Sturdiest tank

[Frosty15]

What is sturdiest tank you can build for example tanking lvl 54 lord recluse

[Octogoat]

Probably invuln/dark

[Thraxen]

Stone/MA

[PLVRIZR]

Shield/Dark is another option.

[StriderIV]

All the options so far are definitely top tier for being sturdy haha.

 

SR/DM I assume would be great for the same reasons Invuln/Dark and Shield/Dark are.

 

Dark Melee seems to be a top choice. One of my personal toughest ranks is Electric Armor/Dark Melee. Two heals and two end recovers make you keep going and going.

 

Shout out to Staff Fighting as well, since it brings +Def, +Res and knockdowns to the equation. I have mine paired with Dark Armor and the thing is monstrously tanky. I could see it pairing well with any of the sets that bring their own heal, like Bio and Rad Armor.

[Xandyr]

Even without Granite, Stone Armor can be built with softcapped defenses, great regen, and with decent resists. Paired with Staff, you can really pump up your resists. Plus, you get good debuff resists.

  It'd be at the very top of my list of tanks to tank damn near anything.

 

- x

[StriderIV]

2 hours ago, Xandyr said:

Even without Granite, Stone Armor can be built with softcapped defenses, great regen, and with decent resists. Paired with Staff, you can really pump up your resists. Plus, you get good debuff resists.

  It'd be at the very top of my list of tanks to tank damn near anything.

 

- x

I’ve been messing around with this combo on a Stalker and it is TOUGH. With it being that tough on a Stalker, I can only imagine how tough it would be on a Tanker.

[The Trouble]

On 2/2/2025 at 11:10 AM, Xandyr said:

Even without Granite, Stone Armor can be built with softcapped defenses, great regen, and with decent resists. Paired with Staff, you can really pump up your resists. Plus, you get good debuff resists.

  It'd be at the very top of my list of tanks to tank damn near anything.

 

- x

Just yesterday I noticed that Brimstone Armor adds Fire to your attacks.  Stone's rework has made it a beast. 

 

I paired with with Spines on a Brute, and holy moly... 

[Mini-Mega]

Tanker (Dark Armor - Ice Melee)V2.mbd

 

Tanker (Radiation Armor - Fiery Melee)NEW.mbd

 

Tanker (Ice Armor - Energy Melee) NEW.mbdTanker (Ice Armor - Super Strength)new.mbd

 

Tanker (invul - Battle Axe)3.mbd

 

These are my main tanks for anything 4* and +4/8 , i solo tank LR with all of these toons. 

[NinjaSquirrel]

shield/ma   Incarnate capped def to all three positions, great resists, near capped DDR, and even terrorize protection.  Yes you'll probably need to get your end from incarnate or a temp power, but it's pretty cheap at the P2W vendor.

[Warshades]

This one is a work in progress, tough ice armor tank. 64-65% s/l/e/n resist built. Add in form of body from staff giving 13.3% resist to all, 5% resist to all from barrier, and 6.7% resist to all from SMoT proc and you're getting an additional 25% resist to all. Hits near 90% resist cap to s/l/e/n and 60-70% on f/tox/psi resist. Also has access to chilling embrace for additional -dmg debuff to foes to stack with DN from soul mastery.

Tanker (Ice Armor - Staff Fighting)2.mbd

[Sovera]

My own Stone Armor builds have, without incarnates, capped HP, 50% defense and 70% resistances with one stack of the ATO. It's sturdy, but it's not THE sturdiest thing since it has no heal and relies on regen. I have, in fact, died to pulling two +3 groups of those nasty robots that both strip defense and strip regen. Granted, if I had pulled a single group it would have been perfectly fine since it was the only time I actually was in danger.

With incarnates (or inspirations) this wouldn't have been an issue. Barrier would have made me invulnerable and even at it's lowest I would have been at 55% defense and 81% resistances. It would be pretty hard to die to anything with those numbers.

 

Even a 50 inf small purple and no incarnates would put the build at 62% defense, or a small orange at the res hardcap.

The downside is still the lack of hard heals. Sure, regenning 60 HP a second is nice, but when having 3.5k HP it will take a while to trickle back up. But, that's what insps are fot and tbh it's so very rare to get to that point. I'll take it since it can be near immortal by level 12.

Edited Tuesday at 10:56 AM by Sovera

[SeraphimKensai]

Don't forget to take soul mastery for darkest night if you want more survivability as it has tohit debuff and -damage.

[BuiltDifferent5]

15 hours ago, Sovera said:

My own Stone Armor builds have, without incarnates, capped HP, 50% defense and 70% resistances with one stack of the ATO. It's sturdy, but it's not THE sturdiest thing since it has no heal and relies on regen. I have, in fact, died to pulling two +3 groups of those nasty robots that both strip defense and strip regen. Granted, if I had pulled a single group it would have been perfectly fine since it was the only time I actually was in danger.

With incarnates (or inspirations) this wouldn't have been an issue. Barrier would have made me invulnerable and even at it's lowest I would have been at 55% defense and 81% resistances. It would be pretty hard to die to anything with those numbers.

 

Even a 50 inf small purple and no incarnates would put the build at 62% defense, or a small orange at the res hardcap.

The downside is still the lack of hard heals. Sure, regenning 60 HP a second is nice, but when having 3.5k HP it will take a while to trickle back up. But, that's what insps are fot and tbh it's so very rare to get to that point. I'll take it since it can be near immortal by level 12.

Stone just seems great after the update. Any sets, other than Fiery Melee, you feel pair particularly well with it?

[BuiltDifferent5]

17 hours ago, Warshades said:

This one is a work in progress, tough ice armor tank. 64-65% s/l/e/n resist built. Add in form of body from staff giving 13.3% resist to all, 5% resist to all from barrier, and 6.7% resist to all from SMoT proc and you're getting an additional 25% resist to all. Hits near 90% resist cap to s/l/e/n and 60-70% on f/tox/psi resist. Also has access to chilling embrace for additional -dmg debuff to foes to stack with DN from soul mastery.

Tanker (Ice Armor - Staff Fighting)2.mbd 44.34 kB · 2 downloads

I love seeing both Ice Armor AND Staff Fighting getting some love.

[Sovera]

8 hours ago, BuiltDifferent5 said:

Stone just seems great after the update. Any sets, other than Fiery Melee, you feel pair particularly well with it?

 

Energy Melee and Axe were good too. EM's AoE is just mediocre and Axe is very endurance hungry which Stone has no tools to compensate other than the recovery boost in Crystal Armor. Fire Melee is just the best middle ground, IMO.

Dark Melee helps a fair bit as well with an endurance tool and a small heal, but, again, mediocre AoE in my experience. Only a problem if soloing a lot.

[Warshades]

11 hours ago, BuiltDifferent5 said:

Stone just seems great after the update. Any sets, other than Fiery Melee, you feel pair particularly well with it?

 

11 hours ago, BuiltDifferent5 said:

I love seeing both Ice Armor AND Staff Fighting getting some love.

 

You could try out stone/staff. While stone armor has an easier time building higher resists than ice armor, it can still benefit from the +all resist buff from staff's form of body to make it easier to hit hard cap.

[BuiltDifferent5]

3 hours ago, Warshades said:

 

 

You could try out stone/staff. While stone armor has an easier time building higher resists than ice armor, it can still benefit from the +all resist buff from staff's form of body to make it easier to hit hard cap.

On paper, I could see this combo being the “studiest” tanker haha

 

Part of me wonders if it’d almost be better suited on a Stalker since it’ll naturally be so tanky, and you get the added ST damage of Assassin’s Strike.

[Onlyasandwich]

14 minutes ago, BuiltDifferent5 said:

on a Stalker

It is indeed outstanding on a stalker. Also - free built in staff form without choosing the power! Buildup, assassin staff - it's all upgrades in my book.

 

You even have an extra lil bit of free defense from hide.

Edited 9 hours ago by Onlyasandwich

[BuiltDifferent5]

28 minutes ago, Onlyasandwich said:

It is indeed outstanding on a stalker. Also - free built in staff form without choosing the power! Buildup, assassin staff - it's all upgrades in my book.

 

You even have an extra lil bit of free defense from hide.

Thanks for confirming. I REALLY like staff on Tankers for the larger AOE’s/Target caps. However, it looks like AS for Staff on Stalkers can really push the offense for it.

 

How is it toughness wise compared to other Stalkers you’ve run? Any other sets you feel mesh really well on a Stalker with Staff?