What AT is best for tanking multiple groups? 'cause "Tank" ain't it.

[Scarlet Shocker]

The more I read this thread and the more I reread the OPs missive I can't help but feel that he wants to control all the things like one allegedly could back in Issue 3.

 

Game has changed. It allows all ATs to contribute in meaningful ways  rather than "I'm herding to here" mentalities. Tanks today are pretty well where they should be in a functioning team.

 

Here's a nice tune

 

[Sovera]

MMs are not a good choice for tanking. On paper it may seem so, but in actuality the minions are weak and paper thin so a few hits and they are all dead and it's resummon, re-upgrade, they died, re-summon, re-upgrade.

 

Even top builds with minions at defense caps the minions remain paper thin.

 

 

MMs are great, IMO, for an offense oriented buffer playstyle. Any other AT has to choose whether to click the buff button or click the attack button, but a MM will let their six minions run around do damage while they simply focus on healing and buffing the team (minions included).

 

But it's not all roses. A regular buffer can also drop a nuke every 40-ish seconds that will do most of what the MM minions would have done but in three seconds and then not worry about the endless resummon and re-upgrade cycle.

[Erratic1]

8 hours ago, Erratic1 said:

 

Sound like an argument for an AT based proc adjustment. 

 

This is wrong. 

 

The adjustment should be universal and simply be based on the number of procs in a power.

[Neiska]

1 hour ago, Jacktar said:

 

In answer to the last sentence…….

I dual box a Bots/Time Mm and a Bots/Elec Mm, the second is the lead and the first goes on follow and I have Group Fly on all the time. Both set to aggresive and then we just float above the large outdoors ruined city farm that has only melee powers foes. I then just meander about the map raining death on all below. Loads of aggro herding and no return fire so no survival problems! 

I did not invent this idea just copied it from a better player to whom I offer my thanks.

 

I started with robots, but I dislike the changes done to them. These days I tend to favor Demons. I am leveling up a Necro/Nature MM now, but its not to farm with, its to play with a friend as well as check out the new Necromancy. But I don't play robots much anymore, because my robot farms actually take measurably longer than they did before. They were 4 or so minutes before, now they are around 7 or 8. I tend to favor Meteor maps for MM farming. But if I want a more relaxed MM farm I do city map too. I did write a guide on MM farming. I am not sure if I "invented" the idea, as I imagine it may have been done on live, well before my time. But when I invite others I'm often told people never seen MMs farm before.

[Neiska]

27 minutes ago, Sovera said:

MMs are not a good choice for tanking. On paper it may seem so, but in actuality the minions are weak and paper thin so a few hits and they are all dead and it's resummon, re-upgrade, they died, re-summon, re-upgrade.

 

Even top builds with minions at defense caps the minions remain paper thin.

 

 

MMs are great, IMO, for an offense oriented buffer playstyle. Any other AT has to choose whether to click the buff button or click the attack button, but a MM will let their six minions run around do damage while they simply focus on healing and buffing the team (minions included).

 

But it's not all roses. A regular buffer can also drop a nuke every 40-ish seconds that will do most of what the MM minions would have done but in three seconds and then not worry about the endless resummon and re-upgrade cycle.

 

MM pets can have the same DEF and Resists as Tankers do, but have far fewer hitpoints and no aggro tools. You "can" tank or swarm with them, but its a lot of work for dubious returns doing something that other ATs can do better and do it far easier. If you try to tank on a MM you have only provoke as an aggro tool, where even a Bio Scrapper will peel enemies off you, much less a brute or tanker, or even a blaster going full burn. And that's not talking about pets and AoE's either, which is the MMs big weakness. But some MMs can be made fantastically durable, equal to many brutes or tankers in terms of what they can endure damage wise. But I wouldn't recommend trying to hold aggro with a MM in a standard group setup no. Your pets simply won't keep the mobs attention. But I wouldn't call MM pets paper thin either. Honestly it really depends on what you are fighting and the difficulty, but I have MMs that can skip through +4/8 with ease, far easier than my Widow or Scrapper. 

[Haijinx]

Why is this thread still?

[Luminara]

13 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

Why is this thread still?

[Haijinx]

Thread premise - 

My Tank can manage more aggro and survive more attacks than any MMO I've ever played, but seriously its not enough! 

 

OP ASK - 

Can't some other AT manage more aggro and survive than the AT specifically intended to manage aggro and survive? 

 

Thread point - 

None 

 

 

[Sovera]

Sure, but it costs no money to ask these questions and anyone not interested can abandon the thread. In the meanwhile the OP has had several answers that showed alternative options for their goals so I think that there was a point.

[Mopery]

2 hours ago, Luminara said:

Quick! You grab its wallet, I'll grab its tricorder.

Edited May 12 by Mopery

[BlackSpectre]

There's no way to hold all the aggro for multiple groups. Taunt is the best power to keep mobs off of squishies, but to be effective when pulling more than 2 groups you need high recharge for it. If you pull too many mobs then even that won't suffice. Also keep in mind that if you are already at aggro cap, the few mobs you aggro with Taunt will break aggro on the same number of mobs who were already aggroed, and they will peal off and attack other targets.

 

Homecoming has been steadily increasing the damage done by tanks because the role of a tank is no longer to hold all of the aggro and keep the team safe. Tanks are really just tougher scrappers.

 

[kryori]

11 hours ago, Sovera said:

 

Tankers do substantial damage for actual gameplay. While leveling I hit Build-up, use my two PbAoEs and all minions are dead and lieutenants are at half HP. Can other ATs do this? Yes. Can they even do more? Yes. Do they more damage? Also yes. Does this mean Tankers hit like crap and it's a slow whittling of enemies? No.

That just is not remotely my experience. 

 

I just came from playing a mid-40s Inv/SS Tank, and Rage + Foot Stomp into a pack of +2 Crey leaves half the minions knocked down but still hanging on.  I'm left to clean them up with single target attacks, I'm struggling to manage endurance with all the toggles plus the need to swing so many times.  My late-30s SD/SS brute fares better, but the teleport -> foot stomp opener is only available every 90s. 

 

I ran +2 Citadel with each of them over the weekend and both performed poorly, in that either my teammates were in so little danger that nobody needed to do anything but hit a blaster T9 or they had managed to pull several packs and were crumbling from behind me, something I could do little to manage.

 

By comparison my Ars/Kin ran the same content effortlessly, preemptively neutering packs of adds and locking down anything firing into the back line while boosting offense through the roof.  I felt I had an impact, and kept Vandal held throughout the final confrontation just as effectively as I might have done on a tank. 

 

I'm not going to offer to tank MoLRSF with a controller, but for general purpose gameplay I just don't see how you're getting damage out of a tank, especially during leveling when you can't rely on IO set boosts.  I'm willing to believe that I'm just bad at building tanks, but if slotting acc/dam/dam/end in attacks and end/res/res or end/def/def in toggles is bad building I guess the game has just changed greatly since I last played melee.

[Haijinx]

So you just want people to say Tankers suck and trollers rock?

 

Cool. 

[Sovera]

35 minutes ago, kryori said:

That just is not remotely my experience. 

 

I just came from playing a mid-40s Inv/SS Tank, and Rage + Foot Stomp into a pack of +2 Crey leaves half the minions knocked down but still hanging on.  I'm left to clean them up with single target attacks, I'm struggling to manage endurance with all the toggles plus the need to swing so many times.  My late-30s SD/SS brute fares better, but the teleport -> foot stomp opener is only available every 90s. 

 

I ran +2 Citadel with each of them over the weekend and both performed poorly, in that either my teammates were in so little danger that nobody needed to do anything but hit a blaster T9 or they had managed to pull several packs and were crumbling from behind me, something I could do little to manage.

 

By comparison my Ars/Kin ran the same content effortlessly, preemptively neutering packs of adds and locking down anything firing into the back line while boosting offense through the roof.  I felt I had an impact, and kept Vandal held throughout the final confrontation just as effectively as I might have done on a tank. 

 

I'm not going to offer to tank MoLRSF with a controller, but for general purpose gameplay I just don't see how you're getting damage out of a tank, especially during leveling when you can't rely on IO set boosts.  I'm willing to believe that I'm just bad at building tanks, but if slotting acc/dam/dam/end in attacks and end/res/res or end/def/def in toggles is bad building I guess the game has just changed greatly since I last played melee.

 

 

Lets just say that between you and me who has the most experience with Tankers? I'm not talking out of thin air, y'know? What you seem to need is an actual build.

 

You don't like Tankers anymore, I get it, but I keep peddling the (near) immortal Tanker in my signature for a reason: it starts at level 13. It's comprehensive since it's made for newbies.

 

 

Now you still won't control a three packs at once. As we all said that's just not going to happen. But as was also said let people who did the mistakes pay for them. If you do like your Controller then stick to it. The name of the game is having fun.

[nihilii]

25 minutes ago, kryori said:

I'm not going to offer to tank MoLRSF with a controller, but for general purpose gameplay I just don't see how you're getting damage out of a tank, especially during leveling when you can't rely on IO set boosts.  I'm willing to believe that I'm just bad at building tanks, but if slotting acc/dam/dam/end in attacks and end/res/res or end/def/def in toggles is bad building I guess the game has just changed greatly since I last played melee.

It is unironically inefficient to slot acc/dam/dam/end and end/res/res or end/def/def. It was always inefficient, common knowledge was often wrong back in the day. Toggles have minimal end cost so you're generally better served by sticking that slot in your attacks.

It's *doubly* inefficient on an Inv/SS, because Rage gives such a giga boost to your damage enhancement /and/ comes with an endurance crash. So the type of slotting you'd want to go for while leveling is closer to acc/end/end/end/dam/dam or acc/end/end/end/dam/rech in attacks.

If you're struggling with end, don't take many poorly slotted attacks, instead stick to fewer attacks that you slot in full.

 

Toggles, I don't know, during leveling all my characters including Tankers are pretty happy with the base slot which frontloads most of the benefit. Extra slots can come later.

Extra tools:

- get 8 hours of all 3 amplifiers at P2W at lvl 1. Costs 24k inf and can carry you for a while
- get the Recovery Serum temp. It's so good it's not even funny

- use inspirations as they drop. No need to prepare or even think. Simply using the things is such a large performance boost at low levels, regardless what you get

I do this and tend to solo +1/8x by the teens, +2/8x by 20s, +3/x8 by 30s. Comparable speed to my scrappers because the increased AOE caps and radii do a lot of heavy lifting on these reputations, and the extra leeway afforded by greater survivability does the rest.

Yet another Rage-related specific, /SS is a very special beast. It has 3 good native attacks but mostly by virtue of damage buffing you really are getting so much more out of alternate picks than anyone else would do. Super Strength with just Foot Stomp and no Hasten can take some time to clear out crowds. Super Strength with FS + Dark Oblit or Fireball, damage procs in both (which are affordable even while leveling, in AOEs these tend to run for 1M to 3M a piece)... You're now looking at a completely different beast, three times the damage output.

Inv/ brings nothing offensively save for the +tohit; which is almost useless for /SS because Rage also gives huge +tohit. Inv/ relies on some +def but Rage crashes nuke defense. Unstoppable is a decent buffer but most casual players will not enjoy the T9 playstyle. Overall Inv/SS is a combo with fairly poor mechanical synergy and yet such obvious theme I consider it the ultimate "noob trap". I'd wager 90% of complaints about Tanker performance are tied to it. You really have to lean into non-Superman thematic choices here if you want to make it perform adequately. It is what it is.

[Maelwys]

18 hours ago, kryori said:

That just is not remotely my experience. 

 

I just came from playing a mid-40s Inv/SS Tank, and Rage + Foot Stomp into a pack of +2 Crey leaves half the minions knocked down but still hanging on.  I'm left to clean them up with single target attacks, I'm struggling to manage endurance with all the toggles plus the need to swing so many times.  My late-30s SD/SS brute fares better, but the teleport -> foot stomp opener is only available every 90s. 

Base Tanker Footstomp is 20s recharge; and deals 75.02 damage. Now slot it up with a few basic IOs: one Accuracy and three Damage plus one damage proc (Explosive Strike will do) and a Force Feedback Proc, then activate Hasten and hit Rage: 241.2 damage and ~8s recharge. With double-stacked Rage: 301.2 damage.
Yes, Epic Pool AoEs help and many of them become available at level 35-38. But just with Footstomp you should still be splattering most of a mob in well under 10 seconds whilst you're levelling up and severely underkitted. At 50 and properly IOed? <6s recharge and >400 damage easily even without Assault Hybrid active, and that's if you're not completely proc-bombing it.

Other Tanker secondary powersets are not much behind Rage+Footstomp performance either. Especially RadMelee and Battleaxe. Even Staff (which often gets a bad rep in terms of DPA; but benefits *drastically* from Gauntlet +Arc/+Range buffs) can really put the hurt on hordes of fodder with minimal proc investment.
  


The Teleport pool is not your only means of getting into the middle of a big group of foes. That's what stuff like Taunt Auras, Jumping and the WASD keys are for.
 

Edited May 13 by Maelwys

[Doomguide2005]

Haven't read the majority of the thread, mostly just the first page.

 

• Aggro is not Threat, Threat is not Aggro
• Tankers create the most Threat the easiest of all ATs.
• Everyone has a Threat list.  It updates 'continuously' and has, afaik, has no limit to the number of foes on the list.
• The game checks the Threat value at any given moment for each character vs a foe.  That foe will Aggro to the character with the highest Threat value until the limit of 17 per character is reached.  See the second bullet point.  This is why any Tanker trying to keep aggro is difficult at best to pull foes off of even by a crazed Fire/Fire Blaster.  But that crazed Fire Blaster also has a 25ft rad. on their Inferno followed by Fireball etc. and that'll open the door to 'stealing' some of the Tankers foes as damage, distance and time all play a roll in the Threat/Aggro lists of each character.
• HC changed at least some the above so foes over the 17 Aggro'd will use range attacks as I understand it against Threats rather than standing there picking their nose acting all oblivious.  There are threads in the forums covering those changes
• As foes die and those Threat lists are updated, foes will Aggro to characters

If my scrapper running a KM ITF at 50+ is trying to get the attention of a bunch of Cimerorans to keep as many as possible off teammates she'll jump in first (range/distance to), fire off Void (damage and debuff to 40 targets).  But then or when a Tanker comes along ... well I'm likely losing 17 of them that'll probably almost immediately get replaced by some of the rest of that initial 40.  And that's assuming teammate(s) haven't come to scrape them up already.

[Crysis]

Once i saw the word “healer” I realized this was a joke thread.

 

 

haha?

[Erratic1]

On 5/12/2024 at 4:18 PM, kryori said:

I just came from playing a mid-40s Inv/SS Tank, and Rage + Foot Stomp into a pack of +2 Crey leaves half the minions knocked down but still hanging on.  I'm left to clean them up with single target attacks, I'm struggling to manage endurance with all the toggles plus the need to swing so many times.  My late-30s SD/SS brute fares better, but the teleport -> foot stomp opener is only available every 90s. 

 

Just to be clear, you are saying your late-30s Brute is dropping +2 minions in one Foot Stomp? Just taking my 50 SS/Bio Brute out on the streets of Peregrine Island and running up to whites foes they don't die in one Foot Stomp, or even two.

 

As for swinging so many times on a Tanker, you are going to survive. Just use AoE attacks as they are the most endurance efficient. Well, you could slot some endurance cost reduction into your attacks too.

[Eiko-chan]

7 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:

 

Just to be clear, you are saying your late-30s Brute is dropping +2 minions in one Foot Stomp? Just taking my 50 SS/Bio Brute out on the streets of Peregrine Island and running up to whites foes they don't die in one Foot Stomp, or even two.

Given they're SD/ I suspect the "Teleport" is a Shield Charge opener. 

[Erratic1]

27 minutes ago, Eiko-chan said:

Given they're SD/ I suspect the "Teleport" is a Shield Charge opener. 

 

Even so, they are suggesting their Brute would kill +2 foes with one Foot Stomp. As noted, my level 50 does not kill things that are +0 walking the street with a Foot Stomp (or two).

[Luminara]

On 5/12/2024 at 5:18 PM, kryori said:

That just is not remotely my experience. 

 

I just came from playing a mid-40s Inv/SS Tank, and Rage + Foot Stomp into a pack of +2 Crey leaves half the minions knocked down but still hanging on.  I'm left to clean them up with single target attacks,

 

@Sovera said "two PBAoEs".  You really expect comparable performance using half that number on any archetype other than a blaster?

 

On 5/12/2024 at 5:18 PM, kryori said:

I'm struggling to manage endurance with all the toggles plus the need to swing so many times.

 

Craft the Increase Recovery buff at an empowerment station, buy the Survival Amplifier from the START vendor, and review your slotting (set IOs are cheap, practically free if you buy low-demand recipes, craft the IOs and convert them to what you want).

[Eiko-chan]

9 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:

 

Even so, they are suggesting their Brute would kill +2 foes with one Foot Stomp. As noted, my level 50 does not kill things that are +0 walking the street with a Foot Stomp (or two).

Shield Charge does more damage than Foot Stomp. Almost as much as two Foot Stomps.

[Erratic1]

7 minutes ago, Eiko-chan said:

Shield Charge does more damage than Foot Stomp. Almost as much as two Foot Stomps.

 

And again, 2 Foot Stomps DID NOT KILL A +0!!!  

 

They were complaining about how their TANKER did not kill off a +2. The point here is how very much more difficult a +2 is going to be to put down. And if Shield Charge has to do the heavy lifting for the Brute, then the comparison against the Tanker is even more daft. 

Edited May 14 by Erratic1

[Eiko-chan]

2 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:

And again, 2 Foot Stomps DID NOT KILL A +0!!!  

What about 3? Because it takes 3 Foot Stomps to match a Shield Charge and a Foot Stomp.