Tanker

Overview

If the Blaster is the irresistible force, the Tanker is the immovable object. While not leading the pack for dealing damage, nobody can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Tanker when time comes to take damage. The Tanker is not totally invulnerable, but while he bends his efforts to protecting his teammates and they lend him their aid in turn, it's very easy to feel that way! The Tanker is a second only to the Scrapper in melee power, and possesses some ranged abilities, though far below those of the Blaster or the Defender. Tankers proudly stand in the front lines of battle in order to protect their comrades and, of course, the innocent.

The Tanker's powersets are:

Primary: Defense
Secondary: Melee

The Tanker has high hit points and medium damage.

Powersets

Primary Powersets

A Tanker's primary powersets are designed specifically for defense. They are:

• Fiery Aura
• Ice Armor
• Invulnerability
• Stone Armor

Secondary Powersets

A Tanker's secondary powersets are designed for melee. They are:

• Battle Axe
• Energy Melee
• Fiery Melee
• Ice Melee
• Stone Melee
• Super Strength
• War Mace

Ancillary Power Pools

• Arctic Mastery
• Earth Mastery
• Energy Mastery
• Pyre Mastery

Strategies

The Tanker strategy is fairly linear; first and foremost, the Tanker has to focus on surviving, and then, on gathering attention away from allies. Fortunately, attacking people is a fine way to garner attention, and this means the Tanker's role is not one prone to non-obvious tactics. Advanced combat maneuvers are things the Tanker can experiment with easily, because the Tanker has a large margin of error. Unlike some other archetypes, the Tanker's raw stats allow the Tanker a degree of safety even in the worst of situations.

Herding

There is a legacy to the term herding, born from days when the issue of scale was much larger. Talking of how things were, however, is far less useful than discussing how things are. Herding is at its simplest, a description for dictating the movement of enemies. Now, all archetypes, can to some extent or another, by understanding the way enemies react to player actions, engage in herding, but the Tanker can excel in this field.

The most basic form of Herding available to a Tanker involves a damage aura (such as is available to the Fiery Aura set). The Tanker moves to engage the enemies, but rather than closing with the nearest enemy and attacking, the Tanker instead moves close enough to the available enemies to deal them some damage with his aura, then closes with their 'priority' enemy, and launch their attacks. Thanks to the damage dealt, and the Tanker's Gauntlet power, the enemy units (unless otherwise distracted) should close with the Tanker, and keep their attention focused on the person best-able to take it.

All Tanker primaries have auras that allow this, just available at different levels. Invulnerability gets its latest, Invincibility, at level 18. Also, at the lower levels, enemies are less deadly, and Tanker players can get a better handle on how much they can handle in this maneuver.

While this maneuver can be broken by large, area sources of damage, knockback, or other disruption, the effect of a herded group can allow supporter archetypes a focused point where they can orient their area effects (such as Tar Patch, or a large area debuff like Lingering Radiation), or allow a character to peel off small numbers of opponents that they can handle.

Early Play

Many tanker sets are lacking for melee attacks early on, because of the slow progression through the offensive set available to the Tanker. This means that many Tankers are able to make a great deal of use of temporary combat powers (such as the Veteran Rewards powers), or of pool power attacks (such as Air Superiority). At least early on, filling out a decent number of attacks can allow a Tanker to reach the higher levels and therefore, the more powerful defensive abilities.

External Links

• Archetypes documentation on official City of Heroes site
• Official City of Heroes Manual as a zipped PDF file