Thank you Statesman for the replies.
This is my first reply to you and this thread.
I have to say thank you for finally looking at the poor ice tanker (I have a 30 ice/ice myself) and I am happy for the consideration you are giving. I was getting concerned seeing the first post followed by nothing for a week - I was wondering if this was just a bone thrown to pacify people into thinking they were getting looked at. I am glad it seems we are genuinely getting looked at.
First things first. I know these boards must be both a blessing and a curse for you with both helpful/constructive/informative posts followed by what seem like a non stop barrage of doooom and whining and complaints. So please ignore the later and focus on the former. Heck, even the negative posts are here for a reason - people care about their toons so changes to them are obviously taken seriously - although the posts themselves may not be helpful. Even the tone of the helpful posts I find in this thread are somewhat negative and demeaning but my opinion is it is just the frustration that people feel, rightly or wrongly, for having this set be a 'back burner' issue for so long. So please try and focus on the positives and don't let people's frustrations get you down.
Now then, here are my points/concerns/recommendations.
1) glad you are going to address the one shot issue; I don't know if you are going to do something specific to address it for just ice tanks but as mentioned above, to maintain balance with all the debuffers I am curious if you are just targetting ice tanks with some sort of 'alpha damage reduction coding'. Regardless, if I won't get alpha'd when I finally get to the 40s I will be very happy - I like a challenge but I hate a one shot face plant just like everyone else. Kudos for getting at what seems to be the number one ice tank issue.
2) I am not a numbers guy but Circeus seems to have many good points on our numbers. As a defence based toon, I cannot quite fathom why it is that our defence numbers are so low? As stands now on live for Chilly Chilli (my tank), things are a challenge and every now and then too much of a challenge. If wet ice is going to get a 90%ish decrease to make the defence part of it basically disappear, well, I don't know what to say but.....ouch ouch ouch ouch. I don't know how to get around it but my opinion is that if an Ice tank which is defence based can't top the defence numbers of other tanks which are not defence based that is just plain wrong. Heck, if a /sr scrapper can pop elude (I have one of those as well) and have way more defence than a tanker, that to me seems wrong as well. Our 'top power' when activated ought to be putting us on par with a /sr I would think or pretty close if you do not slam us with the elude crash. Can you please look at this.
3) I do not know about these EA changes but they seem very contradictory to me. You do not like herding. Ok. I do not go out looking to herd maps so no problem for me there. But in order for me to get any reasonable defence out of my ice tank I need to get 14 mobs around me?
I am going to have to quasi herd. But with my defence having been slammed elsewhere (wet ice), I am quite dubious of my ability to even survive long enough to get a reasonable number of mobs around me to get to activate EA at all. Heck, one of the main things that will get me dead on live currently is me screwing this part up and getting a few too many and going to hit EA....late....and being dead.....only trying to get 5ish guys solidly around me. I cannot even imagine trying to get 14 around me to try and max out defence. I like the system as is for EA defence and it seems to be in line with not encouraging herding. I also like the ideas of say getting most of the defence from guy 1 and then less through the next 4 to still get to the same total - that seems to be a good system to help with tanking AVs when they are the only ones left because then we still will get an ok amount of defence from the last guy standing.
4) I guess by 'look' I would also encourage 'revamp'. I mean, if to make things 'right' in your mind that means slamming wet ice and EA please please feel free to change/buff/modify other things HEAVILY if need be to get us to a state where we can actually be a defence based set - not just one that is generally good but beaten out by others or can be beaten out handily by someone popping a purple luck. I really do feel marginalized by the fact that someone can 'buy themselves an ice tank' by spending 50 bucks on a purple pill. And a respec of course would be appreciated if a major revamp is put through.
5) For my game playing experience as an ice tanker, I want to be able to tank for my experienced supergroup on an 8 person team at invincible and not be expecting to die 3 times in a mission (a current optimistic post in tanker forums) or have to have cookie cutter teams with major buffers/debuffers loading me up. Heck, I want to be able to live on a crappy pick up team with 8 people on something a touch lower than invinceable. This is what I am hoping the devs are aiming for with my monthly subscription money.
So there you have it really. As I said, I am not the numbers guy.
Finally, I know us icers are relatively low profile given our low numbers. Put what that says into perspective though. If you value balance (which I think is what you are striving for), the fact that ice tanks are such a tiny part of the tanker population ought to be telling you something about their lack of balance. I hate to say it but in the minds of other players we are novelties that 'suck' and are 'not real tanks'. This is something that I am sure drives a lot of the negativity of the ice tanks and I hope can be addressed by making us suck less (uh, a buff if you prefer??
).
Do not get me wrong, in my 30 levels thus far I have not felt like my ice tank sucks but I know it is 'less than' the other tanks in many ways and I gather I5 is gonna potentially really make things 'challenging' to say the least. I see weaknesses, lots and lots of them coming my way with I5 and only one improvement with endurance relief via EA - uh, I think I would prefer the endurance issues back as I can manage them easier than I can manage the disappearing defence; unless popping purple pills is supposed to be part of my ice tanker regimen. I see defence disappearing which is the mainstay of the set and you can tell from the posts above that this is getting people, quite understandably, nervous/terrified/ticked off.
Please take some more time to look at us and strip out the positives from the plethora of good ice tanker ideas mentioned in many many of the posts above and then work on how best to implement them. I look forward to 20 levels of fun for Chilly Chilli and am optimistic that you are looking out for us. How about a goal - 10% of tanking population as......icers!
Regards,
yellowducky
