Not at all. All tank weapons are suited to the purpose. Chaos is perfectly good. Hammer’s power skill is a bit strong, but then so is Immutable. Don’t worry too much about bleeding edge cases in any event—all three tank weapons can tank perfectly fine. Use what you (and those you play with) enjoy.
Full disclosure, I play Chaos/Hammer defense glyphed tank and haven’t had issue with any content, including scenarios. Just the occasional aggro issue vs. an early High Explosive Grenade.
Same, though partially defensive. In the proces of turning 6 mythic stalwards into 3 legendary. Been runing 1Hit from the start and the rest is crit from my dps set. Only E8 but managing E7 without issue. Personally avoid sustain where i can, as I enjoy having a healer, and have a healer myself who i dont like dpsing on.
so you use glyph defensive? or critic rate and critic power? in chaos/hammer
With defense glyphed it probably means Stalward and/or Elusive. As things are right now, most tanks go with a DPS setup for glyphs, so 5 crit rating, 1 crit power, 1 hit rating for the talisman, and typically crit power in both weapons. The reason they do this is because of how hard bosses hit later on. Elusive give you at best 45% chance to take no damage, and Stalward at most 45% chance to only take 30% damage. This sounds nice in theory, and is nice as long as you ain’t looking at 1hit attacks. You can’t risk a 50% + chance to get 1shot due to an attack going clean through. This means you are forced to keep up your mitigation abilities, which in turn leave defensive glyphs kinda useless, as the mitigation ability alone will keep you going.
The defensive glyphs do shine when it comes to frequent small hits, like standing in fire, or multi-hitter attacks, as these will glance/miss here and there.
With DPS setup on the glyphs, you will also have an easier time to allocate as a DPS where needed. This could be if you happen to not be the tank, or for normal survival PvE, or scenarioes. Anything where killing fast is the best defense.
----- Extra blabbering below.
It’s really a shame that it’s like that right now with defensive glyphs. Each tanking weapon was clearly designed around one of the mitigating stats; evasion, glancing, protecting. Chaos work with Evasion, and Anomaly adds chance to evade on top of your build in evade chance. Shotgun works with glancing on the bottom elite. Hammer works on protections. The stronger reduction in damage, have the lowest chance when all is put together. As such i think Evade can be amped up to 60-70% with Anomaly (100% damage reduction), Glance to about 90% with the 3rd line elite (70% damage reduction). Hammer will have the least damage reduction (too many sources to count) but the reduction is 100% of the time.
Worth to know that if you Evade or Glance, then the attack can’t Crit. Protection doesn’t counteract the crit to my knowledge. On the other hand that also means that if you take a Critical hit, then it means your Evade and Glance failed, and you are taking 100% damage + whatever the Crit power of the attack.
I’m pretty sure passive levels of defense make enemy crit chances 0 across the board. Only monsters I’ve ever seen crit me had a direct 20%+ crit chance buff on. Which is better off purged than trying to build up 20% glance just for that.
Also hammer’s technically more the equivalent of TSW’s “major ward” than protection - all 3 weapons have a protection buff, but hammer’s got elites with -38% and -40% damage, like major ward. The only reason they’re not popular is cause Immutable is 100% damage prevention in hammer/chaos and hammer/shotgun’s so tanky in the first place you don’t need an elite much.
So far as how I’d rate the weapon pairs, with a healer,
hammer+shotgun >>> chaos+shotgun > chaos+hammer
Just in terms of ease of healing leading to both tank+healer being able to diversify their builds (in turn meaning neither has to play perfectly). You can kinda combine them in any order but offhand hammer builds will need specific itemization to keep pulverize’s buff working.
To my knowledge protection directly reduce damage taken 100% of the time. So -40% damage taken, to me, is the same as a protection buff, its just more clear what the reduction is. I would think the - 40% is also quite a bit more powerful than Any of the x protection ones, but thats just a feeling =P.
Personally, I use three evade, three defense, a hit, and crit in my weapons. Other people use more crit and crit power, because that makes it easier to do other things with that same set of talismans as well as do more damage tanking.
Depends on what you want to do. Defensive glyphing will make you a poor DPS, but it won’t lock you out of anything.
Interestingly, the only time that has ever been a problem for me has been when I was punching above my weight, such as tanking the roughly E9 regionals in E5 tank pants. Yeah, you get one shot that way, but then, you’re under geared.
I’m sure it can happen sometimes otherwise in ye olde mythical E10, but I don’t expect it’s so common as to necessitate months of playing with a squishy gear-set that requires the mitigation skills (just my opinion after healing pug tanks with crit glyphing.)
The glyph set I have works fine in scenarios. It’s a wee bit slow, but it’s very safe, because it is the kind of environment in which evade and defence shine—frequent small hits. Worth noting the Unutterable Lurker also attacks via frequent small hits.
Not recommending anything as the best path, it just matters what you want to do. Defensive glyphing makes one less reliant on mitigation skills (use them still, but life won’t end if you use them strategically or save them for things like mass aggro on adds—throwing up a giant shield tends to get attention!) while crit glyphing makes one more versatile if you want to DPS (or make your tank heals much stronger since crit does that).
I get crit hits (infrequently) by dungeon bosses, while wearing three legendary Stalwarts. I get a lot more glanced hits.
Hmm, I don’t really log most fights so it might be happening and I don’t notice. I do check hits that kill me and I don’t recall them ever being a crit. Usually it’s some nonsense interactions with mitigation (like Reduction does 2 hits, which doesn’t proc Pain suppression so you die even though neither is a 1shot)
The big reason I don’t have a defensive set anymore is time investment in red talismans, my lv.70 head with crit power is preventing more damage than my lv.35 mythic head with defense in it, and I’d rather level up my majors to red 70 than the mythic head. I still keep it around in case I need the cooldown reduction signet but that only has to come out when the group is underequipped with impairs and it’s the 1 or 2 bosses who actually have a 15-20 second cast. I’ll probably work on the tank gear when my majors are all 70 cause minors hardly seem worth the effort.
I can only comment up to e7 ish, so only know what ppl claim above that Elite level, hench my formulation xD
Personally smart mitigate instead of 100% upkeep