So, a bunch of my friends and I resubbed after we heard about this new patch and saw how much better the game was getting.

We have the full group set out, we were just wondering about tanking - what sets and abilities are best for it?

Right now we have a Bestial and Ego blade tank, mostly using the tank stance and the built in taunts to keep aggro. Favorite tanky spell seems to be Venomous breath.

Is there a better way?

Also, what tank set looks best with the bladey arms?

Thanks!

Best Crippling Challenge: Defensive Combo. The power has a Crippling Challenge like extra threat on top of supporting Crippling Challenge itself, so there is no better way to generate threat, if you don't mind doing little actual damage.

Honorable mentions: Lightning Arc, Assault Rifle, Telekinetic Assault. Firing every 0.5 in a maintain up to 100' is a very good thing.

Best Challenging Strikes: Lead Tempest, Mini Gun. Lead Tempest will basically "tag" everything within 50' of you, while Mini Gun will fire in a 100' cylinder toward your target that you can swivel by moving yourself around. So you can tag everything in 100' with luck.

Honorable Mention: Sparkstorm with Electric Personality. This power can be active while you do other things, so you can mop up minion pops without losing focus on the boss.

Best Passive Defense: Defiance With Constitution as your primary focus, you can get up to 120% "all damage" resistance, which translates to a true 55% damage reduction. Of course, high constitution means a high HP total as well. Add in the fact that you get energy for being attacked, and this is the best for tanking.

Honorable mention: Lightning Reflexes. On the test server, I can get a character with a true 80% dodge and 80% avoidance rate easily by stacking LR with Evasive Maneuvers and some dodge gear. Others have scored up to a 95% dodge rate. Taking 1/5th the damage of normal most of the time is really powerful. However, there are some nasty effects out there that simply can't be dodged. So I'm expecting this to become more of a PvP thing than a true team tanking thing. At least until something is "fixed," that is.

Best overall Power set for tanking: Might. Defensive combo is part of this set, and shares Defiance and Enrage with the other brick sets, so it's a natural fit if you want something with a theme and not just a collection of random powers.

In all honesty, the Threat Management guide sticked here hasn't become completely obsolete. The super-stats have changed so that presence is no longer part of aggro control, but all the information on powers and tactics is otherwise intact.


Alas, I can't really tell you what really works with "bladey arms." Is it the Roinesh version or the Nephilim version?

Blade arms are probably from the Roinesh costume set. They look awesome, but do not take on the effects from weapons. I would say that using unarmed and punch type strikes will look the best for the blade arms, however you're not going to get a bladed sound from those attacks.

I'm too lazy to answer the way Konru did but..

Best CC Power: Devour Essence
Its a fast ticking maintain so CC applies alot, and it heals. What more do you want

Best CS Power: Minigun + Micro Missiles
Fast ticking wide wide hitting AoEs are best, Minigun has fastest tick rate and can be used with Micro Missiles own at same time to double up

Best Passive: Invuln if you have Adv points, Defiance if not
The other passives work great too its just these ones are top although PFF excluded for the whole hard to keep it up AND pull agro at same time. New patch might have changed it

Best Active Defense: Unbreakable
A few seconds of nigh invulnerability to heal up? Invaluable as a Tank

Best Overall Set: Power Armor
Ranged Tanking helps immensly, having the highest % resist block and Invuln in set just furthers the deal. With the massive agro boost from two CS running at once and at a high tick rate, the only downside to a PA is low damage. It even has a decent tap to get bubble effect in energy wave

Just curious on how LR is considering specializations. Been on the PTS a bit and it seems you can get allot of damage reduction from the talent tree's with all the boosts to defense, especially from gear. Add in Energy shield w/laser knight and BCR and you could have a really high DR and Dodge with heals (even if smaller due to recent nerfs, but still heals). It seems Defiant DR stacked with all the DR from talent trees would hit diminishing returns allot faster and it would be better to have the extra dodge of LR. I may be wrong here, but just thinking :)

you forgot alot:

Crippling Challenge:
Devour Essence one of the best hitting melee powers and has a heal on top of it? yes please.
Laser sword another high hitter and a debuff to top it off with.
Bullet Beatdown a series of rapid hits that tick like crazy.
AnnihilateDoes extra dmg on bosses, taps can range between 1500-2500ish
Dragon's ClawOne fo the best dragon powers for pve, hits like a truck done right.
Thundering kicks Decent dmg and a escelating dodge bonus.

Challenging Strikes:
Hurricane This thing blows... twice per 0.5 secs. need i to say more?
Chainsaw Gauntlet Hardest hitting melee power in the game, and has aggro management? ohmy.
Avalanche the only t3 power out of it's type that has challenging strikes...
Sword Cyclone Another one of the best melee powers out there.
100 Handssame as Bullet Beatdown, only faster.
CleaveSlow big hits, big hits are big.
BrimstoneA utility power due to it's adv
Arc of RuinFull charges are pretty decent(around 3k~) and a physical dmg debuff.
QuicksandDecent dmg per 0.5

could have kept going but there's no need. there are alot of powers with CS like iron cyclone and others that do just as well, but not so much on the dmg department...

Passive Defense: Invul/dodge, or even Defi/dodge, less effective ones are Regen/dodge PFF(takes alot of work).

i'd go ahead and say that might is one of the better one but surely not the best. the recent changes fixed aggro control to such a point that one set wouldn't be better over the other unless there are two tanks in the team and one is using a set/setup that simply does more dmg than the other tank...

The problem is the way avoidance works. When you dodge an attack, your avoidance rating gets added to whatever damage resistance you might have and processed through the 100%/(100%+resist%) formula. Lightning Reflexes avoidance boost is big enough to really push against "diminishing returns" by itself. So any resistance you have on top of that doesn't help much unless you hit that one attack you fail to dodge.

80% dodge rate sounds extreme, but that's actually 55% from Lightning Reflexes and 25% from Evasive Maneuvers. Other dodge sources are available if you look for them, like an 18% from Thundering Kicks. But dodge failure is pretty much unavoidable occasionally.

The real eye-opener for me with my new Int/dex/pre dodge build compared to my old int/con/str defiance build was Mega-Terak on Monster Island. This dinosaur robot has an attack called "Jolt" that hits for about 4k, and ignores dodge completely. So my 7k HP defiant/healing hybrid ends up taking 2k damage occasionally, which requires some empathic healing, but otherwise still leaves me in good enough shape to press the attack. My 5k HP dodge/healing hybrid still takes the 4k, and can't self-heal fast enough, even with Resurgent Reiki helping. (I do wonder, however, if I am missing something about that specific attack.)

Based on the fact that defiance simply does not fail unless you are out of the line of fire for too long, I have little choice but to give it my top defense passive recommendation for PvE. Just be sure to invest in a lot of constitution as well. But I certainly wouldn't laugh at an Invulnerability or well built Reflex tank.