abnormal_joe

I've been keeping an eye on what type of tanks I see ingame, and seeing as I run two full all tanker SGs I see a lot. Lately I've spent a fair amount of time on the forums again, practically all in the tanker boards.
I'm curious why there is so much invuln love? Is it the current trend to soft cap defense that CMA made so popular? Is it the whole Supes homage vibe? Is it the last round of buffs?

Color me a little puzzled. I've played all the tanker sets to 50 with and without IOs (and yes my invuln/dm went full on softcapped with 0 foes) invuln was good, but not OMGWTFBBQSauce!

Most of you fine folks seem to prefer the set over most if not all others. Why do YOU like it?

joe

Burn always was buffed by BU, Assault, FE, insp etc.
I don't believe that has changed.

Just a quick note. If your main concern is -regen try for darks. Howling Twilight (the aoe rez) also happens to be a monster regen debuff 500% iirc. If memory serves it is the strongest such debuff in the game. They also get a little more -regen from their targetted heal.

Hmm this changes my old fire/ss tank a bit. He was already self capping his damage a good bit of the time. The new FE mechanic coupled with that kind of damage buffing is gonna put out some sick damage.

I don't suppose anyone has done a dps comparo for FA tanks pre/post FE changes?

I have to disagree with the contention that there is a significant flaw in the Tank design.
All I see here is that it does not fit some individuals expectations and tastes.
If you want more damage play a brute or a scrapper.
If you want more control of spawns play a controller or dominator.
If you want more survivability...well there are some awefully tough mastermind combos.

This game has a lot of options. Personally Tank suit me right down to the ground and I fail to see a pressing need to rework an archetype in a vain attempt to please someone who already has several other options open to them.

re:the whole feeling useless on a given team thing....

Any good duo/trio can make the remainder of the team irrelevant. I've run every blueside and redside TF/SF with two friends with no need for a team at fairly high difficulty setting with no issue. In fact the few times we let other folks tag along it actively slowed us down. If you feel useless turn up the difficulty.

Frankly I wouldn't touch the AT any further until we see if all this doom crying over brutes stealing tanker's thunder actually pans out.
All the time we have had coop teaming in RWZ and Cim and there has still been plenty of demand for tanks.
Personally I think the biggest threat to a tanker's job security is a controller and we have been sharing teams with them since day one.

Well for general tanking advice I do have a guide (link in sig). Shield/Ice is a fairly rare combo, I've only seen one before.
It should work fine, as soon as your tank is big enough to slot a few sets try to soft cap his defense as it helps tons, and is very cheap on a shielder.
Once you start slotting Frozen Aura try to grab the chance for self heal proc from the sleep set (don't remember the exact name at the moment sorry) with a big pack around you it should give you the equivilant of a small green inspiration every time you fire the attack.
Ica Patch is also a great little panic button which you will find all sorts of cool uses for.

Mike. Elec/SS is a good middle of the road tank with a slight leaning toward a more damage focused build. What with Rage and the damage aura. The trick is not so much wht it start out as, as it is what you turn him into.

Local_Man. I actually go tpretty deep into CMAs build when I was respecing that particular tank. I took it a bit further than he did. I ended up softcapped to all with 0 foes in range (barring psi/tox of course) It's just my experience was he was fairly squishy for about 2/3 of the game content UNTIL I got those IOs slotted. I agree its a top tier set once slotted up, just take a bit to get there. S/L foes are an entirely different matter.

Come to think of it I may need to see if he would mind me linking his two guides the next time I do an update to this guide.

A full set of Gaussian's gives you 2.5% defense to all three vectors.

I imagine my son/em stun blapper will get some serious mileage out of OG

For comparison my stone/fire build. Bit pricey but very effective.

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cheers!

joe

Here's the build for my old stone/fire. Initially I started out trying to cancel all the penalties (I did barring -jump, there are no IOs for that) I discovered when I was finished that I could run my other toggles without granite and still have a shockinly durable tank while keeping all +rech and +dmg.
I'll post it here just for comparison.

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Kind of toying with the idea of a ice/elec/mu sapper tank myself.

I sort of see it as a ranged taunt aura that happens to do a bit of debuff. (DN that is)

Looking over the new powers it seems like a fallen tank has a lot more aoe damage available in Patrons than Epics. Many of the sets have 2-3 targetted aoes where a Epic mostly has 1 at best.
I'm not sure how useful pets will be except as an IO mule or the eat a kryptonite alpha.
I do like the functionality of ranged aoe immobs, as it will allow me to prevent wander.
It seems a fine way to keep my tightly gathered spawn well in my aura and unable to wander of to do naughty things to that over eager blaster.
I am also intrigued by Mu mastery. It might be fun to try out a ice/elec/mu sapper tank.
It would certainly be different.

Since it will soon be possible to fall from grace and get our grubby mitts of some patron powers I'm curious how many of my fellow tankers will take that route, and which powers they find tempting.

Cheers.
Joe

Its a solid set with plenty of damage. Basic rule of thumb for these forums.
We end up with a thread where we endless argue over the exact damage rankings of the set. Folks glance over it and then proclaim that every set not currently #1 is teh suxxorz.
It's kind of sad really since they are all pretty well balanced at the moment. Some are a little biased for single target or aoe. Some are tweaked slightly for providing more mitigation. None are "low damage" to me and I have played every last set to 50.

Since I will be gearing up for an update over the next issue or so are there any requests?
Overlooked topics, expanded coverage of a point, other ideas?

Two quick points.

1.Siphon Life got a major buff a couple issues back it is now a tidy self heal and a perfectly respectable attack.

2.Touch of Fear is not just a mez it is a MASSIVE tohit debuff.

1.Perma hasten is possible but it is insanely expensive to achieve, and only works for most toons with vast numbers of the most expensive set IOs.

2.If you have enough endurance generally with stamina, QR by itself will probably suffice. Personally I like layering the other recovery powers so I can go all energizer bunny on my enemies.

3.That slotting is still decent though some folks prefer to swap a recharge for a second acc. Take a look at the cheaper IOs sets, it is frequently possible to frankenslot multi aspect set IO cheaper than generics, allowing you to nicely ED cap a few aspects of the power far cheaper and far earlier than you would otherwise.

4.Personally I liked Jacob's Ladder, and I cannot imagin why a scrapper would skip BU. The others are a matter of taste.

5.Vertical movement is cheap and easy, you can earn temp travels from the low level Safeguard missions, get craftable jetpacks as a recipe drop, buy those same recipes on WW dirt cheap, or buy a temp jet pack power outright from a vendor in FBZ just inside the PI gate for 10k. For my money there is no reason to even take a travel power except for IO muiling and concept reasons.

Just a quick thought. I went through a similar tug of war when trying to bring my i5 ar/dev into the IO era.
What I finally settled on was a dual build approach.
Build A was for teaming a purely ranged hover blaster with a decent amount of ranged defense. The other toys were skipped since I had other folks for support and aggro control.
Build B was for soloing and relying on invisibly toe bombing my foes and using my pets to eat alphas for me.

My first serious tank long ago was a fire/ss tons of smashy goodness to be had there.
But that is true of almost any combo that includes super strength.
Elec Armor is a bit sturdier if a little lower damage than fire.
Fire melee doesn't have that cool feel that SS does but it has lots of juicy aoe damage.

If you want sturdy go with the elec/ss if you want lots of carnage go with the fire/ss.
Of course if itsw really carnage your looking for a fire/fire/pyre may be even better.