield Charge Rocks!

I built my Elec/DM with 20% Def to all vectors (one medium purple from normal softcap to every attack type). I have done reasonably well on the small set of trials I have been on. I don't particularly like raid-type content, which is why I haven't done all that many.

Note: Leading Antimatter around by the nose with no assistance does feel pretty good.

I have been thinking about this rather a lot, and am coming to the conclusion that the 'best' iTanks are going to be either shield defense or willpower, with SR and Dark as distant seconds.

Why? Confuse/terror resistance. SD and will offer both, SR has confuse, Dark has terror.

After that, any of the 'traditional' heavy armor sets is viable, with the caveat that you better run leadership and carry breakfree's. Heck, I'd have some breakfree's ready on ANY tanker in incarnate content.

I have tanked many an UG on a stone/ss, and on my beloved inv/ax. Both have quite good builds and did fine, aside from the occasional faceplant caused by Olympian Guards.

MoM is a bit rough on an invuln, but quite doable with dull pain and rebirth.

DD is not that hard to tank, in my experience.

Keyes is tankable by my fires or my invuln, never tried the stoner because you want to be able to run around, but I've seen a teleporting stoner do it amazingly well.

But a top-shelf shield defense or willpower build would, I believe, have the strongest performance envelope in that content.

SR tanks might be a bit crunchy on iTrials, but my tooled up SR scrapper with rebirth does just fine. Rebirth COMPLETELY re-makes SR. Dark, well, the endurance issues and general squish factor can both be handled on a good build.

In my mind, a growing concern s going to be taunt resistance. Namely, we ain't got none.

I'm leveling an Electric/DM tank as my super tough itrial tank. I put together a build that has 45% defense to S/L, with a couple stacks of the ATO proc it's at capped S/L/E resist, 70% or so to F/C/Psi and 55% Negative resist. It has pretty nice regen thanks to Energize and other IO bonuses, and Siphon life at 20% heal at 3s recharge. My plan was to go with Rebirth to push regen up even more, but I hadn't thought about Ageless giving debuff resist, I might have to try that too. All in all I like it because it has strengths in most areas. It's not best at anything, except maybe overall resists, but it's strong in a lot of areas, plus it has a damage aura, and some global recharge in LR.

The reason I liked Electric over some of the other sets is that it has the highest base resists, it doesn't have any resist holes except toxic, which most everything has, and it had some offensive skills. With IO's it's easier to stack up defense and regen then resists. The two real weaknesses I saw for the set were it's lack of strong heals, Energize is great, but it's not quite enough, and no DDR. Siphon Life from DM fixes the heal part, and I just have to live with the lack of DDR.

The other reason I liked Electric is that incarnate trials so far are heavy in Energy and Psi damage, and Electric has the best resists to both those available.

Actually Dark has the best psi resists by a bit...and S/L can be capped and Neg. Energy will cap, Energy is lower, but defense can shore that up.

My Dark/Fire tank is nasty with 45% S/L/E/N and nearly capped S/L (89%) and capped Neg (90%), and Psi is 3% shy of the cap (87%)

With a tier 4 Resilient core alpha slotted, my Dark tank has 88.4% S/L resists, 63.3% F/C resists, 42.7% Energy and 79.2 % NegEnergy resists, 43.1 Toxic resists and 90% (capped) psi resists. This is on top of S/L/E/N softcapped Defense. While I can see the case for Elec (Vysires and I have had this discussion in other threads), Dark is definitely a strong contender. With Melee hybrid active, the S/L and Negative Energy resistances all hit cap.

Also, to speak to the OP's concern about the lack of DDR in tankers doing iTrials with softcapped Defense as a major part of their total survivability plan, I'd like to highlight the radial path of the Ageless destiny incarnate power, which provides a source of DDR. Unless I have a specific reason to do otherwise (e.g. Clarion needed for a UGT), I always run my tier 4 Ageless Radial Epiphany and I have it set on autocast. It works.