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So it's time to round out Tanks with a look at some of the non-standard builds you can make and also discuss a few areas which look like they should be tanks, but they're not.

We'll begin with the Immortal Tank.

Immortal Tank

Now there are many ways you can construct this type of survivor, this is a simple version that demonstrates most of the more commonly used tools that you may want to make use of.

The Feather Shield, Silk Body Suit and Lion Skin Coat all do the same thing - they reduce the amount of damage you are taking to your insanity from hits. The Feather Shield also reduces the damage you take from Intimidate and Hunt events. 

Silk Body Suit is more powerful than the Lion Skin Coat (and safer), but you will need an alternative source for the Green Affinity if you go by that route, because it helps activate the Feather Shield.

The Man Mask is an incredible form of protection against certain monsters (such as The King's Man's Silent Hymn), it allows you to always pick the negative token result from the Forest Gate (Spidicules/Flower Knight) and it also combos very strongly with items that give out negative tokens like the Pulse Lantern. You can then spend these negative tokens for additional survival actions.

The Dragon Belt is simply included to provide a left red, you can put whatever you want there really, choose your flavor! 

Other options for a build like this include:

• Rawhide Vest - +1 Evasion (Skinnery)
• Dried Acanthus - Protection from automatic injuries (Like Butcher's Bite or Gorm's Retch) (Organ Grinder)
• Glyph of Solitude - Makes you Deaf, so you can gain as much Insanity as you like from the Screaming Helm (Lion God - L1+)
• Flower Knight Badge - +1 Evasion and Tactics
• Seasoned Monster Meat/Scarab Circlet - for combos with Red Fist (Dung Beetle Knight)
• Century Shoulder Pads/Century Greaves - Ignoring hits is sweet (Dung Beetle Knight)
• Frenzy Drink - A Burst of Insanity gain with some extra strength and speed (Catarium)
• Lantern Helm - Makes you Deaf, you will want other survivors to use the Screaming Horns to help you gain your Insanity back then (Blacksmith)
• Raptor-Worm Collar - Allows you to Encourage without spending survival! (Slenderman)
• Gloom Bracers - Insanity Gains when Departing combined with strong affinities (Slenderman)
• Gloom Katana/Xmaxe - If you're looking to get lots of Insanity, why not have a weapon with strength that is based on your insanity level? (Slenderman/Promo)
• Green Helm - You have a generic pool of armor points, so the fact that this forces you to take the hits on your head doesn't matter. This item is also easily crafted compared to the rest of the Green Armor set (Green Knight)

You are also going to want Song of the Brave innovated, because Overwhelming Darkness sucks for Immortals.

Fighting Arts and Disorders that support this build are Ghostly Beauty - which doubles all Insanity gained and works very well with the Screaming Horns and Red Fist on any member of your hunt party, because you can then spend the +1 Strength Tokens to activate survival actions in a limited fashion. Rhythm Chaser is also very powerful because evasion is one of the king stats in this game (No shields or heavy gear then). Fencing is also a good one, but that applies to every single tank survivor.

The Leather Silk Body Suit Tank

The Silk Body Suit (SBS) is an immensely powerful defensive gear when you are facing monsters that inflict 2+ damage per hit for most of their attacks. However you cannot wear Metal Armor or Heavy Armor when you have it equipped. So you are looking for something to combine with that and Leather Armor is one of the best choices.

Damage mitigation per hit of 1-2 damage is a huge amount of 'virtual' armor points and if you're not sure just how effective it is, next time you're tanking take a note of each hit from a monster that exceeds 1 damage and total up what the SBS would have prevented. It adds up to a huge amount over the course of a game.

Leather Armor is the best choice because it has a bunch of powerful abilities, solid synergy with Monster Grease and ignoring bash means that you can rely on Rhythm Chaser to provide +1 affinity for longer (If you go shieldless). Ignoring bash is something that I have even seen experience players under value, it's actually a huge benefit for tanks.

You could do this with other light non-metal armor; but Silk Armor is kinda awful, Rawhide just doesn't have the base stats you'd like, Cycloid Scale Armor is an offensively orientated armor set. However Screaming Armor and Rolling Armor both work!

Green Ring/Leather Tank

This one is part of a two survivor combo that will pretty much lock out any monster that doesn't have ways of killing survivors outside of armor points.

The second survivor needs to sit on the right of the tank and can wield whatever they want in most of their slots, except that they should be using the Gloom Hammer as their weapon. Each time they hit the monster, they will get the Monster Controller token, which means that every turn the Tank will be the monster controller. They should be able to target themselves most of the time and gain the armor points benefit, a gain of 15 armor points a turn is very hard for any monster to overcome. 

There are other armor sets you can combine this with, I've chosen leather here for all the various advantages it has (see above) but really it's up to you how you want to build this. You can even go with a more complex mongrel build using Phoenix Placart, Death Pact, Screaming Helm, Silk Boots and so on. The principle is the same, activate the ring every turn and use it to tank the monster into submission.

There is also an alternative version you can do with the Blue Ring, it's more about damage mitigation than straight tanking all the hits. It's still the same principle, you rock the Gloom Hammer on the survivor before the Tank and then the Tank gets to manipulate the AI every turn. Here's a sample build.

In contrast this Tank has very little offensive capability and would just seek to train shield mastery via Slam and simply tank the hits the rest of the time. You can also build this very effectively with Cycloid Scale Armor, otherwise you're going to need to look into mongrel sets, which is a higher risk because your threshold for bad results is a lot lower than the Green Ring version.

This type of tank is very effective vs. The Butcher (and other monsters that draw multiple AI a turn) by the way.

Warlord Armor

While Warlord Armor is more of an offensively orientated armor set, it also has all the traits required for it to tank in a pinch. This is one example of a tank build that can hybridise into a Trapper with access to Spear Specialization.  

You can also flex into any other Axe you want here because there's another slot spare.

Outside of that, this is pretty straight forward, it's got enough green to activate the Monster Grease for the evasion and it includes two of the best individual defensive armor pieces in the game with the Screaming Horns and Phoenix Placart.

We'll talk about Warlord Armor more when we get to DPS and Bruisers.

Calcified Rolling Tank

Finally we'll close out with one of the most powerful tanks in the entire game, this build has a 8+ ignore one hit. Silk Body Suit, 11 armor to all locations (15 on the Head), Block 2 and a bunch of utility abilities. Also you're not wearing armor, so you can take advantage of Leyline Walker/Crystaline Skin/Acanthus Doctor as a part of this build if you want.  If you go with Acanthus Doctors, the Calcified Juggernaut Blade is a better choice of weapon and you can switch out the body suit for Monster Grease if you would prefer more evasion.

The weapon is very much pick whatever you want, I've plumped with my favourite grand weapon the Skleaver because of how powerful and interesting it is. Likewise the Trash Crown can be whatever you want, but because of the Trash Crown not having accessory I tend to carry it on either a Rolling Armor or Vagabond Armor survivor when I do not have Leyline Walker/Crystaline Skin survivors to carry it. (Have I mentioned recently how powerful the Trash Crown is?)

It can be upgraded further if you are playing with Green Armor stuff by adding in Griswaldo, Green Helm and Fetorsaurus. Which will give you another ignore a hit ability and a ridiculous weapon that triggers automatic Block 2 while reducing the * level of the monster on its AI cards. However you will lose the ability of the Rainbow Belt.

Summary:

So there we are, a bunch of expansion based, non-conventional tanks with some ideas to springboard from depending on what monsters you are hunting.  These can be refined further, adapted or even used as inspiration for whole new builds. There is room for evasion tanks, armor tanks and even hit cancellation tanks (Fencing + Green Helm + Rolling Armor + Block)!

Hopefully this gives you a lot of ideas and inspiration for the future, because for someone who's role boils down to 'stand still and take hits' there is a huge amount of depth and strategies available.