Tankerminds, what's is this?

[JORGE MARRTIN]

Hi, all.

 

I'm new in MMs. Anyone could explain me how i can get a Tankermind? You could show me a build as an example?

 

Thank you very much to all.

[Tacheyon]

A Tankermind is where you build yourself to be the Tank of your team.  So this mean maxing out your Defensee and Resistance to the cap (of as close to).  You then leave your pets on Defensive Follow to activate Bodyguard mode.  This will let your pets share the damage you take, basically increasing your HP.  That and once you are attacked your pets will start attacking the source of that damage. 

 

You want to have pets that have a decent amount of HP as well (Demons, Thugs, Bots).  Also a secondary that complements a up close and personal style of play FF, Dark, Traps to name the top ones.

 

I don't actually have a build for you as I have not engage in that side of MM's before.  But that is the general theory of being a Tankermind.   I am sure other people well versed in this playstyle will come by and offer more detailed advice shortly.

[JORGE MARRTIN]

Great! Thank you very much for the information!

[Crysis]

To add to this, many MM's who prefer the "Tankermind" playstyle will take the Presence pool to get Provoke.  This is a Taunt power.  Any MM can draw initial aggro on themselves by just jumping into a spawn with an aura running or throwing out an attack.  But if your henchmen are on Defensive Follow, they will attack whatever attacked the MM until its dead....and then just stand there like dopes until/unless you keep getting attacked.  Which, you sometimes won't be once they pull aggro onto themselves.  

 

So either you are running a toggle/aura as the MM that allows you to keep drawing all aggro onto yourself and/or you grab Provoke and spam it to keep pulling aggro onto yourself, thus keeping your henchmen from taking too much aggro on themselves.

 

Personally, I don't bother with Provoke.  On teams, it's a low-magnitude taunt and you'll have even scrappers pulling aggro off of you so it's not very useful.  And solo, almost all the secondary's have some other form of pulling aggro onto yourself...inclusive of personal attacks.  So not needed IMO.

 

 

[Arcadio]

Tacheyon has it mostly covered. But I would say you want to play like this moreso if you have weak pets. Like my tanker-mind is a ninja/storm, and I feel like this is the only way to keep my pets alive is by holding aggro my self. And for the most part it works. Very well. 

 

As far as building one, I highly advise picking the presence pool for at least provoke so you can keep enemies off your pets. When I'm soloing AVs I just keep it on autocast because my ninjas at least will die in a split second if they get aggro. It's also a great benefit (although not necessary) to have an aoe heal available, since you're splitting damage it'll be 6 times effective if you're healing all your pets too. Still I get by fine with just O2 boost so it's not make or break.

 

Overall it's a hugely engaging, rewarding, and different playstyle if you want to try one out.

[BGSacho]

Tankerminding is extremely effective with certain secondaries, like /Dark and /Time, which have an AoE heal and decent personal defenses.

 

While the tl;dr of tankerminding is "just tank for your pets", there's a lot more to it if you really dedicate yourself to the playstyle.

Let's take Demons/Dark/Mu for example - a pretty classic build where the pets have 80% S/L res, you have 75% SLE res, and about 20%-ish def(can get to 32% S/L def as well).

So what does tankerminding there mean? Well, the prince will have almost 45% def and 75% res, so he's a tanky boy already - you don't need to take care of him. So you're actually 2 tanks and 5 dps. The gargoyle is also fairly tanky, sporting 80% res and lower def, so he's going to be your offtank. The ember demon is not tanky at all, but it doesn't have a melee attack, so it will keep at range by itself. The demonlings are the most problematic - while they are tanky-ish(75%-80% res), they don't have a lot of hp so they can be gibbed easily. 

What does tankerminding mean in this case? You go in an take the alpha, the prince and gargoyle following behind you. You keep the demonlings at a goto behind you while you're setting up fearsome stare/darkest night/tar pit. You spam your attacks(Lash, Crack Whip, electric shackles) on the most dangerous mobs to keep threat on them. Once you have "control" over the fight, you can push in with the demonlings to allow them to use their breaths and melee attacks. While doing all of this, you need to make sure you're keeping all your pets in your twilight grasp range for emergency heals. All in all, the fights are very dynamic and fun.