seeking advice (returning to homecoming after a break)

[floppy]

Hello all. As the title says, I am back after not playing CoH for a while. I've decided to start fresh on a new server. Currently leveling a few different characters.

 

I'll keep my request short and sweet: I want to level a tanker that will eventually serve as a character with whom I can do challenging endgame content. I have never had a resist tank before. I am seeking a suggestion for a powerset combo.

 

I initially wanted to do an invuln tank. I'm not afraid to put in some hours leveling and earning money to spec it out. I'd like to be able to make some friends on the server and consistently do the hard TFs and other endgame stuff. I guess I'm posting in here because I didn't want to build a character only to find out it's never going to be good enough to do hard stuff.

 

I was leaning invuln/elec because I thought (made up?) that elec would give me some good endurance management options for leveling. After browsing this forum a bit I am now considering dark melee and also open to other primaries.

 

I do realize this question is probably asked a lot and I'm not looking for someone to spoon feed me a step by step guide, I just wanted to do my diligence and check before I started leveling 🙂

 

What do you think?

[Warshades]

This might depend on what you mean by "challenging endgame" content. For a lot of 4 star stuff, the general setup is for everyone on the team to cycle T4 barrier core destiny which will cap your resists and soft cap your defenses regardless of what your primary armor set pick is. If that's what you're going for, a utility set that provides absorbs/heals/damage (Bio is a top pick for this) is preferable over a set that can maximize survivability on it's own like invulnerability.

 

If you're trying to build a tank for random PUG teams on difficult TFs and not specifically 4 star content, Invuln is a great pick and can be made extremely durable on it's own without relying on a specific set up like cycling T4 barriers. 

 

I'll link you a sample invuln/dark build. The focus is primarily on maximizing survival. You do want to make sure that you reset invincibility when loading in mids by setting the foes in range to 0 and then back to 1 to see accurate values. The one advantage of /dark is that you do get an extra heal that you can spam with Siphon Life, but it's built for such high survivability that you'll be hard pressed to find game content where it's needed. Another good secondary consideration is /ice melee for Ice Patch and further maxing survival against mobs (again, not something that Invuln will ever really struggle with when built for survival). It will exemplar well since Ice Patch is available early.

 

Frankly, invuln is so sturdy that again, for PUG teams, you can just pick whatever your favorite melee set or concept that you have in mind is and run with that. They can pretty much all be built to be soft capped to s/l/e/n/f/c with 1 foe in range of invincibility and hard capped to all with ~1 stack of SMoT proc.

Tanker (Invulnerability - Dark Melee)8.mbd

 

 

Edit: Added picture of totals from linked build. This is with 1 foe in range of invincibility, 1 SMoT proc, and minimum 5% def/resist values from T4 barrier (after 60+ seconds have elapsed from use). Second SMoT stack will cap all resists.

Edited Monday at 04:05 PM by Warshades

[floppy]

Thank you for your detailed explanation and for generously sharing this build with me 😄

 

I will most likely follow this invuln/dark path. Hopefully I will meet you in game and you can see how well it turns out.