Kruunch

Question for the Shield Tankers out there ... what are your thoughts on Hover + CJ?

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I don't recommend Willpower/Energy Melee at all.

Energy Melee tankers are essentially a closed set now; the Tier I attack you are forced to take now has a recharge of six seconds. That's close to intolerable when you don't have many other attacks to use. The set is extremely inefficient until you get the level 35 and 38 attacks. You will struggle to put together a fluid attack chain; you will be sucking wind because your lower tier attacks do so little.

The stun in the set creates issues for Willpower in a team situation.

Finally, the set suffers from horrible animation lag. This is a bigger problem for sets that rely on self-heals; but there will be stretches of several seconds when inspirations, Strength of Will, and other powers are simply unavailable to you while you watch the too long animations play.

Stay as far away from Energy Melee as you can. A set that's had what happened to Energy Melee done to it probably ought to be simply removed from the list of options when you create a new character.

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While I don't quite share Heraclea's view of Energy (I have an Ice/Eng Tanker that's pretty darn fun to play) I will agree on the points of the animations taking far too long in Energy now.

SS definitely trumps Energy in most categories imo.

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I tanked a two man Posi just fine with my WP/DB. The mobs rarely touched the scrapper I was duoing with. If you have tanking experience, you should be able to compensate for the general lack of a standard taunt aura.

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Hence why I said *full* group.

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Since neither Superman nor Wonder Man nor The Thing are tanks, I'm not so sure that your argument provides the idea any more weight.

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Errr if you were to make a CoH comparison to those characters what would you classify them as?

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What makes me nervous about Ice and Invuln are the holes in their defense. Specifically toxic. I’ve seen a number of Posi TF’s fall apart because the first few missions have Vahz in them and the INV tanks just can’t take the alpha from an 8 man spawn.

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No tanker - none - is going to have the ability to last long against a full team spawn of Vahzilok at level 15. (Oddly, the easiest tanker to work in there might be Fire.)

Posi is something you do because either you want to get to level 15 in the course of an evening; or because you are after Task Force Commander. Or you just want a lot of merits, or maybe the badge. But nobody runs Posi for fun. A tanker built to handle Posi well would be both difficult and pointless to make.

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Just to add to this ... a full group Posi TF is the hardest TF in the game right now (and always has been).

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Hey everyone.. I just started playing CoH a couple of days ago, and after some playing around I've decided on making on Tanker. While I am new to the game, I have been a tank for pretty much my entire MMO career. I played and main tanked WoW's endgame as a Warrior, a Paladin, and a Death Knight for almost 4 years. I love to tank, and I understand what tanking is and what it involves (in a general sense, of course).

I did have a few questions regarding Tanking and power sets in CoH before I fully committed though.

For starters, I was looking for a combo that would be good for tanking yet also allow for decent leveling/soloing/small group stuff. I always see people saying "just pick what sounds fun", but fun for me is not using sub-par skills/abilities.

Right now I'm using Inv/SS which seems pretty decent, but I'm still undecided. WP, Ice Armor, and Shield also all look interesting as far as Primary sets go. Same with Dark Melee in Secondary.

So really, I'm undecided as far as the following:

Primary: Inv, WP, IA, and Shield.
Secondary: SS and DM

Are there any combinations of those sets that people might consider "the best"? I'm aware that there might not be a "best", but I'm really just looking for some general strengths/weaknesses of certain combos in different situations.

Thanks for any tips or suggestions.

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Some other tips regarding your criteria with any Tanker you choose:

Get Stamina by L20 (means you need two of Hurdle/Swift/Health first).

Get Hasten in your mid 20s at some point (70% haste).

Utilize the two build option with one defensive and one solo build. You will probably find the defensive build (depending the combination you pick of course) doesn't need IO sets as fast as the solo build (for enjoyment purposes). Eventually (and again depending on the combo you choose) you can merge the builds together (in other words, you can make your solo build tough enough to tank anything in most cases).

Finally I will say that its not the normal hyperbole that any Tanker combo can eventually tank anything. This game, from a tanking perspective, is much more dumbed down then WoW is from the same perspective. You'll find the hardest challenges early on (teens and twenties) and the game becoming ridiculously easy into your thirties and beyond.

Finally, get past the first 20 levels. The first 20 levels of a Tank will make you feel like you chose the AT poorly. Stick with it and you'll be glad you did (in this respect its not totally unlike a WoW Warrior).

Good luck

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Hey everyone.. I just started playing CoH a couple of days ago, and after some playing around I've decided on making on Tanker. While I am new to the game, I have been a tank for pretty much my entire MMO career. I played and main tanked WoW's endgame as a Warrior, a Paladin, and a Death Knight for almost 4 years. I love to tank, and I understand what tanking is and what it involves (in a general sense, of course).

I did have a few questions regarding Tanking and power sets in CoH before I fully committed though.

For starters, I was looking for a combo that would be good for tanking yet also allow for decent leveling/soloing/small group stuff. I always see people saying "just pick what sounds fun", but fun for me is not using sub-par skills/abilities.

Right now I'm using Inv/SS which seems pretty decent, but I'm still undecided. WP, Ice Armor, and Shield also all look interesting as far as Primary sets go. Same with Dark Melee in Secondary.

So really, I'm undecided as far as the following:

Primary: Inv, WP, IA, and Shield.
Secondary: SS and DM

Are there any combinations of those sets that people might consider "the best"? I'm aware that there might not be a "best", but I'm really just looking for some general strengths/weaknesses of certain combos in different situations.

Thanks for any tips or suggestions.

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Inv/SS is the "classic" tank build and also is probably the one that stands up the best all around per your criteria. Stone will get you higher defenses more easily, but I find the -recharge, -dmg and -run/jump thing incredibly annoying.

Like in WoW you get 2 builds, so you can make a solo build (Inv/SS/Pyre is excellent in this regard) and a team build (or PvP build). Inv/SS was my first Tanker and still my fave.

WP is an excellent set and (imo) the easiest to slot for. It's the easiest (or at least, the funnest imo) to level as well. You *will* be squishier then an equally built Stoner or Inv Tanker however, but you still can Tank any part of the end game. I have a WP/Stoner that I've done ITFs and LGTFs with (haven't done an STF on this guy yet tho) with no problems.

SD is the shiney new toy ... it can be hit or miss tanking wise since it depends on Defense (much like Ice) where you're at the mercy of the random number generator but Shield Charge is a blast! I have an SD/DM Tanker and the combination (I think) is the best all around combo for SD (the heal in DM really makes it shine).

I have an Ice/Eng Tanker that does fairly well and I enjoy the go power of it more then the end drag that SD can be sometimes. However it also suffers from random number syndrome (being a defense set). Energy Melee is a little annoying however (overly long animations).

All the holes in any of these sets can be accomodated for with decent IO set builds.

Hope that helped.

Per usual I didn't read Starman's babbling, but I have to say that I am impressed he constrained himself to two sets of bullet points and no graphs.

*chuckle*

You just eliminated the toughest Tanker primary.

Should work fine as a main tank.

And SD isn't really any harder to get early attacks then other Tanker primaries (in fact I think I have more attacks on my SD/DM Tanker then I had on any other Tanker up through L26 or so (with my normal compliment of Hasten and Stamina yada yada yada)).

Ice Melee works really well with WP (imo) due to the Ice Patch negating some of a big alpha while levelling up and Ice isn't an endurance hog (as far as I know).

I'm not a big fan of single target holds, nor the sleep mechanic for Tankers but I tend to like to tank big groups of mobs where those mechanics don't work really well (too many AOEs in group play for sleep effects and single target holding a minion or an LT out of a pack of 12 seems a little ... pointless (most times)).

Also Ice's damage isn't bad ... it's horrendously bad.

The only upside over Stone (graphics aside) is Ice gets 2 damaging AOEs (Frost Breath and Frozen Aura) and Stone only has one (Tremor).

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This was more pointed at Sorciere who has claimed to have done extensive tests of the agro mechanic as a Tanker, which would have to include knowing about how Gauntlet worked to be somewhat accurate in those conclusions.

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Huh? What on earth are you talking about? You now claim that I didn't know about Gauntlet requiring a to-hit check, when only a couple of pages ago I was the one pointing out that in my recollection it DID require a to-hit check.

Get your story straight.

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Sorciere replying to Sarrate said:

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So, if a player attacks Mob A and hits, would Gauntlet have to check Mob B to see if it hits? If yes, then Gauntlet is a bigger pile than I originally thought it was. :P

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That is what I believe is currently the case. Mind you, I might be wrong -- this is not exactly trivial to test, and I may have made a mistake in the testing setup (plus, it's been close to a year, I think, since I've last tested Gauntlet, which doesn't make my memory any more reliable).

(Solo testing setup: Turn off your aggro aura and go to a zone with critters that are sufficiently below you in level so that they don't aggro from proximity, but high enough so that they don't immediately run away after they miss the first time. Grab a spawn of 4+ critters, eliminate all but 4. Pull that spawn over to the vicinity of another spawn. Make sure that all four of the initial critters are closer to you than the other spawn. Use an attack with a high Gauntlet radius, but low enough so that it doesn't outright defeat the critter. See if the other spawn aggroed. If it didn't, then Gauntlet just missed. Since they are below you, expect to repeat this at least a couple dozen times to see the first miss. Then repeat it often enough to make sure it's reproducible. If you have a duo partner, then much simpler setups are possible, of course.)

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This implies that you do not understand how Gauntlet works precisely. The fact that you are unaware that the accuracy of Gauntlet is not enhanceable and the fact the you aren't sure whether it does indeed need a toHit check per mob it attempts to effect leads me to question your "tests" and your general knowledge of agro in terms of how it applies to Tankers versus my knowledge through what I've experienced in game playing with normal groups.

Straight enough?

You know how I found out about Gauntlet? I was playing the game with a friend on a low level Tanker (pre-taunt aura) and punched one of three mobs that had been AOE'd by my Blaster buddy. One of the mobs I didn't punch turned around (the one I did punch didn't). We both thought that was funny as heck and then proceeded to reproduce the effect fairly consistantly right on up through L50 (the joke was "how often can Gauntlet get my buddy killed).

This is as of last month.

So much for dedicated experiments.

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If you were a *real* Tanker playing with a *real* group of people (not a controlled experimental setting (seriously?)) you would know that taunt auras by themselves do not hold agro well enough.

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In simple terms: you are wrong, unless the taunt aura is Willpower's.

OR if the tanker decides to stand still and not follow the critters.

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If the taunt aura worked as you say, then why would you have to follow the critter?

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Yeah,just like I loathe freshly cooked macadamian nut pancakes. If your going to be confrontational, don't be passive agressive, it shows a weakness you think your hiding, but thats just text book, and your not text book right?....your orginal and unique.

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Lacrymosa: My statement is genuine. I don't like fights or pointless bickering. I am human, and things can get under my skin and get the better of me.

Sadly, there's no way I can prove this. You have only my word to take for it. If you can't or don't want to, I understand.

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Additionally, I wouldn't go crowing on about how many tests you (or the various board junkies) did when said board junkies didn't even know that Gauntlet required a toHit check per mob or that its accuracy was not enhanceable.

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Kruunch: Gauntlet is a mechanic that utilizes Taunt. I've tested tested how Taunt works; Gauntlet I have not, nor do I have any reason to pretend I did. Ignorance of Gauntlet is not indicative of ignorance of Taunt.

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This was more pointed at Sorciere who has claimed to have done extensive tests of the agro mechanic as a Tanker, which would have to include knowing about how Gauntlet worked to be somewhat accurate in those conclusions.

You however seem guilty of weighting the post by the poster and not by it's content. Quite a few times I've already caught you (and Aett for that matter) answering posts of mine on points I either never said or I had stipulated on through various threads. If you can't seem to control your use of the Reply button because the "tone" of my posts drives you to hallucinate or entirely miss points I've posted on, maybe it's time to lessen the post count.

Sorry about the tone btw ... I *loathe* having to point out the obvious but it makes me cranky when I do. I'm only human after all.

/rolls eyes

Just make sure you get Stamina by L20.

That's really the only hard and fast rule for Tanker enjoyment (except WP since someone will mention it).

That was 2 years ago buddy.

And you say I'M out of touch?

Pffft.

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As far as im concerned no one is showing evidence, just posting numbers and their own experiences, a bit pretentious aren't we?.

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When Castle told us how Threat actually works, a lot of tests were done on the subject. Many were accompanied by videos or screenshots in-game, or involved several of us on the Tanker forum watching to see how things actually worked. They worked exactly as Sorciere and Sarate say that they do, in multiple tests on the Test server. This was done over the course of what, 6 months or so, maybe more?

Server purges have caused these to be lost, but they were done. Quoting them as evidence still counts as such. The tests were done. Why should we take our time to do 6 more months of testing of a mechanic that we've already tested, when the people making the counter claim have done none?

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Let's not forget that Castle was attempting to correct earlier announcements (of his) that were faulty. Additionally his comments (at least as quoted by the archive that Sarrate linked) indicated you have to have some extreme conditions to override Taunt.

The fact that taunt auras (with the exception of RTTC) are listed as the same taunt mag as the power Taunt, but do not in fact work in the same way (despite what Sorciere seems to claim), leads me to believe that either the tool tip description is wrong (yet again) or that the taunt auras have another unlisted mechanic applied to them (much like Gauntlet) that makes their agro "slippery" by itself.

Additionally, I wouldn't go crowing on about how many tests you (or the various board junkies) did when said board junkies didn't even know that Gauntlet required a toHit check per mob or that its accuracy was not enhanceable.

Finally, it's not like this issue is hard to test ... just grab a buddy and rub up against a mob with your taunt aura. I did this last night and it works *exactly* how I explained it.

You don't get a screen or vid since you can't be bothered to actually play your Tankers, I can't be bothered to show you "proof".

Ad Hominem Fallacy FTL!

Sarrate: I'd be happy to but pedantic circular conversations tend to irritate me (which this has turned into long ago).

And pardon but "I have run comprehensive experiments of the taunt mechanic ..." isn't any more "proof" then saying "I'm right, you're wrong ... nyah nyah nyah".

Thought you might have picked up on that by now.

Aett himself just answered one of the myriad reasons of what I've been talking about. Several of the most popular builds of a popular AT (Scrapper) run taunt auras as well, effectively negating what we've been discussing (taunt aura only taunting sans attacks).

Aett: I'm not talking about casual players. This may come as a shock to you, but *most* of the currently best built Tankers I see running today (well, at least from my server) don't post here. Most don't even bother to read the forums.

Probably to stay away from conversations like this (on both our parts).

Largo points out that he moves, he attacks (maybe even Taunts) and that settles a great majority of his agro questions. I would take that one step further and say that settles about 99.9% of the agro concerns you could have in this game as a Tanker.

And I base that observation on play. Not forum discussion. Not "scientific experiments". Not spread sheets. Not what Mid's says. Not what Tomax's says. So if it sounds like I'm being condescending, it's because I am.

Interesting that you turn this into a "Kruunch vs. everyone else".

Lot of tanks read these boards. Only a couple disagreeing with me. Probably because most of them don't care ... they play the game to play the game.

Might wanna take a hint.

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I think you need to retest then Herr Professor because you are way off base.


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It is Frau Professor, thank you very much (not that I actually have a tenure track position, of course).

The thing is, if you wish to assert that damage can out-aggro a taunt aura (which you claimed is possible), then you should be able to point out a controlled experiment that can validate this claim of yours. Right now, given that everybody but you thinks that aggro auras DO provide solid aggro vs. damage, you may want to take a step back and re-evaluate your assumptions.


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Most people don't play this game in a labratory and most Tankers don't really give much more thought to their taunt aura then they do the color of the underwear they're wearing.

If you were a *real* Tanker playing with a *real* group of people (not a controlled experimental setting (seriously?)) you would know that taunt auras by themselves do not hold agro well enough. You would also know that taunt auras *and* punchvoke will take care of 90% of your agro concerns, with another 9% being reserved for Taunt. The other 1% I'd put down to the actual skill of the player (that's how simplistic playing this game is ... especially at the higher levels).

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And a taunt aura radius versus the range of Taunt is hugely important as you will usually not be able to fit more then 6-7 mobs in the range of a taunt aura (which incidentally is not much broader then melee range).

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Absolutely. This doesn't say a thing about the strength of the taunt aura and how it matches up against damage, though; it's only important for how you can cover all critters in a spawn with taunt effects. (And for practical purposes, all tankers but Willpower can of course also employ movement to get aggro on more critters.)

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Oddly enough I play an L50 WP Tanker who moves around just fine. Has the weakest taunt aura in the game, has only one AOE and keeps agro just fine with room to spare.

In other news, water is wet.

Good luck with your "experiments".

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Do you actually play a Tanker? Try taking any of them, using only a taunt aura and not attacking and see how long you hold agro.

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I not only play tankers, I have done a lot of controlled tests of taunt mechanics with them. Specifically including the one case discussed in my previous post.

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Not to mention that the taunt mag, taunt duration and general area of effect are MUCH different from Taunt to taunt auras.

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The taunt magnitude of most tanker taunt auras (except RttC) is actually precisely the same as that of the various Taunt powers in tanker secondaries (mag 4). If you slot Invincibility or Against all Odds with three taunt duration SOs, then at level 50, the taunt duration will actually be longer than that of the unenhanced Taunt in Dark Melee and Dual Blades. The area of effect of Taunt is inconsequential for its strength, obviously.

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I sincerely can't see how you could possibly say that's a mischaracterization.

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Because I've actually performed controlled experiments regarding the mechanics of taunt effects and don't just make unsupported anecdotal claims like you tend to do.

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I think you need to retest then Herr Professor because you are way off base.

And a taunt aura radius versus the range of Taunt is hugely important as you will usually not be able to fit more then 6-7 mobs in the range of a taunt aura (which incidentally is not much broader then melee range).

Less testing and more questing

To the poster above you: seldom attacking and never attacking are far and away two different things here. Taunt Aura + Gauntlet effect will allow you to control agro very well in melee range. Taunt auras by themselves will not.

If you doubt this, try running a full group just using a taunt aura and no attacks and see how many deaths you pile up (no cheating and bringing extra Tankers and/or Controllers )

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Please, please, read his post on it. He points out specifically why it's harder than you might think.

Yes, it was 'bad' coding. They didn't think that the players would want it, and so set up the power codes to not need anything like it. They then made each power based on this code. It was an oversight more than bad coding. They were a small team even then, and they were trying to get a game out quickly. They made a business choice, that came back to bite them a bit (the game still works without power customization, but people still really want it).

To re-do this decision, you'd need to re-do every animation in the game six times over, then add extra code on top of that.

Why six times? Here's why:

1) Male standing
2) Male flying
3) Huge standing
4) Huge flying
5) Female standing
6) Female flying

9 powers across about 70 sets. Even if we knocked that down to 7 powers across 70 sets to account for duplicate animations like Taunt that could be more easily reused, that would still be about 2,940 animations that you'd need to do. And that's not even counting unique powers in the Ancillary pools or temp powers, or pool powers (would add another 200 or so animations to do).

It is NOT impossible. It's just time consuming to re-do all that work. So far, the Dev decision has been that it's not worth it. Time spent on this would take time away from new powersets and new animations.

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This is kind of what I said (without going into specifics). And my apologies, I suffer from programmers syndrome ... "bad coding" virtually always means bad planning.

I understand it would be time consuming which is why I said it probably would never get done.

I'll assume the rest was meant for someone else as we weren't talking about broad based power customization originally.

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As for thrown weapon customization ... if you went as far as to come up with new animation schemes for thrown weapons, using the current weapon customization the player has selected would be the easy part to implement in all this (its just a skin difference ... one that's already made).

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From what we've been told by the Dev BAB, it's not that easy. It's basically power customization at that point, instead of just costume customization, which is what Weapon Customization is. Weapon Customization is nothing like Power customization. Being able to swap out one costume piece for another is one thing. Changing out power graphics based on those costume choices is another. Again, it's the reason that Spines isn't customizable: the images that form the body can be swapped out, but the powers like Impale can't be easily swapped out. So, even if you made the spikes metal, you'd still be throwing a banana.


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That just sounds like bad coding (or lack of forethought) which could very well be (happens often in MMOs). From a coding standpoint, there should be no difference from "power" to "costume" customization *except* with regards to differences in animations (as we discussed) as that is the only real difference (standing graphic (or meshed graphic in the case of a costume piece) versus an animated one).

Having said that, I bet it would be easier then BAB (who is fairly new to the team?) thinks if some thought were really put into it.

You'll notice two different types of devs (goes for most programmers btw) ... one that says everything is hard (with the idea that it gives then auto padding by just saying that and possibly can kill an idea in its tracks rather than having to work on it (programmers are lazy)), and the one that says everything is easy (which is usually guilty of speaking before thinking).

But I'm fairly certain in his definition of "power customization" he really meant new animation.

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In my estimation, most Tankers who do get agro pulled are usually guilty of relying on taunt auras (which can be easily pulled away from)

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Aside from AVs, that's really a mischaracterization of taunt auras. You don't pull "easily away" from something that has a taunt effect on it, whether it comes from Taunt, auras, or Gauntlet. That 1000 * Taunt Duration multiplier is really, really hard to beat unless whoever is pulling aggro has a taunt multiplier of their own (usually scrappers or brutes with taunt auras). Even if you park a regular critter next to a Willpower tanker who doesn't do anything but let RttC tick (the weakest taunt aura in all of CoH), it is practically impossible to pull aggro with just damage.

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Totally TOTALLY untrue. Unbelievably untrue.

Do you actually play a Tanker? Try taking any of them, using only a taunt aura and not attacking and see how long you hold agro.

Not to mention that the taunt mag, taunt duration and general area of effect are MUCH different from Taunt to taunt auras.

I sincerely can't see how you could possibly say that's a mischaracterization.

Failsight: The hard part isn't the difference of weapon versus melee power as the power is applied. Those are just number changes in a database which are very easy (e.g. weapon +acc, damage modifiers, etc ...).

As I said, the hard part with thrown weapons (and I say "hard" because its not as easy as changing a number in a field) is the animations involved which we seem to agree on. *IF* the devs were going to implement this, then that would be the most time consuming part out of all the ATs.

I also disagree with you about the "unbelievability" of thrown weapons. I mean seriously? Hellooooooo comic book genre.

Aett: I disagree with your line of thinking with regards to first and second powers (not that you didn't make a good point ... I just don't think it matters overly with regards to Brutes and Tankers), and Scrappers would have to be handled differently then Brutes/Tankers since their damage modifiers are higher and thrown weapons / abilities might infringe upon Blasters whereas we already have Tanker/Brute sets with ranged abiltiies (we also have Scrapper sets with ranged abilities so neither of our arguements might apply by the same logic however).

As for thrown weapon customization ... if you went as far as to come up with new animation schemes for thrown weapons, using the current weapon customization the player has selected would be the easy part to implement in all this (its just a skin difference ... one that's already made).

While if a ranged attack were ever implemented I think the devs would take the short cut with weapons and just use an already existing generic equivelant thrown weapon (i.e. spikes, stars, discs, etc ...) and the already existing animations for them. Now *that* I would have more of a problem with then Failsight's "unbelievability" factor of boomerang Hammers and Axes just from a thematic experience.