In this guide I would like to bring out many different points and reference others.
Here is the basics of ice tanking:
-innate abilities
-your role in group
-getting and holding agro
-powers and staples in your loadout
-weapons
-dominance
-special tactics
Innate abilities
This whole guide deals with ice tanks in tank stance only, fire tanks and ice dps have needs. When you are in DPS stance you lose certain abilities so all this deals with tank stance. Therefore, when you use a power your defense as an Ice Tank increases by 90 percent. So when you have say 2500 defense, when you use a power your defense then rises to 4750, and with a 1 percent damage mitigation at every 71 defense you are taking 66.9 percent of the damage given. (Max damage mitigation available is about 5280 close to 75% damage mitigation. At this point there is no need to block anything because you take the same amount of damage blocking as you do attacking)
Your role in group
Your role is very simple. You are what is known as a meat shield. You let things beat the living crap out of you so that your team can beat the living crap out of them. That is not all you do you must also watch your group (see special tactics) to make sure that you can pull away anything that is attacking them. On top of that it is your job to keep your troller and healer free of stuns. On top of all this you must also be the one to interrupt heavy attacks (see weapons).
Getting and holding agro.
Agro (also known as hate) is actually pretty simple in this game. First off, let me start by saying that dominance does nothing for agro (see dominance) and weapon attacks provide no agro at all. You must hit a mob with a power in order to get agro. A tank in tank stance should have a fairly easy job of getting agro, though if a dps or troller jumps ahead and starts unloading powers it may take a couple of powers for you to pull agro from them.
After you get agro, keeping agro then is all about timing. You must hit a mob with an attack power every 10 - 12 seconds to hold agro (some are slightly more often but very few). The power must hit in that 2 second window for the timer to restart. If you hit a power to get agro then hit another at 6 seconds it will NOT restart the timer. I like reflection (see powers) for getting and holding agro.
Powers and staples in your load out
For this section I will go over my loadout and let you know what the staples are and what you can change to whatever you want. People do have their own preference on powers but some are so great that they should not be overlooked. As a personal note, none of the ice super charges are of any use. The ice golam power is too slow and does not allow you to create any agro also it drops agro so the second you use this the enemy goes after your healer/controller, and hibernation has the same issue except you cant even do dmg while hibernating. If you are going to use a super charge go with something in the movement tree (I recommend speed drain for speedsters and maybe vacuum bubble for flight, dont know about acro)
Cold Snap: This is the first power in my loadout and is not a necessity. It does small AE (area effect) damage and gives adds to the buildup for ice armor. (This used to be in my loadout, I changed it to Bitter Winds)
Bitter Winds: This is not a staple. It is a very nice power though, it knocks up a large group of guys around you which is nice for not taking damage for a little bit.
Ice Bash: Not really a staple but I do recommend it as it helps raise weapon damage and does a little more DPS when needed. This power also adds to the buildup of ice armor. (this power is no longer in my loadout. I changed it to a movement attack.)
Reflection: STAPLE! This power needs to be in your loadout. It starts by doing small AE damage. It also adds to the build up of ice armor. On top of that, though, it gives immunity from all damage and stuns for 5 seconds (that is 5 seconds of immortality) and reflects back a small amount of damage from 4 attacks (I think, I don't really count). On top of all this it has a 10 second cool down, which means that if you pull agro with this power and use it every time it cools down you can hold agro with this one power alone plus take no damage for half the fight plus get the defense boost. Sound good?
Speed Drain: This is a speedster super charge. This ability recharges a lot of power to the entire group and does small DoT (damage over time) to enemies around you and it is only a 50 percent super charge. Not everyone will have this but this power, I believe, is the single greatest super chage in the game. If you are a speedster I highly recommend this no matter what class you are (other than healers).
Inescaplable Storm: STAPLE! This power pulls up to 4 enemies to you and does small damage. Which means while you are tanking you look over and see the healer is being attacked, you target the attacker and bring him to you, away from the healer, and start agro.
Winter Ward: This type of power is a staple. What I mean is that one of you jobs is to release the healer/controller from stun effects. For example, the wing armors in outer with do a move that sucks in multiple people and stun them. If you use WW when they do this it will break out the team and do a fair amount of damage because it reflects 2 hits from each teamate it effects. Tanks have a few powers that do this this is one of them. You could also go for shatter restraints but this is the one I use.
Weapons
Go with staff, martial arts, one handed, or brawling. Here is why. When looking for a good tank weapon, you want to look for stun ability (pop-ups, knockdowns, and straight stuns). As I said in "your role" when you see an enemy getting ready for a heavy attack (this refers more to "trash mobs" as opposed to bosses who you will not be able to stun) you must be able to pull of a quick knockdown, stun, etc and save your group. For example, in outer batcave there are mobs called omac omega, or something like that, that that do a heavy attack similar to the attack of the second boss and if people are close it will take them down fast. I will stun these as soon as I see the symbol above them and most of the time it will interupt the attack (your welcome everyone).
Dominance
There is a lot of speculation about dominace and what it does. Dominance does nothing for agro (the devs have already spoken towards this fact) or damage and has no effect at all in pvp (which is why dominance was removed from all pvp gear). With this in mind what good is it? Dominance effects pve control abilities. In other words whatever would need to be broken out of in pvp. It will determine the success rate of your pulls, how many you pull (up to 4) and your stuns. I myself work this stat up first above everything else (even defense because of techniques you can find in special tactics). Many people will tell you that anything above 350 is useless, or 550, from what I have seen there is still a difference in the success rate even after 600. There are still mobs that I can only pull about 50 percent of the time with over 600 dominance which means there is still room to grow. It effects stuns, so when you are tanking outer and the omega starts his heavy attack you can stun him with higher success rate. (One of these days I do want to run a better test on dominace after 600)
Special Tactics
Turtling- this is the act of taking agro, using a power, hit 1 time with weapon (this will start a power regen), then holding block for the 10 seconds of agro. Rinse and repeat till mobs are dead. This is a very usefull tactic especially with new lvl 30 tanks who have low defense gear still. This will help mitigate a lot of the damage you will take from what could be more devastating blows. Even with almost 5000 defense I will still use this at times to save the healers power (in areas like the first room of LoA, or when fighting the bat family in outer.)
Hurtling- (This is my term I am taking credit for it) This is when you jump over or past a mob in order to pull attention away from the group and create separation. You will basically get on one side of the mob, try to get your back to a wall, and hold agro so he faces you and not the group. This will cause all frontal cone attacks to hit only you, for example the first boss in kahndaq, he has a grenade launcher attack that would do massive AE damage to the group so stand with your back to the wall and he will only hit you. This will also help you be able to watch the group for any stray mobs to pull to you.
I will eventually add more but here is a basic strat guide to get you going on your tanking way.
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