When a tank isn't a tank

[Diantane]

Have played RPG's since they were invented in 1977 (Apple II) and MMO's when they were invented in 1999. My favorite position is a tank. Unlike most tanks on this game where players use them the same way they would use a brute or scrapper, a tank is supposed to jump into a large group (Taking the ALPHA) and keep the baddies away from the team. If they can't do this, they aren't a real tank (just a melee character doing minimal dps (with their weaker secondary attacks). 

 

Taking the alpha is a tank's primary task. When the team moves forward, then stops right before a group, the tank runs ahead straight into them. When the tank has their full attention, the team can safely engage.

 

Have played dozens of combinations for tanks in this game and most can take the alpha pretty well until their mid 20's. The sets that fail to take an alpha without dieing, can't be a real tank. COH is not like most MMO's where there is always a dedicated healer with the priority to protect the tank. So a COH tank set must be able to take the alpha and keep themselves alive to keep doing this. This why most sets will fail.

 

From looking at the builds of other new players, I can see that most tankers train an even amount of attacks and defenses (a scrapper with more armor/health). An alpha tank puts everything into defense (including the fighting pool) well into their teens. The first attack I train is taunt. Then none again until tiers 7, 8 and 9. Later I wil train the rest as fillers.

 

I have found that the most defensive pure alpha tank is one with a very high health absorbtion (1,000+ at 50 using SO's), a strong heal (based on the number of foes in melee range) and does not allow the melee baddies to touch them. This is raditation armor and ice melee (ice has the ice patch making the nearby foes to slip and fall). Many tanks have Super Strength for the Foot Stomp AoE. But Ice has Frozen Aura which does slightly more AoE damage as Foot Stomp (same 20 second base recharge), but also freezes the foes in place.

 

There are more defensive sets like Invul, but they don't have both a large absorbtion and a heal.

[Jocantaro]

So basically, what you are saying is that the builds you do not approve are not real tanks, right?

[Ukase]

A tank is an archetype. That's all. 

I never expect any tank below level 20 to have any real survivability because the game doesn't award them enough slots, nor influence to acquire the SOs to put in the slots they do have - unless they're vet players with a little gift from their alt. 

It always annoys me to no end to be on a tank at level 11, get an invite to a team running a level 14 mission at +4. Those npcs are level 18. And while I am sk'd to level 13, they're +5 to me. The math doesn't lie. It doesn't matter if you're on a stone tank, bio tank, no matter what you're on - if your team isn't killing them super fast, or buffing the crap out of my tank, I'm dead, and they're probably not far behind. 

Two things tend to lead to disappointment. 
Unrealistic expectations and unrealized expectations. 

In the example I provided, it's woefully unrealistic to expect any tank to handle that kind of scenario under typical pug team compositions. (where half of the folks aren't even slotted because they don't think it's necessary. Cheap, lazy bastards, lol)

Every tank I have tends to survive in most conditions. And when it doesn't, I look in the combat attributes to see if I can determine why. More often than not, it's a -res debuff or a -recharge, or both. And if my teammates are otherwise distracted, or just lack the tools to help, then it's time to taste dirt. That's just the way this game is played. To minimize these events, you try to team up with smart people, or you analyze the team comp before you begin, and bail if there's weak team composition given the task at hand. Usually, there's nothing THAT hard that any pug can't handle after level 26. But before then, a tank has to be judicious if they want to avoid defeat. 

[Glacier Peak]

The return of @Diantane. Many of their followers waited with baited breath for the wise words of their leader. Why play anything in this game without their blessing? Doing so would be foolish and a waste of time. Unless fun is defined by @Diantane, none can be had.

[PLVRIZR]

33 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

The return of @Diantane. Many of their followers waited with baited breath for the wise words of their leader. Why play anything in this game without their blessing? Doing so would be foolish and a waste of time. Unless fun is defined by @Diantane, none can be had.

^---this

 

And for the newer players (please read some of D's previous posts...more like "Diatribes by Diantane") I will say that unless you specifically want the original feel of Live, and only DOs/SOs, there's no reason you can't have both tanker ATO procs, by Posi1 (read any of the great money-making threads by @Sovera or @Yomo Kimyata).  While I also take mostly armors on my tanks, early on, I'll make sure to get the first and second (or third) attacks, so I can slot the aforementioned procs.  Quick recharging, fast animating, simple attacks...that proc a lot.  The +res and absorb from MoT and GF, respectively, make big differences in survivability, especially pre-20.  Fill that in with free prestige attacks, and you'll run out of end, before you run out of attacks. 

Edited 20 hours ago by PLVRIZR
reworded

[MTeague]

I main'd a Tank in Warcraft from launch until the end of Pandaria.  

 

It is true that CoH tanks, and really every archtype in CoH, play very, Very differently from their counterparts in a "traditional" MMO.  This is a Good Thing.

 

The brilliance of CoH, is that in the VAST bulk of content, no single archtype or powerset is ever necessary.  Want to run with 8 blasters? You can do that. 8 scrappers? knock yourself out. 8 Defenders? Go to. No matter the config, if people are willing to adapt and play nice with others, you can get the job done, and generally have a good time. 

 

Now, I will say, when I personally am playing a tanker, I have a few rules of thumb.

• If the entire group is charging past me, I'll apologize and ask for a buff to fix whatever is holding me back (often END). If it cannot be remedied, i will gracefully bow out and wish them well. 
• If the group is mostly staying together, but 1-2 players charge forward without the team, those that charge ahead are Not My Problem. Whatever they get into is on them. 
• If any player faceplants a lot in the first few spawns, I'll make it a point to keep an eye on them for the duration, and keep punchvoke or manual taunting whatever needs it. (I always take Taunt, it's nice and handy for runners or annoying flyers)

How much you need to watch out for teammates varies a lot. An exemplared 50 on a Synapse who has several paragraphs of set bonuses, is probably Just Fine without me. A true actual lvl 17 player on Synapse who is sidekicked up to 20, can benefit from a tank paying extra attention. As with most things in CoH, be friendly, be adaptable, and if something isn't working, be collaborative vs blaming people or trying to lock teammates into certain "jobs".  You'll enjoy it a lot more. 

 

[Psyonico]

Ah yes, a tank who doesn't attack is the best tank.  It's a good thing tank attacks don't do anything important,  like taunting in an AoE or doing various debuffs/soft controls that would make attacks useful for something other than damage.

 

It is also known that the best active farming toon is not a tank, because they don't do any damage.

 

Oh wait...

[Sovera]

Ah, hello again, Dian.

[Maelwys]

 

 

(And as a bonus:)

 

Edited 17 hours ago by Maelwys

[Without_Pause]

I took a nice sized break from the forums and still instantly figured out who wrote the OP without looking.

 

The rest isn't worth a reply. They are a user who's vision of MMOs is something that CoH never was, but they are willing to repeatedly lecture its base on the 'proper' way to play.

[Spaghetti Betty]

I see the peg stopped here on the Wheel of Diantane again!

[Neiska]

1. Tanks can be built many ways. Like everything else. I would argue that's part of what makes CoH special is that you can make an AT any way you like, any team you like, and make it work. Some tanks can be quite aggressive and focus on other things like support or debuffs more than absorb or defensive layers. And not all tanks even defend their team in the same way either. Heck I've seen a Shield Scrapper go toe to toe with Recluse. Are they "Scrapping" wrong? Methinks not.

2. If the zoomer/gotta go fast folks leap in before the tank, consistently, I would argue that its not necessarily the tanks fault they aren't there to take the alpha. Especially if they are already at aggro target cap and there's nothing they can really do about it anyway. Doubly so if the team Scooby-do's and pulls the "lets split up gang!" that is common on pugs/random missions. One part of the team goes one way, the other part goes another, its hardly the tanks fault that you are on the other side of the map poking things with a stick.

3. OPs opinions are just that. Opinions. And any claims of playing since computers had vacuum tubes is irrelevant. "I played since blah blah" has about as much weight to the conversation as me going "I have a pet snake that got out of her tank once." 

4. PS - if you NEED Taunt to hold aggro at levels 1-10 on a Tank... I would argue that you are likely a bad Tank. More of a Jeep. Maybe even a Moped. That or you are just lazy. Or, most likely, have such narrow scope of vision that you don't really know what the heck you are doing. The only thing I can ever recall peeling aggro from any of my tankers in those levels are the space squids with their flying pewpew form at level 6. Other than that, nothing immediately comes to mind. Never really had much an issue holding threat at those levels.

Edited 16 hours ago by Neiska

[Maelwys]

6 minutes ago, Neiska said:

"I played since blah blah" has about as much weight to the conversation as me going "I have a pet snake that got out of her tank once." 

[Neiska]

Just now, Maelwys said:

 

...That one is a keeper. SNEK TANK!

[The Trouble]

Please review my tank that is a tank:

[Lunar Ronin]

 

[lemming]

Aw man, we're getting remakes of old threads.   It's like when an author puts out a new book and you find out they reused the plot of one of their older books.

[Excraft]

8 hours ago, Glacier Peak said:

The return of @Diantane. Many of their followers waited with baited breath for the wise words of their leader. Why play anything in this game without their blessing? Doing so would be foolish and a waste of time. Unless fun is defined by @Diantane, none can be had.

 

And yet you keep feeling the need to keep replying to their posts with nothing constructive to say.... Just ignore and move on.  Very simple.  Funny how "be excellent to each other" only applies to some.

 

As for the OP... as @Ukase already pointed out, a tank is an archetype.  Their survivability is heavily depended upon factors like player skill, level, slots and build.  Also, there are many other ATs in this game that can "tank" depending on power selection and build.  

[biostem]

The only time "taking the alpha" becomes an issue is in the much more difficult or star-content, in which case, you do need a more optimized build.  That being said, not being able to do so in those cases does not invalidate the AT in pretty much all other groups the game can throw at them.  I think the misconception that the OP is under is that if you cannot handle the hardest content, then your build is somehow invalid, (which I wholeheartedly disagree with).  I give way more props to a player with a cool costume, concept, bio, and good attitude, than one who has calculated things down to a T, but who rages at teammates who don't play how they dictate and/or rage quits at the first defeat...

[Jacke]

7 hours ago, lemming said:

Aw man, we're getting remakes of old threads.   It's like when an author puts out a new book and you find out they reused the plot of one of their older books.

 

Just like Hollywood.

[UltraAlt]

Welcome back, @Diantane

[tidge]

9 hours ago, lemming said:

Aw man, we're getting remakes of old threads.   It's like when an author puts out a new book and you find out they reused the plot of one of their older books.

 

Who has some good examples of this? The one that comes to mind for me is much of Kevin J. Anderson's Last Days of Krypton was recycled into one of his earlier Doon novels... I can't say which Doon book, maybe the Butlerian Jihad? I'm pretty sure I read their first Doon trilogy, but had been pretty disappointed, so when I encountered the recycling I pretty much dropped out.

 

There is another slightly adjacent concept: Robert B. Parker's Poodle Springs (a "conclusion" to four chapters of an unfinished Philip Marlowe novel by Raymond Chandler) recycles (IIRC) one of the first four chapters for a later one, and (again, IIRC) recycles elements from other Chandler work for other later chapters. Chandler of course recycled certain themes and archetypes, and reworked his short stories into his novels, but the Parker effort felt criminal to me... at the very least he needed an editor, and if he had one I shudder to think what the first draft was like.

[Ukase]

9 hours ago, Excraft said:

And yet you keep feeling the need to keep replying to their posts with nothing constructive to say.... Just ignore and move on.  Very simple.  Funny how "be excellent to each other" only applies to some.

I am as guilty as anyone, at least for this poster. I've been on a team with him before and he gives his team, typically filled with newer players who don't know any better wrong information. It was just a mission team in the hollows, and I left because of their misinformation.  

The truth of it is, I'm sure they mean well. But they're like those players who think arctic fog in the msr is going to impact the number of spawns of rikti. There's zero evidence to support this, yet "bro science" leads the way still. Being mistaken or wrong doesn't make one evil or unworthy of courtesy. But after a while, this begins to look like trolling - as if they are deliberately coming up with a premise that's almost plausible if you didn't know any better. 

There's a proverb that says, "Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent". Please, join me as I shut up. Maybe somebody will think I'm wise. 

[ZemX]

You're not a REAL tank unless you're carrying max. Stun and Frag grenades from the START vendor.

[lemming]

3 hours ago, tidge said:

Who has some good examples of this?

Turtledove replaying WW2 in various ways comes to mind.  I'm forgetting who it was, but some series I read, and it wasn't plot, but some description of a fight and it was nearly an exact quote of some other fight.

 

Sorta similar vibes.

 

And as to the thread:   There's more than one way to play CoH, and that is one of it's strengths.   The worst players IMO are the ones that insist there's only one way.