General tanker and Ice/Ice questions

[Remianen]

Okay, so I was bored this weekend and decided to try out some tanker combos I ordinarily wouldn't have. Ice/Ice and Fire/energy. My questions revolve around ice though.

-Does Frozen Fists have an accuracy penalty or something? While fighting in Outbreak, I had like a 70% miss rate against even con contaminated mobs. It got so bad that I quit using FF and just went with brawl for a long stretch.

-From what I've read, Invuln is the "pure" tank primary but I've never seen a ranking of like who is 2nd, 3rd, etc as far as tanking is concerned. Can anyone venture a guess? I'm considering making a fire/fire tank to play around with but I don't think I have the patience to stick with it (I've been spoiled by 8 blasters and 5 scrappers so playing a tanker just feels sooooooo sloooooooow) as a main. I'm basically trying to find a happy medium where I tank well but can also put out at least SOME damage, END permitting of course.

-What mindset fits tankers best? I know with my blasters, it's "kill it asap!" and the same may hold true for scrappers too (except, in a team, I usually seek out the biggest, baddest creep in a group and dance with him/her/it. "Scrapper lock" for sure). Defenders (at least mine) are more, "lemme debuff the living shiz outta this group then top everyone off". But is the tanker more like a turtle? You know, "Take your best shots and when you're done, it's my turn". I find myself falling into old habits (i.e. "Kill it asap!") and toggle drop soon follows before my target is down. Just wondering if I need to strike a balance or just stick to one side or the other.

I’m think the reason I haven’t really gotten into my tankers (though I adore their concepts and role) is because I’m not approaching them the right way. As an example, I usually don’t mind faceplanting with my other (non-tanker) characters. But when it happens to one of my tanks, I get frustrated and switch to another (non-tanker) character. I’ve read a lot of things by folks who say how anything yellow or below can’t kill them but I’m thinking they’re referring to higher levels. ‘Cuz under 10, from where I’m sittin’, tankers suck (when compared to their “unkillable” counterparts at the higher end).

Just looking for some guidance to kinda steer me in the proper direction or to the right mindset or approach.


Thanks!

[Freeze Warning]

thought I'd share a few of my quick thoughts on some of the questions ya posed about tanks. First, I think they did a pretty good job of making the tanker primary pools different. Invulnerable tanks are best at resistance, Ice tanks are best at defense (making the enemy miss), Stone tankers are a strange (though effective) mix of resistance and defense, and fire tankers have burn. One of the things that you're suffering from is the fact that tanks come into their offense late (in the twenties and thirties) and don't pull away from the other archetypes defensively till the teens. This makes them slow starters but big finishers. Fire tankers seem to suffer from this more than most, as fire tanks tend to depend on defense powers from the power pool to get their defenses up to something worth while (tough, weave, Combat jump and acrobatics are all planned in my fire/earth tank build) and have to slot out burn for good damage.

As for a mind set, well I only play a tank when I can team. Tanks aren't a lot of fun for me solo, as it tends to be a battle of attrition. On a team, I love being the controller tank, bringing order to the chaos that is team combat, with all the holds, knockback and mayhem that tends to ensue. The fun of being a tank for me, is being the first one to charge in and taking all the hits as the team decimates our foes. The larger the team, the bigger the challenge. I tend not to even try and pull out my heavy punches till I've got things solidly under control... But... I tend to take a controllers point of view in almost all my characters. That's why my favorite blaster is an ice/ice and my favorite defender is dark/dark, and why I take taunt or provoke on my scrappers or presence on my blaster... and so on and so forth.

As an aside, whatever happened to Dawncall? She was very tough and seemed combat effective when I teamed with her on the test server (as the blaster Miss Judge).

Freeze