Crenson

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and 4) One that apparently makes no sense with the way Ice actually plays, but that EA can consatntly drain mobs of endurance without letting them run away, which could potentially be compared (albeit apparently a very distant comparison) to Cloak of Fear and the nerf on DA Scrappers.

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Couple of things.

First off, Cloak of fear was hit up with the nerf bat because it was overwhelming in pvp. Fear in general is/was just stupidly powerful. Autohit effective sleep that reattaches itself within 2 seconds after being hit with an attack? Wheee. So...it got nailed. Not saying I agree with the change, but...

On to the other thing. Endurance drain is entirely useles in pvp, so let's remove that from the arguement (if you don't belive me, there are tons of posts about it). That leaves the pve arguement. Since it's absurdly common to be facing 1-2 foes of +3 level, bosses, when EA pops up, you need a +def enhanced EA. You need it to pop often, and you need it to have an end redux in there to make sure you always can. But even if you wanted to sacrifices the slots....

Endurance drain is mostly useless, period. Completely ineffective on monsters/AVs. Most foes regenerate endurance considerably faster than they use it, and even those that don't have a pretty minor reduction in dps because of it. You can never have 'full lockdown' with a power that cycles in 30 seconds and doesn't tag -recovery (which, by the way, doesn't actually work, but that's a whole nother arguement).

I'm basing the above on leveling to 50 as an elec/elec blaster, another much-ignored class by the devs. If you don't agree (I know Circ said he useds the end drain of EA), that's fine, but I've had a lot of experince on attempting to survive with endurance drain, and with 2 high drain powers, 1 -recovery power, and a whole arsenal of minor drains simply not being enough for a solid lockdown of more than 30-40 seconds, I have no clue how 1 medium drain power could possibly work well enough.

And with that....I think I'm done with CoH. I4 is just too much. I wish they had not quite so much slammed the game into the ground, but at this point I can't even come up with a charecter that sounds fun to play.

Good luck, and keep up the good fight. I'm not going to stick around for them to take out yet another class, whichever they decide has 'always been overpowered'- my personal bet would be Storm (Okay, I can -hear- people with stormies shudder at that). The story arcs were fun, but not -that- much fun.

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As for slotting EA with 2 recharges along with perma hasten being optimal, I'm curious why? Someone here said it was permanent without any recharges, so is there a reason for the recharges other than making it perma? Does EA degrade or something that I don't know about?

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EA's base recharge is 60 seconds, base duration is 45 seconds. This comes out to -requiring- at bare minimum a +3 rech enc, and realisticly in the 3-4 zone.

As to why- this is one of the reaons I wanted to show you how an ice tank actually plays. EA on 1 foe is almost wasted, except if that foe is a boss, but that'll be nigh uselss on the next spawn yet help to keep you alive through this one.

You want EA to pop before you enter every single spawn, and you want it -never- to wear off, under any circumstances. Slotting it with the 'bare minimum' recharges is simply a really quick way to end up at the hospital a lot. Assuming optimal situations, as well, Arch's calcuations show that being able to double stack for a fair amount of time with permahasten mean a lot less chance of you having subpar defense for any real period.

It seems stupid to repeat myself, but it's just so different, how IA and SR play. If I don't have a good group around me when EA is ready, there's a very large proportion of the time I should simply let it die off, because hitting 2 foes isn't going to do me enough good. Add in the inherent unbalance of bosses being by far the most likely person to be left standing in a spawn, having higher acc and higher damage, as well as not giving you enough of a buff to handle them.


As to this...
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I honestly hope things don't come to a point where an Ice Tanker (to be seen as viable) has three power pool selections that they must have: speed (for hasten), fitness (for stamina), and fighting (for tough).

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The more I look at the numbers, permahasten seems to be generally a fairly bad idea for ice tanks. Ice already pays an extremely high end cost, adding in a 20 end hit every 2 minutes that can drop you out of hibernate 10 seconds early is...fairly huge. Fitness is realisticly a requirement, as even end reduxed armors will decimate your natural regen, not to mention EA, but Fitness is probably the most common pool 'required' for any primary/secondary. Fighting is a requirement if you wish to have any dream whatsoever of tanking AVs, but doesn't require many slots.

As an aside, it felt pretty nice to grab aggro from a +7 spawn and hold it for a few moments while the team got back into order- especially since it was the everfeared Malta. I would have faceplanted eventually, but I could maintain enough attention for the higher tanker to take over and the team regroup- and my former mentor to realize unsking me was probably an unwise decision.

My story of tanking prowess for the night (and again, other tanks do it better, except for Sappers- which will be handled considerably better by Stone in I4).

Nice post, Snorii.

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I think everyone would like to see something done to the set that is positive.

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And this is a key point, and I agree. So let's just agree to disagree, move on to the threads with various suggestions/comments and the like, and see what we can see.

JackDrek, one final note (and seriously, no offense intended by the following, or condescending tone): EA works differently than you seem to think it does, in terms of actual game performance. It is a vastly different power than Elude, and the functionality on paper is nothing like how it performs in game. As a result, it's kind of hard to judge it as a power from the outside.

So...wanna learn? I have a level 40 Ice/Ice tank, and I'm up for showing you the problems with it and functionality it has. Drop me a line at @Crenson and I'll be more than happy to show you how the power works in the game.


On a completely different note, the concept of 6 slotting EA for defense and running permahasten made me curious, so I ran numbers, and I figured out that running the basic armors, permahasten, permahoarfrost, and chilling embrace, an Ice tank's endurance recovery is around +0.35 or so- no attacks, not even icicles. Eeep.

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jackDrek-

I'm sorry. I see no reason whatsoever that a SR should be able to outdefend an Ice tank. Period.

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For at least the third time explicitly stating this, I agree completely.

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It was the bit where you commented that EA is a slap in the face to SR that confused me, immedately after mentioning Winter Lord babies. Perhaps I read something out of context, but that part of your post isn't the clearest in any case.

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As for Circeus's post, I trust that there is information constantly being generated on the Tanker forum and elsewhere regarding possible fixes to Ice. But this thread is still in the Training Server forum and on the 49th page before I posted is still referring to the Energy Absorption nerf.

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Yes, but since we're trying to look at the power in the context of the set, we're also discussing it here- that said, we've mostly moved over to the other thread mentioned.

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If you don't want to hear what possible reason they had, I guess that's fine, but good luck convincing the red names that you shouldn't be nerfed without having any idea why Ice was nerfed in the first place.

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I'll give you 3 plausable reasons. 1) Ice is already verging on vastly overpowering in large pvp battles. Uncappable defense would vastly overdo it- you think permaEluders are fun? HOed, an Ice tank fighting 7 foes can floor pretty much every single acc buff in the entire game. 2) The EA power in any other set would be vastly overpowering. From invul to fire to -blasters-, this power is only not overpowering in Ice because of the general 'mehness' of the rest of the set. 3) To force/encourage people to take all the powers in thier set. On this point, everyone's been polite enough not to say it, but glass houses and throwing stones- you considered that Elude is even worse about that than EA will ever be? How many permaEluders do you know that actually bother taking thier toggles, let alone slotting them?

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Now, you did manage to bring up the point of mobs using +acc on themselves making 95% a little too low. I could comment on a few alternative solutions, but since I know it will be misconstrued as an I hate Ice Armor post, solely because some people other appear to be die hard fans of the way it's operating on live (imo, not a viable solution), I'll refrain.

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Not even sure what you're talking about with 95% being directly affected by the acc buffs. You do understand that defense/acc is a linear +/- system, and after all the buffs/debuffs are added to the base to hit, if it's under 5% to hit it is adjusted to 5% to hit?

We don't think you hate Ice Armor. We know (via your admission) that you've not played one in the high levels, nor does it sound like you've played -with- one in the high levels, let alone in big teams. So we do think you lack experince, because the way you play a SR is -vastly- different from the way you play an Ice tank. I don't personally have a very high level SR (I think he's 32?), but I know enough to see many differences, and know better than to talk about the set like I know it intimately.

If you have contributions, feel free to post, but please try to come up with something we haven't come up with if you're going to post. We could use suggetions, ideas, and interesting thoughts, but we really don't like being told 'your power is fine' from someone who doesn't appear to understand the ice armor dynamic very well.

Edit: Also, what the previous poster said. We're not -happy- with our set, but we were happy with EA. Now it's going to fail to protect us in certain situations where it was only doing a so-so job before. If you seriously think that we're going to take an EA unnerf and walk away smiling, please actually read the rest of this thread.

With deference, Archimedes, some corrections.

Increase Density is the only +res to smashing (and energy), Shadowfall(psi, dark, energy) and Steamy Mist(fire, cold, energy) are +res PBAoEs, and that just leaves Tough.

As for damage debuffs, these are more common- Fulcrum Shift, Darkest Night (which I think you mistook for shadowfall by aciddent), Syphon Power, Enervating Field, Twilight Grasp, and I think I missed one or two. The saddening part about -those- is that they actually help resistance considerably more than they help defense- you're taking the same % off the damage, but they're resisting more. WHich means the ice will take the same relative % of damage to any other resist based set.

As for def buffs, it's worth mentioning that acc debuffs are a dime a dozen as well.


Pace all of the above, Ice's survivablity does get within punching range of the other tanks vs s/l foes with Tough. I know the numbers don't support this fully, but in my experince this is true.

Of course, as mentioned numerous times, ice is just fine against most nonbuffing/debuffing foes, it's only against heavy Vengence, Quartzes, Council Archons, ect, that we need help. AVs we need something more on the lines of an act of god.


Edit: fixed a couple typos, idiot errors. And no offense intended, Arch, just better to have it spelled out.

jackDrek-

I'm sorry. I see no reason whatsoever that a SR should be able to outdefend an Ice tank. Period. Defending SR's set (which, incedentally, could use some work) is possibly the worst reason I've ever seen for the EA nerf.

An ice tank can tank +12s, with Tough, in groups of up to 10 or so, cycling Hibernate as they do so. The other tanks can do at least that well. I've no clue why you think that Ice should not be able to perform up to the other sets. No ice tank can herd a large amount of +13s, of course, while the other sets can get larger groups.

Scrappers < Tanks for defense/avoidance/resistance/ect. Thats' the offical statement from the devs, it's in the manual, it's in the game in about 10 places in various descriptions. The pure defense tanker set should be, therefore, better than the pure defense scrapper set. It floors me that it looks like you're trying to challenge that- and I appolgise if I'm misreading you.

Resist caps are 90%, not 95%, for tanks. 85% for khelds, and 75% for all other ATs. Minor point, but worth knowing.

And I'm fairly sure that AV accuracy is off. 200% for a +2 might be very high, and it's not factoring in various defense debuffs I've been hit by, but assuming 25% def for Frozen Armor, 10% for Wet Ice, and the numbers Geko gave for EA, I've had well over 150% defense and been nailed about half the time by at least 4 AVs off the top of my head.

Ice is in need of buffs, not nerfs- even ones that only apply to more extreme situations. The change to EA is a negative one, and lowers Ice tanker's abilities to tank in certain situations. I don't see that as being 'able to be argued'. With EA as is, ice tankers < other tankers. Again, no brainer. In light of that, I have problems with anyone beliving this power being changed is called for.

JackDrek-

While I understand that what you're looking at on paper seems like EA was vasty overpowered....you're mistaken. Your experince with a purely defense-based set has given you some experince, your experince, as a whole, has been from a scrapper perspective. Ice tankers have it a bit...different.

First off, I think that JJ_Jason is completely insane (no offense intended *grin*) for not taking GA/FA. On my ice tank, I still take quite a bit of the alpha, and I imagine that JJJ takes 90% of it. If you don't think the alpha from 2 spawns is enough to drop a tank in a large group, you're simply incorrect.

So you have to take the alpha, and survive it, to hit EA in enough groups to bring your defenses in line. Without Tough, this is a very quick way to faceplant- this is why Tough was included on the list of 'defensive' powers he took.

Ice face key decisions- like do I EA on these 2 guys left in this spawn, or save it for the next spawn? This is why ice will gather 2-3 spawns continiously, our defenses -require- it.

Now, to bring it around to the changes on EA. When you're facing 40-50 foes (pretty normal, in large teams, and they will -all- be beating on you specificly, again normal), you're going to get hit moderately often. Quite a few...I'd say maybe 30%, possibly more, of lethal attacks have a -def component, and with only 5 buffs worth of guys, that 'very high' 130% defense is going to go straight down, very very quickly. Once you get hit with 3-4 of them, people hit you more, debuff you more, drop you even faster. This is pretty trivial to test, if you don't belive me- get a mission with lethal dominant foes, and watch as 40 of them start to do pretty astonishing runs and debuff chains on you.

But you might argue that that's situational- and I'd agree. As are Quartzes. You claim that you never need extremely high defense, and I say you do- sometimes. Stuff like Archon bosses are new in I3, with a -massive- accuracy boost in all thier attacks. You say that this is a weakness inherent in defense based, that these things are rare.

So I'd ask what's -wrong- with allowing Ice tanks to have a form of mitigation in those circumstances? So you can guarentee to floor any accuracy, regardless, if you take enough steps. I suppose I'm saying, if you claim it won't make a difference in most situations, fine. Leave us our power as is.

Ice tanks are -tanks-. All other tanks can tank +5s, at least with some degree of success. WE run into issues with large groupings of +3s and +4s- and in any group I've been in recently, +4s would be the norm. We're not super reflexes- something that's hard to hit and can take on a boss of some description. We're instead the meatshields who are NOT doing our job unless every single thing that's noticed us in the block radius is pounding on us. It is our -job- to be attacked, by everything.

Some other issues with the 'new' EA include, but are not limited to, the fact that we're losing a fairly potent aoe taunt factor, and since the range of the power is -less- than the graphic it can be more than a little confusing trying to figure out if you hit 5 or just 3- which is often a life or death difference.

In addition, I have no clue where you're pulling your AV accuracy numbers from, but I'm fairly sure they're wrong. I've had some experince tanking various AVs, and when a blaster nukes and leaves 4-5 standing + Battle Maiden at +2, I start begging for respites- with my 4 slotted Tough. It's happened enough times that I'm fairly certain that a +2 AV has an accuracy close to 200%- I run Wet Ice, Frozen Armor, and of course EA, and I'm getting hit more than occasionally by the av specificly.

Please keep in mind that any other tank can handle a +4 AV of most varieties with some risk, but not much. I've also personally watched every single other Tank handle at least 1 spawn of +13s, so I'm not sure why you think that Ice shouldn't be able to do the same.

And the original subject is indeed about EA- but the discussion has evolved, because the few Ice tanks that we are are attempting to look at the power within context of the set, rather than in a vaccum.

So...yes, you have some experince iwth a purely defense based set. ice works differently. From Fire to Cold to Toxic to Psi, we face different challenges and a -vastly- different playstyle than SR. Heck, our last ditch powers were originally designed with a different thought process- HIbernate keeps us alive and often getting nailed on, while Elude allowed you to run away swiftly. We stay, and even while getting pounded do our best to survive to pop out, you run and return later. While this is not how either power works now, it to me exemplifies the differences between the sets.

Edit: With the current Live version of Ice, Ice in certain situations performs up to the standards of the other sets. With the modification of EA, the number of those situations decreases. If you cannot debate either of these points, and still do not see why Ice tanker are upset about the modification to EA, please, honestly, step aside. Your opinion has been noted, and we thank you for your contribution.

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Honestly? Again, its that the targets are not choosable by me that kills just about any secondary effect you could throw on the power.

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Maybe I'm being stupid or naiive, but I was sort of assuming/hoping that the 'only taunts x people' portion might be fixed. With that still in effect, I'm going to agree. It's just barely worth having a secondary effect, if it only affects 5 people at random. Get more use out of the crey freeze pistol.

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It is possible for Ice tanks to fight AV's, but I've seen tanks from different sets 3-4 levels lower than me (NOT sked) do a better job.....on the same AV i was fighting.

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Except for the debuffing ones, and the oneshots (both of which you mentioned), you're right. It's quite possible, with a good team, or even a medicore team sometimes.

But Ice is the weakest against all the avs. There -might- be an exception in there, but none spring to mind (if clockwork king can oneshot a fire tanker, maybe- but a fire tanker has that great selfheal). It's not a question of 'is it possible' but 'is it preferable', at least in my opinion. At the moment, we've got nothing on any other tanker primary, except being a bit harder to kill in some situations than Fire.

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I also participated in the pcc event, but with a vastly differerent playstyle and build then Crenson. Crenson runs with 6-slotted taunt, so his favorite tactic was to jump in a group of us, taunt and hibernate. Extremely annoying, but extremely effective. Only time it doesn't work well is when I use Tp Foe to pull you right in the middle of us. Whats the point in taunting if we all want to take you down anyway? (I meant to get a pic of that...we had at least 8 people whaling on Crenson while he sat there happily hibernating)

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Hey, I only did that like 3-4 times. *grin* EA in a large group, though, and I was seriously annoying to kill. Taunt all the heavy hitters, and watch my sgmates roll over them. Yes, they'd hit, and yes, they'd hurt ('cept for the Ice blasters- that's just kinda funny), but the damage per second I was taking was just -not- high. Heck, once I had a SGmate empath just pouring on the heals and AB and people just started running away.

In the second match I was a lot more 'fair', only dropping into hibernate as needed, usually doing just fine unless a couple ill trollers came and started slamming me with holds, or when all 4 scrappers attacking me swapped to brawl (which I lived through, but mouse over Wet Ice, that's for sure).

I saw some of Arctic's work, and talked with him about it. He was dishing out good damage, in a setting where he was remarkably tough to take down. I was slotted more defensively and wanted to test 'extreme' battle conditions, hence jumping into massive groupings.

For that matter, -8- people? I counted 15 or so at one point. *grin* I don't think I was well liked.

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Drop the endo drain in EA? I'm all for it, but I know others who use it. They slot it with tons of Endo drain, and recharge rate. I have a feeling that EA is our "other" controller-like power. But it's very weak for this use, since you are nearly required to hit mobs with EA twice to negate their endo.

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I haven't met anyone who does this. I'm not saying they don't exist, but I really question the usefulness of the strategy. I come to ice tanking from electric blasting, and anything that doesn't tack on a -regen at least is pretty much just window painting. The vast majority of foes regenerate endurace far more quickly than they use it, and very few use toggles. So I figured removing a mostly unused/useless effect wouldn't get -any- objection- but am I simply wrong?

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But if you decrease the "per mob" bonus, and increase the cap, does that really help us? Now if I only have one or two mobs I can hit in a group, I get a decent boost. Your change would require I hit even more people to get a reasonable defense boost. And if my debuff is also in EA, then I can only debuff mobs who happen to be in range of the EA blast, when I use it. Not all groups stay that close to eachother. Putting our new "boost" in a power we really need to survive, seems like we'd shoot ourselves in the foot. Do I want defense from this group? Or do I hold off so I can debuff them.

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Well, the 15% was just a toss out since the debuff would stack and decrease the total damage taken from a given spawn by a fairly considerable amount. You'll take a bit more from the next spawn untill EA cycles- but not a lot more. And it'd encourage taking FA and GA a bit (which is one of the two reasons I've come up with that might have prompted this change).

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And you say this would increase our desirability for AV fights, but not solve the Alpha-strike issue. If I'm not playing my Tanks, I'd be less inclined to invite an Ice Tank to an AV fight, knowing they could so quickly fall to one-shotting. A damage debuff is supposed to keep that from happening, directly from AV's and Monsters.

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Actually, I've never died in the opening volley with my ice tank. With this, you have to merely survive the first attack to get into range to EA, then keep that debuff cycling to keep them in lower damage levels.

The reasons I thought EA might make sense as the damage debuff were that I didn't think anyone -used- it as an endurance drainer and it might seem to fit the 'feel' of the power.

On a somewhat related note, how about swapping the endurance drain for a second slow? Stacking this with CE might enable ice tanks to actually have more of an appreciable slowing effect on foes by the time you get EA- usually in the upper 20s people are regularly fighting +2s, and CE just isn't effective at that scaling.

Well, last night I particpated in the pcc pvp challenge, on my Ice tank.

It was pretty fun. 1 vs 1, most scrappers could keep up enough of a damage chain to make me very glad Tough was 4 slotted. 2 vs 1, however, they had a lot more trouble keeping me hurt. With 4 thumping on me I was just fine. When it got to over 10-15, I started getting in trouble again (and yes, I was taunting groups of 10-15).

I did drop quite a bit, simply because I was constantly jumping into groups of high damage dealers and taunting everyone in sight. Certainly quite capible at keeping people occupied while my SG rolled over them, or at least tried.

Brawl as a detoggle did function against me, but since detoggling now randomly affects one toggle and they still had to -hit- me with a mez effect even if they dropped Wet Ice....well

I think that a well organized SG will -trounce- a badly organized one, with teams set up to do various tasks like choke points, and I think that Ice tanks will be extremely powerful in that context.

Enough about that.

I also was chatting off and on with both other ice tanks in the level range, and it occured to me that I never posted (though I intended to) my concept for a chance to Energy Absorption.

In short- up the 'max drained' to 10, lower the per foe def buff to 15%, remove the endurance drain aspect entirely, and add in a 45 second damage debuff. The endurance drain is a joke, and not even a good one- so let's replace it with a team-friendly effect that won't stop alphas (so that'll be our bane) but -will- help us tank medium-to-large sized groups without much worry. We won't be able to herd maps, but we will be able to handle AVs better, and make us -desired- for those fights.

I'm incredibly not a fan of the acc debuff proposed earlier. Acc debuffs don't scale, they'll always have the 5% tohit, and debuffing the foe instead of (rather than in addition to) buffing yourself is probably a very quick way to end up in a lot of trouble. Not to mention to match how EA works now, even half of it, we're talking a 80%+ defbuff, and I think I can hear the devs recoiling in horror over that.

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But that doesn't help you one bit from an Alpha-strike. You have no time to react to a nuke. If the Monster/AV is in "Nuke" animation, and you see the animation going, it's already registered as a hit, or a miss. One-shotted and down.

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No question- and I would love some alpha/nuke survivablity buff. I've been oneshotted by 3 avs so far, and there's simply nothing fun about a oneshot, ever. My comments re: surviving nukes were specific- I know when Drek and Nightstar are going to nuke, so I judge the hp, taunt, hibernate, tell everyone to back off as they do thier thing, drop out and go.

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You can use it when grouping, but you're still just using it as a glorified rest power. You manage it with Taunt highly slotted, and Hibernate. But I don't want to be resting with the battle going on around us. I want to be mixing it up.

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I can completely respect this, but at the same time I like being able to drop out of the battle, regroup, and come back with my wits and health about me in fairly short order. That said, it's not like I use this power a -lot-. When I overreach myself and have a go or two and just need a second to pop back up to full health, when Seige nails me with a big hit, whatever- Hibernate removes any worry about seeing my health hit yellow, and certainly removed any need/desire to keep respites on hand. For that alone, I love the power.

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I've never found, in testing my new PvP build, that Hibernate in PvE maintains aggro. They seem about as taunted as they normally are, and lose interest in me after 5-10 seconds of attack. Perhaps if I dedicate additional slots to taunt, and heal to hibernate, I could drop in and be done with Hibernate quickly enough to manage.

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In my experince, running Icicles and CE, it takes about 5-6 seconds for them to even think about hitting someone else after I cycle up Hibernate. Even then, if it's not a blaster wailing on them, it normally takes a litttle longer for them to notice there's anyone around me, and if it's a retreat tactic they usually won't even look up. It seems like we maintain base Tank threat level (fairly high, which is why a tank is often the first attacked in groups even before you taunt/attack) while in Hibernate, unlike phase shift.

I have noticed that if I'm gathering a huge group, jump over a wall, and hibernate, some of the people outside of thier weapons range (not all, just some) will occasionally turn around. If I turn it off, they'll immedately turn back around. It's odd, and I haven't nailed down exactly why, or why some foe types don't behave this way at all.

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But you're welcome to Hibernate as it is. Like I said, it does have it's uses. I just wanted to point out that while you use it, you are not managing aggro. A new group that drops in, or a boss that teleports into the group, is going to ignore you like the big block of ice you are.

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No question, which is why when I use it it's as a 'drop in, drop out' thing, hibernating for as short as possible to make sure my squishies don't get in trouble.

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And I'll have to try cycling Hibernate against an AV, to see what it does...

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Makes your life easier, mostly. But if you're mostly duoing with a /rad, yeah, I can see why you're kinda worried about the aggro factor- EF and RI are pretty high on the aggro scale. Then again, Icicles + CE + EA actually breaks an even level tanker's Taunt (seriously), so when you're out of that block o' Ice you're mostly without issue.

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edit: Saw your edit, Cren. I didn't realize I was so rare to use only WI, EA and Tough. Sappers past level 41 are easy enough, since a single hold will stop them. But I'll admit that my duo makes Ice work much better. My wife is an Ill/Rad controller. Nothing like using confuse on a Sapper, and letting them use that nasty power to help you instead. I also avoided FA because EA did everything I needed in door missions with group spawns. It has made things tough with AV/Monsters, but the Rad fields give me bonus Defense, and Damage Debuff. I do intend to take FA at 47, to help with the AV/Monsters I now face.

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Confusing a sapper.....*drools*

And I did see a lot of that before I3, of course, but now it seems that everyone grabs all 3 basic armors, even if they don't slot them much. I use EA, and use it quite a bit, but I like being able to stand up to groups without worrying if I hit enough people with it.

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The important thing to note is that based on my experience, the way the game engine works is that those attacks the freakshow initiated use the defense you have at the moment they started to activate, not the defense you have when they land.

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Completely true, but I think it's worth mentioning that this does not hold true for resistance.

If you activate tough as soon as you hear a Nemisis Sniper fire, for example, you'll take the resisted level of damage instead of the 'normal' one. Tough has just enough time to activate in that lag time of that extrodinarily long animation- but if you armor wasn't up you're certainly taking the hit.

Minor point, but thought I'd mention it.

Anyone else wonder if the devs are content with the changes to EA/our dissent, or if they're still entertaining ideas, or if they're actually working on a rebalancing of several options?

I've got to agree with Ravenlute, and disagree with you, JJ.

Hibernate is situationally amazingly powerful. Be it when I duck around a corner after getting nailed by a boss or three, or when that AV is about to Nova, I find myself using it probably once a night, sometimes more.

I'm also pretty much an exclusively grouping tank, and to compensate for the time I'll be out of the fight I dedicated a few more slots to taunt than most- but even if I forget to taunt Hibernate seems to maintain aggro somewhat (unlike, say, phase shift). It's very rare, approaching on never, that my team even -realizes- I'm hibernating till they see my health spike suddenly (unless an empath is attempting to heal me franticly). It does take me 'out of the fight' but it really doesn't seem to stop me being a punching bag- if they upped the base threat level while in hibernate, mind you, I'd be the last person to complain.

I'm also fairly excited about the changes on Test for this power. I'm seriously considering 6 slotting it with heal/end/recharge so I can go from zero to full health in 10 seconds for almost no end whenever I want to- that's probably short enough that the taunt from Icicles and Chilling Embrace won't even wear off.

I'm not saying that I would horribly object to some change to hibernate, but I really don't -want- to see it become another Unstoppable, or Moment of Glory. If it's to be changed, the 'catch me when I'm about to die and heal me up' or 'click based unkillable aggro magnet' are both fun ones, and I don't think it'd overbalance the set to have either. But I don't want to see '+def, +res(all but psi), crash' as my last power- I don't like those powers, and I don't think it even comes close to the 'feel' of the Ice Armor set.

Oh, and for the record- last night I tanked a +1 Clockwork King. No defender, the controller was a gravity (whose singularities helped hold every time his protection dropped), and it wasn't exactly easy, but I kept his attention entirely on me, and purely by cycling hibernate, Hoarfrost and Taunt I was able to keep him from taking a swing at the katana scrapper or the fire tank. Not bad for absolutely no defense to psi (the hardest part was surviving while the others cleared the rest of the spawn).

Edit: By the way, JJ, you are the -first- higher level Ice tank I've ever spoken with post I3 who actually has relied on purely WI/Tough to get him through it. I personally cannot imagine running without FA and GA- how else do you shrug off sappers and survive the alpha? I don't usually run tough, as it isn't needed for non-avs within 2 levels of me, but running it soley with my status protection? *shiver* That is some risky stuff.

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Also, to someone who pointed out that Ice tanks are the anti-sappers: not in I4. Stone armor now gets endurance drain resists in the form of Rooted, not to mention Confuse resists

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Wait....we were anti-sappers?? Since when? I never knew that...sure doesn't seem like it. Sure, you can hold a sapper..if you're */Ice, and that's only one at a time...assuming you DO hit him.

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I've only fought one sapper and he drained my endurance very quickly. I thought I was a goner... and then I turned on Glacial armor and laughed at him. From my very limited experience with the sapper, the drain must be an energy attack and if it doesn't hit there won't be an endurance drain.

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I'm actually coming to the conclusion (testing vs +6 sappers with my 2 slotted GI) that they have 2-3 tohit rolls in thier ranged single target drain. I've yet to actually be drained from over 3/4ths to 0 by a sapper on my Ice/Ice, and I'm not kidding about the +6s.

As someone (I don't remember who?) had or maybe still has as thier signature- 'There are two types of people, those who hate sappers and those who have glacial armor'. I mean, seriously, what's the worst that's going to happen? We're going to loose our toggles! Oh no! Now you just have to somehow hit us! Nthing better than being disoriented for 20 seconds in a mass of guys all taunted to you, not taking a hit.

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What I've found is nice about Ice is there are plenty of slots to go around. I have Health, Hoarfrost, and Tough 6 slotted. So I am constantly at 2900 hp (with accolades) and have pretty noticeable regen. On your pvp comment, Fear and Confuse should never last 30 sec. That's what makes Ice so appealing in PvP: we can get hit with one of those 2 effects, but if we got EA off we're the only tanker set that is safe while mezzed.

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See, no. Not only does supression not work with any degree of effectiveness in pvp, even when/if it does that '30 seconds' is just wrong, unfortunately. Confuse doesn't have any suppression timer whatsoever, and permafear is trivial beyond belief- and neither drops your toggles, so we have nothing with respect to that. However, fear will stop us from hitting Energy Absorption, and that is our lynchpin.


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And on your psychic comment, only Stone is safe there. I think Dark/Psy Defenders are going to wreak utter havoc in PvP.

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I'm aware only stone gets psi defense. I'm not aware of why. I actually think that the sheer undefendability of psi is going to lead to an actual change or two in the stance on psi on the part of the devs- I don't think they can reasonably argue that a /psi defender is in the same even -class- as the other defender secondaries. There is 'many things are different in the arena' and then there is 'this powerset does, on average, 5x more damage than any other of the options'. But that is another rant entirely, which I kind of segued into.

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I mean, if I get into a crowd of villains, hit EA, hit 4-5 of them, and then the boss (Council Archon seems the most common in this scenario) chains three hits on me. Is that floored accuracy?

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You're getting slaughtered by the Streak Breaker. Go to long without being hit and the Streak Breaker steps in and auto forces the system to hit you. It sucks. All the sudden you get this string of attacks that puts you back at an overall 5% floor for your foes.

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THis could be true, but I don't think so. The streakbreaker will nail you, but it seems to take a little bit to kick in.

What I actually think this is is simply a quartz like situation. The archons have a very noticible +acc. I've not done the math on it, but I'd say it's probably not too far off a quartz. Facing them in the mid 20s, they simply didn't miss enough to notice it, and I usually had to rely on teammates to keep me alive/take them out. Maybe I'm alone in this, but I specificly remember them being more than a minor issue.

Few notes for those not keeping up with I4:

Slotting up Health might well become more viable. Since I've noticed quite a few ice tankers already suggest taking and slotting up this power, this is more just a 'good to know' thing than a major change. It will obviously affect Stone and Invul the same as it effects Ice (assuming perma HP boosting).

I hereby withdraw my earlier statements with regards to Ice armor and pvp, which I never intended to be a justification for the lack of buffage/downgrading of EA. Ice's complete lack of resistance to Fear and Confuse means that if an Ice tank EAs up, one fear and they're going to be a nice juicy detoggle target in 30 seconds, when EA wears off. Focused Accuracy also gives us more than a few issues- but that power comes at a pretty high cost, and we have Hibernate.

I'm sure not many of the people reading this thread have any interest in playing an ice tank teh uber build in pvp, and I myself will probably abandon the arena when it goes live (unless some fairly drastic changes are made), but that's another story. And I'm avoiding mentioning the fairly large amount of psi damage being thrown about, which of course we can't handle well.

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Against a +1 or +2 (not precisely sure) Dreck, my DM/DA scrapper with 50% energy resistance (approximately) took 4,000 points after resistance from his atomic blast.

Naturally, it didn't even phase the Inv/SS tanker who was tanking him.

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I suspect that'd be a +2. I'll test personally, but I suspect this means we're giong to have to add Drek to the list of Archvillans who can oneshot an even level Ice tank.

I admit I've avoiding chancing it thus far by simple expident of taunt +hibernate when he gets to about 35% hp. Gives me about 20 seconds of unkillability where he's only interested in me, normally enough time to wait out the nuke. Guess I'll suck it up and try it.

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I mean, if I get into a crowd of villains, hit EA, hit 4-5 of them, and then the boss (Council Archon seems the most common in this scenario) chains three hits on me. Is that floored accuracy?

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For a +3 boss or so, you 'should' be at floored acc. However, many bosses, and quite a few minions, have pretty hefty +accs to thier attack. I belive Archons are mong this level, so you're going to need a slotted EA or more foes to actually floor them. Not to mention tha it could just be random chance.

I've always tended to try to take on more than I should be able to handle...

A stone tanker friend of mine and I are sort of fans of seeing what our upper limits are. Turns out, 10 +9s can wear him down over the course of about 15-20 minutes, if he doesn't hit EE or respites or is even at keys. I could reliably handle 15 +8s with a 4 slotted Tough, but only for about 10 minutes before I got a little unsure.

These numbers are nuts. Is there any point in the game to being able to handle this level of baddies? Without Tough I would have been so much of a pavement smear- eventually. Cycling Hibernate I'm reasonably sure I could have handled it.

I don't think anyone is going to argue that Ice tanks have major issues handling 'average' bosses, lts, or minions. The problems come in with certain foes who have massive defense debuffs, powers which have self def debuffs (is anyone else thinking Rage is going to screw over Ice tanks now?), massive acc boosts, the horror that is untyped attacks (*cough* toxic *cough*) or psi.

Ice vs regular foes jsut has to deal with the streaky RNG. In an 8 man team, at level 28, I was killed by a single spawn at Unyielding when 2 Tank Swipers and a lt hit me at the same time- with Hoarfrost up. A rare case, yes, but it does happen. It's an inherent weakness that Ice has is that it is entirely reliant on numbers and odds.

As for the change to EA, the problem comes in that some things in the game really do make your defense need to be that high, if defense is all you have. Tanks as a rule don't have the damage capacity to take out a quartz- Energy Transfer aside- before they get nailed hard enough to run or hibernate or use those awakens.

As for Archvillans, it's just stupid, period, that Ice has to go outside it's set for Weave if it wants to have a shot vs psi avs (the def based tanker with no def to something boggles my mind), and needs tough to aviod oneshotting. For the record, while risk is fun, can anyone present an arguement that being oneshotted is at all fun?

I'm not really a fan of the spreadsheets going aruond comparing Ice to Invul, let alone to Stone and Fire. I actually think the other 3 sets are fairly well balanced and set up, but I don't feel that the game is balanced perfectly numerically, nor should it be. I know you're trying to demonstrate the dispairity, but I think it's even easier by listing the holes in various armor types.

Also, to someone who pointed out that Ice tanks are the anti-sappers: not in I4. Stone armor now gets endurance drain resists in the form of Rooted, not to mention Confuse resists.

I'm sorry if I'm coming off a bit negatively, but I'm kind of sick (as in ill) and a bit frustrated. I don't understand what the devs -want- Ice to be, but the current situation is basicly 'fairly good at pvp, worse than every scrapper and tanker set at everything else'. I guess I'd at least like a redname to post -some- reaction, short of Geko's post, which I think most of us can agree is more or less looking at EA in a vaccum.

Btw...congrats Bluefan.

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Can't care less about how good can we do PvP. PvP is not the reason why I play this game. I'm happy to know that we can handle PvP, I just hope that's not the reason for EA's changes... I'm sure is not.

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I did not mean, by any means, to make the implication that this makes up for anything. I do think EA's change might have been influenced by PVP, but perhaps that's just me. I don't play for pvp, nor do I plan to- and it's not comfort that we're unstoppable in it.

I more included this info as an FYI.

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Yep, it's very sad what a Monster with auto-hits can do to us :\ I don't care about farming, but not being able to do what the AT is suppoused to be able to do is very sad.

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I don't know if the stuff was autohit. They sure didn't have issues hitting me, and I don't think I ever defended properly fromthat horrible spit thing.

I did forget to mention that the +1 to me tanker could handle two of them, without much effort.

Not a huge farming fan either, but I just hate the discrepency.

So I've had some interseting experiences over the past few days that I'd like to share with my fellow ice tankers (yes, all 5 of us- we got a new member!).

First off, we're minor gods in PVP. Seriously. Hit 2-3 people with EA, then go grab a coke. Once taunt works properly (currentlyt if you die while taunted, you are permanantly taunted- nothing fun about that), -yikes-. We'll be heavily desired. From a balance standpoint, allowing us to buff off of 10 people would make us completely unfair in pvp- but I don't think this is a reasonable reason for the hit we're taking in PVE. Simply put, an Ice/EM right now can take out almost anything. I watched one decimate a team, one after another.

I also last night tried my hand at 'kraken farming', because I was curious. I got taken apart, even with Tough. It was pretty humbling. No oneshots, but plenty of twoshots.

Actually, tis' fairly trivial to list the various powers which give defense vs the ones which give resistance/damage debuffage. In fact, the only sets which can grant reduction in S/L damage are Dark Defenders, Rad def/trollers, and kin def/trollers, in addition to the afformentioned Tough.

On the other hand, Weave, invis, stealth, grant invis, combat jumping, empathy, force fields, dark, storm...seriously. +def is -so- common, but short of those 3 sets or tough, there's not a thing that could help Shadowhunter from oneshotting me.

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More regen would be a nice bonus, but not much help to one-shotting. And as for S/L resistance, I think most of the Ice Tanks (yeah, all 10 of us) are looking for something other then more of the same from other sets. As effective as Resistance is, we seem to reject it as a "solution".

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Well, i'd be willing to go with the damage debuff instead of the resistance route, or even bumping Hoarfrost up to 60% or so. I was merely stating the (obvious to me) fact that we need something to stop the oneshots (because, well, there's not a damn thing fun about oneshots, and ther are only 3 powersets in the game that can help with them).

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Speaking of Stone Tanks, I would like to revise my previous idea for the Damage Debuff. I didn't mention specifically that it would not debuff Psionics. Many people said if we get resistance, we should still lack Psionics. I think the same should go for a Damage Debuff.

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Hmm. On the fence about this. The thing is, I've -seen a Stone Armor running granite, Rooted, and Weave tank a psi av. The hp boost from Earth's Embrace + the regeneration from Rooted actually makes this viable, turning them into a regen tanker. This is what I didn't want to step on the toes of.

And I really don't get why Ice doesn't get -something- in the psi area. Heck, untill I hit 26 and tested, I thought we -did-. Do you really thing Stone tankers would be up in arms if we got buffed vs psi in some fashion? Seriously? Stone is nigh unkillable vs every single damage type in the game, and to take Ice to that level would be a -major- buff, and I don't think anyone here is asking for something on that scale.

However, if you want to leave psi as the domain of Stone alone, I'm fine with that. I'd prefer to be a bit more rounded, but I'm not going to freak out because we're not.

On the other hand....I agree that every set should have something special that makes it stand out. Fire has damage, Stone has psi and +regen, invul is quick moving and damage oriented. Ice has a need to cary awakens.

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Not sure if this would be such a good idea, since there's more than just ice tankers that take Ice Melee. Could you imagine a Fire tanker with a resistance debuff? Stack that with Burn, and oh my...the FOTMs would pour in.

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I considered this, but I wasn't actually talking about a -major- debuff. On the order of 10%, single target, requiring a tohit roll- Ice Melee's damage is so amazingly bad compared to other sets (pulling data from here, but I verified it myself) that even with 10% more damage it tops out at well under any other tanker melee class. And if you think fire/ice isn't already FoTM, I'd ask for a hit off that pipe. *grin* Plus, you ever seen -anyone- use the level 9 power from ice melee?

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Hey, I slotted that power....with Taunts

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So did I...originally. When deciding how I wanted to respec, I copied over to test and tested a -lot- of combos. Turns out, the 'taunt' from CE 'naturally' lasts around 2 seconds. So when you 6 slot it, you're -still- talking almost zero taunt time. Verify for yourself, of course, but I cannot justify putting slots there for now.

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Perhaps they should just revert Hoarfrost back to the old days, when instead of giving +HP, it gave +res to S/L....

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Huh.....
Well, I kind of like it, but I think we need the hp boost more.

And I'd like to chime in that I really am kinda proud of the ice tanks posting on here (all 10 of us...*sigh*), since we really have been constructive, polite, and willing to explore/discuss various options.

In that vien.....I know it's been suggested before, but I thought I'd throw it out to this crowd. Add in a small amount of resistance (being oneshotted is so not fun it's absurd- there's just not a thing cool with it), and some +regen. I know Stone has this, but I don't think anyone is about to claim that Stone and Ice are too similar. As it is, not only is Health near required, but almost every Ice tank I know slots it out- because without that, Swarms -hurt-.

Of course, turning us into another regen with more HP is not a brilliant strategem. Just wanted to throw it out there.