'Tough Enough' - Tanking Theory

[marcussmythe]

A thought I've been kicking around in the back of my head:

 

1.)  IO's give survival, more than anything. (This is part of the reason tanking felt kinda meh to me.  IOs give sooo much survival that most everyone can be 'tough enough')

2.)  Tanks have enough toughness to survive almost anything, even with just SOs, even at lvl 30.  Tanks are already mostly 'tough enough' at those levels with SOs.

3.)  Some endgame mobs exist that completely trivialize our ability to be 'tough enough'.  But they rarely do so by beating us down straight through our defenses.

4.)  Certain incarnate powers do CRAZY things to survival ability.  Barrier and Melee leap to mind, but resist and defense focused Alpha slots can help a lot, too.

5.)  Defeat is the best debuff, and CC works just as well on Seers and Carnies as it does on Council and CoT.

 

Despite 1-5 above, I always find myself choosing full IO sets, odd powers, sacrificing the fun gubbins, to try to build something thats 90% resist/45% defense/lots of extra HP and Regen, and utterly ignoring the ability of my other powers or incarnates or what-you-will to make them survivable.

 

What if I, instead, took... idk, a Dark Armor set, and leaned into the CC?  Don't try to burn the slots for max resist and softcap defense (which Dark Armor can do!) but instead go for fear or disorient or both, slide in more CC from a primary (though I may stay savage for funs) or through pools (when was the last time I took presence pool!) or through incarnates (just to see them used!), layer on procs to make my PBAOE self heal a PBAOE self healing nuke (we always want more nukes)... 

 

What if I take Invuln - which doesnt have as many side gubbins to offer as other sets, but is infamously survivable at the SOs level, because resist+saturated invicinbility - and accept that level of toughness as enough, at least for most days and most content?  Lets say - grab energy melee.  Old set, but hopefully in line for a buff, and the huge AOE Disorient of Whirling Hands is its own mitigation. The Mu Epic layers on even MORE AOE for endgame x8ing, and we can afford it cause were tough -enough-.   And ET is still a decent single target boss buster.  With the freedom to chase procs, and odd powers.. heck, lets grab Assault and Adrenalin boost, and layer on every incarnate damage source known to man.  We are STILL +4/x8 against anything but Seers and Carnies, cause Invuln - and hey, lets use that Mu AOE Root as an opener and some geometry to break up the spawn and then my disorients to cut incoming psychic misery further and hey if ALL OF THAT FAILS or if today I am tanking Lord Recluse or BATF or W/e, well, we can switch incarnates pretty casually.

 

What if I take Fire, infamous as the 'squishy, high damage' tank - and run a survival IO build to push that squishy up to 'tough enough for any reasonable fact pattern' (with incarnate layering for those times I have to do the Real Tough Tanking) - or run a proc/fun IO and fun pool powers build, leaning into the headroom vs Brute/Scrapper cousins given by larger base values to go get 'other stuff', and plan on still being tough enough?  At the end of the day, can I still be *tough enough* while having burn?  Can I be *tough enough* with incarnates and IOs to handle TF Tanking (while still having burn)?  Can I lean into damage increasing tricks and fun toys for my solo experience, while still being tough enough for solo life (and still, yannnowwww... having burn)?

 

((More broadly - Im starting to fall in love with having 3 builds.  Maybe 'Solo/Maximum Offense' on the outline above, 'Survival/Max Defense' on the classic set-bonus chasing approach, in case incarnates and teammates arent enough, and finally a 'How do I live my best life in the Caverns of Transcendance and Rule of 3' exemplar build build))

 

 

Edited June 12, 2020 by marcussmythe

[Seigmoraig]

15 minutes ago, marcussmythe said:

What if I, instead, took... idk, a Dark Armor set, and leaned into the CC?

layer on procs to make my PBAOE self heal a PBAOE self healing nuke (we always want more nukes)... 

The problem here is that the mag of the CC you get in Dark Armor is pretty low and you will only be CCing minions (mag 2 hold and fear)which IMO is counter productive to what the game is today not to mention the end drain these CC toggles generate. The idea is the group everything together and keep it there so that it gets nuked to smithereens.

I wanted to look into making my heal a nuke as it seems interesting since my guy is Dark Melee and more aoe is good but I decided against it and get with Pyre Mastery and got Fireball for the Nuke and decided to keep my set bonuses in my heal power !

Edited June 12, 2020 by Seigmoraig

[marcussmythe]

Alone, the DA toggles impact only minions.  But minions are a lot of damage in a big spawn, and having them all some mix of afraid and drunk makes my life easier in the 30s solo.  At 50 on a steamroll team, it wont matter.. but at 50 on a steamroll team, what matters?  

 

Also, at 30, I find the End and HP drain from those toggles pretty manageable on my Savage Melee Tank.  Perhaps I should lay aside Savage, though, and troll the Tank Secondaries for even more CC...

 

Remind me to holler when/if I see 50 and slide in all the CC Procs and CC Incarnates and CC Pools that will hold still, and see where we are then.

[Seigmoraig]

7 minutes ago, marcussmythe said:

Also, at 30, I find the End and HP drain from those toggles pretty manageable on my Savage Melee Tank. 

Savage Melee makes a big impact on your end management since you get that stacking end reduction thing. On other it's a whole different game, for DA specifically. My Dark Armor / Dark Melee guy only got his End recovery power at level 35

 

Pre 50 gameplay especially when solo is a different game altogether. I typically don't solo and just roll group TFs the whole time so I got rid of those CC powers pretty early after trying them. The stun one is manageable since the drain is incurs is minimal but the fear one is pretty steep at 0.52

Edited June 12, 2020 by Seigmoraig

[marcussmythe]

My DA/TW also manages endurance pretty decently, but that took a lot of build tweaking and willingness to turn off unneeded toggles.  Not for everyone.

 

I agree that tanking team TFs would devalue CC - I find that large teams, if one is not careful, collapse almost all playstyles into 'herd it up and nuke it down' - and in that context, any tank that focuses on doing anything other than being an indestructible lump of aggro sink, maybe with a tiny bit of side AOE to add to the carnage, is not maximally efficient.

 

 

 

As an aside... can anyone think of any powers in tank primaries or epics that are just lovely wonderful gamechanges that suffer from overly long cooldowns?  Im looking at the Force Feedback +Rchg proc and Battleaxe and wondering if there is anything to be found there....

[Redlynne]

Well, here's my take on the value of increased crowd control capacity on a Tanker ... v3.1.0 SR/MA "No Get HITSU!!"

[marcussmythe]

That thread lead to my own SR Tank (though I went DM, MA and STJ are close behind).  And the 'meta-how-does-timing-attacks-work' and 'can-I-reapply the proc/effect' informed some odd choices on my current EM tank - abandoning Total Focus for Energy Punch, and running Bonesmasher-Energy Punch-Barrage-Energy Punch as my basic cycle, with Energy Transfer going in twice on each buildup and otherwise wherever it will fit.

 

So, thank you for that work.  You and Sir Myshkin are major impacts on what Im playing and how Im building these days.

[Redlynne]

10 minutes ago, marcussmythe said:

That thread lead to my own SR Tank (though I went DM, MA and STJ are close behind).

You flatter me.

10 minutes ago, marcussmythe said:

And the 'meta-how-does-timing-attacks-work' and 'can-I-reapply the proc/effect' informed some odd choices on my current EM tank

It's one of those "how many layers deep do I need to go to figure this part out?" kinds of things.  A lot of people who mess around with the build planner(s) simply do something that "looks right" and is all about optimizing each individual power in a vacuum, rather than going to the extra dimensional layer of looking at how their entire build ... integrates ... as a whole.  Depending on how you're doing your build, that's like about 3-4 layers deep into the build strategy, and you're dealing with 4th dimensional Tetris assembly at that point (and that's before you even start accounting for how gracefully performance will degrade when Exemplared below 50).

 

But yes, being sensitive to the ... shapes ... of attack cycle timing (animation and recharge cycling) as well as making sure you have enough margin to double stack your mez durations reliably will make a tremendous difference in overall performance in actual gameplay.

 

I see a lot of builds that go the a la carte route of just wanting to "pick the best everythings" and then throw them into a build and call it Done™ without going onto that extra dimension of even trying to integrate everything together to see if all those "best everythings" even fit together in ways that are useful, let alone self-reinforcing (or even stable).  If all you care about is MAX DEEPS then that kind of additional layer of analysis won't interest you because all you care about is "max everythings" and anything else is a waste of your time.  So it really depends on what your goals are for your build(s), and what kind of investment in time and rethinking you're willing to put into refining your build strategies ... because the more you put in, the more you get out of it.

20 minutes ago, marcussmythe said:

So, thank you for that work.  You and Sir Myshkin are major impacts on what Im playing and how Im building these days.

And THAT ... right there ... is the reason why I post the results of my research.  Knowledge shared is knowledge multiplied.  Pass it on.

[marcussmythe]

While weve wandered away from the question of 'how tough is tough enough', at the same time, I think this returns us to it (in a way) - the whole concept of 'tough enough' for me grew out of playing and finding the characters were tough enough LOONG Before the sets came in.. so maybe I could do something else with the sets?

 

Now, it wont make my Tank a scrapper in damage or a defender in utility or a controller in CC or (insert AT here), but it gives me a lot more room to chase other things that might be more useful and more fun than simply transitioning from 'tough enough to survive if I play the game and use the tools I have' to 'tough enough to survive forever while asleep at the keyboard'.  The later, while nice in its way... I wonder if the opportunity cost we pay, automatically, is actually a little too high.

[Cutter]

3 hours ago, marcussmythe said:

What if I, instead, took... idk, a Dark Armor set, and leaned into the CC?  Don't try to burn the slots for max resist and softcap defense (which Dark Armor can do!) but instead go for fear or disorient or both, slide in more CC from a primary (though I may stay savage for funs) or through pools (when was the last time I took presence pool!) or through incarnates (just to see them used!), layer on procs to make my PBAOE self heal a PBAOE self healing nuke (we always want more nukes)...

Been running a Dark/Elec feartank experiment lately. Heavy into the Presence pool, complementary slotting, all that jazz. /Elec has a whomping great KD+stun in Thunder Strike, as well as the sleep chances in the ST attacks. Sitting at 42 so no incarnate yet, but planning around Control hybrid - likely going to build both sides of the tree: Radial to stack fear/immob/stun, Core for the extra mag and damage.

 

The fear effects are very noticeable - between Cloak of Fear and Invoke Panic it's not uncommon to see most of a spawn shaking in their boots, including bosses. Stuns are less reliable, but I'm working on it! Overall he's all kinds of fun to play, and picks up comments from time to time so I know it's not just me seeing what he can do.

 

(The final build also hits very respectable resists and defenses - its biggest hole is +recharge.)

[marcussmythe]

Interesting point on Thunder Strike - Savage, as much as I'm enjoying it (and TW, as much as I enjoyed the raw damage potential) are probably not the best approaches if I want to leverage the fear and disorient in Dark.

 

My feeling is that neither CC is perfect - Fear allows an attack back after each tic, and in a game of AOE spam, thats basically all the time - though I do sometimes turn off my AOEs and focus down one target at a time while the fear keeps the rest off my back - and Disorient provides for superspeed running away by mobs.

 

Maybe go big on the disorient, and also leverage an immob in somewhere?   IDK, thinking.

[Hjarki]

The basic notion you're stumbling at - that excess mitigation is, well, excess - is reasonable. However, you have to strike some balance if you're going to do your job - and a lot of those balances aren't a particularly efficient approach.

 

I think the easiest way to approach the problem is to make a list of "can I tank this?". No build can tank everything. Some things to think about:

• Can your build exemplar down to Positron? Numina?
• Can your build tank Lord Recluse without the towers being down?
• Can your build survive the mass -defense debuffs of ITF and certain DA content?
• Can your build tank Hamidon?
• Can your build efficiently farm?

You might also consider how much in the way of temporary powers/consumables you need to do your jobs. Anyone can 'tank' with enough Inspirations, temporary powers and panic buttons. But if you're leaning heavily on these abilities, you're going to find that you often can't be as effective as if you weren't.

 

[Cutter]

1 hour ago, marcussmythe said:

Interesting point on Thunder Strike - Savage, as much as I'm enjoying it (and TW, as much as I enjoyed the raw damage potential) are probably not the best approaches if I want to leverage the fear and disorient in Dark.

 

My feeling is that neither CC is perfect - Fear allows an attack back after each tic, and in a game of AOE spam, thats basically all the time - though I do sometimes turn off my AOEs and focus down one target at a time while the fear keeps the rest off my back - and Disorient provides for superspeed running away by mobs.

 

Maybe go big on the disorient, and also leverage an immob in somewhere?   IDK, thinking.

You're absolutely right, neither is perfect. But together they mitigate a good amount. I'm no tester so I can't give you percentages and numbers, but strictly on feel based on what I've done thus far, I have no complaints, or doubts that this approach isn't doing something useful.

 

Snagging an epic immob is probably the most straightforward approach to managing the stun wander problem. I'm tight on slots for my approach, so instead I've got to leverage the +immob proc in Oppressive Gloom, and wait for Control Radial to apply a much better +immob proc throughout. Honestly tho, til now the fear control is much more consistent and noticeable anyway.

 

1 hour ago, Hjarki said:

The basic notion you're stumbling at - that excess mitigation is, well, excess - is reasonable. However, you have to strike some balance if you're going to do your job - and a lot of those balances aren't a particularly efficient approach.

 

I think the easiest way to approach the problem is to make a list of "can I tank this?". No build can tank everything. Some things to think about:

• Can your build exemplar down to Positron? Numina?
• Can your build tank Lord Recluse without the towers being down?
• Can your build survive the mass -defense debuffs of ITF and certain DA content?
• Can your build tank Hamidon?
• Can your build efficiently farm?

You might also consider how much in the way of temporary powers/consumables you need to do your jobs. Anyone can 'tank' with enough Inspirations, temporary powers and panic buttons. But if you're leaning heavily on these abilities, you're going to find that you often can't be as effective as if you weren't.

These are good questions. At my level I can really only answer the first and third, to which I say "yes, easily" and "no, but...".

 

I just ran a Numi yesterday, and my bar only moved once to the point where I needed to heal. Haven't gone back and done a Posi yet with more powers slotted, but given that Dark really gets all its "core" powers by what, level 8? I can't see it struggling. (My memory is fuzzy from when I ran it actually at the appropriate level.)

 

With respect to def debuffs, well, Dark doesn't get any DDR so that gets shredded, but with projected melee def sitting around 43% (technically soft-capped with Cloak's debuff applied) it should be a while before that first hit lands; and at any rate it boasts solid resists and a sub-13-second heal under that defense. I've only ITF'd once on him, and yeah I did hit a few dicey spots, but that's the famed Dark Armour Health Bar Cha Cha Slide (TM) in all its glory 🙂

 

For endgame content, It's entirely likely I'll invest in a second build that pushes the conventional numbers more. Can't say for sure however til I get there.

[marcussmythe]

1 hour ago, Hjarki said:

I think the easiest way to approach the problem is to make a list of "can I tank this?". No build can tank everything. Some things to think about:

• Can your build exemplar down to Positron? Numina?
• Can your build tank Lord Recluse without the towers being down?
• Can your build survive the mass -defense debuffs of ITF and certain DA content?
• Can your build tank Hamidon?
• Can your build efficiently farm?

You might also consider how much in the way of temporary powers/consumables you need to do your jobs. Anyone can 'tank' with enough Inspirations, temporary powers and panic buttons. But if you're leaning heavily on these abilities, you're going to find that you often can't be as effective as if you weren't.

 

I'll address these as to my Invuln/EM, as that is the only version nearly mature.

 

1.)  Positron is not the ideal case, as Invuln is so heavily tied up in Invincibility - but this would be the case for a 'natural' invuln at that level.  Exemplars are going to be fine as long as you don't skip or underslot powers planning on patching them with a 'superpower' later.  Ive not done them all, but the ones I have (even positron) felt pretty smooth, tank wise.

 

2.)  I have not tried on an Invuln, or really on any non-cap-energy tank.  Invuln is not as optimized for endgame meta as later sets, lacking the solid resists against exotic damage types that developers became enamored of as CoH developed*

 

3.)  DA and ITF are quite doable.. +4/x8 DA is a given.  Ive not tried to solo ITF at +4 yet, and anticipate that even if the debuffs are survivable (and I think they will be), it will be extremely time consuming, and the kill time on the pack of +3 AVs at the end may be enough to render it unfun (maybe once in a 'because it was there' sort of way)

 

4.)  I have not tried.  I anticipate that Invuln will perform poorly against an opponent that ignores defense and resist and quickly debuffs healing into uselessness. 

 

5.)  Fast.. enough?  Mu AOEs and Whirling Hands make crowd management reasonable, but if you want Rad/Fire Brutes, you roll Rad/Fire Brutes.

 

*It seems, on reflection, that they made content, and tanks.  Having made content and tanks, the devs found the tanks were too capable of tanking the content.  The devs then started handing out psi, toxic, energy, and debuff to threaten the tanks they had created.  Later developments and a change in dev focus saw them creating sets (understandably) custom crafted to perform well in the face of that specific content, and (as a side effect) balanced in performance with SOs, while being ideally crafted to leverage IOs.  This makes sense - you want New Stuff to keep people playing, and that New Stuff will synch up better to the other New Stuff than Old Stuff does.  But I digress.

[Hyperstrike]

I'm a Tank.
To the question of "Tough Enough?", I say HERESY!
Gold standard for survivability is still a Stone Tank in Granite.

Invuln is down from that a bit, but for 99.9% of things you'll never notice.
 

1. Posi & Numina, no real problems unless your team is VERY sloppy.
2. Yes, I've tanked Recluse with the towers up.  Care needs to be taken however.  You can push En/Neg Resists into the 70's without serious compromise elsewhere.  But, outside of Hover-tanking, you may need to use some Purple and Orange inspies.  But, unlike some other builds, you can get away with the small ones.
3. ITF?  No problem.  DA is a tough one.  Because the RNG Gods, when they hate you, they REALLY hate you.  Sometimes you're fine.  Sometimes you're going, "HEY!  Where'd my EVERYTHING go?"  But if you can get in and saturate Invincibility fast enough, you're good.
4. Tanking Hami on an Invuln with a decent support team isn't terribly harrowing.  But if your support team is having problems, it gets ugly FAST.
5. My current live build can farm just fine. A maximized rebuild would barely notice.

[Hjarki]

15 minutes ago, Hyperstrike said:

I'm a Tank.
To the question of "Tough Enough?", I say HERESY!
Gold standard for survivability is still a Stone Tank in Granite.

Stone Tanks are Psi vulnerable, it receives no significant healing/endurance management and there are considerable drawbacks to being in Granite armor. So while Granite Armor makes it incredibly easy to reach resist/defense goals, it's often not the route you want to go.

 

However, as I noted, my list of questions (which is far from comprehensive or even weighted towards what an individual might care about) is more about establishing in your own mind what you want to accomplish - and then not wasting effort on things you don't care about.

[Hyperstrike]

3 minutes ago, Hjarki said:

Stone Tanks are Psi vulnerable, it receives no significant healing/endurance management and there are considerable drawbacks to being in Granite armor. So while Granite Armor makes it incredibly easy to reach resist/defense goals, it's often not the route you want to go.

 

However, as I noted, my list of questions (which is far from comprehensive or even weighted towards what an individual might care about) is more about establishing in your own mind what you want to accomplish - and then not wasting effort on things you don't care about.

However, none these considerations really affect the end goal of "Toughness".
They are (mostly) ancillary issues that make being the toughest thing on map "painful".

[Hjarki]

28 minutes ago, Hyperstrike said:

However, none these considerations really affect the end goal of "Toughness".
They are (mostly) ancillary issues that make being the toughest thing on map "painful".

I'm not sure what you mean by "Toughness". Or, for that matter, "painful".

[Pzn]

6 hours ago, Seigmoraig said:

The problem here is that the mag of the CC you get in Dark Armor is pretty low and you will only be CCing minions (mag 2 hold and fear)which IMO is counter productive to what the game is today not to mention the end drain these CC toggles generate. The idea is the group everything together and keep it there so that it gets nuked to smithereens.

I wanted to look into making my heal a nuke as it seems interesting since my guy is Dark Melee and more aoe is good but I decided against it and get with Pyre Mastery and got Fireball for the Nuke and decided to keep my set bonuses in my heal power !

I run dark regen slotted with procs on my tank.  It's decent damage but only especially useful for cleaning up spread out groups with it's big radius.  If the animation was quicker it would be perfect, but dark regen is slower than the listed activation time.   Power info says 1.17s but it takes well over 3s.  The bio and rad heals are way better for procs since they're quick.

[Heraclea]

3 hours ago, Hjarki said:

• Can your build exemplar down to Positron? Numina?
• Can your build tank Lord Recluse without the towers being down?
• Can your build survive the mass -defense debuffs of ITF and certain DA content?
• Can your build tank Hamidon?
• Can your build efficiently farm?

 

Heraclea, Impetua, and most of my later tankers handle all of those things fairly well.  They handle ITF and DA Pantheons without frequent resort to incarnate poweers.  Heraclea has T4 Barrier for Reckuse and T3 Ageless for Hamidon.  She can also fire-farm at 4/8 despite being Invulnerability, but it does get slow.  What keeps her going as much as Invulnerability is Dark Melee.  The constant -tohit of DM makes her practically softcapped even if her raw figures of defense only get to the high thirties, and the self heal attack means she is always topping off the tank. 

Edited June 12, 2020 by Heraclea

[Hyperstrike]

1 hour ago, Hjarki said:

I'm not sure what you mean by "Toughness". Or, for that matter, "painful".

First, general ability to mitigate damage.  As in "just stand there and take it".
Defense (damage prevention) and Resistance (damage reduction) are mitigation.



For Tanks, there is "I shall gently sand your HP out of existence!" and "I won?  It's five hours later and I now need to see a physical therapist for the RSI damage I've done to my hand!"

Edited June 13, 2020 by Hyperstrike

[Hjarki]

1 hour ago, Hyperstrike said:

First, general ability to mitigate damage.  As in "just stand there and take it".

The point I'm trying to make is that there are many forms of attacks and no Tanker is good against all of them. So you have to pick what you're going to be good against and how you're going to be good against it. You can't just say "I want to be tough!".

[Hyperstrike]

22 minutes ago, Hjarki said:

The point I'm trying to make is that there are many forms of attacks and no Tanker is good against all of them. So you have to pick what you're going to be good against and how you're going to be good against it. You can't just say "I want to be tough!".

To a certain degree, yeah.  You CAN.

Then again, I never said there weren't tradeoffs.

[Yomo Kimyata]

I’ve never built a team tank, but I do find myself asking the question: what makes a tanker different from, say, a controller in terms of “tough enough”?
 

I’d say: higher hp, higher res cap, taunt, damage scalar.

 

I’m missing a lot, I know, but those seem like the simplest factors.  It’s one of the reason I prefer res builds to def builds, since ir doesn’t matter if you are a tanker or a controller if you are soft capped defense wise.  (I know, DDE, but you see my point, I hope.)

[Bill Z Bubba]

11 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

I’d say: higher hp, higher res cap, taunt, damage scalar.

Mez protection so you don't have to waste your destiny pick on clarion.