Hibernoob

Haha, more time in game does not equate to more experience, sorry. Frankly, intellegence and ability to learn faster have their variables too, but let's not go there. It's not your fault man...some people are just a bit slower than others.

I linked you to 2 threads talking about how Fire sucks. There are plenty more to find. Accept it as gospel.

I, too, would like that to change, but wishing does not make it so.

As someone else pointed out, there's not really ANY tank out there with too many tricks...Fire is so less than nothing without it's heal it's not even funny. So, I guess, even from your point of view, if Ice has two tricks (and it really has three, btw), then Fire has only one. Wewt!

What a lame, self-defeating argument to make. *rolls eyes*

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The number of trollish posts spewed here has nothing to do with ingame knowledge,

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Oh...I'm trolling my own guide? You don't even make sense, you're just mad cause you're a newb who got shut down with your BS opinions. Go ahead, say WE'RE trolling YOU now....you make me laugh.

So...I mean, btw...we're on the same server and all...if you're so convinced you pwn on your Fire, you pick a teamate, I'll pick a teamate, we can duel it out. I guarantee you, my side wins. *shrugs*

Is it ok if I Frap it for the video?

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Where's the thread to start pushing for a FA nerf?

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*feels the need to smack a fellow poster for the first time*

Sighs...try the pvp section. Seeya there.

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I think the tank who fought me in Warburg today had read this guide. I didnt know any thing about Ice armor before this guide except that it is Teh_Gimpzor. So any way, to day in the WEB I came across an Ice/EM tanker. So we began fighting, and I was winning at first, when suddenly, BAM, I am at half endurance from 80% endurance. Then, my attacks are all slowed. And then I get stunned through integration. We slugged it out, and my QR made a good show, but EA and CE eventually drained me and took my teeth away. After a long epic battle (Probably five minutes. In the middle some MM punk showed up and we whooped him together) He beat me. He was a great sport, and offered me my Code back as we congratulated eachother. But I let him keep it, he earned it for beeting my FOTM [censored] with his "Gimp" build

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Are you on Infinity? You've just described what i do ona regular basis! I always offer up a chance to return codes if I'm not hunting for them. No sense in wasting hard-earned codes.


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ME TOO! I was totally thinking it might have been me, then I saw the post date. My vid card has been down for about a week now, so it couldn't have been me, I've been unable to play for about a week now.

But yeah, as long as they're behaving well and weren't like uber jerks or anything, I offer it back to them. I sure don't want another missile code, I don't even like the temp power, and I don't want to sour people on Warburg.

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Darth just has the patience and style fit for writing guides.

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Thanks! Put a lot of time into it, but it's almost time for a revamp anyways. I think I'll wait till i7 is a bit further along, to tie some of that in, but it needs a few tweaks anyways.

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Let me explain something.

Ice Armor is a 2 trick pony. Massive End drain and the Hibernation chicken button. That's about it. If you resist End drain, you can just pummel them into hibernation over and over. Myself, I can beat one to a pulp with my brute, but they always just hibernate.

Take it from me, if you actually want to never die in a 1 on 1 fight, go ahead and play Ice.

For teams, Ice just isn't as good as fire, since Fire can heal without needing to be out of the fight for about 30 seconds while your team gets crushed.

Also, don't expect to be able to kill another brute or tanker if they have end drains of their own or a resistance to end drain of any kind. I can go toe to toe with an ice tanker and neither can die. In fact, I went afk with healing flames on auto with my /Fire tank vs that very tank (Ice-Cubed) and came back to find myself still at 100% health.

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No, no, no...let ME explain something....

1st) The word Rookie is by your name. Live it, learn it, love it. Walk with a humble and affable attitude and kindness will be shown you. Think your the sh** and start talking crap to people, and you're begging to be slapped down. Clearly you have little idea what you are talking about, your own post proves that.

2) Fire tanks suck in pvp. They're better in 1v1 than teams. Why? Controllers and their HP issues. Ultimately a tanks final line of defense is often their HP, and Fire has roughly 1k less than other optimally built tanks. That's roughly 2/3 my HP. You're vaunted heal is worth exactly squat when overstacked by a hammied up controller, and the opposing team will end up killing you at will. What good is a tank who dies?

Other vulernabilities of Fire tanks include: Slows, -res, crits, stalker vulnerabity, and lack of a tier 9 for the tough stuff. Oh...but when you die, you get to come back rather than respawn. Quite a timesaver. Very helpfull to your team.

In the incidence you refer too, you also never managed to damage me notably. Congratulations. You only did something any other tank can build to do, sit there and ignore each others damage and heal up. We're designed for it. Difference is? If we were both trying to kill each other, I win. If I was attacking you and we had equal back-up? I win. When I blow you off and forget you, while you remember and hold on to the encounter for months? I win.

Some recent threads I've been involved in concerning Fire's suckiness:

Gekos mammoth thread
My asking the pvp community what a viable Fire tanker duelist would look like thread.

Forum dueling? Yep...I win.

GG

Mmm. I'd really rather see an AT specific modifier applied to heal self. Except they need to be the reverse of the usual for this kind of thing, stronger for melee sets and weaker for casters.

Either that, or it needs to no longer be affected by powerboost. If you think about it, the ATs Aid Self will not be nerfed to help get no use from power boost anyways.


Here's a few problems I see with Heal Self atm:

1) Powerboosted Heals for blasters. Yep. Wasn't enough they have medium HP, unresistable damage, a strong synergy for suppressionless movement, and are retaining at least some form of detoggling, let's give them resists to all common melee toons damage and then let them have an 80% self heal every once in awhile, in addition to FoN. Oh...no...PFF too.

Cmon...you mean to tell me this was really intended? A heavy ranged damage AT should NOT be healing themselves that well, bottom line, but ESPECIALLY not when you guys have already caved and given them resists and more HP. Gimme a break.

Tank mage, anyone?

Frankly, I think someone should look into powerboosting the self heal on Rads heal as well...it's quite effective atm as well, and rather spammable.


2) Too strong a synergy on many sets, Hasten + Stamina + defenses or phase power make Aid Self very good. In pvp, only toggle debuffs will really interfere with the use of this power, the interupt is avoidable.

3) Obviously benefits all ranged classes more than melee classes. Why? Ranged classes have range...ie..less damage...ie...less incoming attacks, ie, less interupt = more chance to use. We can't gale/hold/phase/PFF/duck around a corner/cage them or w/e else casters can do to get breathing room. We're naturally in the thick of it, taking damage the whole time. The res based sets with no self heal get kinda screwed here too...without defenses they're much more likely to be interupted, even with 3x redux slotting.


I suppose you could remove the interupt for melee toons, and that way Aid Self would be mutually annoying to everyone, and then everyone would ask for the damned thing to get some more balanced attention.

But, let's be real here...the Devs haven't said "there's nothing wrong with Aid Self", they've said, "gee, we're not smart or motivated enough to figure out how to deal with it, so we've decided to just let you deal with it. We'll also be dispensing another stealth fire or regen nerf in i7, we haven't decided which...frankly, we just flip a coin."

Ice has weaknesses, it's just the best adapted to the broken pvp enviroment we play in. A tanks main fears are: toggle-dropping, mez overstacking + containment, and unresisted damage.

You run no fewer than 4 toggles. Ice-Cubed runs about 5-6 atm. This makes toggle-dropping much less of a threat, if you're paying attention. Additionally, once ppl learn it's a lot harder to knock off your mez toggle, they tend to focus on other tactics.

The medicine pool makes a nice addition. When you're basicly taking damage straight to your HP, a little self heal to compliment your +HP is good stuff, keeps you in the fight longer and out of hibernate.

Hibernate is a catch-all cure to unresisted damage, uber-strong containment, "omg my toggles were dropped and they've been beating my a**!", and quite a few more cases other tanks have trouble with. Is it overpowered? No, but it's right up there with Granite, Unstoppable, Overload, Elude, and MoG in a lot of cases. There's also a psychological element similar to when a scrapper hits IH...you almost thought you had him, then he heals it all back up and you gotta start over.


So Ice Armor acts as a pretty nice band-aid over the various gimps tanks have been saddled with. It's main weaknesses can be found in my sig, but primarily it's also a clicky build, which means you end up being saddled with 3 power pools right off the bat. You need hasten, the medicine pool, and health/stamina. This makes it tough to get a vert power, and it's hard to fit in leadership if you wanted.


However, with toggle-dropping being scaled back, other sets will get better. Invulns biggest beef was always that you're either toggle-dropped or in Unstoppable, and Unstoppable is a death-sentence after 3 minutes. Stone tanks have been trundling through all the nerfs for awhile, with various degrees of usefullness, and there's really no change on their front. Fire tanks, who usually only run 3-4 toggles, are getting a bit of love, but not enough.

So I predict Invuln will rejoin Ice at the top of the pvp order, and probably be preffered for many jobs, while Stone will play second fiddle and Fire will still suck in both pve and pvp.

~DJ

PS- He's right, EM gains no special synergies from Ice armor, so when complaining about Ice/em you're really compaining about Ice.

Hoo/Ninja Monkey, you just made a thread saying all tankers suck, then when I asked you for a match you said "oh, except for Ice/em tanks", and now you want us nerfed too. Apparently all tanks should suck so your controllers are safe and happy atop the pvp mountain?

Please take that garbage somewhere else.

We're a high-hp AT. THAT is our counter to unresistable damage.

IMO, only time any of those are a problem are when shields are dropped...and when your resistance is down to 0 anyway, the unresistable portion is no longer a concern of yours anyways.

Even my gimped out, i3, pre-ed, pre-burn nerd fire tank can run around SC and escape stalkers. AS is still like 1/2=2/3 hp, heal flames, hop, hop, hop away!.

Second to toggle drops, our lowered mez resistance is a real problem in pvp. Or, more accurately, THIS is the problem:

Our mez shields seem to be balanced around the idea that a single controller, when well built, should be able to reliably overstack them given enough time, around lvl 30+ or so. However, once you hit hammis, and everyone is packing a few acc/mez in every hold, you get reliably overstacked that much faster...and then it's 3x damage, debuffs, and being vulnerable to everyone elses attacks time.

I've often said this about detoggling...I think they should just make the Mez shields impossible to detoggle. Even when mezzed, I either want the toggle up, OR build in an option like hibernate, where, as soon as the power ends you are able to choose one power/effect that will take place before anything else can affect you again.

IE, if I'm held, and not knowing when that hold will end, I'd like to be able to re-set my mez shield to go back up the second I'm un-held again. Not knowing is just making you sit there staring at that little red word, hoping to get your shield up before your one hold ends and someone elses mez attack gets you while your pants are down.

IMO, hammis and how they've been altered have simply brought chain-mezzing back into the game again. No other AT has as much to gain as controllers do from hammi-ing out, and certainly not any melee toon out there.

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Replace tanks with any other AT in a PvP team and you perform much better, that's a fact you cannot argue about.


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Oooh, ooh, I can. Though not the norm, a purpose build pvp team that's using tanks, sonic or ff users, and empaths to divide and conquer will end up tearing it up in arena matches.

I picture something like a mind/son (tk, cage, res debuffs), 2x Ice/em tanks, and an illus/empath with phase.

Six-slotted taunt + auto + follow and hitting the spacebar every once in awhile may be an annoying thing to play with and against, but it works. It's just not a fun game dynamic.


Like Castle said...no one is entirely useless in pvp. Tanks just don't get chosen right now because they're too vulnerable, put out too little damage, and don't do anything like their jobs in pve in pvp. This does not mean we're entirely worthless, it just means we're "situational".

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Will the Gauntlet bugs never cease?

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It's been almost 2 years. I'm thinking...."no".

They were phased, you missed getting them within the pbAoE, or a bug.

Trust me...I've hit everything high-defense you CAN hit with EA. Pimped out SR scrappers. PFF lovin FF fenders. I've drained Rad users through two layers of to-hit debuffs (rad AND a dark on me). Btw, i would have lost that had they excerised common sense and not tried to stand so near me while I was debuffed...but stand in close range and I'll SS up to the lowest on the blue bar, leach em, and hit BU+ET+TF+(rest of chain) and try to take one down, even out the odds, etc.

I'm something of a pvp-**** with my Ice tank, since it's my favorite toon ever and pvp is my favorite way to play. So, yeah, trust me, it's auto-hit. As it's primary function is +defense, it's similar to invinc, in that you don't want a solid buff for your toon to be dependant on hittin vs AVs, high defense players, bosses, etc. Same basic concept with CE being auto-hit, and with no "tick"...you don't want any of yuur primary damage mitigation to be based to much on "hitting" your opponent to save your bacon.

Circ, I don't think it's ever been confirmed that ANY of the taunt auras are getting any love in the pvp section.

Though it WOULD make use of the taunt enhancements you can place in auras, and I think it's a good idea to have like a 15%, short duration taunt per "tick", I think it depends a lot on how they're going to work gauntlet in anyways. I do agree that, if they do, they need to be carefull with CE and Incvinc. I'd rather see the taunt in Ice go to Icicles and Energy Absorbtion...both of which you can already slot for taunt enhancement, so it will work out well. EA is auto-hit, but also pbAoE and fairly tough to aim on a mobile target.


I figure they're likely to do a % chance to taunt per attack, similar to scrapper crits or critical holds. If auras simply added a +crit element, or a +% to taunt to melee attacks, that would work well for me too. It can't be too high or taunt will be obselete and it will needlessly annoy other players, and it can't be too low or it won't be effective when it needs to be. Also, should AoE attacks have AoE pvp gauntlet, or a reduced chance to taunt?

I think our ranged attacks should have gauntlet as well, but at a diminished capacity. That was part of the problem with taunt anyways....when it was 100% to hit, and had a fully enhanced duration, it wasn't a particularly fun or interesting mechanic to play against or even WITH, imo.

Ice still ends up putting my six-slotted taunt on auto and spammin it in the zones. It is effective but decidedly un-fun for both sides. It also significantly reduces my DPS to be stopping to taunt every 3-6s (don't have planner in front of me, but I know with 3x recharges + hasten I can spam that beast), and that's not a good idea in pvp either.

In any case, I'd really like to see tanker taunt brought back up to 100% in pvp and the duration cut short, for pvp alone, to restore some of it's usefullness. I've had squishies taken right out from under me in some zones because, while I could SEE the stalker, there were no options available to me to break his hide or interupt his AS (if taunt misses and he's running a tier 9, for example). My tank might as well be a lamp-post in those cases. 100% also gives it a "niche" as a usefull power against un-hitable foes, like SR scrappers and other things a tank might not be able to taunt via gauntlet.

For my take on Ice tanks, obviously one should check my guide.

I agree, our ability to regulate tempo and our general playstyle ends up making us fairly buffed up melee-trollers. IMO, I wish a lot of tanks were more like that in pvp...tanks would be good if secondary effects actually meant anything on the majority of our sets.

But the actual effectiveness of the Ice tank is reliant on it being a good fit into tankers current weaknesses. We run lots of toggles, so toggle dropping is no biggy. We're not afraid of being SLOWED when toggle dropped, which is a killer on a lot of builds and the reason for Ice/em blappers popularity. CE is a great anti-stalker tool. +perception is very big right now. Being able to actually get people to slow down a second when they hit CE is nice, with all the suppressionless hoo-ha in pvp atm. It's a very nice meshing of all the band-aids that were applied to Ice over the years, and it works well for pvp as things currently stand.

I hopped on a fire tank today...good god. How would you ever PvP with that thing? Might as well just drop your toggles and re-name the toon "Easy Rep 4 U".

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Ice Tanks are the exception to the rule. Look out for nerf threads concerning them fairly soon.

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Shush!

Hrmm.

I don't think it's not that we don't know we're getting buffs for teaming, or that we don't appreciate it, Tanks are just a little nervous when you guys change stuff with us.

There's a history of it not being...for the good.

I think reducing toggle droppers and giving us punchvoke has the potential to be very good balancing and also a fun and interesting dynamic to play with/against in pvp. But, it is an extremely delicate change, so we're all a little nervous...we don't want another not-so-good fix and then to be neglected for 6 months to a year.

Frankly, after ED/i5 and plenty of fire/taunt nerfs, we're all a little skittish when Devs come bearing gifts...

Um...masterminds are NOT a good matchup with Ice tanks.

Know why?

Energy Absorbtion. You + 6 pets = decent defense bonus on top of what I already have, meaning your pets aren't going to be hitting much of jack. Meanwhile, you're feeding me max end every 22+ seconds. As a synergy issue, the fact that the pets are hitting at the pvp base of 50% and also hitting a +con (me), really helps defense sets to shine, and 7-10% more defense is nothing to sneeze at here at all.

I'm not trying to talk crap, I'm just saying, that's always an aspect of MMs I've enjoyed.

*gets out his forum-jousting lance*

Ok...who wants a piece of this?!?!


Back to the OP...yeah, I would like it if they kept ranged toons ranged and melee toons melee. I'd also prefer if melee toons were able to feel less suppresion, of all have short-ranged attacks, or something...IMO, the jump dynamic vs a melee toon is very far off. Any experienced dueler who wants to drop his incoming DPS vs a melee toon only has to hop about for a bit. Lame.

IMO, they borked blasters from the beginning. I think they need less HP, more un-resistable damage, and perhaps a pierce aspect or something...maybe add a steady to-hit bonus to defiance or some such.

My problem with blaster HP is watching one shrug off your melee attacks, hop away, hit Power Boost + AId Self, then hop BU+Aim and turn around to blap you to death.

That, IMO, is pretty damned unfair to melee toons.

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Did the dog eat your homework, too?

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Yes. D*mn dog.

Rash of thread deletion going on lately...kind of odd, for these forums.

Yep, my next project, actually. Apparently it's easier than I had realized, so I've been meaning to do a few. probably some instructional ones too, depending on how much bandwidth I can get out of a site.

Ok, since ppl are obviously still reading this, here's an "off-the-cuff" change to SS/Fire numbers.

Please note that only the following calculations are off, and only for the ranged portion of SSs.

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At lvl 50, the SS/Fire string = 64.7 x (.36 x -44.49) + 29 x ( .36 x -27.81) = (-1036.261) + (-290.336) = -1326.597 raw "hp" worth of damage before resistances, dam debuffs, all that get thrown in the rougly 11s indicated above.. Also, this is the string with Rage's activation included. The other string is only an extra 9.9 BI x the ranged modifier, so it's a fairly minor change.


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New numbers, for THAT string, are:

93.7 BI x (.36x-44.49) = -1500.74 HP worth of damage in the 11s window WITH rage activation included.

103.6BI x (.36x-44.49) = -1659.30 HP worth of damage in that same window with another attack instead of Rages activation included. Likely more "real world" a number.

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So, going from that, at level 50, the EM string = 130.8 x (.36 x -44.49) + 8.2 x ( .36 x -27.81) = (-2094.945) + (-82.095)= 2177.04 raw "hp" worth of damage before resistances, dam debuffs, all that get thrown in the rougly 11s indicated above.


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So you end up with 2177.04 vs 1500.74 or 1659.30 , depending on how you want to look at it.

That means SS is still doing only .69 (69%) of EMs damage in the first case, and .76 (76%) of EMs in the second case, in BURST modes of 11-12s.

To sum up, ANY EM string is going to be better both in a common 1-2s window in which you catch skilled squishies for a sec before they hop off, and an 11s window vs anything that doesn't hop off.

The SS combo will pull ahead in overall DPS, and probably EPS (endurance) as well. It succeeds at ranged damage too. There are utility-combinations and other factors that may want to be considered, such as taking Footstomp for the AoE knockup and some damage after toggle-dropping some enemies with Energy Absorbtion. Also good to hit stalkers with when they placate you and are after a friendly who's nearby. I liked clap on my brute in SC too, good for those squishies who got too close when taunted or something. Few squishies have resists to disorient.

More. I made a mistake in not personally confirming how ranged attacks were set up previously, so I am now looking into it myself. Went off forum wisdom, PMS to ppl who were, apparently, wrong.

I'll re-crunch the numbers for the other case, as well though, to compare them again, so we'll have them for either/or.

Also, I've been told Ice Blasts BI is off on the planner...which doesn't help the prospect of an Ice/SS/Ice, which woulda been cool, IMO.

OK, crap. Hrmm. I'll have to rework this at some point in time.

It took like a month or two, but I'm getting indications that the Brawl Indexes for tanks were normalized for the ranged attacks...in other words, that 4.5556 is actually higher, but then the ranged modifier brings it back down in line, so that 4.5556 melee is the same as 4.5556.


Sadly, I cannot test that factor out right now, but I will, on the next day when I have nothing better to do, review the old Ice/SS/Fire prospect.

I'd be happy with this. I'd also like to see Blasters un-resistable damage component possibly enhanced, and/or a "pierce" component (steady +acc bonus, or +to hit).

Making the ranged damage AT pwn in melee because they couldn't get it to work at range was a big mistake, IMO. The Dev team should expend a few brain cells trying to figure this out, IMO, and stop with the slap-dash fixes.

EM blappers would still end up with high damage/acc attacks, build up, and other tools. Toggle-dropping is being nerfed anyways.


But, as far as I can tell, the blaster community is by far the whiniest community in this game, and definately the one with the least reason to whine.

PS- The "give us mez protetion" thing is old. So old. It's been 3-4 issues and a year + already. I don't think you guys are getting it, do you?

I find CoV PvE far more entertaining, flexible, and streamlined than CoH PvE has ever been.

If two tanks want to duo, it's going to be real crappy for em. 2 brutes? It's go time. 2 stalkers? ditto. 2 corrupters? perfect. A team of MMs reminds me of the all-defender PvE teams...they own.

It's nice not to always have to put together the mage/meatshield/healer threesome. As game population goes down, and IMO, CoHs definately is, I'd much rather be able to form a competant group 80% of the time than a uber group 40% of the time.

I think the autonomy is much more interesting and fun than depending on another random person too much for any one thing.

Yeah, I have a problem with forum brevity too.

Not just you though, like the last 3 pages are full of some of the longest, quote-iest posts I've ever seen.

OMG....quote-fests! Longest posts ever!

Whew..I can't even make myself read all that. Shorten it up when possible, guys, sheesh.



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CoH and CoV have two different, unequal paradigms, that meet in an unbalanced way in open PvP.

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That sound that everyone just heard, was Logarithm hitting the nail right on the head with a 50 pound sledgehammer of truth.

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I agree. Thing is, the Devs built CoV with a lot more personal damage for every AT. In short, they realized, over the process of doing CoH, that it wasn't much fun to be the "debuff/buff guy who really sucks outside a team" or "the control guy who really sucks outside a team", etc, etc. If there's not a team to be had, or the team is not working that well, etc, it's easier to water-down the specific roles CoH ATs were built around and spread the love.

There is no "aggro" AT. There is no "healer/support" AT. Damage is the general priority and everything else is usually in a secondary.

All the CoV ATs can solo at almost any level. It's fun and entertaining.

In CoH, blasters and scrappers can solo. Controllers can late-game. Defenders and tanks, it's just painfull, man, especially now, for tanks.