Once A Tank, Always A Tank

[Alumette]

I *love* playing a tank. For almost a year now, Alumette has been my only toon and I have changed her build only very slightly in respec. I have so much fun playing a tank, I can't play anything else. I've tried a scrapper and a blaster, and I don't get them out of Outbreak before I decide I'm bored with the AT. :)

Recently I've started playing a controller, and I'm enjoying that, but I find that I still do "tanky" things with my controllers, like, run right into the center of the mobs to get my blind off. As a result, I've heard the comment "Once a tank, always a tank" from people.

What do you think? Do you play other ATs and find that you still try to "tank" them?

I'm of the mind that it takes a certain kind of person to play a tank, and that those who do tend to be pretty loyal to the AT.

Thoughts on this? Am I just talking kooky talk?

[Impact]

Nope, you're definately not alone in this....ask Dione about what happens when I play my scrappers and/or defender (since she teams with them all). :chuckle: In our Manticore TF Saber was the psuedo-tank after ours dropped due to connection problems....I loved it. I guess it's just like I told our group after Saber was 1 shotted twice by Infernal:

"I'm just a tank trapped in a scrapper's body!"

With my rad/energy defender I'm almost always in the middle of the fray and I've been known to brawl with a boss more often than not before letting loose with energy blasts.

[Dynamo-Man]

Dude, I play a "tanker" in every game I play. Whether it's on the computer or P&P. And I'm pretty darn good at it, I must say. Just ask Masked Revenger. :)

Dynamo-Man was only the second character I ever made on CoH, and he is still my favorite.

I made Hero-Man as a Scrapper, and after one real mission, I remade him as a Tanker. Tankers just fit me. And it's nice to hear that there are more psychos like me out there. :D

[Jade]

LOL, my outlook is a little different, because my first 50 was a defender. I look at battles different than the average tank. BUt yes, I do catch myself playing very blapper with my blaster. hehehe

-Dee

P.S. Frost is a once a tank, always a tank....... he's only allowed to tank when I'm defending, as he's NOTORIOUS for giving me heart attacks.

[Quakester]

Happens no matter what your AT. The one you find most comfortable is the style you stick with. Took me a while before I got the hang of leaping headlong into the fray instead of staying back and hammering from a distance. I'm a blaster at heart. ;)

[Sword]

I tank.

Doesn't matter what AT i happen to be playing at the moment.

At low levels, while playing my blaster, I told the tank to stay back while I showed him how to herd. (Blaster have really good aggro-control tools :D)

[Masked Revenger]

Yeah, I can vouch for this (though from a scrapper point of view). It took me some time to get used to running Captain Noble (a blaster), and I just started a tank (Flag-Stone, a stone/stone tanker), and am still thinking like a scrapper. But, I can get used to playing other AT's after about 6 or so levels, so I figure Flag will get better. :)

Also, some AT's are easier to switch to when you play other types. For example, I find that blaster/defender are pretty compatable, and going from scrapper to tanker is pretty easy (though not nessicarily the reverse).

Chris

[Morcalivan7]

Played most ATs a couple times between levels 10-20 but have by far played many more cons and defenders than anything else with my 2 defenders (1 deleted) to be the only ones that survived long enough to get past 30 before being deleted, and with one making it to 50. So that is why I will be going Destroyer with an alt Dominator in CoV to create a complete Lord Morcalivan and LordMorcalivan. I do miss the Dark Scrapper though. But as for Blaster, after you played your first 20 levels it gets real boring after that as you just keep doing the same thing. And as much as I play I have a short attention span when it come to re-play value of things which is why I only have one 50 and my highest alt is lvl 12. Just can't stand not having any new challenges and/or experiences. Especially when I'm paying monthly.

[Sun-Scarab]

tanker with a gun, tanker with a sword, tanker with mind control, tanker in a hot scarab costume...
I hear ya Alum!

[Greblaja]

I've gotten much better at not charging in first, not leading the crawls, etc - but it has taken me about a month long binge on alts to do this.

On a side note, I have seen so much bad tank play while playing alts that I am often tempted to switch to a tank alt and provide the offending tank a personal demonstration of better tank play!

[Esbat]

Esbat is my main and a defender so I dig the extra defense she gets PLUS her ranged ability, so when I have to decide between Taunt and Hurl for Dog Fight of course I go for the ranged attacks. When I have decide between Acrobatics and Stealth I pick stealth 'cause even if I can kill everything in my path that cons purple and is at least 4 lvls above me I still want to be able to slip by "without any trouble". :sarcasm:

[Jade_Dragon]

I seem to be pretty much a Defender in everything I play, but then I play my Defender very much like a Tanker. (A lot more now than I used to) So I think I'm just a very defensive player overall.

My Scrapper and Blaster are probably unusually balanced towards defense, so I would say Defenders and Tankers are a bit more natural to me. Those two are my highest level characters. :D

[Mahaf]

My two highest are a Scrapper and a Controller.. I don't really have a natrual aptitude at either of them. :( I've tried playing a Tanker, and it was fun, but never something I've ever stuck with. I've played a Blaster, and it was fun, but again, not something I ever stuck with. I've played many a Defender in the low levels, and turned out the same way as with the others. Eh.

[Randomus]

For a long time when I was playing Torch (my second major character) I was very hesitant about Tanking because I had always been a Defender. It was kind of sad. At one point I was hesitant about taking on a group of orange minions "because they all have holds!" even though I had mez resistance. Darknesse, over a tell at the time, scoffed and said, "That's Defender talk!" So I jumped in and about 2 seconds later they were all "in jail". It takes a while to get used to any new AT when you've been intensively playing one for such a long time.

No real point to this story, I just thought it was funny.