Kruunch

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I made up a SD/Axe recently and am really enjoying him, but I haven't picked up Sands or the Axe because I was unsure if I should, with redraw and the like. Is it better to go without, or if not, which would be a better choice?

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Definitely take one ... you can always choose not to use it later.

As people have said, Sands is generally considered superior to the Axe. One part of your question might have been thinking that the Axe wouldn't cause a "draw" animation since you're already using "axes". I don't believe this is correct ... I think you draw the different axe when using Ghost Axe (can someone confirm?).

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I'd generally avoid groups of this size since it doesn't increase kill speed ...

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So so so so untrue (which any farmer will tell you).

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... and is much more dangerous to the team;


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True .... we find excitement where we can. I would never attempt to do this without a team I was comfortable with AND that knew and agreed to do it.

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... but when it happens (say multiple ambushes) you have to be able to roll with it.

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Much easier to do with some practice wouldn't you agree?

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I don't consider it it to be tanking more than 17, though.

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That's fine ... we'll call it Multiple Mob Cold Shoulder Spooning then (MMCSS). Whatever definition fits into your world.

But it's still tanking

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I can see what Kruunch is trying to say: tanking is more than just holding the attention of 17 targets, but more minimising the danger to the entire team.


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Exactly.

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On the other hand, I personally would call what he's demonstrating as "tanking" so much as "good team play including his tanking." It's taking a lot more than his prowess to make what he's showing work, which is fine, but his tanking is only a subset of that, and saying otherwise is conflating a subset for its superset.


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I'd agree with this but "tanking" shouldn't be a replacement for "teamwork". From what you said above, I'm inferring that you are presenting an "either/or" scenario which I wouldn't agree with. Specifically the part I'm showing is my "tanking" (rather than showing the Blaster's maneauvering). Am I "tanking" each mob simulteneously that we've engaged? No. Am I tanking multiple packs at once which make up a number over the agro cap? Yes.

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As for affecting more than 17 enemies, technically you're still only handling 17 or less at a time. If the Blaster with you was a bit less cautious, you'd see everything beyond your current 17 peel off like cheap wallpaper. So again, this seems more about good team play than about tanking.

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But this statement always applies, whether you're fighting 5 or 50 mobs. The agro cap just makes it apply more when fighting above it.

Haven't you ever tanked a spawn less then the agro crap and had that over eager Blaster or Scrapper start nuking/charging ahead of you (or a spawn on the side or out of your immediate agro radius) and get themselves killed? I get that all the time (and happily giggle to myself when it does).

The difference between that and doing it above the agro cap is that the team *has* to pay attention or dies more readily. So one could make the arguement that tanking over the agro cap is solid team building.

But it still is tanking to me and the really fun part of tanking

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If you're not holding aggro, you're not tanking. Tanking specifically means preventing enemies from attacking other people by making them attack you. For you any mobs more than 17 are completely irrelevant, since you can't affect them. It only matters for your teammates who has to survive the aggro you can't hold.

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That's your definition of tanking (and might very well be this board's accepted definition by proxy) however tanking to me means being the focus (but not necessarily the end-all-be-all) of agro and/or spawn management.

The fact that we can do those amount of spawns in the same amount of time it takes normal groups to do a spawn smaller then the agro cap size and that we can only do that with a Tanker (or more precisely, only do it as easily as we can do it with a Tanker) satisfies my definition of tanking.

If you want to call it spastic noodling, I'm ok with that too.

P.S. - While I may not physically be able to hold agro on more then 17 mobs, I can still physically effect more then 17 mobs which is why this works. And whether the mobs are agroed on me or are flopping up and down because I Footstomped them while they tried to hit the Blaster or just stood there like badly coded zombies is just semantical diarrhea.

Quid Pro Quo: Relying on taunt auras and spamming Taunt isn't "tanking" in my book. I'll let the novice Tanker decide which he/she thinks would be a more fun version of "tanking" to aspire to.

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As you can see it's well over the cap limit.

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You're not over the cap limit. The enemies over the aggro limit are either ignoring you or looking for someone else to attack.

I see it all the time. Here you can see a bunch of Freaks standing around waiting for their turn to fight, because I'm already at the aggro cap.

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Yep, that's exactly what I see as well; nothing demonstrating that are more than 17 enemies trying to attack you, Kruunch.

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That's fine except that wasn't the point. I acknowledged the agro cap. The point was that I could pull and tank over the agro cap for my team which I have demonstrated. Whether they are all attacking me or not is due to CoH's limited coding.

In other words, I can pull (however many) with or without the aid of my team (depending on spawn placement, which I commented on originally) and with a coordinated effort by the group, kill off said pack in whole.

It certainly isn't what it was like in the old days of being able to pull 80+ across a zone solo, but it's what I previously posted I could do. The agro cap just makes it more tedious (balancing the transferred agro to group members).

Incidentally there was a comment made earlier about not being able to kil fast enough and that the mobs' regen would actually make this type of herding ineffective which is plainly silly. As I said above, this was with 3 others in the group, two of which were leeching XP. So basically this was just a concerted effort between me and a Blaster. With a full sized and competent group I gather 3 to 4 times what's shown in the screen shots (and yes, that's with help of the group members due to the agro cap and depending spawn placement).

Note: In my original post about this particular issue, I mentioned leash/agro tether mechanics applying here which they do but I did not intend to mean that is all that applies here or that they supercede the agro cap mechanic (my bad if I was unclear).

Some pics for Sarrate regarding tanking over the agro cap:

http://dmech.org/pics/

In the pics this is with a group of four. They timed their swoops and nukes with my Footstomps. As you can see it's well over the cap limit. As I said before, tanking like this is a group effort but very doable (and loads of fun). This is something I would think most every new Tanker would like to be in the middle of at some point.

Caveat: You are correct in that while solo this is harder to produce (the ITF spawns being what they are allow for this however). The first pic is me solo in Crey's Folly with about 24 or so (I haven't done an ITF in a bit but can post some pics the next time I do).

I'll just assume Aett is right and /agree



P.S. - I have a Spines/Fire Scrapper that constantly pulls agro off of Tankers if I'm not fighting right next to the Tanker. In the case of Stone Tankers, remember they are dealing with slower recharges (and movement when it comes to it).

I might be wrong but I believe that 10% Regen bonus you get from Perfect Zinger is constantly active, not just when you use that attack.

As for your attacks, I'm not sure what people here would recommend from full IO sets versus frankenslotting. I have full sets on most of my attacks but KO Blow I've frankenslotted so I get 97% Dam/End/Recharge and 37% accuracy on my Inv/SS Tanker (the down side being I get something like 3% immob duration reduction or some such out of that attack *whistles*).

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Well, one of you always is going to be the "secondary" tanker, since only one of you will have aggro on a mob at a time. Usually, whoever jumps into the spawn first will hold the most aggro on that spawn (there are exceptions to this, of course, but in the simplest terms, holds true).


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If I was planning on running with a Tanker buddy from L1, I'd build to herd personally (as in both Tankers herding to a central spot), in which case Inv/* and SD/* would work well together.

For secondaries I'd probably go with Inv/Fire (or WM) and SD/Dark. This being conceptual of course (in practice I might have just recommended that you eat your soup with one chop stick).

When I've herded with a second Tanker in the past, I've found usually only another Invuln can keep up (I'm Invuln/SS in this scenario btw) and on one rare occasion, a SD Tanker did very well (*waits for the howling to begin*).

Most Fire/* Tankers I see get smooshed fairly quickly in packs (I assume since they are built more for soloing and not large packs by the players who play them by and large).

For the anvil/hammer idea Inv/Ice and SD/SS/Pyre or SD/Fire/Pyre (or WM for that matter) might work more along that theme (I don't think Ice Slick (Patch?) technically has a mob limit?).

Depends how autonomous each tank wants to be.

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Thanks guys, the CoH community is a lot more helpful and friendly than the WoW community as a whole. Anyway, based on my character's concept, which is a bit tl;dr to post here, I need to pick a primary that's light on the special effects (ie. Fiery Aura flames) because my character's a normal guy that's a vigilante.

Which sets are light on the special effects and have little to no special auras? I'm gonna choose either DB, BA, or WM for my secondary because my char would use a weapon. Thanks

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In order:

Willpower
Shields (if a shield graphic fits your concept)
Invulnerability (Herc is right about the settings but if you run on high settings you can't fail to miss a glowing Invuln tanker).

Will Power has almost no glow (a slight pulsing yellow from time to time) at all and Shield has no visible aura (I think) other than for the actual shield which you can pick from a variety of.

Fire has it's auras (more obvious then Invuln's) and Ice/Stone/Dark either partially or totally obscure the toon's visuals via their toggles.

Will Power might fit your theme the best from what you're describing.

Invulnerability: The primary that has most other Tankers rerolling Scrappers.

Fire: The primary for people who pay to be alone in a multiplayer game.

Shields: The primary made to seduce Warriors over from Worlds of Warcraft.

Ice: Tanker on the rocks.

Stone: For people who are frightened and confused by the character builder.

Dark: For those that cried when seeing Donnie Darko and wish to cry more while tanking.

Will Power: Because having a Regen Tanker would drive Scrappers to new heights of whineyness and envy.

Hope this helped

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Inv/SS by a mile. It's iconic, it's in-game all around solid, and I can go from min/max to comic book with a build switch, yet be solid either way. I enjoy the way it lends itself to concepts. It's what comes to mind when I think Tanker.

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I've had fun with about 6 or 7 different Tanker builds but Inv/SS is still #1 in my heart.

Inv/SS stinks.

Statesman quit the game over it.

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it takes a billion or more infamy/influence to gear a shield scrapper/brute to be at the soft cap (depending on server).

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Leaving aside the "billion" figure, which I think must be an exaggeration, based on my own attempts to squeeze blood out of the market stone, my question is: what does "depending on the server" have to do with the cost of your build?

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a full set of mako's level 40-50 on infinity blue side will run you 15-25 million for one set of 6. so i call bollux to the 100m to soft cap scrapper bs.

it's even MORE expensive red side on infinity.

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Your figures aren't totally off (having just done Mako's Bite and spent similarly on blue side) however thats' the high side of "buying now". With a little planning you can drop those figures immensely.

Tips:

1) Run TFs for merits for the really expensive recipes (such as Numina's +recovery/regen).

2) Use the MA system to farm tickets for your rare salvage (although it's arguable if this is more efficient then just farming money and buying the salvage (depends toon I guess)).

3) Sell the recipes and salvage you get. There is a lot of white salvage selling for 100k now due to the MA system.

4) Realize that building an IO'd out toon is going to take more then a day.

5) Don't look at purples and base that on what you're going to pay (the billions remark is fairly ridiculous).

6) Try getting into large groups and TFs more ... this is where the bulk of your good random drops will come from. Not only for yourself but it will give you stuff to sell as well.

To echo Call_Me_Awesome you're going to love the set bonuses you can get with IOs and/or the frankenslotting you can do with it (mixing sets to maximize the enhanced percentages across multiple facets).

Currently Kruunch (my Inv/SS) has more endurance Recovery then a Will Power Tanker and totally offsets Hasten and Rage crashes (my apologies to the person who I said it couldn't be done without purples).

1) Take Hurdle instead of Swift. Hurdle combined with Combat Jumping gives you a mini-super jump that doesn't get suppressed (great for maneauvering around packs and bi-level areas (i.e. offices, tech labs, etc ...).

2) ould take out a "toHit" enhance in Invince and put in an EndRed (Invuln/SS tends to gat a bit endurance heavy with Rage crashes and the toggles).

3) Take the second slot out of Jab, and an endred slot out of Air Superiority and Punch (neither of which are heavy end users) and put those three slots in Tough, Resist Energies and Resist Elements.

4) Except for the occasional happy gaga moment, I think you'll find Hand Clap fairly underwhelming. You might want to consider taking another power instead (I would highly suggest at least Taunt over Hand Clap). I'm a big fan of Hasten on all my Tankers so you may want to go that route as well.

On my Ill/Kin Troller I only SB people in CoT caves ... and then only when they hit that big 4 story room.

However I do try to keep the snickering to a minimum.

P.S. - Speed Boosting that anxious Scrapper JUST when the Tanker starts to charge is my second most favorite thing to do in the game (the first being watching a Scrapper getting splatted by an alpha )

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Yup, just keep in mind that what a Dev told you two years ago might not be the most up-to-date information that we've gotten.

Everything I've seen in game, at least since I starting diving around aggro as well when Castle gave us the updated facts, has held to what Sarrate has demonstrated here.

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Yeah I'm starting to find I'm running into a lot of that here in there and in the fine details.

BTW when was the combat meter put in?

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In your example it sounds like you hit some buggy pathing and then your taunt's duration ended. You were out of agro range at that point, so the mob returned to its spawn point.

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No, I've done a LOT of testing of threat-related mechanics. Read what Sarrate posted for some further information.

My bigger point was, anyway, that the reset is not related to a tether/leash mechanic as far as I've been able to determine (in other setups, you can move the same distance from the mob and it keeps attacking). I've done more tests than the ones I listed here. If you have a better explanation that matches in-game data, by all means present it, but the one that you're currently providing is almost certainly not the right one.

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Well short of actually being allowed to comb through the code myself, based on what I was told (by a dev) and what I've experienced in game, that's what has been my experience so far (your story seems to confirm that). However I will definitely concede, that I am no more "in the know" then anyone else.

Sarrate: Thanks for the link. Something interesting ...

Castle said:

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I apologize to folks I've given incorrect information to over the last couple years. Our internal documentation was just plain wrong on all of this, and it wasn't until we started researching the issue that we (Ghost Widow and I) discovered the fact. Ghosty followed the code path with a fine tooth comb to get the details on all of this, a process which took over a day, so now we have a solid understanding of how and why it works -- and the general rule of "Twice the Duration of an existing Taunt to take aggro" is still a good general rule to follow. But, much like Euclidean physics, there are some edge cases it doesn't quite cover properly.

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I was lied to! (j/k Castle ).

Being a programmer I understand how poor documentation and buried code can lead to misconceptions about the app you're working on.

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That's like asking which tire is best without stating on what car its going on.

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Wait -- what?

That's just -- wow, just wow.

Remember the old adage: If you don't understand analogies, don't use them. It's like a honey badger and a vanilla shake from McDonalds.

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Mom is that you?

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Sarrate: You can pull a mob all across a zone if you keep damaging it (thus resetting its tether). If you hit a mob once and run across the zone it eventually gives up (at its tether range) and returns to its spawn (or despawns entirely). So yes there is a maximum tether ... it just can be reset by periodically re-agroing the mob.

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This is not really an accurate description of how the mechanics work.

As far as I have been able to determine, there are two conditions (outside of exceeding the aggro cap) that must both hold for a mob to return to its spawn point:

(1) Your threat must fall below a certain minimum value.
(2) Its AI must not see any option to continue attacking.

Example: I dragged a Behemoth Overlord across half of Founders Falls with Taunt, stopped, Taunted once more. Its AI got stuck in just attacking with Swipe. I quickly moved around 20 yards out of range (with Sprint), it took a step towards me, and then started running back rather than taking the extra steps towards me. In other words, it was not tethered to the point I had dragged it -- it started resetting after I had just moved a few yards from it (for the record, my tanker was the same level as the critter, and I had turned my aggro aura off).

You don't have to drag the mob far from its spawn point, either -- I've been able to engineer resets very close to the original spawn point as long as the two conditions above held.

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I was told a couple of years ago by Castle (or Geko? forget which) that there was no agro list in CoH. So there is no threat level excluding damage, effects and proximity.

This holds true with some basic tests ... two blasters ... one hits the mob for 100 pts of damage, the mob turns to the blaster to attack. The other blaster hits the mob for 1 pt of damage, the mob turns to attack that blaster. In MMOs with an agro list (pretty much every other major MMO I've played) this would not occur as your "threat" level is based on a number based scale (i.e. in other games 100 pts of damage would equal 100 threat, while 1 pt of damage would equal 1 threat ... thus the mob wouldn't turn away from the first blaster in another MMO).

Additionally Taunt works differently in CoH then in most other MMOs. In other MMOs the taunt mechanic adds to the taunter's number on the threat scale. For instance in EverQuest, a Warrior's taunt adds a predefined number to the Warrior's current threat level. If the total of that comes in below the highest threat, then the taunt doesn't succeed in pulling the mob away from what it is currently agro'd on.

In WoW the taunt mechanic takes the currently highest threat and adds +1 to it, giving the taunter automatic agro. If the taunter's agro falls below the top spot after that, the mob turns away to the new highest threat.

In CoH Taunt acts like a control. When you taunt a mob, it can attack no other character except the taunter while the taunts duration runs. This includes if another person taunts right after you. However both taunts exist on the mob. Once yours ends, the mob will turn to the person who next taunted and be stuck on that person until the remainder of that taunt's duration fades.

In your example it sounds like you hit some buggy pathing and then your taunt's duration ended. You were out of agro range at that point, so the mob returned to its spawn point.

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Thank you all for your advice. I'll see if I can't find a Terra Volta trial tonight, so that I can get that respec.

I do understand the importance of both defense and resists and I have worked on getting both of them up.

I don't have a problem with most of the PVE content. Mostly its when I'm doing MA mishes or on an sk and fighting Malta. The Council also has some pretty mean fire spiders or whatever they're called and they're also ripping through me like I was a wet noodle.

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Just to reiterate what others have said, don't use the MA's as a measuring stick. I run a pretty decent L50 Inv/SS Tanker and he gets creamed all the time in those.

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it looks like Praetoria is just going to be yet another in a long line of 'co-op' zones, and the only 'side' switching that's going to be done is based on an 'alignment' rating. the more eviller you get, the darker your missions become, and you can finally make 'good and evil' choices in plotlines.


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Not to be pessimistic, but that's exactly what I think it will end up being, with some new emotes and costumes. Still new and cool nonetheless.

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/agree

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I personally find WP/SS to be a great combination. The two sets go well together, especially conceptually.
Plus, Rage's animation matches the WP toggles =]

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Wow I can't believe I missed this in my original post.

Yes WP/SS is an amazing combination. I have a SS/WP Brute that is a freakin monster.

Sarrate: You can pull a mob all across a zone if you keep damaging it (thus resetting its tether). If you hit a mob once and run across the zone it eventually gives up (at its tether range) and returns to its spawn (or despawns entirely). So yes there is a maximum tether ... it just can be reset by periodically re-agroing the mob.

Also on another note, your analysis of how I was pulling is wrong. I don't have to hit a single mob to bring the whole pack with me ... proximity agro and the taunt aura being run (in my case, Invince) pretty much do the work for me (again, tether range being an issue here). I assume your 5-7 number was just taking into account the punchvoke effect which isn't really the mechanic at work here (although can add to it). I just can't pass up the opportunity to KO Blow a mob who has it coming

Starsman: Yes it *is* an opinion and more appropriately your personal take on what is what. The fact that you don't know the difference is why your posts get treated as so much spam by me.

Solo anything is just soloing ... herding for a group and then taking the brunt of the damage while the group kills said herd is tanking (that's *my* opinion). I've discussed both here, please try and keep up and you can call it spelunking for all I care.

And this is getting wildly off topic since none of this discussion applies to new Tankers; except to say that most any Tanker that I've heard/seen/talked to gets giddy at the idea of being able to herd and/or take on large packs of mobs for his group eventually. As a new Tanker, this will probably be something you are looking forward to being able to do in the future and I would definitely recommend it ... it's one of the great pleasures of this game that few others offer and is what drives most Scrapper envy.