ihatethewind

I started at launch, some of my particular highlights (I'm sure some have been mentioned, I didn't have time to read the whole thread) Rag doll animation system was different, you could knockdown a mob again in the middle of its falling down animation, ice slick basically made popcorn out of groups and was infinitely more safe than it is now because they couldn't take a pot shot at you when they stood up before falling over again Lvl 40 level cap, but who cared because getting xp was a chooooooore No ED! but honestly, for as much of an uproar as it caused the IO system that came later I am a fan of. There was no minimum slow/recharge floor, so you could slow the mobs down so much they just ran in place forever and none of their powers ever recharged while you wailed on them with impunity BUUUUUURN AOE Holds were soooo much more powerful, people used to skip the single target ones because the AOEs recharged so fast (plus everyone had perma hasten) SS jousting, it didn't suppress in combat Making a female character with the bare chest torso was possible lol. I reported it when I figured out how to do it and they patched it out very quickly (never got my bughunter badge though, still salty about that one) The game was more about the journey, we spent soooo long leveling our characters it was a completely different feel. All the hullabaloo about the suit from marvel and us not being able to make their characters, good times heh. I think still to this day my favorite Hulk tribute I saw was a guy named Le Hulk. It was just like regular hulk, but with a beret and a mustache 🙂 If you wanted to change your costume as a lowbie you had to sneak up the west side of steel canyon to make it to the tailor, it was very dangerous Were fire imps even level in the way back before times? I can't remember Its weird to think of this game being in my life for so long, but I'm really thankful its been there for me.

10 here as well, I always consider Tough pretty mandatory on my tanks, cuz I figure I should lean hardest into what they specialize in. Welcome to the SR club, its the best. Here's my dudette at base with no SMotT proc, she has Rune too but in practice I find I don't use it very often outside of 801.x missions

Shield can get ddr so high as to be mostly equivalent outside of very extreme edge cases. Plus ithas all the other goodies. I’d say unless you love SR (personally I’m SR weeaboo) just go shield.

Your group toggle has part of your defense debuff resistance if I recall correctly, I wouldn’t turn it off even when solo.

This is pretty much how I feel. I love SR it’s amazing, it’s just that I know Shield is a bit more amazing. It’s got practically the same ddr (pretty sure with ageless they can be identical) plus more damage. Still though I find I play my SR tank more often, I think I just like her concept/story more and the differences are negligible in most situations, and I don’t have to hold a manhole cover 🙂

I generally prefer shield wall over lotg on sr, (I keep the lotg global though). Gives a more even resist level and extra health, but this is personal preference I admit.

There are normally a couple very heavy debuffer mobs in each group, I forget what power sets they use, but expect a wide variety of very large magnitude debuffs. (Although they don’t normally stack unless you agro two different groups.) You can build up quite a large amount of slow resist with winter set bonuses though, so with some tweaks you can mitigate that particular issue. Plus as a bonus you can zoom around in caltrop patches

Marginally useful I agree.

All of the single target immobilize powers.

Apropos of nothing, I always thought fire melee should get burn, and fire armor should get something different.

I am in the camp of slotting SL purely for damage and ignored the heal component as well, I just treat it like a nice added bonus. Exactly how you get the damage is really up to you, but I went 4 procs and a couple franken IOs. Some really good points here about the build in general as well that should give you lots to think about. I'd also say that I initially went Soul mastery for gloom and dark oblit, but ended up switching to Energy for Focused Accuracy, I really wanted the -tohit debuff res. Losing gloom was a bummer, but I picked up touch of fear and it was a decent replacement for dark oblit.

Your SR/DM will hold up just fine, whether you are solo or on a team. Most tanks are effectively immortal with supporting buffs, SR being no exception. DM doesn’t have a ton of utility for your team aside from the -toHit debuff but that can help a little. I slotted a knockdown proc in soul drain to give me a little more CC potential and I like how it plays. Really id say all tanks will be effective on a team, they just play a little differently. All the combos you mentioned should be effective.

I’d hate to see additional sources of DDR in the games available through IOs or the incarnate system, would make the hybrid armor sets even more insane. I’d be in favor of removing it from Ageless Radial path even. Adding it to force field might give the set some usefulness but I’m not sure if it would be too good or not, guess it would depend on how high the value was. Defense debuffs are one of the few avenues mobs have to be dangerous to us these days.

I would slot siphon life as an attack personally.

SD/DM is probably one of the best combos you could pick. Great def and res, +dmg in both sets, close to capped ddr if you go ageless, a self heal and end mgmt if you need it. Plus a cool teleport attack. To be honest I’m not sure why I haven’t played one yet.

Ironically you can pretty much ignore the combos for DB, the best attack chain doesn’t even use them as far as I remember. Aside from my pedantic response though I tend to also avoid the combo sets.

I’ve never made an Invuln but I’ve got a hankerin’ to make one for the new diff settings. Haven’t decided on a secondary yet, but that MA build looks tasty.

I would LOVE to try EA on a tank, it’s like the best of every set all slapped into one.

SR is great for incarnate content, easy to hit 59% and you are basically immune to def debuffs. Dark melee is a nice pair with the heal but if you wanted some variety I bet energy melee would be great. After the rework it’s very good and has lost of stuns potential if that’s your thing. Also to @Werner ‘s point, yes if you take rune and barrier/melee hybrid incarnates and alternate them you can do some impressive things, but for most content it’s overkill.

I got bored so I tried this again on my SR/DM tank with a slight change in tactics. Turns out it made +1x8 laughably easy. Just turn on fly and punch the tops of their heads, easy peasy.

Just tried +1x8 on my SR/DM tank, some thoughts: Definitely a challenge. The groups can kill me if I just stand in one place and they surround me and then multi tar patch me while I cant jump or move out of it. I was kind of surprised that they were really that much of a threat even with all the tar patches because I was still sitting at close to incarnate softcap, but then I remembered SRs -def debuff resistance for some reason scales with level, so I was only at like 65% because I was auto exemped down to 29, and this is low enough for my def to actually get debuffed. The other pain point for my build was not having FA, and hence not having any -tohit debuff resistance. Soul drain right off the bat to counteract the -tohit of the autohit nightfall helps, I could kill things decently, although I still hate whiffing. In the same vein as the defense issue, I think this is mostly because of the level restriction. Debuffs can be very debilitating when we don't yet have all our fun tools to deal with them. All in all was a nice change of pace, I actually had to move a bit, like @Werner said it felt sort of similar to the 801 series,

Oh I definitely do, between it and ageless it usually takes care of me for most things

Never tried clawz but sr is fantastic, it’s my new main. It’s a lot different than other tanks which I find refreshing, you actually see your health low sometimes! :) It’s not invincible, usually the thing that gets me is being end drained, which seems to happen easily despite all the defense. Kinda wish there was a power that could plug that hole but I suppose every set needs a weakness

I did pretty much the same thing, really it’s not too bad as long as you don’t agro more than one group. I haven’t tried higher than 801.2 yet, I’m assuming at some point though the debuffs will get cheaty enough to either kill me or make it take so long I run out of time. They are definitely a nice change of pace if people want a challenge. I still marvel that we even have AE in the game, talk about a feature ahead of its time.

No