The Strongest Tank

[Sovera]

1 hour ago, Hjarki said:

Think about Lord Recluse on Relentless. You're nicely soft-capped at 45%. The tower requires another 30%. His Praetorian hit requires another 18.75%. Relentless requires another 30%. You have no temporary powers/inspirations. With Barrier Core Epiphany, you can probably survive 10 secs if you have a extremely high defense build. After 10 sec? You're probably toast without some significant help.

 

That help probably isn't coming from Storm Kick either since there's a good chance you're not going to able to hit Recluse with it reliably.

 

Most of the time when we're talking about 'Strongest Tank', we're implicitly using a model like "can solo ITF". Once you start getting into the extreme situations Relentless will open up, I'd argue it's far less about what you can do independently of others than how effective your baseline is for the support others provide.

 

Right now, I'm definitely leaning towards the "Super Reflexes is King of Relentless". While there are a host of issues with the set, it can achieve sufficient native Defense against all positionals to deal with the run-of-the-mill challenges in Relentless - 75% Defense is not an unreasonable goal for SR. Against Lord Recluse, it can hit that 123.75% for 3 minutes. In theory, two SR Tankers could tank worst case Lord Recluse all day long.

 

 

 

 

You have a good point. I have not tried it yet but the knife edge of Fire Armor using Barrier as a panic button may have collapsed at last. It did ok in the ITF with some minimal kitting, but now? Hmm. Well, with all the extra support these runs will have it may still work.

[Xandyr]

5 hours ago, Hjarki said:

,I'd argue it's far less about what you can do independently of others than how effective your baseline is for the support others provide.

 

 

 

This. I believe this is the intent. Having to RELY on your team. I'm looking forward to that aspect.

 Now, to figure out that best baseline to protect my team.

[Tsuko]

The strongest tank is a Brute with Sonic, Force Field and Cold buff 

 

Edited November 11, 2021 by Tsuko

[Hjarki]

33 minutes ago, Tsuko said:

The strongest tank is a Brute with Sonic, Force Field and Cold buff 

My suspicion is that healing will be mostly useless. For healing to be valuable, you need to hit a very narrow sliver between "obliterated in an instant" and "I scoff at your puny damage" - and that sliver shrinks the more you ramp up difficulty.

 

But a lot of other support mechanisms won't be all that great either.

 

Consider Cold. This is one of the top support sets right now, but primarily for its debuffing. However, all of that debuffing is based on a hit roll - against enemies with +30% Defense against you. If you're using a Defender build optimized for +4/x8, that means you're only going to be hitting 40% of the time (presuming +75% accuracy from 5x purples or the equivalent) with abilities that have such a long recharge that you won't get a chance to re-apply them in a timely fashion. So while the bubbles are nice, they're essentially all the set has to offer for our purposes unless you're building specifically for Relentless (and, even then, overcoming that +30% Defense isn't going to be particularly easy).

 

The same sort of reasoning applies across the defense sets. If you start with the assumption that heals aren't particularly useful and non-auto-hit abilities are unreliable, the value of a huge range of powers diminishes greatly.

 

Compounding this is the reality that if the Tanker is struggling, there's no chance for anyone without an Armor set to risk being anywhere near the enemies. A 45% S/L/R soft-capped Blaster or Defender does just fine in that solo ITF. Against Relentless? Anything that so much as glances at them is going to kill them. This alters the design philosophy of such AT.

 

Looking at the support sets, the two I see really shining in Relentless are Electric Affinity and Trick Arrow. Electric Affinity gives you very strong single target +hit/+defense (presumably for the Tanker) and a resist/status bubble for the team as well as some other various buffs to damage/end/recharge. While Trick Arrow is primarily a debuff set, the key debuffs are generally auto-hit (and often rapidly re-useable) while it also provides a resist bubble similar to EA.

[Hyperstrike]

On 11/7/2021 at 7:48 AM, BurningDezire said:

Title says it all! Any build/suggestions? I've got a Inv/DM that's pretty tough but it's never enough. Looking to fall asleep without concern while standing in front of LR. Don't care for DPS. Want to make a purebred tank. Hit me!

Post your build.

Betting that we can toughen up the build...

THEN you'll understand "tough enough".


Okay, CURRENTLY Stone tanks are generally the toughest.  You can cap out Defense, Resist and Regen.
It's just that there are some downsides to playing Stoners.

Outside of that, Invuln can be built into a Tank that's essentially 99.9% as tough as a Stoner.  WITHOUT the crippling downsides.

Edited November 11, 2021 by Hyperstrike

[DrunkFlux]

6 hours ago, Tsuko said:

The strongest tank is a Brute with Sonic, Force Field and Cold buff 

 

I know this is a bit of a joke and this'll be very obvious but....

 

I think it'll also be useful and greatly appreciated on Relentless, even critical, that teams do not neglect leadership: Maneuvers and Leadership: Tactics.  The more people with stacks of those in a team the more the to-hit and defense rates of the mobs will be counter-acted.  I do agree healing will be very weak/overly situation as it always is, even more-so with the damage buff.  And you still want to be killing the mobs efficiently, you'll NEED to-hit buffs that are consistently available.

 

Ranged AT's of all types should strongly consider support hybrid over assault.  Assault won't be as valuable because if you and teammates are dying, well damage isn't helping as much, especially when your damage is zero all the time from being dead.  Only pick assault if your like a defender/controller who's already buffing everyone elses defenses highly, even then, I still highly recommend getting the two leadership powers above, even more-so if your a defender.  And VEATs...well if they don't take the built in leadership powers they are just worthless teammates.

 

The most successful tanker will be the one with better support overall in relentless, rather than the one who's got the raw stats and very well built but is not well supported.

 

Support will just be far, far more valuable.

 

My blaster is already specced to better assist tankers in this regard, though I have to respec tactics in(planned to at some point anyways even before this difficulty came up, for the concept of "High performance in all other areas").

 

In fact if I decided to run a team on relentless I'd just flat-out exclude all who don't have those leadership powers and are IO'd out.  The what I call the Team Qirex rule(from the wipeout franchise, RIP): If your not the best, your unceremoniously shown the door.

 

Edit: On the last comment, I only take this kind of stance as, to be honest, I probably won't even touch relentless with a 50 foot pole:  Having to go with only the most extreme best teams with only top tier builds, powersets ect kind of imo goes against the spirit of the game.  The "LEadership tactics" requirement is what I consider to even be able to ENJOY the difficulty; missing a huge majority of your attacks is never fun, no matter the difficulty setting, less so if you know its from number fixing.

Edited November 11, 2021 by DrunkFlux

[BrandX]

Sad to see Dark Armor not mentioned...

 

I have the following...

 

88.96% S/L Resist

88.70% F/C Resist

61.26% Energy Resist

90% Negative Resist

52.2% Toxic Resist

90% Psionic Resist

...and that's all before the, Reactive Defense: Scaling Resist, kicks in.

 

46.9% Melee Defense

37.53% S/L Defense

 

And self heal and a -ToHit Aura.

 

Feels like one of the toughest tanks I've ever made!

 

 

Edited November 11, 2021 by BrandX

[Gobbledigook]

18 hours ago, BrandX said:

Sad to see Dark Armor not mentioned...

 

I have the following...

 

88.96% S/L Resist

88.70% F/C Resist

61.26% Energy Resist

90% Negative Resist

52.2% Toxic Resist

90% Psionic Resist

...and that's all before the, Reactive Defense: Scaling Resist, kicks in.

 

46.9% Melee Defense

37.53% S/L Defense

 

And self heal and a -ToHit Aura.

 

Feels like one of the toughest tanks I've ever made!

 

 

Defence and heal debuffs would really destroy a DarkA. Not to say they aren't very tough. very slightly ahead of my RadA Tanker, but below shield/invuln.

 

The combination of debuff resistant high defence with some decent resists buffed by the SMotTanker etc is just too hard to beat.

 

Taking no damage is better than trying to heal damage taken.

[BrandX]

25 minutes ago, Gobbledegook said:

Defence and heal debuffs would really destroy a DarkA. Not to say they aren't very tough. very slightly ahead of my RadA Tanker, but below shield/invuln.

 

The combination of debuff resistant high defence with some decent resists buffed by the SMotTanker etc is just too hard to beat.

 

Taking no damage is better than trying to heal damage taken.

 

I've found it survived well on ITF

[ZemX]

25 minutes ago, BrandX said:

I've found it survived well on ITF

 

Solo or on a team?  A typical L54 ITF with a team is kind of a pushover for any Incarnate Tank.  Enemies are no more than +3 and you have a team to back you up.  

 

I do fine as well on those ITFs with my RadA Tanker but when I tried an all-melee level 44, no-incarnate, no insp/temp, enemies buffed run?  That's where I got eaten and Invuln and Shield Tankers did better.  I have built as much debuff resistance as I can for things like recharge and toHit debuffs but I can't do anything about Defense.  So I end up defense floored and taking about double the damage that normally gets through.  Even to capped S/L/N that's not nothing.  

 

I do wonder how well DarkA's controls are helping mitigate the defense debuffs.  Do you find melee defense holds up?  Mine gets stripped easily to the point where I've respecced out of most defense bonuses.  It's basically no good in the only situation where I really need it.

[Werner]

57 minutes ago, BrandX said:

I've found it survived well on ITF

I found the same. A solo +4x8 enemies buffed ITF no temps no insps no deaths is doable on both my Katana/Dark Brute and Dark/MA Tanker. But it is dramatically easier to do it on my Shield/MA Tanker. My friend’s Invuln/SS Tanker also finds surviving that solo to be trivial, he’s just not built to do L54 AV DPS so can’t finish it solo. Dark Armor is tough enough for almost anything, and I’ve always been a fan of it. I just think that there are tougher primaries, that Dark Armor doesn’t make for The Strongest Tank.

Edited November 12, 2021 by Werner

[Werner]

11 minutes ago, ZemX said:

I do wonder how well DarkA's controls are helping mitigate the defense debuffs.

A lot. Absolutely. It’s a lot harder to debuff you when all the minions are wandering around in a daze. But it certainly does happen, and frequently. Even with the defense boost from Katana or Martial Arts, I have to monitor defense carefully and be ready to react at a moment’s notice with Barrier or by running. I’m sure it’s easier without setting enemies buffed. And harder with a secondary that doesn’t boost relevant defense.

[SeraphimKensai]

I have a DA/SS that pairs  a proc'd Handclap with Oppressive Gloom to help soft control some incoming DPS. It works pretty well in essentially giving me more tools to work with, but if too much -Defense gets in and eats away all my def my resistance is only going to take me so far. I also have to time out Rage so I know when I have a crash if I'm fighting a particularly tough mob. If it's common everyday trash well they can't kill me anyways so double stack rage for days on that.

[Pzn]

12 minutes ago, SeraphimKensai said:

I have a DA/SS that pairs  a proc'd Handclap with Oppressive Gloom to help soft control some incoming DPS. It works pretty well in essentially giving me more tools to work with, but if too much -Defense gets in and eats away all my def my resistance is only going to take me so far. I also have to time out Rage so I know when I have a crash if I'm fighting a particularly tough mob. If it's common everyday trash well they can't kill me anyways so double stack rage for days on that.

Have you tried capping slow resists with that combo?  I know right now you can only get to 95% (5 winter set bonuses+winters gift) but once they add that other slow unique from beta you'll be able to get 100% immunity.  I recently rebuilt my fire/SS to cap slow resist and being able to guarantee healing flames cooldown seemed to hold up better than defense without any DDR.  Dark regen is way stronger than HF so it might be worth considering.

Edited November 12, 2021 by Pzn

[SeraphimKensai]

9 minutes ago, Pzn said:

Have you tried capping slow resists with that combo?  I know right now you can only get to 95% (5 winter set bonuses+winters gift) but once they add that other slow unique from beta you'll be able to get 100% immunity.  I recently rebuilt my fire/SS to cap slow resist and being able to guarantee healing flames cooldown seemed to hold up better than defense without any DDR.  Dark regen is way stronger than HF so it might be worth considering.

I haven't tried it, but that does seem interesting. It can't hurt to throw together an alternate build in mids. The big issue though is that the heal requires a to hit roll, so there's a chance that it could miss, but with slow res cap it would be back up pretty quick for a 2nd attempt.

[Werner]

We all have Brawl, and often Boxing and/or a poor first attack that we're forced to take on a Tanker. Split Superior Blistering Cold across them and add a Winter's Gift somewhere to hit 65% with only a few slots. You might instead want the full set since the set bonuses are very good for many builds, and I prefer avoiding set mules where possible, but it's an option. I like to have very high slow resists. 

[Gobbledigook]

2 hours ago, BrandX said:

 

I've found it survived well on ITF

Me to just not as well as some other sets. Of the resist sets its probably the best.

 

I also have a Bio armor Tanker that does surprisingly well. Better than the rad or dark Tanker usually, just took me a while to get a good build.

Edited November 12, 2021 by Gobbledegook

[BrandX]

2 hours ago, ZemX said:

 

Solo or on a team?  A typical L54 ITF with a team is kind of a pushover for any Incarnate Tank.  Enemies are no more than +3 and you have a team to back you up.  

 

I do fine as well on those ITFs with my RadA Tanker but when I tried an all-melee level 44, no-incarnate, no insp/temp, enemies buffed run?  That's where I got eaten and Invuln and Shield Tankers did better.  I have built as much debuff resistance as I can for things like recharge and toHit debuffs but I can't do anything about Defense.  So I end up defense floored and taking about double the damage that normally gets through.  Even to capped S/L/N that's not nothing.  

 

I do wonder how well DarkA's controls are helping mitigate the defense debuffs.  Do you find melee defense holds up?  Mine gets stripped easily to the point where I've respecced out of most defense bonuses.  It's basically no good in the only situation where I really need it.

 

Haven't tried it solo for a whole run, done the speed runs to seers and crystals and did just fine.

 

Never though to try solo, as I just don't know if my Titan Weapon secondary is going to have enough ST DPS to even try it, but it seems like a thing to try when I get bored at some point.

[ZemX]

33 minutes ago, BrandX said:

Never though to try solo, as I just don't know if my Titan Weapon secondary is going to have enough ST DPS to even try it, but it seems like a thing to try when I get bored at some point.

 

Was just curious how it handled the Cims debuffing without other support.  Sounds like from what Werner said the Dark auras help reduce that incoming debuff.  Probably tougher in the face of them then than my RadA.  And while I absolutely love RadA for how it play (especially since putting a knockdown proc in Ground Zero!) I would probably not ever vote it Toughest Tank just due to the debuff weakness.  As much as I can build in debuff resistance I have, but lacking uncrackable defense or enough active mitigation, it's still too vulnerable in the toughest challenges.  It needs to lean on Incarnates where others like Invuln don't.

 

Really good discussion here.

[BrandX]

6 hours ago, ZemX said:

 

Was just curious how it handled the Cims debuffing without other support.  Sounds like from what Werner said the Dark auras help reduce that incoming debuff.  Probably tougher in the face of them then than my RadA.  And while I absolutely love RadA for how it play (especially since putting a knockdown proc in Ground Zero!) I would probably not ever vote it Toughest Tank just due to the debuff weakness.  As much as I can build in debuff resistance I have, but lacking uncrackable defense or enough active mitigation, it's still too vulnerable in the toughest challenges.  It needs to lean on Incarnates where others like Invuln don't.

 

Really good discussion here.

 

Going to have to give it another run thru, as it's been awhile, since I play my main and have been focusing on finally finding a fun Dominator.  No +5ed Enhancements and missing 3 Purple IOs (out of 5) in one power.  So, the build is pretty close to complete.  I'm sure the build would be even tougher with Ageless (that gives the Defense Debuff Resist, right?) but I went the Teleport Destiny for concept. 😛

 

However, I didn't die (self rez if I do) and Self heal comes back quick with Cloak of Fear (didn't take Gloom) for it's -7.5% To-Hit.

 

Maybe I'll give it a go on ITF tomorrow (today is go into work early)

[Tsuko]

14 hours ago, Gobbledegook said:

Defence and heal debuffs would really destroy a DarkA. Not to say they aren't very tough. very slightly ahead of my RadA Tanker, but below shield/invuln.

 

The combination of debuff resistant high defence with some decent resists buffed by the SMotTanker etc is just too hard to beat.

 

Taking no damage is better than trying to heal damage taken.

 

At some point during the ASF beta testing, i soloed up to the Princess in max hard mode with a Rad ice tanker

 

Well, it took me in the 3 hours range and i dont think i could kill Zoe 🙂

 

On 11/11/2021 at 6:57 PM, DrunkFlux said:

Ito be honest, I probably won't even touch relentless with a 50 foot pole:  Having to go with only the most extreme best teams with only top tier builds, powersets ect kind of imo goes against the spirit of the game.  The "LEadership tactics" requirement is what I consider to even be able to ENJOY the difficulty; missing a huge majority of your attacks is never fun, no matter the difficulty setting, less so if you know its from number fixing.

 

Nothing is really a must have in the ASF, it makes 4 months, we break our teeth on it, testing every stage of developement and i saw improblable setup doing it, even sometimes with great success.

 

The only requirements for Relentless are :

• Loving and playing 100% your toon
• Having a team with support and control
• People awaken and not drunk

Edited November 13, 2021 by Tsuko

[Bill Z Bubba]

7 hours ago, Tsuko said:

and not drunk

 

Pfft. Challenge accepted.

[ZemX]

2 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Pfft. Challenge accepted.

 

Drunken Master of the Aeon Strike Force?

[Tsuko]

1 hour ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

Pfft. Challenge accepted.

 

i ll come to buff for your run 🙂

[Haijinx]

On 11/11/2021 at 12:57 PM, DrunkFlux said:

I know this is a bit of a joke and this'll be very obvious but....

 

I think it'll also be useful and greatly appreciated on Relentless, even critical, that teams do not neglect leadership: Maneuvers and Leadership: Tactics. 

 

I feel the danger of this is tiny.

 

We already have Eleventy Million threads about what Primary And Secondary Powers people can skip so they can take Vengeance.

 

Besides, I'd rather less people worry about so many freaking Leadership powers and maybe play ATs with Support in them.  1 Force Field Support character is better than a whole Team of Maneuvers and I don't have to poke around waiting for people to stay within 60 feet of me.