Tank vs Tank - Comparing the Tank Powers

I love Tanking. It's my favorite part of DCUO.
You get to jump into a huge crowd of enemies and smack them around instead of running away from a single add. You fight toe-to-toe against the meanest bosses in the game. Everybody wants a tank along on their raid. Sometimes they even want a spare. Life is good when you're a Tank.

But which Tank power to choose? Which one is best? How do they work? What are they good for?

I started writing an updated guide to Fire tanking for the Trailblazing thread, and wound up comparing Fire to some other Tank powers. I started digging into the numbers, and having some fun with it. I started comparing each Power's mitigation, crowd control, and survivability with Fire's... and my Fire Tank write-up slowly morphed into a full comparison of all the Tank Powers.

For the final survivability test, I came up with a fairly concrete example:

Survival Scenario
Baseline stats for a complete set of CR92 gear (while in tank stance) are 18728 Def, 16469 Health, 4433 restoration, and 2586 Dominance. To simplify things, we'll assume a few skill points or mods and use the following stats:

• CR 105
• Defense 19000
• Health 17000
• Dominance 3000
• Restoration 4500

OK. So Here's the Story....We are a brand new CR105 Tank going into Love and War. (don't laugh, I'll admit you have to suspend disbelief here).
We have with us a lazy, mostly useless solo troll so we can't spam multiple powers to survive. With a couple of exceptions, we'll limit ourselves to just 1 power.
We also have a competent healer, but she's distracted by her baby or her glass of chardonnay from time to time.

In our Love and War Raid, we run into 2 different "OH NO!" moments:

• We take 85,000 damage (before defense) over 10-12 seconds from being surrounded by a ton of adds.
• We take a 70,000 damage (again before defense) one-shot from Carol or Wonder Woman.

13 seconds after the start of each attack, our healer puts down her chardonnay and kicks in a 2000 health burst heal.

For each Tank Power, I'll run through the results with and without blocking. We're assuming that our Tank is smart enough to have the Fortified Blocking Home Turf MOD. The following posts are lengthy, but (I hope) at least mildly entertaining and informative. Seeing how each Tank deals with this can help you see how to play each power.

Ice uses shields to protect themselves.

Earth can use a combination of shields, Absorption, and Transference

Fire tries to use its self-heals to survive.

Rage uses Rage Mode and tries to avoid the Crash.

ATOMIC mixes high defense and self-heals.

And though I hope you'll read the whole thing, HERE IS A HANDY SUMMARY

A NOTE ABOUT EFFECTIVE HEALTH
Since different tank power sets change their defense, I talk about things in terms of Effective Health. Most shields have a health of (Dominance+Restoration) or 7500 health in our example here. If we had 0 defense, our shield would break after 7500 damage. But since our defense is applied first, the shield will actually break after (shield health/% damage allowed past defense). If your defense mitigation is 50%, your shield won't break until 15000 damage. If your defense mitigation is 75%, your shield will actually absorb 30,000 damage. I use this to normalize things across the different power sets to get a fair comparison.

A NOTE ABOUT DEFENSE
The amount of Defense needed to reduce incoming damage by 1% changes with CR as Shiny Mackerel describes in this excellent thread. TL;DR version:

1% mitigation = (CR x 3.5) +46

Full Tank Gear always yields about 45% damage mitigation. If you buy all the Defense available in the weapon trees you can increase your defense by 600. Since at CR105 we need 413 defense for 1%, this winds up being about 1.5%. The 200 defense you can add with nanoweave armor is less than 1/2% at CR105.

A NOTE OF THANKS
Special Thanks to Veritech and Rokyn for posting excellent visual aids, which I've now linked to.

TODO: Power use analysis. Need to check what percentage of max power gets used up in each of these scenarios by the tank.

ICE
Power set Guide found in A Chilly Guide to Everything Ice
==============================================
+90% defense
Shields

Buffed Defense: 36100
Defense Mitigation: 75%

Shield Strength: 7500
Reflection Strength: 13000

Effective Health: 68000
Effective Health (with Shield): 98000
Effective Health (With Reflection): 120000

Tank Supercharge: Hibernation, Ice Elemental

Special: Stacking chill effects grants Ice Armor, which keeps an Ice Tank's defense buff active for 60 seconds even without casting any powers.

OPENING NOTES:
Ice is the standard that other tanks are measured against. We'll see Ice's strong and weak points. An Ice Tank's Effective Health is 68000 without a shield (goes to 85000 while blocking) which means that without a shield an Ice tank doesn't live very long. First rule of Ice Tanking: always have a shield active. ICE Shield Powers:
Reflection
Winter Ward
Bitter Winds
Shatter Restraints

Main AGRO moves: Frost Snipe, Inescapable Storm.
Inescapable Storm is a great multi-target ranged pull. Frost Snipe is Ice's single-target super-taunt, but has problems because it occasionally roots or encases its target.

Main CC moves: Bitter Winds, Inescapable Storm, Freeze Wave
Bitter Winds is a shield + juggle move. Inescapable Storm is an excellent ranged pull. Ice's other CC powers mostly involve rooting and encasing enemies-- neither of which is popular with the DPS community. If you can root enemies far away from you you'll take less damage because melee attacks tend to be stronger than ranges ones. If you encase an enemy you'll take no damage, but the encasements will have to be broken sooner or later.

Break-Outs: Shatter Restraints, Winter Ward.
Both of these are also shields.

Survival:

If you didn't use Reflection you've lost more than half your health. If you did, you lost less than 30% and can laugh at this pathetic attack. Sort of.

Out healer then Kicks in her 2000 point heal:

This Raid isn't going to go far at this rate. But even though the Home Turf mod only increases your mitigation from 75% to 80% while blocking, we can still give it a try, right?

What a difference that 5% made! If you didn't use Reflection you took a bit of damage. If you did, you barely took any at all and are probably starting to get some confidence.

If you didn't use reflect out healer then Kicks in her 2000 point heal. If you did she goes back to her chardonnay.

85000 Damage Over Time (not blocking)
You pop a shield and decide to smack those adds around a bit. Again your defense buff allows only 25% of damage through, shield absorbs 7500, Reflection 13000.
Damage In: 21250
Shield: 7500 / 13000
Net Damage In: 13750 / 8550
% Health Lost: 81% / 48%

Ouch. That smarts. You're probably yelling at your useless troll for more power so you can shield yourself again, and begging your healer to put down that glass. She does and here's how things look after her burst heal:

Net Damage In: 11740 / 6250
% Health Lost: 69% / 36%

Looking better, but still not great. Maybe you should have blocked?

85000 Damage Over Time (Blocking)
Your damage mitigation goes all the way to 80%
Damage In: 17000
Shield: 7500 / 13000
Net Damage In: 9500 / 4000
% Health Lost: 56% / 23.5%

That still hurts. This might be why people say that Ice's weakness is against lots of adds. There's not a lot of CC available to Ice Tanks, and when shields start breaking Ice Tanks start stressing out their healers and trollers. Our clueless troller is probably dead and waiting for the healer for a revive after she finishes her wine. Before she does that she sends out her 2000 burst heal as an afterthought:

Net Damage In: 7500 / 2000
% Health Lost: 44% / 12%

The heal helps things quite a bit. If you used reflect there, you are ready to roll. If not, things will probably be ok if your troll gets revived and sends some power your way.

SUMMARY:
Ice has been described as "Easy-mode tanking". That's really only fair when Reflection is available to cast. Ice tanks have lots of shield powers but are a little weak in the crowd control area. Blocking is more helpful to Ice Tanks than you might think, and when shields break a healer sure comes in handy.

EARTH
Full Power Set Guide in A Guide to Everything Earth
=================================
25% Damage Absorption
30% of damage Transferred to Brick (after Absorption) or +25% absorption with Aftershocks.
+ 1 defense per point of Dominance

Shield Strength: 7500
Buffed Defense: 22000
Defense Mitigaion: 53.2%

Effective Health - Aftershocks: 72656
Effective Health - Aftershocks (with shield): 88469

Effective Health - Transference: 72664
Effective Health - Transference (with shield): 96472

Tank Supercharge: Envelop - only really effective for Brick tanking.

Special: Reinforce is a power that allows you to shield the lowest health member of your group by transfering some of their damage to you-- and the damage gets reduced because it's applied against your defense and absorption. Can be useful for protecting that idiot DPS who insists on using melee attacks against Carol and Wonder Woman, or maybe that useless troll.

Earth has only one shield-- Gemstone Shield-- which can absorb 50-100% of incoming damage, depending on aftershocks. It lasts 12 seconds, but aftershocking Gemstone Shield also refreshes it to full time and health so you can get it to last 14-15 seconds with good timing. Aftershock slowly if you're taking heavy damage. Sadly, Gemstone Shield also has a bug where if it is not aftershocked at all it breaks in 1 hit.

OPENING NOTES: It's hard to calculate how shields stack with Absorbtion and Transference. Generally I believe the order is Defense - shield- absorption - transference. Absorption and shield get combined in the combat logs. If the order is wrong the shield will absorb 15000 after defense instead of 7500, and in most cases the order doesn't seem to make a huge difference. Earth's Effective Health is a good deal Higher than an unshielded Ice Tank's, but isn't nearly as good as an Ice tank with even a normal shield. Earth Tanks do get more out of blocking than Ice Tanks, though. We'll see the implications of that below.

Main AGRO Moves: Earthen Grip, Stone, Brick
Earthen Grip is only a single-target pull, though it will AGRO anything around its target. Stone is a fairly standard super-taunt. Brick taunts from time to time when it has power.

Main CC Moves: Jackhammer, Upheaval, Totem, Epicenter, Unstoppable, Earthen Grip, shards, Brick
Earth has quite a few decent options for controlling adds. Epicenter is an area pull. Jackhammer is an excellent knock-down move, and aftershocking it can keep things juggled.

Break-Outs: Unstoppable, Soothing Sands
Unstoppable is also a good CC move. Soothing Sands give a Heal over Time (which isn't Earth's thing, but is fairly helpful)

SURVIVAL:
Earth is more complicated than Ice, because of the Aftershocks and Pet options. With Brick, we have to assume that Brick has all his health. In order for Aftershocks to be at all viable, we have to assume that we kicked our useless troll and got a league-mate in for the last boss fight, allowing us to use 2 powers, one of which is Gemstone Shield.

70000 Damage 1-shot (not blocking)
You see the big skull and aftershock Gemstone Shield to the max.
Damage In: 32756
Shield: 7500 / 7500
Absorption: 8189 / 16378
Damage In: 17067 / 12687
Transferred: 5632 / 0
Net Damage In: 11264 / 12687
% health lost: 66% / 75%

Due to the way the Brick's Transference stacks, your brick is a more effective way to tank. You're still not doing as well as ICE though.
Out healer then Kicks in her 2000 point heal:

Net Damage In: 9264 / 10687
%health Lost: 55% / 62%

Better. You're not dead yet. But you really should have blocked.

70000 Damage 1-shot (blocking)
Look out! the Red Skull of Doom! Hurry up aftershock my gemstone shield and block! block! block!
Damage In: 14000
Shield: 7500 / 7500
Absorption: 1625 / 3250
Damage In: 4875 / 3250
Transferred: 1608 / 0
Net Damage In: 3218 /3250
% health lost: 19% / 19%
Hey that's not doing too bad. Better than Ice did with just a normal shield, though not as good as ice with reflect, and we had to use gemstone shield. If a shield is on cool-down (a real possibility) then an earth tank will still lose 41% of their health, even when blocking. It's no wonder a lot of earth tanks seem to run with both gemstone shield and hard light shield.

Was that the clink of a glass being set down I heard? It must have been, because we just received a nice burst heal, bringing us to

Net Damage In: 1218 / 1250
%health Lost: 7% / 7%

85000 Damage Over Time (not blocking)
Pop that shield and try to doomspin because we know that troll is good for nothing and we'd better see to our own power. Our buffed Defense is only allowing about 47% of the damage through. Let's see if our shield and absorption takes care of the rest.
Damage In: 39776
Shield: 7500 / 7500
Absorption: 9944 / 16378
Damage In: 22332 / 15988
Transferred: 7369 / 0
Net Damage In: 14739 / 15988
% health lost: 87% / 94%

Not good. Not good even with a shield, which might be on cooldown since there's only one (gemstone shield). We need heals! Heals!

Net Damage In: 12739 / 13988
% Health Lost: 75% / 82%

It's not looking good for the raid at this point.

85000 Damage Over Time (Blocking)
Your damage mitigation goes all the way to 80%
Damage In: 17000
Shield: 7500 / 7500
Absorption: 2400 / 4800
Damage In: 7200 / 4800
Transferred: 2376 / 0
Net Damage In: 4750 / 4800
% health lost: 28% / 28%

That was tough, but you're not done. If your shield was on cooldown you're left with only 50% damage absoption, so you'd be at half health. As it is, you're doing quite a bit better than Ice with a normal shield, but not nearly as well as Ice with Reflection.

Net Damage In: 2750 / 2800
% Health Lost: 16% / 17%

Again, not bad, but you have to consider that your shield may or may not be available.

SUMMARY:
It's a good thing that Earth Tanks have some good CC moves. Be prepared to make use of them. By the numbers, Brick does exactly the same as aftershocks without a shield, but a little better than aftershocks with a shield. In most cases, Earth comes out of things reasonably close to our earlier Ice tank example.

Earth's big weakness, compared to Ice, is that an Ice tank can (and should) stack their power bar with shields, so that there's always a shield power off cooldown. Earth has only Gemstone Shield, which has a 22 second cool down. Like Fire, Earth has to survive by blocking and using CC moves.

FIRE
Full Power Set Guide in Trailblazing Guide to Fire
==============================================
+60% Health
+2.2 Health / 1 pt Dominance.
+80% Healing Received
Restoration Bonus at T5 and above (roughly 25% of gear's base unmodded restoration)
Self-Heals

Shield Strength: No shield / 8600
Defense: 19000
Defense Mitigation: 46%

Buffed Restoration: 5600 (Actual bonus is 1096 rounded to 1100)
Buffed Health: 35152
Effective Buffed Health: 62533

Fire's Self-Heals (at CR105/3000 Dominance/5600 Restoration) (all Numbers Averaged)
Absorb Heat - 4085 over 6 seconds.
Backdraft - 2243
Burning Determination - 2895 burst + 10x 729 when hit for 10185 total
Burnout - 2683
Overheat - 1482
Stoke Flames - 2916 burst + 11x 668 over 11 seconds for 10266 total.
Wildfire - 360 per burning target hit.

Tank Supercharge: Reignition, Eternal Flame
Eternal Flame is noteworthy because it generates a limitless stream of self-heals similar to Rage's but based on Restoration and Dominance instead of incoming damage. Combined with Fire's 80% healing bonus this power can take a Fire Tank back up to 100% health over its duration.

CC powers: Enflame, Flashpoint, Backdraft, Flame Cascade, Burnout, Meteor
Backdraft is a mid-range pull with a juggle thrown in and a heal if any enemies are burning, but Fire has no long-range pull. Many Fire tanks run with their movement pull, or with Amazon Lasso. Fire's multiple juggles and knock downs tend to be very effective outside of boss fights.

AGRO: Fireball
Fireball is the super taunt. Other ranged options are Wildfire, Flame Cascade, and Meteor Strike. Flame Cascade is less viable now that Power Refund is disabled in Tank Stance.

Break-Out powers: Burnout, Burning Determination

OPENING NOTES: We can see straight away that Fire has the lowest Effective Health of any tank so far 10000 less than Earth and 5000 less than Ice without a shield (but since Ice always has a shield up the difference is more like 30,000). It's not looking good for fire without a lot of blocking. In fact, it's looking so bad that we have to cheat a little in Fire's favor. Let's let our fire tank have a lot of skill points to give them all the healing chance bonuses, which will get their Crit Healing Chance up to 20% and Crit Healing Magnitude to 97%. This means that, on average, we're healing 20% more than the numbers above. And we'll only consider the best self-heal: Stoke Flames buffed in this way heals for 12258 on average over 12 seconds).

SURVIVAL:
Our Fire tank is going to try to use their self-heals to mitigate damage. We'll see how well that plays out.

70000 Damage 1-shot (not blocking)
What's that Big Red Skull? Is it bad? You hit stoke flames and attack. But though your health is buffed, your defense isn't, and is allowing 54% if the damage to get through to you.
Damage In: 37835
Shield: No shield
Heal: Already dead
Net Damage In: 37835
% Health Lost: 112%

You're dead. One-shot. The raid is a wipe and everyone's pointing the finger at you, probably complaining that they should have shouted for an Ice tank in LFG. None of your healing powers can help you at all once you're knocked out. Let's check the case where you're a very very quirky Fire tank and run with Hard Light Shield.

Damage In: 37835
Shield: 8600
Heal: 0
Net Damage In: 29235
% Health Lost: 86%

Hard Light Shield is enough to prevent a one-shot here, though Fire with Hard Light Shield is doing quite a bit worse than Ice or Earth. In fact, we can hear our Healer choking and spitting out her chardonnay while she scrambles to hit her burst heal:

Net Damage In: 25635
% Health Lost: 75%

Our Healer's 2000 point heal gets magnified to 3600 for Fire, so we get about 10% health back-- which is still not quite as much Ice and Earth get.

70000 Damage 1-shot (blocking)
The 8600 from HL Shield is better than most of Fire's self-heals, but the two main ones are more effective given time. Let's hit Stoke Flames and block through the big bad attack.
Damage In: 14000
Shield: No Shield
Heal: 12258
Net Damage In: 1742
% Health Lost: 5%

There's a big dip in the green bar, but it's healed back almost completely inside of 12 seconds. Our healer probably missed it, and is taking another swig of chardonnay. If she happened to catch the dip and got excited, we'd be at 100% health. Wait, what? Ice with a normal shield loses 38% when blocking, Earth loses 20%... Fire loses only 5%?

85000 Damage Over Time (not blocking)
Since Fire's self-heals work well over time, this should be Fire's chance to shine. Let's hit stoke flames just after we start taking damage and kick some violet butt.
Damage In: 45943
Shield: 0
Healing: 12258
Net Damage In: 33684
% Health Lost: 99.6%

You're down to less than 1500 buffed health. If the damage happens over 10 seconds instead of 12, you're actually dead. If we didn't cheat and give our Fire tank the critical heal bonus... well you get the idea. That crash you heard is your healer dropping her wine glass as she panics and tries to save you. Probably mumbling something about "only Ice or Rage" into her microphone. After her heal:

Net Damage In: 30084
% Health Lost: 89%

This is why everyone says that Fire is terrible. You have 0 margin for error at this point, and you needed to spend a bunch of extra skill points to even be alive. But the good news is you can at least try to blame the troll. What happens if you block instead?

85000 Damage Over Time (Blocking)
Your damage mitigation goes all the way to 80%, but you fire off stoke flames just in case before you turtle up.
Damage In: 17000
Shield: none
Heal: 12558
Net Damage In: 4742
% Health Lost: 14%

Things are looking pretty great here. Even Ice with Reflection wound up taking more damage than you. Your healer doesn't even put her wine glass down and instead hits her heal left-handed, probably saying something like "I thought this raid was supposed to be hard?"

Net Damage In: 1142
% Health Lost: 3%

Whoa. You shrugged all that off as though it was literally nothing. This is why Fire is insanely great.

SUMMARY:
With a good self-heal going, no tank that we've seen so far can match Fire's performance while blocking. Outside of block you're blown away like ashes in the wind. This is why Fire is such an unforgiving power to tank with. Since you can't block all the time, you need to be totally aware of your surroundings and take care before you come out of block to renew AGRO, grab an add's attention, or refresh your self-heal. It can be fun and challenging, and it can be stressful.

Fire's weakness compared to Ice is that Fire has only 2 good heals, while Ice has 4 shields. Fire's weakness compared to Earth is that it has no Damage mitigation, only higher health.

Rage
Full Power Set Guide in An Anger-Filled Guide to Rage
===================================
+.66 Health per point of Dominance for each enemy close by each time you use a power.
Self-healing

Shield Strength: 7500
Defense: 19000
Defense Mitigation: 46%

Buffed Health (1 power) 1 enemy / 4 / 8 : 18982 / 24930 / 32861
Effective Buffed Health : 35120 / 46124 / 60796

Buffed Health (2 powers) : 20965 / 32861 / 48772
Effective Buffed Health : 38788 / 60796 / 90141

Buffed Health (1 power+Severe Punishment) : 22665 / 34561 / 50422
Effective Buffed Health : 41933 / 63942 / 93286

Tank Supercharge:Mangle, Vindictive
Vindictive would be an amazing supercharge if it didn't share a cool down with relentless anger and severe punishment-- but it does, so it isn't.

Break-Outs: Ire, Ferocity

Self-Heals: Rage Blast, Ire, Remorseless Recovery
Rage's self-heals mostly do healing based on your damage out or based on damage in.

AGRO:Rage Blast, Eviscerating Chain, Revenge
Rage Blast is Rage's super-taunt. Eviscerating Chain is a max-range single-target pull and also a rage crash canceler. Revenge lunges and taunts, and is a crash canceler.

CC Moves: Eviscerating Chain, Without Mercy, Ragebringer
There are a few other attack powers that apply a knock down effect.

Rage Mode:
Relentless Anger
Severe Punishment

OPENING NOTES: Rage is... different. And complicated. How big a % health you've lost depends on how many enemies are around and how many powers you've used in the last 10-12 second window.

Most tanks are on a 12 second schedule in terms of refreshing powers. Not Rage. Rage is on a 10 second schedule-- the cool down of Rage Mode. Also, our Rage tank requires 2 powers every 10 seconds (start Rage Mode and cancel rage crash) or they are dead in every case. The faster pace and 2-power requirement combine to make rage the most power hungry of the tanks. Many rage tanks make this even worse by pulling everything in site to buff up their health. In addition, Rage's health buff stacks each time they use a power. For our testing purposes, we're going to assume that 2 powers are used -- one to start rage, and one to cancel the crash. With 2 powers and 8 enemies around, Rage has a similar effective health to Earth or Ice with a shield. With 4, it's close to Fire. I consider the cases of 1/4/8 enemies being close by for calculating effective health and % health lost.

Crash Cancelers: If you time the use of these powers correctly, you become immune to Rage Crash.
Eviscerating Chain
Outrage
Revenge
Dreadful Blast
Plasma Retch


Crash Softeners: If you use these powers to cancel Rage Crash, you take 50% damage. We'll assume that Remorseless Recovery is used, and that it heals back about 2000 damage over its course.
Remorseless Recovery
Bloodlust
Galling Eruption
Lacerate

SURVIVAL
70000 Damage 1-shot (not blocking)
All that Big Red Skull does is make you MAD! You pop Severe Punishment and fight! Numbers are for 1/4/8 enemies nearby.
Damage In: 37835
Shield: 0
Rage Mode Heal: 0 / 0 / 37835
% Health Lost: 166% / 109% / 0%

Depending on the number of enemies close by, that strategy didn't work so well, since you can't heal dead. If there were 7+ adds around, and you had enough health to survive the shot, 100% of it got healed back! Our healer is getting bored.

If we use Remorseless Recovery to mitigate Rage Crash instead of one of the cancelers (and assume it heals about 2000 health)
Rage Crash: 0 / 0 / 16918
% Health Lost : 166% / 109% / 33%

Then our healer helps us out:

Net Damage in: 37835 / 37835 / 14918
% Health Lost: 166% / 109% / 29%

If we survived, we're doing better than any case except for Ice with Reflection. The problem is unless a bunch of lanterns were around us, we probably got one-shot. The good news is we can blame the Quantum Troll for locking the adds in place on the other side of the room.

70000 Damage 1-shot (blocking)
I'm mad, but I can block for like 2 seconds until this attack is over.
Damage In: 14000
Shield: 0
Rage Mode Heal: 14000
% Health Lost: 0% / 0% / 0%

Hey what do you know? 80% mitigation can be a life-saver, even for Rage. If we have a crash canceler off cool down, our healer can keep drinking her chardonnay. No other Tank power can match this.

If we use Remorseless Recovery to mitigate Rage Crash instead of one of the cancellers (and assume it heals about 2000 health)
Rage Crash: 7000
Healed Back: 2000
Net Damage in: 5000
% Health Lost : 31% / 21% / 14%

At this point our healer will probably put her glass down:

Net Damage in: 3000
% Health Lost: 22% / 14% / 10%

Note that since Rage doesn't get Fire's healing bonus, as our health goes up the % we get back from our healer goes down. This puts even more stress on the Controller, since our healer has to work harder to keep our Tank healed. Also note that we're doing worse at this point than any tank except for Ice without Reflection.

85000 Damage Over Time (not blocking)
This is a fight that Rage is uniquely suited for. Taking this much damage over time probably means lots of adds (and thus, lots of health). For the sake of simplicity, I have to assume this damage comes steadily over 10 seconds, not 12, and Rage mode is active for 8 of the 10 seconds.
Damage In: 45943
Shield: 0
Rage Mode Healing: 36754
Net Damage In: 9189
% Health Lost: 41% / 27% / 18%

Even if we canceled Rage Crash, our Healer has something to do! She pumps out her happy burst heal:

Net Damage In: 7189
% Health Lost: 32% / 21% / 14%

Only Ice with Reflection can even come close to this. And we didn't even block.

If we couldn't cancel the Crash but only softened it, then things go quite a bit worse for us:

Rage Crash Damage: 18377
Healing: 2000
Net Damage in: 16377
% Health Lost: 72% / 47% / 32%

At this point our Healer is probably asking why we aren't blocking, yelling at the Troll for more power, and complaining that she never gets to drink her wine. After her burst heal:

Net Damage In: 14377
% Health Lost: 63% / 42% / 29%

That's still much better than Earth or Fire, though not quite as good as Ice with Reflection. Who needs a block button?

85000 Damage Over Time (blocking)
This just doesn't quite work because it's not actually possible for Rage to block through this-- we HAVE to leave block to cancel our Rage Crash. So for Rage, blocking through this attack means blocking only after we use our Crash canceller-- about 2 seconds out of 10.
Damage In: 35221
Shield: 0
Rage Mode Healing: 31821
Net Damage In: 3400
% Health Lost: 41% / 27% / 18%

Our Healer is debating whether to put down her glass and heal us or to not even bother. She heals us, mainly out of boredom.:

Net Damage In: 1400
% Health Lost: 6% / 4% / 2%

That's comparable to Fire, but we only had to block for 2 seconds out of 10. Just make sure it's the right 2 seconds. Blocking during Rage Mode won't affect the above case, but will improve the case where we crash for half damage. The math is a bit messy though, so I'll just continue this same case:

Damage In: 3400
Rage Crash Damage: 15911
Healing: 2000
Net Damage in: 17311
% Health Lost: 76% / 50% / 35%

Our Healer is finally getting a workout. After her burst heal:

Net Damage In: 15311
% Health Lost: 68% / 44% / 30%

Rage Crash really stinks. If we had blocked all through Rage Mode, came out of block to mitigate and went back into block without taking a hit (I know that could never happen, but bear with me...)
Damage In: 17000
Rage Mode Heal: 13600
Rage Crash : 6800
Net Damage In: 10200
% Health Lost: 45% / 30% / 20%

Note that we don't get any self-heal this time, because for the most part, Rage has to be doing damage to get heals. TODO: Think of something witty to say about our healer.

Burst Heal: 2000
Net Damage In: 8200
% Health Lost: 36% / 24% / 16%

Better than Ice (without Reflection) and about the same as Earth. Ironically, it can't touch Fire without more than 48 enemies being in range, or a LOT of power use, which our useless troll just won't stand for.

SUMMARY:
If at any time a Rage Tank fails to mitigate their Rage Crash, they are dead. There's just no way around that fact. In that sense, Rage is a power that requires quite a bit of timing and skill. The Canceling powers are all vulnerable to interrupt, so it's an extra risk for an extra reward.

There's a temptation to want to pull every add in sight, but the examples above show that you don't really need a lot to perform as well or better as the other Tank Power sets.

Rage is the bane of Controllers everywhere. As a Rage Tank you'll want to use 2 powers every 10 seconds instead of 1 every 12. On top of that there's the temptation to pull everything. And that's not all... because when your health is buffed high, your healer has to use more power to keep you healed. Power management is key for any Rage Tank.

ATOMIC
Full Power Set Guide in An Unstable Guide to Atomic
==============================================
+90% defense
Self-Healing

Buffed Defense: 36100
Defense Mitigation: 75%
Shield Strength: 7500
Proton Recovery Healing: 9200

Effective Health: 68000
Effective Health (with Shield): 98000*
Note that since Atomic's shield power breaks after a certain number of hits, it's unlikely to give the entire effective health.

Tank Supercharge: Energize, Mass Density

Special: Stacking 3 combos grants you Quark-Gluon Aura, which increases your damage out and lets each attack you make heal 2% of your health (processes only about once per second).

OPENING NOTES:
Atomic is a strange sort of hybrid of the high defense of Ice, the attacking style of Rage, the Aftershocks of Earth, and the self-heals of Fire. We'll see that it shares the strengths-- and weaknesses-- of all of these powers. Just like Ice, an Atomic Tank's Effective Health is 68000 without a shield (goes to 85000 while blocking) which means that without a shield an Atomic tank doesn't live very long. The first rule of Ice Tanking is always have a shield active. The bad news is that Atomic Tanks only have 1 shield power: Density. The worse news is that Density is a healer-type shield that breaks after a certain number of hits and doesn't necessarily protect you for your full (Dominance + Restoration) shield health.

So. Given that there's only one shield, and the shield is pretty sucky, Atomic is left trying to heal itself. You have 3 ways of self-healing:

• Proton Recovery - Gives a burst heal + 24 ticks of healing over time (about 2/second) for a total of about 7400 at CR105. With Quark-Gluon Aura, the HOT component is only 12 ticks, but each tick heals twice as much.
• Power Combos - Performing a combo immediately after using a power heals you for 48% of your Dominance. At CR105 this is 1440 per combo completed.
• Quark Gluon Aura - Performing any attack (including Power Combo attacks) heals an additional 2% of your max Health. Using Proton Recovery while this aura is active does not affect the burst but doubles the heal over time ticks. The heal from damage done is effectively 340 health/second at CR105.
• Quark-Gluon Aura now conveys 20% damage absorption while not blocking. This makes your net damage in the same whether you block or not! We'll see how that affects things as we go on.

So is just spamming combo powers a viable strategy? Is Density really that bad? Is Proton Recovery any good? Should I try to get that magic aura thingy?

Like Rage, a lot will depend on how many powers you use and how many combos you hit. All the combos are vulnerable to either interrupt or block, so hitting a long string of them is not as easy as you might think. For our testing we'll assume 3 powers and 6 total combos. Which should take roughly 8-12 seconds to execute. For purpose of the aura's contribution we'll assume you generate 6 ticks of extra 340 heals.

Combo Healing = 6x1440 = 8640.
Combo Healing (w/aura) = 10640

Main AGRO moves: Particle Beam, Atomic Reorganization.
Atomic Reorganization is a great multi-target ranged pull that actually teleports your targets (how cool is that?). Particle Beam is Atomic's single-target super-taunt.

Main CC moves: Atom Splitter, Nuclear Burst, Thermochemical Explosion
Atom Splitter is a multi-target area pull/stun/teleport can can be combo-d twice with a burst heal for each combo. Nuclear Burst is an area juggle that can also be combo-d twice.

Break-Outs: Unleash Anti-matter, Neutrino Blast
Neither of these are juggles. Unleash Anti-Matter is a very small burst heal (roughly the same as Fire's Overheat-- which is so small nobody uses it). If used immediately after a double-combo, Neutrino Blast activates Quark-Gluon Aura.

Survival:

Yeah, your heals are just no good when you're dead. The healer is saying something about Rage being better, the Troll is saying "I thought Atomic didn't have to block?" and the DPS' are secretly cheering because a wipe means their final damage numbers will look bigger. This is Fire's weakness, and Atomic shares it. Unlike Fire, Atomic doesn't need to rely on Hard Light Shield-- they have their own equally crappy version right in the power set:

Just like Ice, you've lost more than half your health by trying to attack through a boss one-shot. Unlike Ice, Reflection isn't an option for you. If you're counting on shields to save you, you're in for a long raid, because you have only one shield, and it doesn't last long with adds around.

Out healer then Kicks in her 2000 point heal:

Like Ice, you're actually being healed more efficiently than Fire (if you can call what this Healer is doing efficient). This case is an Atomic weakness- you absolutely need to know when to block and you absolutely cannot get countered.

What if we had our Quark-Gluon Aura going?

I'm stopping in the middle because 20% damage absorption that the aura gives is literally the difference between life and death. More interesting than that: the 14000 net damage in is the same damage we would have taken if we blocked. Once your Q-G Aura is up, there is no advantage to blocking, except to counter a lunging enemy.

How much can we heal back? With combo healing a lot depends on how many combos we think we can do before being interrupted. In this case we'll look at 4x and 6x:

Hey, now that's not bad for avoiding the block button entirely. We're doing better than any other non-blocking Tank except for Rage with a ton of adds. If you could actually get 6 combos in or use proton recovery then you're actually 6% better than a non-blocking Ice tank with Reflection.

How are things if we block?

Almost looking better. Our healer can take a nice easy drink if you had your aura on or if you hit Proton Recovery, and our Troll is yawning even though he just got one-shot.

If you can't get in any combo heals, blocking has lost you 71% of your health. If you buy the argument that you'll be able to just block through the 1-shot and then attack to help regenerate health, you're doing better, but still worse than any other tank power except Ice with a normal shield.

Let's take a look at how we do against the Adds.

So many options and so many of them are so bad! WE NEED HEALS HEALS HEALS!:

To be fair, if you managed to get your Quark Aura on and used Proton Recovery, you're actually doing as well as a Rage tank and better than an Ice Tank with Reflection. On the other hand, not shown here is the case where you're crowd controlled and only get 4x Combos in-- in that case you lose 97% of your health. If you can't hit at least 4, it's a wipe.

Without your Aura none of your options look great. If you used Density you're looking pretty squishy whether you have Aura or not.

But can't we just Turtle up and Block our way through this?

Wait-- what?? Blocking barely helps us at all! You'd better hope you can juggle them to avoid this kind of situation, because your shield becomes next to useless, and your Proton Recovery is going to be on cool down for the next 6 seconds. You'd better hope your Healer can keep you alive until then. You ask her really nicely and she throws out her 2000 point heal:

If you used Proton Recovery or Density, trying to block your way through the rough patches leaves you worse off than any other Tank Power. If you had neither of those options available to you (off cool down) then you are, in fact, DEAD. In this case Atomic is like the anti-Fire: Unless you have Density or Proton Recovery available, blocking is actually worse for you.

At this point the Troll is whining in your ear: "Dude my Ice Tank would have just hit Reflect. You should switch to Ice, dude. Ice is BOSS". The Healer is getting thirsty, and I think one of the DPSs actually moved out of melee range.

SUMMARY:
Atomic is different. If you can get your Aura active and keep it, you can be a very active and very survivable tank. If you lose your Aura, get countered a lot, or try to block, there's probably a power respec token in your future.

So what's the Punch Line?

No one will be surprised when I say that, overall, Ice is the most effective Tank Power. Its crowd control powers are a little weak, but the strength of its shields more than makes up for that. Always have a shield active, use Inescapable Storm to gain AGRO on the far-away adds, and you should be fine.

Rage is potent, but requires good timing and a lot of power. By gathering adds and using lots of powers, a Rage Tank can buff their own health very high-- but the higher it gets buffed the less effective your healers are. Rage's real mitigation is Rage Mode. If you can avoid being interrupted and cancel Rage Crash, you'll take virtually no damage (as long as you block through the one-shots). If you only mitigate Rage Crash, you're more or less in line with an Earth Tank.

Earth has better juggling powers than Ice, but only has one shield, and needs to block a lot more. Relatively few of Earth's numbers are really bad, but none is really good. Absorption does not stack with shields (though transference does) so Earth tanks could probably stand a higher defense buff or a slightly higher absorption rate. As it is, Earth Tanks need to stay in block more than Ice or Rage Tanks to be effective.

Fire is the worst tank power by far. Except when blocking, when it becomes the best tank power by far. Only two of Fire's self-heals are really good, though, and we had to cheat a little and give Fire Critical Heal bonuses to keep it competitive. Every second that you're not blocking you're extremely vulnerable. Being a Fire Tank means you absolutely live or die by the Block/Block Break/Interrupt combat mechanics.

Atomic looks great. And with its unique healing combos and Quark-Gluon Aura, Atomic is actually a formidable and survivable Tank. Until you start getting crowd controlled or have to block, when it becomes worthless and weak. You have the coolest-looking shield in the game, but it's not very effective in most cases. Like Fire Tanks, you will live or die by the Block/Block Break/Interrupt combat mechanics. Keep that Aura active, and combo-heal yourself constantly. Or get crowd controlled and die. Or, unlike all other Tanks, block and die. The choice is yours.

Here are all the powers by the numbers. Green Numbers below highlight where each Tank Power can perform well relative to the others. Red Numbers are where each Tank under-performs.





A NOTE ABOUT SHIELDS:
It's interesting to note that HL Shield for Fire is actually slightly more effective than a fully Aftershocked Gemstone Shield is for Earth. This is due to the fact that Fire gets a Restoration Buff when using gear with CR of 81 or higher. Despite that, the Healing from Stoke Flames or Burning Determination will heal back more Health than HL Shield will protect you from (unless you get one-shot). The numbers for Rage's shield may be off a bit because I've calculated it as an Ice-style shield instead of a Healer-type shield.

Our slightly-drunken Healer's 2000 point burst heal means about 12% total health to an Ice or Earth Tank. But Even buffed to 3500 it's only 10% to a Fire Tank. This means that Healers will have to work harder to keep Fire Tanks healed, despite putting out huge healing numbers. For a Rage Tank, 2000 health starts at 12% and goes down from there depending upon the number of powers cast and enemies present. The more a Rage Tank's health is buffed, the harder our healer needs to work to heal the same % of health.

Great read LT.

Healer afk

Awesome read. Really funny. Troller AFK

This is one of the best/well written/composed guide here on the entire DCUO Forum regarding all Tank Powers. Highly recommended for all our Tank brothers and sisters.

Best part is that afk drunk healer and yawning troller

Very good work LT.

I can finally compare tanks properly.

My view although always will be that some tanks are harder then others, and it's a tank loving players choice whether they want easy or thrill.

Thanks! Good read and a job well done.

Great work LT! Hopefully all prospective tanks find and learn from this guide.

And Fire Tank AFK:

Awesome read, yet, however i would only say one thing, why do people keep saying that rage tanks are hard to heal?, i know healers spam heals on us, but...we heal ourselves...its basically the main thing of rage tanking.

Think of the rage tanks health bar as the ocean and the healer is trying to fill it with a tea cup. Only applicable if you lose health.

Lol. Great stuff

I admit. I've healed like that too

Thanks for the kind words. I've updated the guide with links to your visual aid (with due credit given).

I also added links to the various power guide threads in each example.

Me too!

Oh well yeah, if you lose health i can understand it, but most of the healers i come across seem to spam heals for their life, as in, life is not going below 3/4 and keeps healing on their own, but you still have heals raining upon you even if it's just some adds you are fighting, it's not annoying or anything, but few healers seem to know that its easy to heal a rage tank. (Being honest, if a rage tank crashes and survives, it's only polite for them to drink a soder on their own lol)

Added a link in the Earth section to the bug report for Gemstone Shield.

A recent post by CrazyArtBrown prompted me to add a note to the first post. For those of you too lazy to scroll up, here it is

A NOTE ABOUT DEFENSE
The amount of Defense needed to reduce incoming damage by 1% changes with CR as Shiny Mackerel describes in this excellent thread. TL;DR version:

1% mitigation = (CR x 3.5) +46

Full Tank Gear always yields about 45% damage mitigation. If you buy all the Defense available in the weapon trees you can increase your defense by 600. Since at CR105 we need 413 defense for 1%, this winds up being about 1.5%. The 200 defense you can add with nanoweave armor is less than 1/2% mitigation at CR105.

You have infinite patience, Sky

One of the best guides for tanking around, if not the best!