Erratic1

I cannot speak to most but my first characters to max were my initial character, a Defender, and a follow up Scrapper. It was not until near the end of Live that I first gave Tankers a go. I mostly soloed, and was careful when teaming to point out I was new to Tanking, to set expectations. But my goal as a Tanker was to tank.

I am not the one making the claim. The '?' at the end of the italicized portion indicates a question, specifically a question based on a claim put forth,

Probably should skip Tanker Tuesday when its a team with 8 Tankers. I have a lot of fun with them though.

*Considers asking, "If Tankers can keep pace with Brutes for damage but Brutes cannot keep pace with Tankers for survivability, what good are Brutes?", but then remembers the last flare up of the Brute/Tanker wars and decides against*

Most squishy with skill use the Tanker (or really any willing individual) to take the alpha and then go about their business. It is what allows some of my still unfinished melees the confidence of leaping into a crowd they would not otherwise survive--that shortly everything will be controlled or killed, I just have to survive that long.

Context is key. I was referring to TFs, which was what the OP was talking about. On a farm...*shrug* I noted my Brutes do not come with Taunt. Someday I may give a go at building a Brute dedicated to tanking but so far I've built tanks towards that end. In fact, was toying with working up another Tanker just earlier today.

A Brute not holding aggro is not that surprising. I do not think any of my Brutes have Taunt and I do not feign being a Tanker unless there is literally nobody else who could do the job (though if I do have to do the job, I try to do it appropriately). A Tanker not holding aggro, even without Taunt, sounds like a malicious act.

It is. My Energy Melee/Shield Stalker gets Hide, which is useful despite supression.

The problem with Active Defense and high recharge is each activation locks you out of attacks for the animation--something which will not usually get you killed but does impact dps.

Will they in its present state? Stackable damage buff with crits.... Who cares if you crash because everything is dead? Edit: But if while you were raging you couldn't crit.....

At that point just prevent the power from stacking. Thing is people would still reduce its recharge so it was always up..

Perhaps but keep in mind one of the most iconic of superheroes has spawned a legion of Super Strength/Invulnerability characters--effectiveness would not be a high consideration in the draw due to that.

I am getting back to playing some character who have languished due to my periodic non-CoH flings. Along with playing comes the need to fiddle with what they wear. Not a new character, but have given him some costume updates:

I've always been more of a Moria/Angband fan, 😛

I have never used Willpower so tried to apply small tweaks to what you had. Comparatively the differences are: Willpower is weak in DDR so I tried to squeeze a bit more Defense in while recognizing no amount is really safe when debuff rears its head. That being the case, I was also determined to get scaling resistances in the build. Threw in some +To-Hit but overall lost a bit of +Rchg.

You could try DCUO, though at 11 years old it is closer in time to CoH than modern. But the graphics are spiffy and it has probably the best implementation of Super Speed I've seen to date. It is, however, its own game with its own way of character development, community, mechanics, etc. And frankly, the free play option is manageable only once you have a feel for how to carefully manage your inventory (you may want to pay for a few months until you learn this).

And for those armor sets without click powers to serve as offsets?

You don't do ITFs because you can't sit in front of a computer for that length of time but you do ITFs? Yin is shorter. Hess is shorter. Posi 1 is shorter. Synapse makes Odysseus' journey seem like a quick trip to the corner store, and friends will try to dissuade you from as otherwise your suffering will rival that promised by the cenobites in Hellraiser...so yeah, I can understand not doing that.

Dropped all slots and enhancements to see what I might end up with given the same power selection. Defenses: S/L +3.5%, E/N +5.4%, F/C +11.79%, P -1.24% [normalized to Invicibility on 1 target for both builds] Resistances: S/L 0*, E/N -21.85%, F/C -1.6%, T -8.35%, P -14.25% Recovery -8.4%, Drain -0.03/s, EndRdx +1.25%, Regen 0, To-Hit 0, Rchg +11.25% 3249 hp vs 3142 Dull Pain is up every 167.4s (vs 276.9), heals for 79% (vs 53.32%) and grants 59.5% HP (vs 46.66%) Siphon Life drains So a bit better on defenses, weaker on resistance but not a ton of difference, a bit weaker on Recovery but a bit better on lowering costs. A shade better +Rchg. It was a quickie and is no gift of the gods. Guess is means depraved minds think alike.

I have used Discord for years. As I noted upthread, I am always in it (because I have it auto-launch when I boot my machine). And currently I am in my CoH supergroup's channel. And yes, it operates like a forum of its own. But I associate with plenty of other people who are not members of that SG and only have them as in game friends (global) and that works well too.

When I play with friends I am in voice chat. Heck, when I am playing different games than they are playing we are often in voice chat. What is being asked about here is gathering groups together via voice chat--something I am not really aware of happening in any game.

Having played Lost Ark in its Western release in February, people are not forming groups via voice programs. Most groups you join are put together by the game and everything is via typed chat. Is that not a modern game?

I do not recall across long years of playing WoW using a voice program to get together a PUG.

As I recall, CoH came out the same year, though a bit earlier, as WoW. You can use a voice program while playing CoH. My friends and I did back in the day. But the content is not so hard it is necessary and I am not seeing how forming is aided in CoH or any other mmo by voice being available. Typically there are in-game methods of being paired and that is what happens in CoH. As for actually playing the content, again, someone calling out dangers or calling for certain roles to do something at a specific time is not the nature of the fights in CoH. So while you can certainly hang out in a Discord channel and have fun, quite frankly I type fast enough that for the most part any communication I need to relay (or jokes more likely) can be done while fighting. And that negates the need to communicate what channel and use a program (which I admittedly have installed and running all the time, but that is me...other people are different).

I ran a DM/Elec brute back on Live. Give yourself some time and he will get there, even on SOs.