Flints

This was pretty much what I was thinking anyway, and was just brainstoming the idea of having it as an aggro panic power (Even though such situations are unlikely.)

I think my final opinion then is either taking Leadership Pool for Vengence (dropping Smashing Blow all together and using Brawl as a 3 slot Mule for that E/N defense if I can't get it other places.)

Or going Medcine Pool for the aidself, dropping Permafrost and slotting Winters Gift.

EDIT: Prety much whatever I take its always going to end up as a situation power.

These were indeed helpful, although I was pretty much working at my own rhythm for when to return to the cubes as I've done it before on my Tanker, having everyone be prepared for that phase was useful and noticable.

I think all 7 of the people in my team (While I was still in it) were new to the CoP as such there was a lack of Shivans and HVAS from that side, I was talking to them about certain things before the start mostly relaying or adding details to what Tsu was briefing (Loving how short those introductions are getting btw, while still explaining everything there is to say.) but probably the most useful thing was all of Tsu's binds spamming chat.

From what I can tell (Aside from healing flames) it should be increasing your (Inherent) Health power enhancements a little past the ED cap, which will be increasing your Regen.

However, it will not increase any set bonuses, all it does is add enhancements to all your powers, whether they have those ehanceable stats or not.


I'm most looking foward to see how it effects EA for defense, because any increase in percentage gets increased by 10 at its target cap.

incredibly long post ahead.

First off while its easy to soft-cap without Fitness and CJ at 50 with IOs, during leveling you may want to pick both of them up and try to get Energy Absorption down to a perma-recharge and close to 1% def per target. (Sitting at .9% def per target would end up giving you 9% def instead of 10%, as EA hits 10 targets max)

Ice has insane aggro managment, pretty much all the time you're in a team without another tanker or a brute, you're not going to lose aggro at all, occassionally you'll lose it to another tanker who's generating more Threat than you, but the majority of the time you'll be the one taking all the hits,

Now there's the problem with Ice/ people pick up Chilling Embrace far too early in the game (its selectable at level 2) This ends up meaning that through levels 2 to 26 (Where you can have capped defense to S/L and about 30% def to N/E) you're going to be out of end, hardly and defense, and having every single mob your team fights hitting you until you die a quick death. This is the real issue with Ice armour, and its a player issue not a powerset issue, you have to be prepared to sit through 26 levels of painful, low damage, end issue, no defense leveling before you suddenly wake up and realize you're invicible. All defense-based tankers suffer from this however, its just something you have to live with.

Also people don't see the tier 9 as a useful power at first glance. "What? I can't attack with it? What kind of panic button is that?" The best kind, if you're low on end and EA hasn't recharged (Sappers for example.) if that nasty AV just broke your soft-capped defenses and hit you for a 3000 damage hit (Happens.) Hit them with a taunt, press hibernate, your end and hp will recover to full, you'll get about 5 seconds of recharge for your powers, that AV won't lose aggro (roughly 13-14 second duration on Chilling embrace.) and you'll be back in the game with a bunch of combined Insps you just made while hibernating, I personally find this the best tier 9 in the game (I'm biased though, I love ice tankers.)

Ice some people also find hard to look at, I'll admit that you don't look like a tank (for example, a Granite tank, you look like a tank.) and other sets give you the option of being able to display your fanatasic superhero costume, Ice doesn't have this, in the lower levels you can colour the armour white/grey and your costume is completely visable, but in the higher levels you just become a coloured ball of Ice, with all four toggles having a isal, and Hoarfrost and EA both having visuals, its so easy for your costumes to be obscured, I can take a guess that this is the main reason people don't play Ice.

But there's also an awful lot you can do with an Ice/ tanker, depending on how you built it, you can pump out insane AoE damage. (Ice/fire, Ice/SS) have plenty of soft-controls. (Ice/ Mace/Axe/Stone. Put everything around you to a state of sleep in Ice/Ice, omitting Icicles, you could even add Stone Mastery to have your mag 2 sleep become a mag 5 sleep stacked, enough to hold bosses and possibly AVs.) Or you could focus on stacking debuffs such as the -dmg and -rech aspects of the aggro aura, with sets like Kinetic Meele, Ice Meele and Dark Meele. And finally you can focus on being an defense-based Sapper toon by going Ice/Elec(/Mu) Ice/ is a monster people don't seem to use, because they're either seeing/wanting all tanks to be thematicly just a damage sponge, not something with so many options and playthings that almost anything is possible (Except high resistance) This, in my opinion, is close to the same reason we don't see many Dark/ tanks in the game, people have wrong ideas about what a tank can and should be.

Personally and for an example of the uses of Ice/ with other powersets, I just rolled my 3rd Ice tank (Ice/Dark, a surviability powerhouse of single target damage.)

My Ice/Ice/Ice is insane, Ice Meele is currently on the same level as Super Strength without Rage (With arguably isn't a whole lot of damage considering rage is quite possibly the most important power in SS's damage output.) with the addition that instead of extra damage (Rage) you have so much more surviability with all the -recharge debuffs (and Ice Patch, can easily be made perma with one recharge IO, possibly autohit KD, with a -90% runspeed and -50000% Jump height.) and aggro is easier to maintain.

The Ice/Kin/Soul I use is also pretty impressive, combining soft-capped defenses with stacking -tohit, -dmg and -run/rech. Once again its a case of not losing aggro, having a stupidly powerful attack and debuff chain on AVs with Power Siphon, and throwing everything to the ground with Burst, its slow to attack, feels a bit flashy, but honestly its enjoyable to play.

Finally theres my Ice/Dark/Mu that I'm planning and slowing leveling, He's going to be my powerhouse, trying to get Hasten to perma with one +recharge buff (For example AM or SB from rads or kins) so Hoarfrost can also be perma without using Purples, the idea is to sit at the HP cap with a 20% heal power on an <5s recharge, being able to drain targets End in two rotations of EA - Electric Fences - Ball Lightning in large mobs, and stacking large amounts of -tohit from /dark during AV fights. (While also draining end, generally paired with things such as Elec controllers/Dominators or anything using Kinetics, AVs end should be floored with a considerable amount of -tohit as well.)

Going on just debuffing and ignoring damage.

Dark has -tohit and -res, 0.83s cast 3s base rech.
Elec has -end and -res and a weak chance to sleep. 0.83s cast 3s base rech.
Ice has -rech, -speed and -res. 1.33s cast and 3s base rech.
KM has -dmg -res. 0.83s cast 3s base rech.

Most other tier 1's seem to be disorients and thus have around a 6s recharge.

if you just wanted to apply Bruising, and that being your only use for your tier 1, then its best to look at activation times rather than recharge.
As long as the recharge is lower that 10secs a constant application of bruising can be kept. And afaik most if not all tier 1 attacks are between 1 and 2 sec recharge.

As it's been said before, its mostly for solo.

And that a 20% -res debuff is a pretty hefty debuff.
I believe I dev stated the reason for Bruising was because they saw a very little amount use of the Tier 1 tanker attack in game.