Call for New Tank Guides

[11Troy11]

I'll admit I know almostvnoyhing about playing a tank, but am interested in doing so. I would especially like to make a tank that could serve both as a pve toon and a solid farmer. 

 

Are there any guides that take the recent changes into account?

[Frostweaver]

Not really yet, but a good rule of thumb is that any primary that offers extra damage in the form of auras, damage buffs, or extra attacks and offers the ability to cap certain defense/resistances and stack mitigation types can farm effectively, and any secondary that offers solid aoe can as well.
Any tanker primary that can offer high defense/resistances or multiple mitigation types can pve effectively as can pretty much EVERY secondary.

 

In my opinion, there is only one primary that does not PVE as well as the rest but makes up for it with incredible farming ability (although, as a tanker, you can make it work) which is fire, a few primaries which work well as solo content runners, farmers, or super-tough dps adds but not quite as well as team PvE tankers like willpower, bio, and shield (but again, as a tanker, you can make them work), and a few primaries which are outstanding in teams and nearly unkillable but do not add very much to farming like stone, invulnerability, and SR.

And then there's Rad, electric, ice, and Dark, which, while they have their own minor problems, are decent in pretty much all areas as farmers, PvE runners, team tankers, and dps adds, but are not really specialists in anything but being incredibly hard to kill with a good build, and can add a little to all areas.

Primary-wise, Energy, Martial arts, battle axe, psi, ice, katana, and kinetic are considered lower performers than the rest or are particularly weak against certain enemies, but offer decent secondary mitigation effects that help team tankers much more than farmers. or special ST effects that help defeat hard targets (dark is sort of in that category too, but is no longer a secondary performer even though it's aoe is still slightly lower than others)
spines, Claws, savage, radiation, and electric all offer outstanding farming utility while only slightly losing utility in pVe (although tanker builds can generally counteract this effect) so They are considered the top farmers.

And then there are solid middle-of-the-road sets like Mace, Staff, broadsword, super strength, and fire melee which offer decent abilities with both PvE and farming, but are not really specialists.

And then there is TW, which is amazing in all areas IF you can tolerate a very concentration-intensive mechanic and strong motivations to avoid pool powers which make some of the OTHER sets perform at a similar level. It has it's own strengths and weknesses, which require a completely separate guide to explain, although in the end, despite many people's opinions, it's limitations balance it's dps potential fairly well (On tankers... on scrappers it is a whole different story). It is a bit of a category-breaker, though.

[oldskool]

This kind of topic also begs the question...  What do you mean by farming?  

That may sound like I'm being dense, but hear me out for a second.  

There are purpose built farm characters, purpose built PvP characters, and then there is everything else.  When it comes down to being able to both PvE effectively, and ALSO step into a farm, the Tanker can do just fine.  

The difference between a purpose built farmer and a generalist is time.  If you're not too concerned with how fast you're downing a farm map, then you can really just apply any AT/character that is capable of surviving it.  

I have a purpose built Brute that lives only in AE.  She's stepped into Dark Astoria a few times but generally she just exists to power level other characters.  Making money is just a side effect of my incurable alt-itis.  I have a Dark Armor/Titan Weapons Tanker that is surprisingly effective in farms.  That character's defenses and resistances are pretty much the same to anything but Toxic.  So it really doesn't matter what content it does.  Its slower, but it can easily survive S/L  or Fire farms.  Doesn't matter.  My primary Tanker is WP/SS.  Hell, even that can run farms.  That character is hard to take down and it chain casts Knockout Blow -> Footstomp -> Cross Punch.  

There was a time last year I ran a Trick Arrow/Archery Defender through some AE content for the purpose of just collecting cash.  In other words, I'll potentially farm on any character that I happen to log into with some that just aren't capable of it at all.  

Farming, generally, is all about downing some specialized content over and over as fast as possible for the most possible influence.  That's the usual way to do it.  That's not the only way to do it.  So if efficiency is something you can give up, then this question has a lot more answers to it. 

Edited June 4, 2020 by oldskool

[Hjarki]

In general purpose play, the reason for being a Tanker is so that you can tank everything. If you just want to build something that can mostly jump into random trash spawns without too much worry or you want to tank one specific fight, then you've got a host of other (often better) options.

 

There are three basic layers of mitigation: resists, defense and healing/regen.

 

Tankers (and armor sets in general) are horrible at healing/regen compared to support sets. Armor sets will have heals on long recharges that can be easily matched by heals support sets can toss every few seconds. Healing/Regen-centric sets tend to deliver 3 - 4 times the performance of what any Tanker would get just from IO sets/uniques. While nice, this isn't remotely close to the level of mitigation than can be achieved via Defense/Resists.

 

In terms of Defense vs. Resists, Resists tend to win. Resists are far more universal than Defenses and hard-cap is a lot better than soft-cap. Moreover, it's a lot cheaper to get Defense from non-primary sources than Resists. There's a single pool Resist power. There are half a dozen Defense powers. Resists are more 'expensive' in set bonuses than Defenses are. You've got numerous Defense-adding attacks. There's a single Resist-adding attack and it requires a combo to achieve (rather than merely a single attack). Defenses can be debuffed - often catastrophically - while Resistance debuffs don't change the value of Resists.

 

That being said, the different attack types tend to favor either Resist or Defense. S/L/E/T are all attacks you want to Resist. Either they're incredibly common or, in the case of Toxic, there isn't a typed defense against them (and they often bypass Defense entirely). C/N/P are attacks where you normally want Defense because they carry potentially annoying secondary effects.

 

However, Cold is a rare damage type, Cold/Psionic are almost always partial Smashing attacks and Psionic isn't actually much of a worry for a character with strong status protection. Negative can be quite a nuisance, but it's fairly common for builds to have some attacks that are just barely at 95% while having others that are seriously over-cap due to the discrepancy between franken-slotted and straight-slotted attack powers.

 

Given, the above, I tend to view Radiation as the top set for pure Tanking, with Fiery Aura slightly behind. Dark and Electric both have their virtues, but they also have critical holes (Energy and Toxic) that are hard to address.

 

Stone deserves a bit of a special mention because it can be nearly indestructible with a single power. However, the drawbacks of Stone are sufficiently enormous that it's hard to recommend.

 

Most of the rest of the sets don't really make you a 'Tanker'. They're more appropriate for more damage-oriented melee AT, in my opinion.

 

In terms of secondary, I'll call out some specific sets of note:

• Dark Melee. The major virtues here are the heal and Soul Drain. Something like Fiery/Dark is actually an excellent 'farming spec' because it's so effective against large crowds. The heal is useful for its exceptional slotting options (Including Theft of Essence).
• Electrical Melee. This is one of the better single target dps sets with some strong AE. You can also slot Power Transfer everywhere if you like the idea of self-healing and the major AE can slot Force Feedback. It's not nearly as good for farming since its PBAoE is actually a targeted effect (and you can't auto-fire it and go make a sandwich).
• Martial Arts. This has a KB AE, which is nice. It also has a high dpa +positional defense move that is the major selling point. Unfortunately, almost everything else offered by the set is mediocre.
• Savage Melee. This is one of the better single target sets, but it has a long wind-up time so the single target is less useful for chopping down the surviving boss than it is long AV/GM fights. Its AE isn't all that great.
• Spines. Atrocious single target, but very good multi-target. One of the main reasons to take Spines would be to get a damage aura to pair with a set that doesn't have one.
• Staff. Arguably the most 'tank-ish' of weapon sets, this is where you get the sole +resist attack from a secondary as well as enhanceable/stackable L/M defense. It has great AE damage, but somewhat weak single target damage.
• Stone. High single target dps and the ability to slot Force Feedback virtually everywhere. It only has a single damaging AE, but it's a very good one.
• Titan Weapons. This is the highest single target dps set, with solid AE dps. It also has a stackable/enhanceable defense move, but it's not a very good one (albeit on a Tanker, mandatory) since it affects S/M rather than the more useful L/M.

If I had to pick a single 'perfect Tanker', it would probably be Radiation/Titan Weapons. But it's a very late-developing build that will be painful to level.

 

Something like Fiery/Stone is incredibly easy to level and will provide similar performance at 50.

[Sgt. Terminus]

3 hours ago, Hjarki said:

 

• Stone. High single target dps and the ability to slot Force Feedback virtually everywhere. It only has a single damaging AE, but it's a very good one.

Are you talking about Tremor?  With its 3.3 sec activation time? Did it get buffed recently or by "very good one"  you mean because it is the only one?   

[Frostweaver]

It's a very good one because you can slot FF into it?
I dunno. a hundred points of damage at the high end is pretty mediocre, but it is really good for holding aggro.

Still, stone melee's best aoe is cross punch. Or a pocket Blaster.

Edited June 6, 2020 by Frostweaver