ZemX

Doesn't look that way to me. Important to remember the original design never accounted for animation times. If you use the powerset comparator in Mid's like @Erratic1 did, but instead choose Damage/Sec and tick "Attempt Matching" the result is a lot closer for the two sets. The attacks are mostly in line with their recharge times, which is all the original design cared about. Which means if you want to talk balance, you kind of have to compare Rage to Build Up. No way anybody is getting even 1-stack Rage as a toggle with no crash because that's Build Up... except always on.

You can pick up a little end drain resist in the base empowerment station as well.

Down with Rookies! Fight the establishment! What? What do you mean this reply "won't age well?"

Well at least I don't have to salute anyone.

Nah, it's fine in Spin. It's just HILARIOUS in Ground Zero because it hits so many targets and has a 90% proc rate there. It'll only proc a little better than a third of the time in Spin but you're using it six times as often as Ground Zero. But give it a try sometime just for giggles. Cost you a few unslotters to swap it back and forth but worth seeing what it does vs. a full team sized spawn... or two at once.

You mean the inherent arc/radius boost? It's +50% radius to AoEs and +50% arc to cones. I think it does not apply to pets or pseudo-pets however. Can't be certain, but I don't think so. Ice Patch on my Ice tanker does not seem to have a larger radius, for example. Certain other powers have specifically disabled the tanker inherent boost to arc/radius. Foot Stomp is one. It was already 15ft radius and devs decided not to allow it to get bigger. You see that here in CoD: Hover on that little red exclamation point and you see radius strength doesn't work on Foot Stomp. That means it stays at the listed radius for Tankers. Ground Zero, however, has no such tag. So its 15ft radius should be 22.5ft on Tankers. Oh and it hits thirty targets. It's bonkers! Rad Therapy is bigger at 20ft radius (30ft for Tankers) but only hits 10 enemies in that huge area. Still nice. If you have a spread out spawn, it's a nice way to taunt 10 of them (and everyone in a 10ft radius around each of those targets) with one button press while dealing a good chunk of damage.

If it doesn't already have one... find a way to put Superior Avalanche: Rech/Chance for KD in Ground Zero. You will thank me later. Put that one and another from Avalanche in there and get the +15% slow resistance if you need any more of that too.

As I understand it, it's a -100% range debuff, but there's a floor of 25% range. So there are still mobs, most especially Snipers, who will never get close enough for your AoEs, even taunted by a Tanker. But it works well enough for most others because they have more moderate ranged attacks. A 70 foot rifle shot from a Nemesis means coming in just under 20 feet to keep shooting you. And once they are that close, they are that much more likely to want to use their one melee attack as well, which brings them the rest of the way in on their own.

The main benefits of Taunt are the inherent -range effect it has and, simply, that it's a ranged autohit AoE power. You can grab aggro from 70 feet away without having to go to it. That's nice if you have punch-voked a group of enemies and then there are stragglers. But you can do similar with another AoE like Ball Lightning if you want. It just won't be autohit and it won't have the -range effect. But for most mobs it does the job. I take Taunt myself every time. It's just too useful if tanking for a team is what you want to do. It's not that you can't do without it. It's that it makes it easier to do. It also needs no extra enhancement slots.

Drunken Master of the Aeon Strike Force?

I suspect that comment was more about narrow/longer cones like Breath of Fire or Shockwave. Most melee cones don't take you out of melee range to fit the most targets into them as possible. You might move a little to line things up but that's about it. And of course it's that much easier on Tankers with the +50% arc inherent.

I can't step over a curb but... watch me jump kick this guy in the face and then do a backflip! 🤪

It's big, but sadly has a 10 target cap (well technically 11, but the 11th is you). Still nice, but Ground Zero... is the monster. Not as wide, but still a 22.5ft radius on a tank and... drumroll... thirty target cap (although that includes allies). It's ridiculous. I put a pair of Superior Avalanches in it (bonus 15% slow res) including the Knockdown proc along with four other damage procs and this thing just puts the whole room on its collective asses whenever I let er rip. It's Shield Charge without the teleport but with better proc chances. Also have yet to find I need the Theft of Essence in Therapy. RadA has just so much endurance. I put another damage proc in there instead. YMMV.

Was just curious how it handled the Cims debuffing without other support. Sounds like from what Werner said the Dark auras help reduce that incoming debuff. Probably tougher in the face of them then than my RadA. And while I absolutely love RadA for how it play (especially since putting a knockdown proc in Ground Zero!) I would probably not ever vote it Toughest Tank just due to the debuff weakness. As much as I can build in debuff resistance I have, but lacking uncrackable defense or enough active mitigation, it's still too vulnerable in the toughest challenges. It needs to lean on Incarnates where others like Invuln don't. Really good discussion here.

Solo or on a team? A typical L54 ITF with a team is kind of a pushover for any Incarnate Tank. Enemies are no more than +3 and you have a team to back you up. I do fine as well on those ITFs with my RadA Tanker but when I tried an all-melee level 44, no-incarnate, no insp/temp, enemies buffed run? That's where I got eaten and Invuln and Shield Tankers did better. I have built as much debuff resistance as I can for things like recharge and toHit debuffs but I can't do anything about Defense. So I end up defense floored and taking about double the damage that normally gets through. Even to capped S/L/N that's not nothing. I do wonder how well DarkA's controls are helping mitigate the defense debuffs. Do you find melee defense holds up? Mine gets stripped easily to the point where I've respecced out of most defense bonuses. It's basically no good in the only situation where I really need it.

DoTs don't directly spoil the crit. That comes from the Hidden status conferred by Placate. A DoT that is still ticking from a previous attack doesn't count as another attack, so it doesn't unhide you. DoTs from pets don't ever unhide you. That's why Shield Charge and Lighting Rod don't unhide you. They are implemented as pets. What the DoTs or pets ticking damage DO do though is notify enemies. So they will spoil the placate effect and cause the mobs to attack you again, which if you haven't gotten your Hide crit yet means it will be spoiled if they hit you first. Shouldn't be a problem unless you are trying for a Hidden AS after Placate... and you really shouldn't be doing that.

I think for the most part damage resistances aren't a big deal in FW/NW but Lethal still gets the shaft more often than anything else. Still, it's 10-15% resistance usually. A few odd cases like the Resistance Heavy Barrel with 30% S/L will be a pain. Living Spells tend to resist the damage type they deal, so the animated weapons do resist Lethal but the elemental ones resist Fire, Cold, Energy, or Negative, etc. Spirits do resist Lethal a bit usually, presumably for being incorporeal and not having blood to spill. As for debuffs, this really depends on difficulty setting. I would say a defense-based armor is only really necessary if you intend to solo large groups. Then the stacking debuffs can be an issue. Might also be a problem if you want to solo +3/+4 or something because the Purple Patch increases the debuff magnitude, requiring less stacking to floor you. Resist/Regen based armors that don't have +toHit or toHit debuff resistance can be a problem at higher diff settings. I want to get into an SR Tanker next but.... struggling to do so myself. They're good... but after playing Rad Armor, also kind of boring looking. It's a set-it-and-forget-it set, which is a plus for many people. To me it's just a bit less interesting. Shield Maybe. I had a lot of fun with an Ice/Shield Stalker. Very tanky for a Stalker and decent AoE.

edit: Nevermind me. Thinking of a different "Force of Nature"

Ah ha! That explains it. Don't see it advertised very often and generally don't run it much myself. Even though that map with all the ice is kind of fun.

I feel stupid for asking but... what the heck is "FF"?

Assuming it's an existing mob and not a new one. Should probably be discussing anything like that on beta forum.

I posted this in your other thread in General, but here it is again: The only way I see someone with capped res being floored by debuffs is if they are unresistable. If anyone in the new Aeon TF, which I have not done yet myself, is using Tar Patch, that's your culprit right there. Tar Patch for NPCs is currently bugged (I am presuming) in that it deals -30% unresistable res debuff. Take that up to -40ish% for a +4 mob. Put a couple of them in a spawn and watch the Granite Tanker get melted. Other than that, some NPCs that use Enervating Field like Positron, Antimatter, and Bile, have the unresistable version of it.

Right, that's why I think the bigger deal with Staff on an SR tanker is the 13.3% +res(All) you get from using Sky Splitter with 3 stacks of Perfection of Body. Lasts 15s and is easy to keep going.

Sky Splitter followed by Innocuous Strikes. A.K.A "Stab them while they are down" combo.

Short of actually being hit with an unresistable resistance debuff, a Tanker/Brute with capped resistance can shrug off a whole LOT of debuffing. Scroll down this thread for some interesting examples.