Kruunch

What are currently (functionally) the best Tanker primaries> My list includes first those sets that are both functionally tough and self sufficient (not end-hungry) 1) Radiation 2) Electric 3) Bio 3) Energy (**EDIT** my mistake here ... Energy is available on Brutes not Tankers). Next are the functionally tough but can be a little (or a lot) clunky to run: 4) Stone 5) Invulnerability 7) Dark 8) Super Reflexes 9) Will Power (because of sustain but I'm not really sure it holds up well on a Tanker) Next are the ones I find that have holes in their sets (i.e. need help filling out past IOs / slotting). 9) Ice 10) Fire 11) Shield What are your thoughts?

Totally understand that feeling.

Interface: my preference so far is Diamagnetic. Adds to your tankyness, helps your group and gives you the key -regen which is a must for soloing AVs. Hybrid: Assault all the way (chance for double hits and energy damage). Lore: Polar Lights I like best overall so far. Cimmarorans are great (both for dps and support). Knives are very good (testing them with my scrapper atm). Nemesis are junk. Most bots are ok but not amazing. Destiny: Barrier all the way. Not just for your tankyness (psi hole) but the entire group and also the res if you're a white knight ;) Also T4 Barrier is a perma buff if you go that direction. Hope this helped.

JavaMonk is the winner! :D

Even if my Scrapper with Provoke does the exact same thing?

Gotta admit, you have me intrigued in trying to make a Corruptor Tanker now ;) Great to see all the old names popping up ... good to see your posts again Obitus :) So yeah, back at release people realized that there was a certain amount of imbalance in the power sets and this allowed for some ridiculous mangling of the AT roles (thinking Regen Scrappers here). Then the re-balancing of ATs took place, and the roles resumed back into their proper places (a few outliers (players) aside). Then you had CoV and a further mangling of roles, although more from a conceptual sense then a cross-faction way, as we saw MMs taking the lead tank role a lot of the times (at CoV release). Then you had IOs and IO enhancements which further blurred the lines. Then cross-faction playability with Rogue. Finally you had the Incarnate system which just made everybody a bloody god. The determining factor for all of these however was time. As Heraclea alluded to earlier, the time it took to get a Scrapper/Stalker/Brute to comfortably tank what a Tanker could (and all the earlier levels as you built up in any AT) was what made playing a Tanker worthwhile. Sure at the very end game, it might all even out but you still had a whole career's worth of tanking to get to that point that the other ATs wouldn't get (including learning all the subtleties of tanking in CoX that comes with it). I maintain that that's not necessarily the case today (and more so tomorrow and so on). Mmmmm I think people who tend to skip content in lieu of easier content will tend to include Tankers as well. Tankers with Psi-holes will still avoid Psi based enemies if given the option if they are of that mindset to begin with (or can be masochists like me and demand to main tank Hami on their Inv/SS Tanker :o ). If the comparison was Brute vs Tanker solely I'd tend to agree (depending the build of course). However Scrappers/Stalkers bring a whole other level of damage, only being out-shined by Blasters in this regard (again depending the build). But on average, the difference in Scrapper/Stalker damage to Brute/Tanker damage is fairly extreme. Now I am part of the gimpiest group you could think of in terms of buffing (3 Blasters and a Scrapper (me)) and we cruise through all content (thus far ... might find an outlier TF that gives us a tough time at some point). This more than anything is why I posted this. I saw a guide ( https://forums.homecomingservers.com/index.php/topic,3161.0.html ) on the Guides forums, played around with it for a few hours (making 100mil in the process) and got it to the point where I make about 200m per 30 mins. 200m is about all I need to fully twink a toon to the areas I'm talking about (keeping in mind that this process also produces all of the globals I'll need). This isn't some hard core game-mode 24/7 botting the system ... this is 30 minutes of figuring out what sells and what doesn't and a little literacy. 15 year old game now on private servers ... yeah there are going to be soft spots in the economy ;) As to the Incarnate stuff, I run regularly with 3 friends (all CoX alums from SNAFU, Inc). When we hit 50 with a set of toons, we do the Incarnate arcs together until the finale, and then do the finales one at a time (getting the end rewards for each). The first few we did on +8/+4 and that took us an afternoon to get through the Dark Astoria, Belladonna and Diabolique arcs (that's 12 rolls for 3 arcs total). This last time we did the same arcs on 1/-1 to speed run through it and finished all 3 in an hour. Even soloing the arcs and not getting the extra rolls, you should be able to get to this point by the end of a week assuming a very carefree and casual pace of 2 hours a night 3-4 nights out of the week. Again, 15 year old game on a private server so yeah. The downsize is that some of the gameplay has been marginalized and unfortunately I think maybe some of the ATs.

First off hey there Heraclea! Long time :) From a sheer numbers standpoint, sure. But in practically speaking, I'd argue not so much. Resists have caps and you can still achieve overage on those caps with all ATs I've mentioned. Defensive sets can easily reach ~60% (more than enough for soft cap and overage for debuffs/level difference). As for QoL, I'd agree but only from the standpoint that I can make a Scrapper/Stalker/Brute that can tank by their 30s, versus having to wait until Incarnate to see an equivalent amount of damage for a Tanker (thus the relief for the Tanker possibly being greater from the player's mindset). But I'd think that favors my OP rather than as a debate against it. All of the ATs I've mentioned can attain enough survivability to tank. Endurance is a build issue, independent of what AT you play. I don't see a ton of Dark/Mace Tankers jazzersizing out there :P Ah that's the crux of it isn't it. Seen through the glasses of the past, I totally get this sentiment. I wonder how many people who haven't come up via Tankers (old school) will feel the same way however? I'm not trying to Tanker bash here ... was an honest question and I wondered how others felt about it.

Agree ... you wouldn't want to play Regen (anything really). If you like that play style look at Will Power.

Ok sure I get that. But there aren't many combinations of sets you can take as a Tanker that you can't take as a Brute/Scrapper/Stalker. So besides the name "Tanker" ... what's the appeal?

With enhancement sets, the Incarnate system on easy-mode and an easy market on private servers have Tankers become totally obsolete? I have an L50 Tanker, Brute and Scrapper. They've all tanked 1-50 + incarnate. It takes me 30 minutes to make enough money to completely twink them out in enhancement sets (including superior ATOs, globals and purple sets). It takes me less than a day to go from dinging L50 to being 4/3/3/3/3/4 Incarnate. The state of the game is what it is, and I'm fine with it (that's not the complaint here). However with the current state of the game, why would you ever play a Tanker over a Brute, Scrapper or Stalker? In other words, everything else being equal, why would you play an AT that kills slower, and affords almost no practical upside over the mentioned ATs? (randomly depressing thought that struck me this morning)

I use Spring Attack less for teleporting into a pack (I still just jump into the middle of them) but use it for the CC (AOE knockdown) adding another AOE and the sheer fun of watching a big guy leap on people. It does surprisingly good damage for a power pool power and has a ton of utility. BUT certainly not a "must have". If you aren't feeling it, don't take and don't worry about it.

Some things I see off the top of my head: 1) No Lightning Field? Grab that and throw your Might of the Tanker: Rech/Chance for Resist in it. Guarantees a double stack at all times (with opponents in melee range). 2) Electric Armor has an amazing Endurance reclamation power and Electric Melee is endurance friendly. You don't need the +Recovery specials in Health. Frees up a slot and I would look at +Regen personally. 3) Get rid of Kismet in Maneuvers (in fact get rid of Maneuvers) and put in the LotG: Recharge global in that. You should have more then enough +Acc from other sets. 4) Get rid of Afterburner (crap power) and use #3 above as your LotG mule. In Afterburner's place, take Dark Oblivion in Ghost Widow's pool. Gives you a ranged AOE attack/taunt/toHit debuff and you're already into that pool as it is. 5) No Reactive Defenses: Scaling Resist? If you're gonna twink, twink it good ;) 6) Toxic is your hole and if you're playing Villain side (which you will be eventually given Ghost Widow's pool) it will show up against Arachnnos. You want to look towards filling that hole up and it's a long climb from 0%.

Confusing defense and resist? If not, there shouldn't be a need to get defense that high.

I'd go with 55% (or higher if you can) depending how much you like pushing the envelope.

As noted, beware of powers that depend on ground interaction (i.e. Electric Armor's Grounded).

Justice represent!

SG: SNAFU, Inc. (mostly red side) SG Leader: @kruunch SG Outline: Four guys doing things that should be physically impossible and are morally improbable. And oh yeah ... we got super powers too.

Damage adds to threat which builds your agro. Taunt *enhancements* only increase the duration of the taunt effect of that power (not the magnitude). Taunt and taunt effects are basically building agro without damage (or in addition to) at a greater scale (generally speaking).

Overall I've found cold to be the best ammo choice for the slows/hold. The other ammo choices don't really seem to add a whole lot except in some rare occasions. Hoping they add more ammo types in the future.

VERY end thirsty though :(

BTW it does feel like the Taunt mechanic was changed at some point (after i19?) as Taunt used to be a total lock down (i.e. the mag on Taunt could not be covered by damage due to the damage cap). And actually I'm talking about Provoke since Provoke used to be 10 targets max and every Tanker would go into the Presence line for that (*that* was annoying). So I'm guessing about the same time they normalized the Taunts and Provoke, they maybe tweaked the formula for the taunt mechanic? Today in game, Taunt and taunt auras shouldn't be confused. Taunt has a much greater magnitude ... taunt auras can be fairly easily overridden if the Tanker (and/or group) is relying on them and nothing else to keep agro. Gauntlet (punchvoke) is a neat mechanic but again, it's an addition to Taunt, not a replacement for it (functionally speaking). Bottom line, if you're a Tanker and have Taunt and are active, you should have no problem holding agro providing the following: 1) Your group isn't jumping the gun on you 2) The mobs aren't so spread out that your taunt/aura/Gauntlet isn't reaching them all. 3) There aren't more than 16 mobs you are trying to engage. 4) You're not playing a pacifist concept character :P

At least Brutes benefit by way of Fury. Scrappers, on the other hand... :o (Of course, Taunt duration outstrips Confront, so they'd be fighting a losing battle, there!) Are most tankers taking taunt now? If they're not they aren't Tankers .... just gimpy Scrappers. **EDIT** /wave Sarrate and Tiff

Agree about the endurance issues. Bio is a great set endurance wise, but you'll want to 3 slot Stamina with EndMod and Inexhaustible with 3 EndMod. That makes you pretty much bullet proof endurance wise. I run a Scrapper version of this build and can chain all day long with that basic setup.

Wow that's a lot to unpack. First off, it's not you. While Dark Armor is a great set, it's enormously endurance hungry and learning to deal with that is the challenge of the set. So as you discovered you can't run all your toggles comfortably, so don't try to. Focus on running the main toggles (Dark Embrace, Murky Cloud and Obsidian Shield) as you need those to survive. The other toggles you can add (or not) as you overcome your endurance woes. The main toggles should be 5 slotted (x3 resist, x2 end reduc). To help with endurance, throw an extra slot into Stamina and put in Performance Shifter: Chance for End Proc. Add and an extra slot to Heal and put in Numina's Convalesence: +Regeneration/+Recovery and Miracle: +Recovery. You will find that those enhancements cost millions of infamy, so you will need to farm/play the market (there are guides for both on these forums). As far as taunt goes, it hits 5 targets. If you pull a pack with more mobs, any AOE from your team members will draw agro on those mobs not taunted (assuming you're doing nothing else). Any of your AOE attacks should suffice for keeping agro as long as your diligent about spreading those and your taunt around. Hope this helped.

EA and Rad are both strong but it depends on which protection type you prefer, resist (Rad) or defense (EA). If you like the idea of EA but prefer resists, you want Electric Armor.