So you want to tank

[Kiloton]

I've been tanking in this game since shortly after it went live.  My main is an invulnerability/super strength tank (currently vet level 100 on HC), I've also played ice/ice, stone/stone, fire/fire, shield/mace, SR/SJ, radiation/radiation, willpower/psi tanks to level 50+, and I'm currently working on an electric/electric tank.  This post is based on my own experiences, as well as questions I've had during that time, and watching years of tanks play during Tanker Tuesday events.
 

Any AT can tank, at least once, though how long they survive depends on the situation, their build, the enemies, and the environment.  I won't be getting into which is "better," I'll limit this discussion to explaining aggro mechanics, basic "tanking" techniques, etc.  Also, when I say "tank" here, insert your favorite AT you think can tank, it's pretty interchangeable.  As far as the tanker AT goes, I think the best way to explain what a tank is is that it's a melee range controller, whose job it is to reposition mobs into groups to make team PBAoEs and ranged AoEs more efficient.  
 

Basic aggro mechanics
 

Aggro in the game is based on many things.  I think it goes kind of like this.  Can the enemies see you?  If so, they attack you, until a better target presents itself.  If players generate "threat" to mobs, from experience, it's in this order:  Are you the first visible?  If so, you take the alpha strike.  Controllers very quickly rise to the top of this threat list, followed by damage dealers.  Tanks try to insert themselves into this threat list, at the top, hopefully, to protect the team.  As a tank, I've found it's hard to pull aggro off a controller once they've pissed enemies off, more so than damage dealers.  So, I think enemy threat priority goes like this:  controller, tank, damage dealers, everyone else.
 

Aggro management

Tanks, and, brutes, have an inherent ability called gauntlet.  It's an AoE taunt that hits up to 10 targets for tanks (brutes may not work this way).

Gauntlet has a taunt component (magnitude and duration), which forces the target to attack the tank for the duration of the taunt.  Magnitude determines where on the threat list the taunt overrides current aggro of the mob.  The most useful component of gauntlet, however, is a fairly substantial range debuff, which combined with taunt, forces the enemies to close on the tank.  
 

Most tanks have a "taunt" aura, a PBAoE damage or effect aura.  These pulse at regular intervals, typically once per second, some more, some less.  For tanks, these pulses also have gauntlet, so once enemies get into melee range, this aura effectively glues foes to you, and makes it very hard to pull them off a tank.  Trouble usually happens at the parameter of the PBAoE, where aggro can be peeled from the tank.  
 

Aggro cap--Aggro is capped at around 13-16 (I forget exactly which).  What if I told you you could get around this through careful manipulation of the "threat table?"  More on this later.
 

Finally, a word about the taunt power.  Taunt does not a tank make.  This is important, so I'll say it again.  TAUNT DOES NOT A TANK MAKE.  Taunt is a tool, among many, a rather poor one, that I rarely use, but this opinion is in the minority.  It's slow to animate, and it only (auto) hits 5 targets, with no gauntlet component.  A tank has many attacks, PBAoE, some have a ranged attack, all with gauntlet.  All extremely more effective than taunt at holding aggro.  Taunt is for the periphery, but my go to is a attack (PBAoE or ranged) if I have one.  If you're only using taunt to tank, you'll do it poorly.  You have so many other tools that are much more effective, use them first, use taunt to pull aggro that escaped you back from your teammates.
 

The survivability "triangle"

Regeneration, resistance, and defense form what I call the survivability "triangle."  Damage output can be considered a fourth leg, if something is dead, it can't hurt you.  Various powersets provide varying amounts of this triangle.  Some are easy to augment with IO sets, eg, defense, while regeneration and especially resistance are difficult to significantly augment through IO sets.  You'll frequently see soft-capped defense on many ATs, boosting resistance more than 10% is very hard to do via IO sets, while regeneration is somewhat in between.  Defense is fairly easily debuffed through lethal and radiation attacks, quickly stripping your tank of their primary survivability leg.  Regeneration and resistance debuffs are rare, and where they exist in the game, are also low in effect.
 

Tanker powerset taunt auras
 

Some tanker armor powerset taunt aura provide an additional benefit per foe in melee range, some of these can be huge, making the difference between an unstoppable God, and a pleb.
 

Invulnerablity:  Invicibility provides +defense per foe in melee range.  Huge benefit, it's what turns your squishy tank at level 17 into a beast at level 18, susceptable to defense debuff

Willpower:  Rise to the Challenge provides +regeneration per foe in melee range.  Another huge benefit

Radiation armor:  Beta decay provides +recharge per foe in melee range.  Weak benefit, the per foe buff is low, and the overall cap is low.  Compared to the other tanker auras, this one contributes little to survivability

Shield defense:  Against all Odds provides +damage per foe in melee range.  Decent benefit, reduces enemy damage, buffs yours

So, what now?

I've explained threat generation, basic aggro management, and survivability.  So you may be asking, "So how do I tank?"  Like I said earlier, for me, tanking is a mindset.  I find it hard to not try to tank on every AT I play, with varying results.  I'll try to boil down this mindset.
 

Aggressiveness--the best tankers I've seen in the game throw themselves into danger, regardless of the threat.  I typically test my tanks to destruction as they level up, especially if I'm playing a new powerset for me.  I learn what my tank can take, and what they can't, so I can tank on the edge of survivability.  Remember, your job is to take alpha strikes, reposition mobs to maximize team damage output, and keep your eye on your team's health, so see where aggro has bled off on the team, and get it back.  In my experience, timid tanks are the most frustrating, they are difficult to teach, and it's an extremely bad habit that is difficult to unlearn.  Don't learn it.  What is a timid tank?  One that hesitates before engaging, waiting for the team to show up before jumping in.  You could be using that time to gather aggro and group mobs, your team will catch up. 

Also, tanks don't run.  If you die, your team dies, most of the time.  If you run, you likely die, and so does your team.  Tanks hold the line at all costs.
 

Herding--your primary job is to reposition mobs for your team to annihilate.  Here, taunt will simply not cut it.  You must use gauntlet, for its taunt component, and more importantly, the range debuff.  Run into a mob, weave through them so you hit all foes in the mob at least once with your taunt aura (preferably twice).  Move to next mob, repeat.  You should now have aggro on two full mobs, all looking to pile on top of you.  Aggro at this stage is pretty weak, so your team will have to be patient until they all pile on top of you.  Lock down aggro with a PBAoE attack, and then the team can unload at will.  Controllers, please try not to lock down mobs during this process.  It results in a bunch of spread out mobs
whose threat table you will quickly rise to the top of, and it's difficult to unscramble that egg.  Don't do it.  You only have to keep your finger off the trigger for a second or two.  Trust me, the wait will be worth it, or, you will likely face the wrath of multiple enemies who will kill you.  Your choice.
 

Remember I said earlier it's possible to bypass the aggro cap?  It's based on the threat table.  Even if you're over the aggro cap, if you've hit a foe with your gauntlet, you go into their threat table for the duration of the taunt.  When foes that are within the aggro cap die, if you're still on the threat table of other foes, they will come to you once a spot opens up in your aggro cap.  I think most taunt durations in gauntlet are about 15 seconds,
so you will only loosely hold this virtual aggro and not for very long, and it's easily overpowered by your teammates, but it works nonetheless.  

 

Some mobs have mostly ranged attacks, and the range debuff in gauntlet isn't enough to get them to pile on top of you from this "brush pass."  For these, you can either marinate them in gauntlet long enough to debuff their range enough for them to follow you, or you can find a spot that breaks line of sight, forcing them to come and pile on top of you, or both.  Breaking line of sight isn't always possible though.  Rikti on a mothership raid require both gauntlet marination and line of sight breaking to effectively herd your aggro cap(+) to the bowl.
 

Finally, there's nothing wrong with fighting mob to mob, and forgoing mass herding.  If the situation, environment, and foes warrants it, herd away.  If it's slowing things down, don't bother.

 

Multi-tanking

 

At times, you'll have multiple tanks on a team, each with their own aggro cap.  One should be the primary tank, first to go in, while the others support and feed that primary tank with additional mobs.  Don't "cock block" your fellow tanks by stepping on their aggro train while they are herding, get your own!  Bring them back to the primary tank, and when you and your team have whittled away most, leap out and go grab the next group, a technique callled "leap frogging."  Your team can mob up the stragglers, by alternating primary and supporting tanks, with support tanks feeding the primary, and swapping roles, you can steamroll through most content.

Taste the rainbow

Finally, you have a full tray of inspirations, and they drop all the time.  Keep a break free, for when you've been end drained and lose all your toggles, maybe a couple of blues, maybe a row of purples/oranges.  Don't be that guy/gal who dies with a full tray of uneaten skittles.
 

Conclusion

I think that's most of the basics.  Learn your tank as you level up.  Test to destruction.  Be aggressive.  Use gauntlet!  See you next Tanker Tuesday!

Edited May 10, 2021 by Kiloton

[Wolfenstein]

As a person who has found a (newer) love for the Tanker AT, thank you for putting this into words I can understand.  Most of it is common sense, I guess, but being able to read and visualize it at the same time, helped greatly.  I too have quite a bit of Tanks in the clubhouse.  They are easy to get a team with, but more importantly for me, easy to run mish after mish without the need of teaming.  I try to "practice" while soloing also.  I always try to let the team know that I'm new(er) at the AT but I'm always trying to get better.  After reading this, my biggest problem is going to the next group when the current one is just about dead.  I find myself hanging around more and more until the end of the fight, rather than starting the herding of the next group(s), while the team is finishing up the final one/two.  Another thing I find "scary" as a newer Tank is not knowing/remembering where to go on the map or how the TF is laid out.  So I find myself waiting so that others can lead the way and THEN jump in and start to Tank.  Just things I guess I'll learn and remember as I do them more and more.  Thanks again for the write up, looking forward to next weeks lesson!

[Kiloton]

Looked up the differences between Tanker and Brute gauntlet from the patch notes from Issue 26, page 4.  From what I understand, tanks get gauntlet on anything that costs endurance, brutes only get gauntlet on things that do damage or takes an accuracy enhancement.  From this, I assume invincibility on brutes does not provide gauntlet, nor does any other "taunt" aura that doesn't accept an accuracy enhancement.
 

• Gauntlet is now applied via a global proc.
  • Any single target power that takes endurance cost enhancements will trigger an AoE taunt.
  • Every AoE power that takes endurance cost enhancements will taunt the enemies it hit.
  • All Auras that take endurance cost enhancements will taunt the enemies they hit.
  • Radius is now the same for all attacks (10ft, 5 targets max)
  • Taunt scale is now 10% higher than the Brute's.
• Brute PunchVoke is now also applied via a global proc.
  • Any power that either inflicts damage or takes accuracy enhancements will trigger PunchVoke.

[Warboss]

4 hours ago, Kiloton said:

Taste the rainbow

Finally, you have a full tray of inspirations, and they drop all the time.  Keep a break free, for when you've been end drained and lose all your toggles, maybe a couple of blues, maybe a row of purples/oranges.  Don't be that guy/gal who dies with a full tray of uneaten skittles.
 

 

I begrudgingly do this, but that's just me and I am getting better at it (somewhat..). Not that it's wrong, I just feel I should be able to design my Tanks to us insps as little as possible. That said, it's only MY approach, the skittles are in the game for a reason. I'm just a stubborn Tanker.

 

4 hours ago, Kiloton said:

Conclusion

I think that's most of the basics.  Learn your tank as you level up.  Test to destruction.  Be aggressive.  Use gauntlet!  See you next Tanker Tuesday!

 

This, if there's one thing I could tell someone, it's to understand what your Toon/Tank can do, and Tankers are really fun to push to the limit. Massive pulls in TT, taking on AVs, and completing raids/content that we (historically) "weren't supposed to be able to...".

 

Thanks for the write up Kilo.

Edited May 6, 2021 by Warboss
better wording

[TaxibotJoe]

6 hours ago, Kiloton said:

Taste the rainbow

Finally, you have a full tray of inspirations, and they drop all the time.  Keep a break free, for when you've been end drained and lose all your toggles, maybe a couple of blues, maybe a row of purples/oranges.  Don't be that guy/gal who dies with a full tray of uneaten skittles.

related: consider macros to combine less useful inspirations into more useful inspirations; in other words, don’t die to defense debuffs with a tray full of break free and catch a breath candies 

[Kiloton]

While I don't recommend carrying more than one break free for emergencies, or a couple of blues, that's a good idea.  What's the macro?

[Ukase]

2 minutes ago, Kiloton said:

While I don't recommend carrying more than one break free for emergencies, or a couple of blues, that's a good idea.  What's the macro?

This is an archived site; as such, there are times when I have to hit refresh to get it to load. But, it has all the macros for combining inspirations. 

https://web.archive.org/web/20120904041854/http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=125603
 

[Hjarki]

Some notes:

• Gauntlet does not appear to have a -range debuff, only the Taunt powers from secondaries. Here's the entry for Gauntlet: https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=redirects.inherents.gauntlet_proc_aura&at=tanker
• Players have an aggro cap of 17. While your effects (including Taunt) will remain on the target if it drops off your aggro list, you will not hold threat on more than 17 targets regardless of the effects you have on them and if mobs are too far away from you, they will not re-aggro. Moreover, having just a taunt effect is not a significant source of threat.
• 'Herding' in the classic sense doesn't work. There's no benefit to super-large groups of enemies since everyone has AE target caps (and most of those caps are less than the aggro cap anyway) and going over your aggro cap just means you'll get people killed. Mostly you're going to see melee leap-frogging one another from spawn to spawn.
• Not moving is perhaps the most critical skill a tank can learn. Because the tank is the focal point of the battle, you want to pick your spot and stay there until it's time to move to the next spawn. If you're running around, you'll be disrupting your own group's targeting and making the fight much harder than it has to be. Once you've engaged, don't chase after enemies - either pull them in with ranged attacks or just deal with the fact that they're not in the scrum.
• Breaking LOS is a legitimate tactic, but one that should be used sparingly because it's incredibly slow and normally unnecessary. In most cases, holding aggro on the ranged that refuse to close distance is unnecessary - your own ranged can easily win the one-on-one fight - as long as you're holding aggro on the general group (so your Blaster doesn't end up in a one-on-many fight).

 

[Kiloton]

4 minutes ago, Hjarki said:

Some notes:

• Gauntlet does not appear to have a -range debuff, only the Taunt powers from secondaries. Here's the entry for Gauntlet: https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=redirects.inherents.gauntlet_proc_aura&at=tanker
• Players have an aggro cap of 17. While your effects (including Taunt) will remain on the target if it drops off your aggro list, you will not hold threat on more than 17 targets regardless of the effects you have on them and if mobs are too far away from you, they will not re-aggro. Moreover, having just a taunt effect is not a significant source of threat.
• 'Herding' in the classic sense doesn't work. There's no benefit to super-large groups of enemies since everyone has AE target caps (and most of those caps are less than the aggro cap anyway) and going over your aggro cap just means you'll get people killed. Mostly you're going to see melee leap-frogging one another from spawn to spawn.
• Not moving is perhaps the most critical skill a tank can learn. Because the tank is the focal point of the battle, you want to pick your spot and stay there until it's time to move to the next spawn. If you're running around, you'll be disrupting your own group's targeting and making the fight much harder than it has to be. Once you've engaged, don't chase after enemies - either pull them in with ranged attacks or just deal with the fact that they're not in the scrum.
• Breaking LOS is a legitimate tactic, but one that should be used sparingly because it's incredibly slow and normally unnecessary. In most cases, holding aggro on the ranged that refuse to close distance is unnecessary - your own ranged can easily win the one-on-one fight - as long as you're holding aggro on the general group (so your Blaster doesn't end up in a one-on-many fight).

 

Good points. 

From my experience on Rikti MSR raids, gauntlet does seem to have a range debuff component, since the Rikti on the mothership have insane ranged attacks, and they won't pile on me until I've marinated them good in gauntlet.  It's the only way to get them to follow, barring breaking line of sight.  I'm curious now about my experience vs. your link as to what is causing the range debuff, as I don't use taunt enough to envelope full aggro cap when I'm herding a group to the bowl.

Herding makes sense if you're multi-tanking, but I concede your point.  At least gathering up aggro cap so the team can move from AE target cap to AE target cap.

Agreed on picking a spot and staying there.  Especially important when multi-tanking.  Lead has to pick a spot for the support tanks to feed mobs, or else you step on each other's aggro trains.

Breaking LOS isn't ideal, but debuffing range enough to get them to group on you takes time.

[Hjarki]

1 hour ago, Kiloton said:

From my experience on Rikti MSR raids, gauntlet does seem to have a range debuff component, since the Rikti on the mothership have insane ranged attacks, and they won't pile on me until I've marinated them good in gauntlet.  It's the only way to get them to follow, barring breaking line of sight.  I'm curious now about my experience vs. your link as to what is causing the range debuff, as I don't use taunt enough to envelope full aggro cap when I'm herding a group to the bowl.

Very few enemies are purely ranged. The only ones I can think of off-hand would be things like Rikti drones or various floating Psionic enemies. Almost everything else has, at the very least, a brawl-type attack. But there are plenty of enemies that are mostly ranged. These enemies will try to exhaust their (good) ranged attacks before they resort to any sort of melee attack.

 

1 hour ago, Kiloton said:

Herding makes sense if you're multi-tanking, but I concede your point.  At least gathering up aggro cap so the team can move from AE target cap to AE target cap.

Even with multi-tanking, you're running afoul of the target cap. While you can certainly pack 100 mobs into a small area, that doesn't change the fact that you're only able to damage 16 of them at once (and frequently less than that). So you need some sort of synergy effect to justify doing it over simply having each tank take their own little group.

 

There are certainly reasons to do this. If you have a Kinetics players in your group, they can only pick one direction to go but they can buff the entire team. So it may prove more worthwhile to keep the entire group together so everyone can get the +damage buff. However, even then, trying to do much more than simply maintain at 16 (which may involve grabbing other groups before the current one is dead) doesn't make much sense.

[Gobbledygook]

6 hours ago, Warboss said:

 

I begrudgingly do this, but that's just me and I am getting better at it (somewhat..). Not that it's wrong, I just feel I should be able to design my Tanks to us insps as little as possible. That said, it's only MY approach, the skittles are in the game for a reason. I'm just a stubborn Tanker.

I believe this same stubbornness is what led us scrappers to solo AV's with no Temps or insps.

 

Next project is a Tank to solo all the TF's @ +4/x8

[tidge]

Good advice in the OP, but with a couple of minor sour notes (to my eyes, YMMV) that prevent me from applying a "like". Nothing worth starting a discussion over.

 

Story time, just for discussion.

 

I recently joined a Ms Liberty TF with my Tank that was being run by another Tank. No big deal, my casual observation is that we were roughly equal in terms of survivability but it did result in some odd (team) behavior that I hadn't witnessed before. When we ended up 'in the future' as part of Doc Aeon's trap, the other tank went through the effort to round up 3 of the 4 AVs while I held down the first... and then did the same sort of thing with the "big four" in the final mission. This struck me as a a reasonable way to demonstrate "I'm Tough", by my clock it actually made the TF missions go longer than they otherwise would have if we had 100% of the team focused on 1 (or 2) AVs at a time.

 

The ONLY complaint I have about having two tanks on that TF was that when it came time to take down Lord Recluse, he ended up being 'pinned' at the top of a tower, which made focusing fire from the team difficult. (I think opinions can vary if this was good or not vis-a-vis LR's specific attacks). The Dominators can take some of this blame, but I feel like the competing tanks made it hard to get him to move.

 

On a completely different tangent: I have grown to LOVE "Tanker Stealth" on missions in arcs such a Manticore's TF. I'm specifically thinking about the magic combination of missions where the team doesn't NEED a tank, and there is a desire to 'get to the glowie' ASAP, and the tank is the fastest toon on the map... the trick is to get past the early mobs (who will be aggro-triggered, but will eventually focus on the non-sprinters)... and then hit the aggro cap with some completely OTHER spawn (that won't lose interest in you) and get to the glowie without upsetting the nearby baddies. 95% of the time I just keep my Tank near the door mowing down baddies, but every once in a while it is fun to take a different approach.

[Kiloton]

11 hours ago, Hjarki said:

Even with multi-tanking, you're running afoul of the target cap. While you can certainly pack 100 mobs into a small area, that doesn't change the fact that you're only able to damage 16 of them at once (and frequently less than that). So you need some sort of synergy effect to justify doing it over simply having each tank take their own little group.

 

There are certainly reasons to do this. If you have a Kinetics players in your group, they can only pick one direction to go but they can buff the entire team. So it may prove more worthwhile to keep the entire group together so everyone can get the +damage buff. However, even then, trying to do much more than simply maintain at 16 (which may involve grabbing other groups before the current one is dead) doesn't make much sense.

I can think of two examples off the top of my head of AoE attacks that hit more than 16 targets:  Ion Judgement (30 targets for T3, 40 targets for T4) and ground zero (PBAoE in rad melee, 30 targets).  There are probably more, I'm not overly familiar with blaster ranged AoEs.  Not the norm, sure, but they exist.  Gathering a "judgement worthy" mob is certainly satisfying, if only to see a screen full of orange ion judgement.

[MTeague]

There is a reason I mostly solo on my tankers. 

 

I like having a couple of characters who just DON'T DIE. Period. Against Anything.  Defend the Midnight Mansion?  Yup, just keep slogging away and watch the mobs start to have conniptions when your tanker simply refuses to fall down. 

 

But only on rare occasions do I want to be tank for a group of players. I main tanked for a Warcraft raiding guild for 8 years. I feel like I've already served my time in hell, and I don't care to be the "pace setter" whose probably always got people somewhat angry at him for moving onto the next group too soon, or not moving onto the next group quickly enough.  I generally only tank for groups of people I already know, and who I know are doing casual kill-all missions without concern for how fast we clear, who don't get all "WTF are you doing typing banter? You're the tank! You're not here to entertain us, you're here to pull shit! Keep GOING!!!"

 

Maybe I just had some real bad luck on my first few forays pug tanking.

But I think what most groups want, is simply not how I'm interested in playing my tanker. 

So, solo's a lot. 

[tidge]

18 hours ago, MTeague said:

There is a reason I mostly solo on my tankers. 

 

I like having a couple of characters who just DON'T DIE. Period. Against Anything.  Defend the Midnight Mansion?  Yup, just keep slogging away and watch the mobs start to have conniptions when your tanker simply refuses to fall down.

 

I've been revisiting my Tanker with the explicit intention of playing different styles with different PUG, just to see how the players react. I don't do this as some sort of grand social experiment, its more along the lines of exploring different corners of gameplay. The main thing that gets me to STOP experimenting this way and settle into a more commonly recognized play style is if one or more members of the PUG are in over their heads; as much fun as I may get from my squishy characters pushing far past the limits of what they can handle I don't assume that other players feel that way.

[ninja surprise]

On 5/6/2021 at 8:06 PM, Hjarki said:

Some notes:

• Breaking LOS is a legitimate tactic, but one that should be used sparingly because it's incredibly slow and normally unnecessary. In most cases, holding aggro on the ranged that refuse to close distance is unnecessary - your own ranged can easily win the one-on-one fight - as long as you're holding aggro on the general group (so your Blaster doesn't end up in a one-on-many fight).

 

 

Breaking line of sight is a great way to force grumpy mobs to gather into a larger battle.

Playstyle note: Assuming the player is playing aggro and crowd control, and not personally trying to defeat everything:

Taunt a group far away and it'll approach to within their debuffed max range. But things like Rikti Drones, Mentalists, and other primarily ranged attackers will still stay far enough away to be out of the team's AoE.

But if the tank runs back and past the group, either just around the corner to break LOS or far enough past the group, the taunted mobs will follow until they run into the rest of the team who will suddenly say "Woah! More mobs dude!" and start attacking them.

Then you jump right back into the fray and commence punchvoke again.

 

On 5/6/2021 at 12:20 PM, Kiloton said:

I've been tanking in this game since shortly after it went live.  My main is an invulnerability/super strength tank (currently vet level 100 on HC), I've also played [snip], shield/SR, [snip]

 

Confused me here - was SR supposed to be Super Reflexes or one of the attack secondaries?

[Kiloton]

On 5/8/2021 at 1:36 PM, ninja surprise said:

Confused me here - was SR supposed to be Super Reflexes or one of the attack secondaries?

Yeah, fat fingered that.  Shield/mace, SR/SJ.  Edited to correct.

[Andreah]

On 5/7/2021 at 10:15 AM, tidge said:

TF with my Tank that was being run by another Tank. No big deal, my casual observation is that we were roughly equal in terms of survivability but it did result in some odd (team) behavior that I hadn't witnessed before.

This is a bit off from the full context of Tidge's post, but on most normal teams when I join and find another tank who's either leading or joined before I do, I say right out front in team that I'll be off-tanking and the other tank will be main tank, unless they'd prefer otherwise. Sometimes I have to be extra clear -- "Stay with So-n-so, they're main tank, don't follow me if I bounce around"

 

An off-tank also has the stern responsibility to not make a mess of things. Which they can. Easily. 

[Andreah]

On 5/7/2021 at 2:38 PM, MTeague said:

"WTF are you doing typing banter? You're the tank! You're not here to entertain us, you're here to pull shit! Keep GOING!!!"

Lol, nice. Sounds like the sort of team that's not fun to be on.

[Sir Myshkin]

On 5/11/2021 at 2:53 PM, Andreah said:

This is a bit off from the full context of Tidge's post, but on most normal teams when I join and find another tank who's either leading or joined before I do, I say right out front in team that I'll be off-tanking and the other tank will be main tank, unless they'd prefer otherwise. Sometimes I have to be extra clear -- "Stay with So-n-so, they're main tank, don't follow me if I bounce around"

I've joined teams that have differed in the past. Got picked up on my Ice Armor while there was a Granite previously on the team, the Granite differed responsibility to me, glued to my side and detoggled all of their armor shields and went full rogue melee. It was rather amusing.

 

I don't prime Tanks, and my other one doesn't even have the actual Taunt power of the pure fact he doesn't require it between raw damage, gauntlet, and debuff capacity to grab enemy aggro and hold it. It's fairly impossible for him to "alt tank" without moving into a separate room from the team.

 

On 5/7/2021 at 2:38 PM, MTeague said:

I generally only tank for groups of people I already know, and who I know are doing casual kill-all missions without concern for how fast we clear, who don't get all "WTF are you doing typing banter? You're the tank! You're not here to entertain us, you're here to pull shit! Keep GOING!!!"

 

"Hey team, I brought you a present!"

 

 

On 5/6/2021 at 1:20 PM, Kiloton said:

Basic aggro mechanics

 

Primary Level: Visibility, Damage, Debuff

Secondary Level: Taunt and Threat Level

Taunt, the act of, and/or the power that creates it can insert itself at any stage of the primary level and supersede any single aspect of that tree. Threat Level is something modified by things like Damage, or powers like Super Speed. Two players standing side by side with varying threat levels, the higher level will take priority response by the enemy.

 

You could call this the three D's of Tanking. Distraction (Taunt or Visibility/LoS), Damage, Debuff.

 

Okay, no one really calls them that, but that's basically what it is.

 

It is possible for a player to strip aggro from a Tanker if they do enough damage to a target for their threat level to rise beyond what Taunt modifies for a Tanker. One of the best examples to see something like this in game is the B.A.F. Incarnate Trial with Seige AV since its red ring component is built around aggro management on Seige. When aggro is developed, a ring appear, as threat level grows, more rings appear until a third generates and the character is locked down. The faster that process builds, the faster aggro was obtained. My Taunt-less Rad/SS/Soul Tanker can obtain three rings within about 15/s, and is incapable of going "whole hog" on Seige during that phase beyond a few pot shots without getting locked out the entire time even if there are multiple other Tankers present because of his damage level, and the ability to stack additional debuffs onto the AV in conjunction with Gauntlet effects.