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While it's not wrong to expect this, it is related to seeing the blue shield of a Defender and expect healing.
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I must honestly admit that I've never thought about it that way before. And it certainly bears to think about.
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Fire/EM is probably the best scranker or "scrapping tanker" set for a few reasons.
The first is that /EM's damage is extremely high, and concentrated on single target 'spike damage' attacks. This lends itself to taking on small numbers of tougher opponents rather than larger groups of weaker opponents. Fire/ also has Firey Embrace, a "second Build Up" which further increases this damage output. EM's most powerful attack damages you each time you use it... which is no problem with Healing Flames.
The second is that Fire/ possesses a good range of mitigation, but nothing that increases with the number of enemies around you (Ice, INV and Willpower all do). You have good resistances, an endurance drain, and finally Healing flames. Healing Flames gives you considerable survivability and drastically lowers downtime... but it doesn't raise your HP like DullPain/Hoarfrost/etc. so you are vunerable to heavy "Alpha Strikes".
Finally, Fire/ has no autohit taunt aura. This makes it fairly poor at holding aggro against very high level enemies. It also has a few mez holes, Immobilisation and Knockback protection being amongst them.
So Fire/ can easily face a wide range of damage types but is generally better versus fewer foes than versus many foes. And /EM is best at fighting fewer opponents, and has VERY powerful spike damage that can be boosted further with Firey Embrace. Combined, they produce a character that will survive best against small groups of opponents and can output a large amount of single target damage in a short amount of time.
The same reasons also make it a good choice for PvP combat, since /EM damage is rarely resisted and Fire's Heal and high resistances work in its favour against most other players. Also, the traditional power pool choices for a Fire/ (Fitness obviously, Leaping to cover the mez holes, Speed to decrease the recharge on Healing Flames) are also typical choices for PvP melee toons (SJ/SS + Hasten + Fitness) so you will find a lot of Fire/EMs being rolled for PvP combat, where they will be mainly Damage dealers rather than Meatshields.
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I partially agree to that, but I must add that said /EM high damage comes at lvl 35+ (Energy Transfer) or even at 39+ (slotted Total Focus), which leaves you with a lot of levels to grind... especially soloing. I couldn't play my INV/EM tanker past lvl 28... it was sooooo boring.
On the other hand, Fire/Fire tanker is quite the squishiest of the tankers against smashing/lethal (though better than INV against energy/fire) but has much better damage since the begining. I have mostly soloed mine up to level 35. I think she is even faster to solo (e.g. kills enemies faster) than my katana/SR scrapper. You run through the rooms with your aura on and once you have gathered say 6-8 enemies you let them sorround you and do Build up + Fiery Embrace + Combustion + Fire sword circle + burn and almost everything is dead (with some Healing Flames in between if needed). You can finish off the lieutenants with Scorch and Fire sword.
I only had trouble in the very early levels (endurance, low resistances) but after level 12 she really was very good.
On the negative side, in 8 man teams I cannot tank +3 enemies without good buffs.
Should my fire tanker be considered a scranker? She deals damage, I have most of the attacks (all /Fire except Fire Breath) but also have Taunt and the taunt/damage aura. And in teams I try to manage the aggro. Need all the possible buffs/debuffs from defenders and the team killing enemies fast because I am not a super-tough Granite and will be the first to die otherwise but... that's why the team is there!
I am rambling, sorry. My point: Fire/Fire is a very fun and easily soloable tanker (scranker if you want). You deal damage at scrapper levels (or even more) and can also tank for an 8 man team with appropiate support.
Hybrid-build some would say. That sounds OK to me. A pure specialist is very inefficient if he gets out of his niche and that I find too limiting.
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Scranker = a player who should have picked a scrapper but for some reason chose the Tanker AT because he wasnt satisfied with the melee powerset options of the scrapper. As playstyle goes, he can be seen very much taking the role of a scrapper, dealing damage and helping taking out enemies. Some sets can rival scrappers in terms of damage, and as they are slightly tougher than the average scrapper, they need less support in terms of healing and defensive buffing.
In that respect, a "Scranker" can be as useful as any other AT in a team.
But just like the scrapper, they dont deal with aggro management. Any aggro they remove from the rest of the team are purely incidental.
The depreciative view of the Scranker as such derives from the expections of other players regarding the tankers sole role as aggro management.
They see the steel shield of a tanker in the teamwindow and stop worrying about aggro, after all, that IS what the Tanker excels at, right?
While it's not wrong to expect this, it is related to seeing the blue shield of a Defender and expect healing.
So when the Tanker starts manage aggro that is when he becomes a Tanker, when he starts deliberately try to manage aggro away from the rest of the team, that is when he's started tanking.
And this may come as a shock to some, but being able to still deal damage does not make him a less tanker. In a way, any damage dealt is a form of aggro mitigation as it removes enemies faster from the combat, the quicker the combat ends, less damage is dealt to the team.
A Meatshield tanker manages and survives more aggro than the more balanced one, but a balanced one is more versatile and can adapt easier to the situation.
UNION
Officer Cuffz lvl 50 Inv/Nrg Tank
Badge lvl 50 dwarf/human Peacebringer
Dark Air lvl 50 Ice/Cold Corruptor
Ayre lvl 50 Storm/Elec Defender
Total Cat: @Officer Cuffz
"When I say interview, I mean engage in combat and defeat..." -Laura Brunetti, on how to deal with Warriors.