Tanking Basics

Holding Threat or Aggro

Threat/Aggro is the measure of how much NPCs shoot at you as opposed to nearby allies within 10 km. This can be parsed as percentage of incoming attacks toward the team (% atks in). A good tank will hold 75% or more; an excellent tank can hold above 90%.

Given the intricacies and randomness it is difficult to fully map any threat interaction. The thousands of moving parts and AI decisions that happen makes it nearly impossible to really track what does and doesn’t affect threat; including but not limited to distance from target, damage dealt to target, debuffs applied to targets and heals applied to allies. Threatscale is the main force of a tank as it tends to increase the contribution of these sources to the threat redirection assessment, and is something that can be expressed mathematically. 

Threatscale effectively ‘tricks’ NPC AI into perceiving players as a bigger threat than they are, and as such helps redirect attacks to that player. There are a couple of sources of threat generation that are useful:

• The Captain Ability Threatening Stance is unlocked at level 32, and offers +300% Threat Generation while active. This is a power available to anyone. 

• The Cruiser Command Attract Fire additionally adds +100% Threat Generation while active, and also decreases the threat generation of nearby allies in the field who don’t have Attract Fire active. This is one reason why cruisers lend themselves well to tanking (also because of large hull modifiers and high weapons count).

• Imposing presence (player personal trait) adds +25% Threat Generation

• History Will Remember (Starship trait) which adds +10% Threat Generation per stack, for a maximum of +300%

• The Threat Control skill unlock further increases the effect of threat generation by 100% when in Threatening Stance

As a result of this lower DPS threshold (note the damage potential still needs to be there), tanks generally fare best when running large scale area of effect powers (such as Fire at Will and Gravity Well). Fire at will, for example, targets multiple enemies within a weapons firing arc. FAW with standard 270 degree beam arrays tend to be the go to for any tank, as it creates a large sphere of influence (SOI - a region where a tank can influence the threat direction to themselves). In this case a ship with a 4/4 weapon spread will have a fairly even SOI within a 10km radius bubble centered on the player.

Being close to enemies, but also healing allies,  and using confuses (however these can mess with threat allocations), and debuffing (to a degree) also influences threat and aggro pulling. Tanks in STO need to do damage - there are essentially no direct taunts that force the targets to attack you over someone else. There are also a ton of targets in STO, so single-target abilities are not going to cut it. Additionally, if you can do a big initial burst of damage, it will help lock in your spot as threat leader. But you also need to survive that damage with resistances, healing, and raw hit points. Experience points to the most successful tanks having 25% to 35% of cumulative non-tank player damage output, which can go down if the DPS players are running higher-end builds and the tank is particularly well-geared towards increasing the threat multiplier. 

Taunts

STO has very few taunts; this makes them very important for potential tanking platforms. Taunts essentially override any threat scaling / attack direction decisions the NPC AI might make. However, there are two types of taunts; hard and soft.

Hard taunts usually have very little conditions and last for a set amount of time. This is the case for the Ability Diversionary Tactics (from Strategist secondary specialization), the Chronos Starship Console Chronotachyon Capacitor, and the Advanced Obelisk Carrier starship console Reactive Antiproton Cascade Emitter.

Diversionary Tactics is why tanks universally run Strategist secondary. 

Soft taunts are much more plentiful, and often work similar to most placates. Lone Wolf, for example, cause the rest of the team to placate enemies around them leaving the player as the only ‘viable’ target. However, this placate comes with a damage cap and as such with high DPS teams tends to last for only a second or two (often being a single shot from the tank).

Surviving

Tanks need both big defensive buffs/heals for “spike” moments when incoming fire is at its highest from many ships and sustained healing to withstand continued punishment

• Burst/spike heals are often from consoles, active reputation traits

• Sustained heals/regens are from other pieces of gear, traits, and bridge officer heals

• Don’t neglect damage resistance, which is a percentage reduction of incoming damage

Heavy/Classic Tanks versus Support/Debuff Tanks

In its simplest a tank is designed to remove all incoming fire and redirected towards a singular entity, which in this case is the 'tank' player. To achieve this the player must have sufficient sustained heal/protection and otherwise damage prevention to act in essence as a damage sponge. There is something of a divergence between secondary goals in tanking that will influence a decent amount of the build that can be boiled down to the answer to this question:

"Should my tank also deal lots of damage or should it focus on helping the team inflict more damage?"

There are pros and cons to both. The former, which is referred to here as a "heavy" tank, is more self-sufficient, tends to be built with more survivability due to less build space devoted to debuffs, and can be used more easily on more maps than just DPS-parsing maps that spread the team out and require each player to contribute substantial DPS and survive on their own on a spread out map, not lending themselves to a singular tank: (examples: certain stages of Battle of Korfez, Azure Nebula, certain stages of Herald Sphere, Dranuur Gauntlet). The downside is that if you're trying to help an ally reach new DPS heights on a parsing map like Infected Space or Hive, the tank's DPS can detract from theirs if your allies are sufficiently strong that they don't need the tank's DPS to contribute to the speed of the map's completion. This is basically only a problem for high-end players above 300K DPS. Heavy tanks or classic tanks aim to be a self sustained high performance (High DPS, High HPS, High AtksIn/s) ship that can work in virtually any team configuration and of varying skill from all users. Examples of heavy tanks include the U.S.S. Bedivere, Stormbreaker, and the U.S.S. Dragonscale. 

A supportive tank, conversely, tends to be less survivable and will certainly be more team-dependent, but still draws enemy fire and survives while also tossing out debuffs and ally buffs to assist the team. If you're trying to help boost allies to new records on parsing maps, support tanks are helpful in that they contribute to both the team's survivability and ally damage output, and they're generally still playable on other maps. Examples of supportive tank include the U.S.S. Alamo, the U.S.S. D'Alembert, and the I.S.S. Phlegethon. 

Career and Species

Doesn't matter. Okay, there are small differences as you min-max more, but unless your goal is to chase the very top of the DPS leaderboards, any captain career, faction, or species can fly any type of ship and any type of build and do very, very well in any map in the game. Engineering gives you extra survivability. Tactical has more damage and debuffs. Science is in between the two. 

Ship Basics (Beams only)

There's a large combination of things that interact to evaluate a ship's suitability for tank builds. Here's our list:

• You're going to be flying a beam ship, so the more weapons the better: 8  ≥ 7+Experimental Weapon (XW) > 7  >> 6+XW > 6 

• A high hull modifier is desirable.

• Consider Commander Engineering (Reverse Shield Polarity III) and/or Commander Command (Suppression Barrage III) mandatory for those major defensive tools. It's possible to tank without 1 or both of them but for just starting out, better to have both of those. Commander Command has the added benefit of Inspiration abilities which buff your team periodically.

• The "Attract Fire" cruiser command is desirable to help draw threat and give resistances but is not mandatory

• Ships with 12 consoles (T6 Fleet-grade) > Ships with 11 consoles (T6) > ships with less (T5 and below)

• Specializations: Command (Cmdr) > Command (LtCmdr-) > Miracle worker (Cmdr) > Temporal (Cmdr) > Intel/Pilot (Cmdr) > Everything else = ships with no specialization seating. We'll discuss specific powers below.

• Other gimmicks: Hangars are an option for many cruisers. While some high-end builds will prefer hangar-less tanks, some hangar pets can help add DPS or cast buffs like Suppression Barrage, Attack Pattern Beta, or Focused Assault

• These aren't the only variables tied to a ship's evaluation as we also need to consider our bread-and-butter bridge officer skills

Bridge Officer Seating

• Aside from prioritizing Suppression Barrage or Reverse Shield Polarity at the highest possible ranks, bridge officer seating is generally the same priority list as if building a Fire-at-Will DPS ship (see the energy basics page). Chronometric Inversion Field can also be used as an AOE damage debuff on ships with Temporal seating.

Skills

• The same skills used for the energy weapon build apply for tanks, but place higher priority on Hull Restoration/Hull Capacity, at least 1 point in Shield Generation, and Shield Restoration/Shield Capacity

Specializations

• For general use, Miracle Worker primary and Strategist secondary is the best option

• More supportive builds can use Temporal primary to add the Atrophied Defenses specialization at a decent cost to survivability and personal DPS

Power Levels

The same power levels used for generic energy weapon builds apply to tanks.

Gear

In general, the same gear for generic energy weapon builds is used for tanks (look for entries under "tanking"). Of particular note:

• Engine/Core/Shield should be the Discovery 3-piece for regeneration from the 2-piece and the Mycelial Lightning passive from the 3-piece, which helps draw enemy aggro (attention/fire)

• Weapons: You'll be using Beam Arrays in order to attack enemies in all directions and thus draw their attention to you. Any flavor can work, but in order of priority:

  • Ba'ul Antiproton (expensive) with the Linked Sentry set's omni and console (Lobi store, also expensive) are the premium options. These weapons "refract" to hit an additional target, which makes them excellent for hitting many enemies and thus drawing fire. Antiproton with the Ba'ul 2-piece is THE go-to weapon setup for tanks at the high-end. If you're using this, place a high priority on acquiring the Kemocite-Laced Weaponry bridge officer ability. Barring that, some other good options are:

  • Polaron with Lukari Adv-Piezo Polaron + regular Piezo-Polaron beams for the healing proc. Advanced Inhibiting Omni can be added to help reduce enemy resistance.

  • Plasma with Lukari Adv-Piezo Plasma + Altamid plasma for the healing proc from Lukari weapons and the resistance shredding proc from Altamid Plasma (note that Altamid weapons are expensive)

  • Disruptor can be used to help provide secondary effects to benefit the team due to the resistance debuff from most disruptor weapons 

• Consoles: We have a tailored tool called ALICIA that can provide console recommendations depending on whether you are building a DPS-focused tank (heavy tank) or a supportive tank (support tank) based on your budget. Some generic advice is listed below:

  • Tactical consoles: the Energetic Protomatter Matrix Infusers from the Fleet Colony are your go-to for sustained healing. Lorca's Custom Fire Controls can still be slotted, along with the Fek'Ihri Torment Engine on plasma builds. 

  • Purely defensive consoles: At least 1 high-impact defensive console is recommended for basic tanking. The cheapest and one of the most powerful is the Shield Absorptive Frequency Generator from the T3 Valdore. It is highly effective at regenerating shields while under fire, but it can struggle against enemies that are also constantly draining shields. Other examples include Reiterative Structural Capacitor, Protomatter Field Projector, or Ablative Hazard Shielding. These tend to be expensive. You can skip this once you're confident in your build's survivability.

  • Supportive consoles: Supportive tanks can look at tools like Interphasic Instability (Phoenix Box) or Temporal Destabilization Matrix (T4 ship) to help provide team-wide resistance debuffs. At higher price points, there are many more such consoles that can be used to disable enemies, reduce enemy resistances, buff allies, or knock shields offline. Support tanks need to balance survivability, teamwide utility, and still sustain enough damage to draw threat via AOE attacks. F

Traits and Duty Officers

Are well covered under Energy Basics and our Tier Lists. Make sure you follow the recommendations for survivability. A few notes:

• Under reputation traits, prioritize Advanced Targeting Systems, Precision, Energy Refrequencer, and Tyler's Duality

• If you're shopping the C-store for starship traits, prioritize Emergency Weapon Cycle for general energy weapon performance, (this also gets you the Ablative Hazard Shielding defensive console), Entwined Tactical Matrices to extend Fire at Will uptime, and History Will Remember for offensive/defensive stats and increased threat generation. These three traits are all you really need for an Elite-capable tank.

• Personal traits and duty officers will need to be divided between survivability and energy weapon categories. You'll need to practice and experiment to find the right balance for you and the teams you typically play with. A higher DPS team needs less survivability and incoming damage will be below 4M incoming. Lower DPS teams need their tank to absorb 6, 7, or even 8M incoming damage on ISE, much less HSE.

Piloting

Tanks should typically employ the broadsiding with Fire-at-Will and 1-torp piloting techniques. Seek to move quickly with the rest of your team to each encounter and be near as many enemies as you can engage at once. If you die, the entire team likely does on Elite. 

External Resources

If you'd like some other resources beyond this site, check out:

• Budget Elite-capable tank by DilaZirk