Will Power vs Shield Tank?

[ResToons]

I am currently trying to come up with the build with the best survivability and 2 powers have been mentioned Will Power and Shield.  My goal is to build a PVE content tank that can handle all types of dmg for any content.  Influence isnt a problem i will spend as much as i need to for the tank to perform at its best.  I dont like Stone tank due to its slow movement in Granite form.  Just curious if anyone had a thought on this? 

[Psyonico]

If you don't like the slow movement in Granite, just skip granite.   Stone Armor (even without granite) is going to be better than either shield or WP.  Invul will also perform better.  However, out of just those two options, Shield probably ekes out the win because you can have soft capped defense with higher resists than a WP soft cap build.  You'll also have more DDR.  However, willpower has a ton more regen available and also better endurance management. 

 

What secondary are you looking at?  For a "just want the best tank" secondary I'd recommend Dark Melee.  The heal from Siphon Life will keep you topped off.

 

As for epic, I'd suggest Soul for Darkest Night.   The to hit debuff won't be that important if you're soft capped, but the -damage will always be useful.

[Warshades]

Any tank can handle general content without issue when built well, but you'll be hard pressed to match invuln in terms of sheer survivability. This is a sample invuln/claws that can hit resist cap to all damage types with 1 SMoT proc and the 5% minimum resist/defense from T4 barrier core destiny. It also hits 50%+ def to s/l/e/n/f/c with 1 foe in range of invincibility. It doesn't really matter much what secondary you take, you can go with /dark for the extra heal in Siphon Life, /ice is a good one for Ice Patch, and you could also consider /MA for Storm Kick which gives 10% positional defense (while invuln is a typed defense set, the extra positional defense will be slightly helpful against psi/toxic typed attacks which you can't easily get typed defense set bonuses for). 

 

As @Psyonico stated, you can go for Soul patron to get DN for the additional -dmg. 

 

Do reset invincibility to 0 foes in range and then back to 1 when loading invuln build into mids as there is a known bug that defense totals won't display defense from invincibility when loading a build into mids. 

 

Shield is also an extremely tough set capable of easily soft capping positional defenses and having high DDR. You can also build it to reach high resist totals, though it won't cap all of them like invuln is capable of doing without relying on OwtS.

 

Tanker (Invulnerability - Claws).mbd

[aethereal]

4 hours ago, Warshades said:

Any, and you could also consider /MA for Storm Kick which gives 10% positional defense (while invuln is a typed defense set, the extra positional defense will be slightly helpful against psi/toxic typed attacks which you can't easily get typed defense set bonuses for).

 

Good news, Storm Kick gives +10% not only to all positional defenses, but also to all typed defenses besides psi/toxic.

[ResToons]

I guess the information I got in chat last night wasn’t correct.  I was sold that Invincible def set was the best route to go but they convinced me will power or shield was better.  As for the secondary power I believe dark melee sounds interesting.  Ice does too but neither are big on AoE or am I wrong on that?

[Psyonico]

Dark has "ok" AoE while ice is slightly better.  The biggest problem with ice is that it doesn't get its PBAoE until 30.

[Grimm2]

Ice Melee actually has great AoE*, especially if you're ok bunny hopping up or back to get more targets in Frost. Frozen Aura sleeps as well as damages, and can hold a Sandman heal proc. Ice Patch won't affect AVs, but makes everything else flop. The hold hurts and takes a lot of procs. Not great single target damage otherwise.

 

Dark melee's heal would add reliable sustain vs. targets that resist CC. Far worse AoE, and I don't know how their single target damage compares.

 

*Edit: I haven't done tanks since their update, so I'm not sure how it feels now. Frost is a ranged cone that you can work with, but you have to be willing to work with it.

Edited Thursday at 03:17 PM by Grimm2

[Uun]

14 hours ago, Psyonico said:

However, willpower has a ton more regen available and also better endurance management. 

While Shield has no endurance management abilities outside of OWTS (30% +recovery for 120s), I find Willpower's endurance management to be lacking as well. WP gets 30% +recovery in Quick Recovery, plus 30% for 120s in SoW and 200% for 90s in Resurgence. The issue is that it has no end drain or -recovery resistance. Facing Arachnos Mu, Malta Sappers and similar foes, it's painfully easy to be end drained and toggle dropped. Shield actually fares better in this regard as its defense blocks many end draining attacks. 

 

The armor sets with fulsome -end/-rec protection are Bio, Dark, Elec, Rad and Stone. These also include +end/+rec tools (Dark requires Obscure Sustenance). 

 

 

[Warshades]

12 hours ago, ResToons said:

I was sold that Invincible def set was the best route to go but they convinced me will power or shield was better.

 

Shield is in fact really good, you'd pretty much be splitting hairs trying to pick between shield and invuln, both can be built to be insanely durable. I would recommend /dark for shield just to have access to a heal to add some sustainability and Dark Consumption for endurance (also helps that /dark is light on endurance as an attack set). Invuln doesn't really need to go with /dark for Siphon Life as it's high def/resist and access to DP is sufficient imo, so you could go for other secondary options. Posted a sample shield/dark below. The build is focused more on trying to reach high resists, I don't know that I would recommend going this far for it as it makes several sacrifices, but it should be very durable. With 2 stack of the SMoT proc, you'd be hitting 89% s/l resist, 87% e/n/f/c, 85% toxic, and 76% psionic without relying on OwtS, you could honestly swap that out for taunt. 

 

Again, at this point it's more about what flavor of tank you prefer and like playing more. Both invuln and shield can hit such high survival stats that only extreme cases and specific scenarios would ever pose any issues. 

 

Willpower has a few holes that make it, imo, less of a durable armor set than invuln or shield. Regeneration takes time to work, so you're inherently more vulnerable to burst damage. WP can easily cap s/l resist, but you won't be reaching such high e/n/f/c/tox/psi resist with it that you can on invuln and shield. Additionally, it's DDR is pretty low and your defense can get floored more easily than it would on invuln or shield, at which point you'd be taking a lot of hits. It also wants RttC saturated with 10 foes around you to max out the regen bonus. You'll end up losing a good portion of your regen if you only have 1-2 enemies around you. With a saturated RttC, you could hit ~205 hp/sec regen with Vigor Core alpha. Drop the foes surrounding you from 10 to 1 for RttC and that regen will drop to ~130hp/sec. It will still do fine in most content, but there will be more scenarios where high burst damage that's not smash/lethal can create problems.

 

Tanker (Shield Defense - Dark Melee)7.mbd

[CoeruleumBlue]

19 hours ago, aethereal said:

 

Good news, Storm Kick gives +10% not only to all positional defenses, but also to all typed defenses besides psi/toxic.

 

So Bio Armor/MA tank then? 

[ResToons]

10 hours ago, Warshades said:

 

Shield is in fact really good, you'd pretty much be splitting hairs trying to pick between shield and invuln, both can be built to be insanely durable. I would recommend /dark for shield just to have access to a heal to add some sustainability and Dark Consumption for endurance (also helps that /dark is light on endurance as an attack set). Invuln doesn't really need to go with /dark for Siphon Life as it's high def/resist and access to DP is sufficient imo, so you could go for other secondary options. Posted a sample shield/dark below. The build is focused more on trying to reach high resists, I don't know that I would recommend going this far for it as it makes several sacrifices, but it should be very durable. With 2 stack of the SMoT proc, you'd be hitting 89% s/l resist, 87% e/n/f/c, 85% toxic, and 76% psionic without relying on OwtS, you could honestly swap that out for taunt. 

 

Again, at this point it's more about what flavor of tank you prefer and like playing more. Both invuln and shield can hit such high survival stats that only extreme cases and specific scenarios would ever pose any issues. 

 

Willpower has a few holes that make it, imo, less of a durable armor set than invuln or shield. Regeneration takes time to work, so you're inherently more vulnerable to burst damage. WP can easily cap s/l resist, but you won't be reaching such high e/n/f/c/tox/psi resist with it that you can on invuln and shield. Additionally, it's DDR is pretty low and your defense can get floored more easily than it would on invuln or shield, at which point you'd be taking a lot of hits. It also wants RttC saturated with 10 foes around you to max out the regen bonus. You'll end up losing a good portion of your regen if you only have 1-2 enemies around you. With a saturated RttC, you could hit ~205 hp/sec regen with Vigor Core alpha. Drop the foes surrounding you from 10 to 1 for RttC and that regen will drop to ~130hp/sec. It will still do fine in most content, but there will be more scenarios where high burst damage that's not smash/lethal can create problems.

 

Tanker (Shield Defense - Dark Melee)7.mbd 45.5 kB · 0 downloads

I wish i saw this post before yesterday.  I made an Invul/Dark tank and got him to 46.  I believe I will tryout both and see which I prefer.  It won’t be hard with the double xp event.  Thank you all for the helpful advice 

[PLVRIZR]

5 hours ago, ResToons said:

I wish i saw this post before yesterday.  I made an Invul/Dark tank and got him to 46.  I believe I will tryout both and see which I prefer.  It won’t be hard with the double xp event.  Thank you all for the helpful advice 

Two of my most durable tanks are Inv/Dark and Shield/Dark.  Can't go wrong with either.

[ResToons]

I came across this build. It doesn't reach you 90% resist but it seems doable.  any critiques?

Tanker (Invulnerability - Dark Melee)7.mbd

[Jocantaro]

In my humble opinion Wp and Invuln are best defensive sets sinc eyou get resistances plus you can softcap the most common dmg types. Main thing is that they are boooooooooooring to play, especially WP. Shield, Radiation and Stone (granite or no granite) make really solid tanks and far more fun to play.