Shield/Sword Tanker questions?

[gimpyfish62]

Hey, I'm new to the higher level stuff in this game, I was a MAJOR altaholic back when I first played. I'd get a character to 14/15 (enough to get a travel power and make them kinda cannon complete) and would move on to the next concept... I still am a bit of an altaholic now, I just love making new characters!) but now I have a new character I love that I made (after re-making my old mains) and he's a sword/shield tank (which was my favorite class - you used to not have access to sword on tanker for some reason I think?)

 

My character is an angel warrior, the sword and shield look like they are made of pure holy energy, and I'm all about it. Absolutely have the most fun on this hero just for the theme alone. Him being an angel means I'm using the flight power pool for my mobility instead of things like combat jumping, which is a little cumbersome for my melee tank... but oh well. That's all good. Epic Power pools weren't a thing I ever accessed when I used to play, so I'm not really sure what to do there either.

 

The issue is... Sword and Shield seems... well... not great. I've got -okay- single target damage, barely any CC at all, virtually no AoE (shield bash and I guess Whirling Sword?), and run into some end issues when I'm trying to keep in combat for a decent amount of time. I can tank some real heavy hitters... for a while. But my DPS won't necessarily scale up well enough, and if I run out of end then an elite boss or whatever will eventually overtake me. It's hard to manage larger groups, but I would love to be able to if possible.

 

It also seems like if I were making literally the same exact character but as a Brute, I'd have (almost) equal survivability, but more damage output? Is this incorrect or does it just seem that way because of farming builds being so common? Idk.

 

Now I'm actually totally okay with a potentially underpowered build for the theming, I really like this character and they don't have to be some uber farm beast or something... however, I -do- want him to be as effective as he can be in game. I am concerned that part (or a bulk, even) of my issue is that I'm making my own errors as I go. My build is definitely garbo, and I've mostly just been messing around with things while I level up, and don't know anything about set enhancements or all that high level stuff right now. I'm sure I'll be wanting to get a ton of those for my tank once I'm 50 (I'm 41 right now)

 

Basically, I just need general help I guess.

 

Any suggestions for decent builds? Am I completely wrong about this setup? Help me please I love this game but am so new to high end stuff LOL

 

[Xaeon]

If you want more AoE, spring attack and mu mastery are probably your best bets.  Tesla Cage and Ball Lightning are pretty strong AoE that you can't go wrong with.