Aett_Thorn

Well, I'm going to offer up what is probably going to be a completely wacky idea: change power sink to have the same effects as Energy Absorption from the Ice Armor line. This would give it pretty much the same qualities it has now but with the added bonus of +Def. It wouldn't be much, but might help in large battles so that you get hit a bit less.

Sure, it's no self-heal, but it could help.

I'll start this one off. I have frozen fists 6-slotted. Of course, I only have four real attacks, so I need all the damage I can get from what I have.

And this is why I love the tanker forum. Seriously, if one of us gets flamed, we all step in to flame back. It's great! I mean, plasma's response to firebomb really is just irrelevant considering his initial post, and I agree with Firebomb all the way. When you take into account that barrage does S/En damage versus just S/L, barrage is a great power. This is either on its own or as part of a chain. But really, if you say the power sucks, and you are shown evidence that it's better than most, just suck it up and realize you lost.

But man, love the way we all stick up for each other.

Which really kinda sucks for him, since I doubt that was in the job description.

There was mention of it a while ago, but I think the idea was nixed, or at least put off for some further date. I do like the idea though, and wish they would implement it. Just so that way there is one Dev for the tankers to talk to, one for MMs, etc.

Okay, now that I'm awake and refreshed, I'll go into more specifics about my tests last night.

First of, my build, in a crappy, non-exported fashion:

Ice Armor:
Frozen Armor - 3 DefBuff, 1 EndRed
Hoarfrost - 3 Heal, 3 RecRed
Glacial Armor - 3 DefBuff, 1 EndRed
Wet Ice - 1 EndRed
Chilling Embrace - 2 EndRed, 1 Taunt
Icicles - 2 EndRed, 1 Acc, 2 Dam
Hibernate - 2 Heal, 2 RecRed
Energy Absorption - 3 RecRed, 2 EndDrain, 1 EndRed

Ice Melee:
Frozen Fists - 1 Acc, 3 Dam, 1 EndRed, 1 RecRed
Ice Sword - 1 Acc, 3 Dam, 1 EndRed, 1 RecRed
Greater Ice Sword - 1 Acc, 3 Dam, 1 EndRed, 1 RecRed
Frozen Touch - 1 Acc, 3 Dam, 1 EndRed, 1 RecRed
Ice Patch - 1 EndRed

Leaping:
Combat Jumping - 1 DefBuff
SJ - 1 JumpDist

Fitness:
Hurdle - JumpDist
Health - 3 Heal
Stamina - 3 EndRecovery

Fighting:
Boxing
Tough - 3 DamRes, 1 EndRed

Ice Mastery:
Block of Ice - 1 Acc, 2 HoldDur, 1 EndRed

I think that's it for powers and slots. So now lets go over results. First off, Pinnacle was a ghost town last night for a while for people in their 40s. So I decided to tackle one of my missions solo. It was the mission with Bobcat, so lots of alley cats running around. Mission setting was unyielding, but it was old, so mobs were spawning even-con.

Minions were in groups of 5, with 0-2 lieutenants. One group, I could solo fine. Although it felt like I was taking constant damage (meaning that one minion in the group was constantly hitting me), the damage was low. However, turning on tough did not seem to lower their damage at all (I /bugged it, so we'll see, as tough seemed to work the rest of the night).

Decided to try to gather three groups to more accurately represent what I would encounter on a 6-8 person team. Got three groups, lost some due to the agro limit of 17, and herded them around a corner. First round of their attacks wasn't so bad, but then two of them got -Def attacks off, and that was the beginning of the end. Hit hoarfrost, but that merely delayed the enevitable. They hit me too fast and constantly to survive, and I took a trip to the hospital. Lesson learned: 17 alleycats is too much for one Ice tank alone. That's fine, probably what it should be.

So I clear the mish of alleycats, and spot Bobcat. Decide to see what happens. Pop two lucks, and charge in. She doesn't hit that hard (550 damage max I think), and between a combination of hoarfrost, hibernate, and green inspirations, I stay fighting her solo for a good 20 minutes. Can't really do too much damage to her since Ice Melee isn't exactly know for it. In the end, I have to run because eventually she'll wear me down. Leave the mission, feeling good.

As soon as I exit, I get a tell from a level 45 mind/emp controller, asking if I want to do a mission, I sign up. We eventually get the full team together as I described earlier. Go into mission, where there are a lot of freakshow. Events happen as described, except for one fact: in three of the fights that I took part in, I took down my defenses except for Wet Ice. Fared exactly as well in this situation as without my defenses. The dual fortitudes were covering my defensive needs plenty. Yet, when using FA, GA, tough, and CJ, without any fortitudes, I was dropped very quickly. Result of testing: other defensive powers were accomplishing more than my primary. Not a very good outcome, I think, as I'm not always going to have fortitude on me.

Second test: can scrapper do as good of a job as I can? Scrapper gets fortituded, and charges in. Agro gets spread around a bit more, but they win the fight in about as much time as it took them with me. If they had had another damage dealer, and not me, they probably could've done it faster. Result: my presence was not required on the team.

Third test (unitentional): See a group of freaks, don't see the shadow cyst crystal-thingy. Jump in, and several lesser bound nictus or whatever pop out of the crystal. Now there are more than 17 enemies, and I have agro on about 1/2 of them. Before I can even relay this information to the team, one of them is down. Two people ended up dying in that fight due to the agro limit. Though doing my job, I couldn't keep the agro off my team, which is supposed to be what we do best now. Disappointed that doing my job to the best of my ability wasn't enough, due to game mechanics. If we agroed a second group by accident, the battle became chaotic, as I could not hold the agro of both groups.

So those are the results of my tests are thus:
1) Solo, Ice tanks should be fine, if they have to slow down from what they were used to.
2) My presence on the team was not needed, which will lead to more of number 1.
3) Agro limits, while understandable so that you can't drag 100 enemies to one location, need to be raised to at least 2 max groups worth of enemies, or one group with max shadow cyst spawns.
4) Teaming will require that an Ice tank find a group that can actively increase his defenses. Like I said, when I wasn't buffed by teammates, I went down fast. If I had been with 7 Blasters, and tried jumping into the mobs first, I would not have lived through half the fights. <- Editted to put in number 4

Yup, earlier today, people had wondered if the same held true for Ice tanks, so I said that I would run some tests to see (since there aren't very many of us). I'll post some more disturbing info tomorrow. Well, today, I guess, but much later!

Okay, true to my word, I used my respec on live and ran some tests with a group tonight. It's late, so I'm just going to give the generalities here, and will post some specifics when I wake up.

Basically, I could still tank fine, but there was nothing that the team could do with me, that they couldn't do without. Meaning, if I was on the team and being an active contributor, we did fine. If I was just standing off to the side watching, the rest of the team did about 95% as well, maybe more.

The group was made up of two defenders (emp and dark), a mind controller (emp secondary), two blasters, a scrapper, a peacebringer, and myself (and Ice tank). The emp defender and the scrapper were SKed up, but not by much. We were fighting level 46 freakshow (highest level in the group was the mission holder, the controller, at 45). I was at 43.

When properly fortified, I could tank quite well. The time that I wasn't, I died very quickly once the group was engaged. In fact, I'm pretty sure it provoked a few "wow"s. If properly buffed, I still took damage (sometimes into the red) from the alpha, but could cure it through either hoarfrost or the two emps.

After tanking normally for a while, I asked the group if I could perform a test. Basically, I needed to see if they could take the villains at the same pace without me as they could with me. They agreed, with a little trepidation, and the emps proceeded to fort the MA/Regen scrapper. The fight with me on the side went just as well as the fights with me in it. On a second attempt at this test, the same result occured.

So basically, with this group, against these foes (the mish was set to unyielding, so each spawn had many minions, several leiutenants, and 1-3 bosses), my presence was superfluous. If I had not been there, they could have done the mission just as fast as they could with me there.

Okay, that got a bit more specific than I would've liked, and I'm really tired (almost 4 am here), so I'll tackle the rest tomorrow, including posting a rough sketch of my build. But that was the general tone of the night.

Foo, we losing you for good to the world of brutes?

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I just played a Tanker with the following group (actually, at the request of a PM)...

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This has come up in other threads, but I think the flaw in your tests is that you're not representive of the typical player. You understand the math behind the game far better than any of us could hope to and that gives you quite an edge. These posts come across like Evil Knievel saying "I don't see why you people can't jump your motorcycles across the Grand Canyon too. I'm managing it just fine."

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Until I run my tests tonight, I'm going to try to take States at his word for this. In that well balanced of a group, I don't think that many tanks would have a problem. What does concern me, is that when he taunted, he got 1/3 of the group on him, and dropped to 1/3 of his life total. With CE and Icicles running, an Ice tank can manage to get the agro of much higher numbers of mobs, but might not be able to handle it.

Yes, Statesman is probably very good at the game by now, which might not be representative of the general playing public. But frankly, I'm just glad he posted.

Especially a post as detailed as that, specifying exactly what he expects tanks to be able to do. Because now we have something very specific to test against. Can we do this, or can we not? At least we can test this and prove one way or the other.

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If Ice is the new standard, perhaps we can get some idea of what Ice Tanks do for a team? Any of you out there care to comment?

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Well, I have a level 43 Ice tank that I need to respec on live...I can do some work with him tonight and see what he is capable of. I almost wish I could make a scranker out of him, but with his Ice melee set, I don't see that happening too well.

After I5, I could still tank fairly well on a team, except against AVs. I really haven't found a build I like on test, but I'll give some a try.

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All Positional defences (Melee/Range/AOE) work against Psy. This includes all power pool defences, Cloaking Device, SR Defences, both Illusion controller Invis powers, and the Defender buffs Shadowfall and Steamy Mist. All three FF Bubbles also provide Psy defence in some form or another nowadays (the two small bubbles through MELEE and RANGE, Dispersion through both AOE and outright PSY).

[/ QUOTE ]I take you mean they work against Psionics because Psionics is ranged. I looked up a few pool power defenses like Tough, Weave, Combat jumping, Stealth, Invisibility, Grant Invisibility, and Acrobatics. They didn't say anything in game, nor on the boards about defense to Psionics specifically. But many have a ranged defense, so I figure this must be what you are referring to. In that sense, yes there is a defense to Psionics, but it is not Psionics per se, its a defense to ranged attacks.

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All Psionic attacks are ranged. Therefore ranged defense = psionic defense. If there were a psionic melee attack, it would be different, but this is how it stands for now.

I think I had a heart attack just hearing that dude. Does sound tasty though, so I think it might be worth it.

Most people tend to see it the other way around. Get rid of typed defense. I imagine that it's much easier to dodge a bullet fired from 90 feet away than one fired point-blank range. But if you can dodge said bullet, why should you not be able to dodge an energy beam fired from the same range.

I am not a fan of just reducing it to one type of defense, but if we had to, I would say the melee/ranged defenses make the most sense. The problem with that is that Stone tanks (pre-granite), Ice tanks, and SR scrappers would all have the same feel to them then, with very few differences. I would much rather keep the tanker sets feeling different from SR scrappers.

I view SR as dodging, and the tanker sets as deflection. I view both of these as DEF, however, and believe that they should be part of the same mechanism. If you're nimble, but have armor that can deflect the attack, you're not going to stop trying to dodge just because of the armor.

Resistance is just a whole 'nother pony all together.

But if I had to choose between DEF being just positional or just typed, I'd have to say make DEF positional, and leave RES for the typed defense.

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S/L are important but if you really want to make it work the same for everybody then that isn't enough. If a power currently gives protection to melee, ranged, and AoE then it needs to give protection against smashing, lethal, fire, cold, etc. All of the damage types. Otherwise it is not working the same.

If it gives a bonus to a ranged fire attack for people that already have ranged protection then it needs to give it to people that already have fire protection.

Scorus

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/signed

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This goes back to the original issue though. Take, for example, a smashing/energy melee attack. If we use your system to take this attack versus an Ice tanker who has both FA and GA, then you would take the smashing defense of FA, and add it to the energy defense of GA. This should not be happening, as it should only calculate against the better of the two.

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Actually, the original issue was that DEF powers that provided both SMASH and NRG defense - like Dispersion Bubble - were counting *twice* against such attacks. My proposal would not allow any one power to apply twice. But I see no reason why both of the Ice Tankers armors should not apply against an attack against which both are applicable. Its not like Ice Tankers (or non-Granite Stone Tankers) are overpowered at present...

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While you'll get no argument from me about Ice tankers, I do not think that this system would be good. This might just be something that we can agree to disagree on though. I do not think that any two defense powers in a set should stack with each other (with the caveat of powers that are supposed to stack with each other, like dispersion bubble and IS). Thus, FA would not stack with GA because they are supposed to handle different things, but both would stack with Wet Ice (if you consider a 1% boost to be stacking) because WI is supposed to cover everything but Psi and toxic. I hope that makes sense, but I am a little sleep deprived, so it might not. Basically, I think that powers in a set should not double-count towards defense, but that power pool defenses should stack with everything else out there.

For the record, I think that the combinations of Ice Armor and Force Field bubbles should be taken off of that list. At least the ones that they don't stack with. Basically, Insulation shield is on that list as not stacking with FA, and it should not stack with this power, because they are supposed to protect versus different things. Thus, they do "stack" in that they are side-by-side defenses, but not on top of each other. That is the only reason that I would take these off of there, just to avoid confusion.

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I'm still not sure why DEF stacking can't simply boil down to: For each DEF power in effect, do any of its types (positional or damage) match any of those of the incoming attack. If yes, its DEF adds with that of any other current effect which passed the test. If no, ignore it. So a power like Combat Jumping which gives MELEE/RANGE would stack its 3% to the sum against any attack that was MELEE or RANGE - regardless of any other considerations. How hard is that?

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This goes back to the original issue though. Take, for example, a smashing/energy melee attack. If we use your system to take this attack versus an Ice tanker who has both FA and GA, then you would take the smashing defense of FA, and add it to the energy defense of GA. This should not be happening, as it should only calculate against the better of the two. Now, I agree that if you have both melee defense, and smashing defense, these two should stack against this attack. So if this particular Ice tanker had weave and FA running, they should both be adding to the same defense value against this attack.

I would ask the same question to Statesman, why only S/L defense in weave, combat jumping, etc.? If I have made myself nimble enough to dodge a bullet, why am I not nimble enough to avoid and energy beam, or an icicle thrown at me?

I just find it funny that people without defense will gain more use out of these powers than people who already have a bit of defense. This is indeed a band-aid on the issue, and while appreciated, I do not think that it is even close to what this community was asking for.

I think I would have been much happier if a Dev had come out and said, "We do not have a fix for this issue yet. It will take some time to rework defense so that all characters can benefit at least a little from every power. We did not want a quick solution to this issue, but wanted to do it right. Thus, while no fix exists right now, we are working on the issue, and will let you know you know when we have a system that we think will work."

This would have let me know that the issue was thought through, and would have been better than the "quick fix" that they seem to use all the time instead of fixing the entire system. We still have powers that are in limbo for who they are helping and who they aren't. And the fact that several pool powers are not helping versus all attacks I think is just silly. I'd much rather have the Devs take their time and fix the system right, rather than putting some duct tape on the sinking ship and saying that it's fixed.

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I'll doublecheck the numbers today and post something in this thread (hopefully today).

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Thanks!

While you're at it I don't suppose you'll throw the bone of the -Damage and -Recharge on Granite Armor would you?

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I'd much rather have him give us an answer to the defense stacking issues we're been talking about for days now.

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7% damage resist and defenses surpassed by a single parry could easily be considered a waste of coding time. It's too bad that we are not deemed worthy or deserving of legitimate communication and answers to questions (READ: not Astroturfing) despite monetary and charitable rewards being offered for such dialogue.

TTR

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And don't forget the nice, frosty beverages.

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We want honest answers - not the fine display of Astroturfing that Force Field Set received.

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The sad part, Toshi, is that this is exactly what I expect to happen. We'll get a dev response (if we're that lucky) that basically goes over the powers in a manner similar to FF. We know what the powers are, and our complaints are that they are underperforming in almost every aspect. We don't have enough DEF from our +DEF powers. Wet Ice now only provides status protection and gives no DEF. Icicles costs too much for what it provides, and EA is no longer a +DEF power but an endurance recovery tool. Don't even get me started on how misplaced Hibernate is in a tanker set. So yes, we need a Dev response that tells us exactly what the vision for Ice Armor is and why it got smacked like it did. But I'm cynical, and don't think we'll ever get what we're asking for, no matter how much alcohol we offer.

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Yeah two full cases of beer of choice were offered between Toshi and I for direct answers to all points of all questions laid out by me towards the beginning of this thread. And most of the questions remain unanswered still.


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Heck, throw another case of beer and a handle of Grey Goose in there from me. We'll see what their price is.

Okay, I understand what you mean, and since my main is an Ice tank, I know personally how much different defense feels than resistance. So let me clarify what I was trying to say. On paper, 40% defense is better than 40% resistance. And 40% of both is better than 40% of just one. However, you are absolutely right that that level of defense will most often FEEL weaker than resistance.

This is for the reasons you mentioned: the prevalence of defense debuffs and mob accuracy buffs (especially in the late game), and streaking of hits. Basically, in Ice armor, you're usually either fine, or dead, and that is a problem that almost every Ice tanker has faced. We don't usually have time to react when things start going south.

Thus, defense will always feel weaker than resistance, but look at the formula that you used: 25% defense versus 50% resistance. Thus, a 25% defense equates to 50% resistance. So an even level of defense is better than an even level of resistance. That is all I was trying to say, and I apologize for the confusion.

I think it actually goes something like this:

Resistance < Defense < Resist + Defense

This is why Invulnerability was so good, because it stacked Resistance and Defense. (Note I think that Invuln got hit in the hammina-hamminas with I5 and am not supporting the nerf they got.) Stone is a mix of defense and resistance, but until granite, it is mostly one or the other to a damage type, not both. Once in granite, they do get both resistance and defense, but at a cost.

Well guys, I just wanted to let you know that I will be taking off soon as well. It took me since last August to get one toon up to 39, and after playing him on test, I just don't feel like continuing to play an Ice/Ice tanker. My new defense is supposed to be my offense I guess, but it's not like I have all that much of it.

Basicaly, playing as little as I do, it just won't be as fun for me with my main now, so this poor Ice Demon will be signing off as soon as my account runs out. I would like to thank all of the Ice tankers out there for the advice I have gotten from them in the past, and would especially like to thank Ciceus for his tireless efforts to improve the lives of Ice Tankers everywhere.

I may reactivate my account at some point down the road, but until then, this is Aett Thorn, going back into hibernation. Thanks everyone!