Make Me A Tanker Main!

[Yellowjacket]

Shield/Ice would be my recommendation. The animations are not spectacular, but it is considered by many to be the most tanky tank secondary with mitigation from -recharge and slow plus some control from ice patch and frozen touch. Frost is a beast of a power too. There used to be a lot of hate for ice since the damage was lacking, but it was fixed long ago and I think there's some residual disdain for the set. It has some very high damage-per-activation powers if you crunch the numbers. Remember to use frost in your ST rotation. The whole theme behind the tanker is leading the charge and keeping your buddies safe and I think shield/ice best embodies that.

 

Shield/elec is fun but it's more of a scrapper/stalker combo and if I remember ST damage is lacking (I could be wrong there). There's not a whole lot of mitigation coming from elec melee as well.

[ninja surprise]

A couple other options that are a blast:

Ice Armor / Stone Melee - Ice is easy to soft-cap and Stone is just fun and powerful-feeling with the animations and sound effects.

 

Electric Armor / Super Strength is similar, but resist-based.

 

Both combos have self-heals and "give me my endurance back" powers which means you can fight forever, or until you've defeated everything.

[Charistoph]

On 1/31/2020 at 1:08 PM, Yellowjacket said:

Shield/Ice would be my recommendation. The animations are not spectacular, but it is considered by many to be the most tanky tank secondary with mitigation from -recharge and slow plus some control from ice patch and frozen touch. Frost is a beast of a power too. There used to be a lot of hate for ice since the damage was lacking, but it was fixed long ago and I think there's some residual disdain for the set. It has some very high damage-per-activation powers if you crunch the numbers. Remember to use frost in your ST rotation. The whole theme behind the tanker is leading the charge and keeping your buddies safe and I think shield/ice best embodies that.

 

Shield/elec is fun but it's more of a scrapper/stalker combo and if I remember ST damage is lacking (I could be wrong there). There's not a whole lot of mitigation coming from elec melee as well.

Shield's Aura also doesn't do damage, so the aoe sleep in Ice Melee shouldn't be affected, either.  The natural slow from Ice Melee and other controls make it a very Tank-friendly setup, and the damage seems to be on the up lately.

 

Thematically, there is even an Elemental\ Ice Shield for a costume option if that is something that is desired to help tie a costume theme together.

[metacore]

SD/Savage is fun. I have a Brute with this and Savage Leap into the mod from afar (add a KD proc), then Shield Charge (already has a chance to KD so now you've got most foes on their backs), then Rend = most minions/LT's dead.

Maybe Street Justice for Secondary?

[Saikochoro]

Quick update. 
 

I ended up making two tankers. One is the shield defense / electric and another is fiery aura / super strength. Both are in their thirties and have been fun so far.
 

I’ll update again when I get one of them to 50. Might be a while with my altitis though haha. 

Edited February 11, 2020 by Saikochoro

[Call Me Awesome]

8 hours ago, Saikochoro said:

Quick update. 
 

I ended up making two tankers. One is the shield defense / electric and another is fiery aura / super strength. Both are in their thirties and have been fun so far.
 

I’ll update again when I get one of them to 50. Might be a while with my altitis though haha. 

Glad you're having fun with your tanks.  I've played both Shield and Fire primaries on Tankers and they're nice.  The Elec secondary I only have with my Elec/Shield Stalker and I've never played SS but both should be solid pairings.

 

Yeah, I know SS is the thematic Tanker secondary but I just never got into it.  At first around issue 3-5 it was because every other Tanker you saw was Invuln/SS and later on because I wasn't a fan of the Rage mechanic.  I know Hyper swears by it, I just figured I'd likely end up swearing at it.

[Saikochoro]

6 minutes ago, Call Me Awesome said:

Glad you're having fun with your tanks.  I've played both Shield and Fire primaries on Tankers and they're nice.  The Elec secondary I only have with my Elec/Shield Stalker and I've never played SS but both should be solid pairings.

 

Yeah, I know SS is the thematic Tanker secondary but I just never got into it.  At first around issue 3-5 it was because every other Tanker you saw was Invuln/SS and later on because I wasn't a fan of the Rage mechanic.  I know Hyper swears by it, I just figured I'd likely end up swearing at it.

I mainly made a FA / SS as a reincarnation of my main on live. I chose that combo without knowing it was popular back in the day. I thought what could be more cool than a fire shield and being super strong? My first 50 on live (only one of 2 50s even after playing for years) was a SS / FA Brute.  I figured I would resurrect him as a tanker. 

[Call Me Awesome]

1 minute ago, Saikochoro said:

I mainly made a FA / SS as a reincarnation of my main on live. I chose that combo without knowing it was popular back in the day. I thought what could be more cool than a fire shield and being super strong? My first 50 on live (only one of 2 50s even after playing for years) was a SS / FA Brute.  I figured I would resurrect him as a tanker. 

It should work just fine.  Since you're familiar with the way the Brute version worked you'll find the Tanker to be very similar.  As you know Fire Armor isn't the toughest set but it's capable of handling most anything with a good build and intelligent play.  It should play very similar to your Brute without needing to chase Fury.