First Experience Tanking Prime Battleground

So before tanking Prime, the group was talking about how hard it is to find a tank for groups. Not sure if they meant a good tank or a tank in general. My experience within the instance shows why it is hard to find a good tank, whatever the case may be with what they meant.

I'd run the instance once as a controller. The tank we had (99 CR tank who was very sure of himself) tanked the bosses and ignored the adds, which led to the healer getting all adds on her and dying a couple times.


I tried to tank the adds and the bosses the first time, and we wiped. I decided to tank the bosses and ignore the adds like the other tank did. Got called a noob for my efforts and that player abandoned the instance.

Yeah, I didn't know what I was doing, but to call me a noob and not even bother to try to explain is very frustrating to a tank. I stuck with the group, and I learned from the rest of the group to tank the adds in the first part and ignore the bosses. Then I was told to pull the repair bots in the second part. Everything went very smoothly once I was given that information.

Why is there a portion of the community in this game that feels the need to pass judgment without even giving someone a chance? It's a bit upsetting to be treated this way when I do the best I can to help the group do content. I'm also very happy to teach people who are struggling.

There is an element in this community that regards their own gaming time as more important than anyone else's

Yep, that was the person's attitude alright. He/she said that we wasted his/her time. Of course, the very next run went very smoothly once I had been informed of the proper strategy. Too bad that person didn't stick around to see what can develop from patience and teaching, and the teaching only took all of 30 seconds for someone to lay it out for me. I already had an inkling the adds were important to control, I just didn't know how to handle them properly without some guidance.

Our community is horrible.

Also, tanking Prime Battleground is the most boring out of all tanking. You essentially pull the adds away while the boss runs around being beaten on by the dps/group. You only get to tank Brainiac himself, but for the most part, he stays in the middle. Just most of his big attacks are focused on you. You do get the luxury of grouping the repair drones...

This raid can be done w/o a tank. (On launch with the team buff it was! LOL)

It's similar to tanking the Broodmother in the Fortress of Solitude: The Chasm. The Broodmother requires the tank to round up all the sentries and keep them occupied in a similar manner. I actually don't mind that type of tanking; it requires me to really pay attention and make sure I don't miss any adds that spawn.

As to doing Prime without a tank, that must be rough on healers. I know when the tank I learned incorrectly from was running, my girlfriend was healing and I was controlling. She went down twice due to having all the adds attack her, and the tank's response was "I've never seen a 97 healer die so easily. She must not be very good." I think any healer attacked by 10 or more fairly powerful adds is going to struggle with all the interrupting and damage being done.

The adds don't spawn that fast and if you work to remove the spawners while you work on the bosses, it's pretty simple. It actually not a bad spot for a controller to shine. Because you can controll all the adds in there. One of the last things that controllers could do before ultimately becoming power batteries. At level of course.

A 97 cr healer really shouldn't be getting hurt at all in prime.

One good strategy for prime in mixed CR groups is for the TANK to lead the raid (In our league whatever the ability the TANK always leads the raid), in PBG that means that after the cut scene he/she goes immediatly to META to keep him on his pedestal if he gets up first, if it is not him then the team call which boss is out, for Meta get under him and face the group. As adds spawn adjust your position to pull them under Meta so that they get hit by the dps.

For Tech, he is not realy worth active tanking, an odd pull every so often will keep his AOE 's on you the trick is to position yourself once again between Tech and your group, adjust your position and pull all the adds under him. The TANK must inform the group to let him know if they have adds that he /she has not seen (if they have mics),

Magic will generally do a jump attack on a random team member so we generally don't active tank him, instead the tank stands to the side of him and again pulls all the adds to his vicinity.

The healing bots are the tanks priority on Brainiac, get them out of the air as quickly as posible and group them if you can, in conjunction with your trolls the team should make short work of them.

hope this helps, its not the only way , just the way we have found to do it with people of all abilities and experience.

Oh, it's not just our community. The general lack of manners and common courtesy in most walks of life is staggering.

Tanking both the boss and the adds at once is a valid tactic.

Deathmike out.

Prime is just frantic for a tank, lots to do but you can't really go wrong. Get in the middle and pull everything to you , keep your eyes open around the whole arena and just grab everything to you. Fast and furious action for a bit, great battle.

There is no reason why you can't tank the bosses and adds at the same time. I've done this many times with every tank powerset and sometimes with an undergeared alt and well before Home Turf came out. A good tank will be able to pull adds from pretty much anywhere. It really seems like tanks have gotten so bad that the bar is at an all-time low.

I guess that's no surprised since tanks aren't often used in alerts and lower-level raids are just blown through by overgeared groups. New tanks are simply not getting the learning experience they should be getting. It's rather sad that tanking has come down to being able to cycle shields and getting enemies stuck against pillars.

Where you doing that before you learned the raid? It's obvious he didn't run the raid a lot.

I think the community should understand....unless you pug with someone you know, not everything will be the way you want. First and foremost, you should have said "I have never tanked this before, any suggestions for a smooth run?" If they didn't want to run with a first timer, then they can bail right then. A downside to FTP is a mass of players that just want to play and be done and don't give any care towards other players.

LOL When are you gonna solo it? I know Odyssey already two manned it.

Also, when at level, tanking the 3 avatars while pulling the mobs was a problem because of the aoe control effects that some of the adds do. Just simply pulling them away from the avatars actually made it really easy to beat. Now it doesn't matter where the tank is, the splash damage from the dps kills all the adds fast.

Yes, of course. Back then, the adds could actually kill people. To me it's so bizarre that you would even have to ask that. BTW, we did with a tank (didn't have to take advantage of no-tank bonus), not knowing how to glitch people back.

Lol, I've been kicked for saying just that every time I've said it within a PUG; many people do not believe in teaching, they believe in kicking in this game. The only times I have not been kicked for letting people know it was my first time was running with friends or my league. Sometimes it is better to ask forgiveness than it is to ask for permission.

Agreed. The tank should have been keeping all the pesky adds off her so she didn't take any damage. Saying she was attacked by 10 adds was probably generous; it may have been closer to 20.

Don't know why people think a 97 healer is invincible. Healers, controllers, and dps have fairly low defense even at CR 97. If they get swarmed by every add in the vicinity, it's going to be rough for those players. Try walking in as a 97 healer with the tunnel in FOS2; do so either in the first tunnel where groups wipe a lot due to not allowing the tank to pull or the split tunnels with all the Assassins. That's only Tier 3, but I doubt a 97 healer can survive there. I know my 98 tank has a hard time surviving those without a healer, and even with a healer it is sketchy.

Doubt I'll give it a serious try anytime soon. Probably Gates will come first, if any of them will.

When managing trash mobs/adds, it's not just an issue of how fast they are killed but also how well they are CCed. A tank can avoid a lot of damage to both himself and his teammates with proper CCing in mob heavy encounters.

Deathmike out.

When i used to do prime I tanked it as fire and earth and really the tactics dont change that much depending on powers. The first key to success is the group communicating with the tank since it's a large arena and you may have a blind spot if you dont zoom your camera out. The second thing is if an add is on a member you need or want to get aggro from a person with a bit of sense does two things....calmly tell you they have an add and two.......get in range of your powers so you can do your job, not run way out of range from where you are. In the case of the latter it's not you being a bad tank it's the players be a suck player. If your fire I would suggest u have fireball or absorb heat as a long range aggro move. People in this game that play this as their first MMo mean well but most are clueless, you dont have to pull an add right under your butt to prove you have aggro, when you have aggro the target will charge across the room, completely ignoring the rest of the group for 10 sec. If your fire or earth and you use that tactic that's 10 full sec that NO ONE is getting hit unless that add has a long range attack.

The actual Braniac battle my league tried several tactics, but the one that we used for the entire league( pro players and not so good players) to get everyone a weapon or in most cases a collection required me NOT to worry about the drones unless they got past the controllers. We had controllers that focused on vit, dom, & vit/dom and you'd be surprised at much freedom comes with the variation. If your the only one in the group that has the ability to knock the drones out of the air, it's not you failing as a tank....your in a garbage group

Awwww.

Wait... Don't leave. Are you... Are you saying that... CONTROLLERS CAN CONTROL?!?!?!?! And that a tank can benefit from putting a CC on a spinning wing armor and NOT get yelled at by the tank?

LOL Pugging Prime was so horribly difficult to do when I was gearing up T4. You basically did what you were told are good luck staying in the group. I made a lot of friends during my gearing up phase in Gates. So I was able to pug it successfully. I just hate the raid. Randomly luck based that was the basis of T5.