Icetower

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Hey Posi - just so ya know.. Spectral Wounds also does damage to the fires. Don't know if SW does "imaginary" Ice damage or it's just a bug, but there ya go. :]

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I guess tankers aren't the only ones who have a vulnerability to Psi damage...perhaps you're scaring the fire away?

Maybe all the firefighters around the country need to think up a new strategy for putting out fires....get a bunch of scary costumes and make threatening gestures at the fire! Saves on the water bill.....

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I've also read that Bobcat hits for massive numbers. (3,000+?)

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Yep. She hit me for 2052 with 5-slotted Tough, which is 3420 (approximately) for the poor schmo without Tough.

Let's not forget about Adamastor, with his Vahzilok-like toxic vomit attacks that happen way too often as well. It may not one-shot us, but it almost always hits.

Sadly, Invuln tankers don't even need an outside influence (Kora Fruit) to reach those numbers.

Simply slot Invincibility with 6 +DEF enhances, and you get the same number (approximately 86.67% more effective, which is consequently the most they can be above us, assuming we have floored accuracy on the enemy). Add a single Kora Fruit to the mix, and they will remain 87% more effective even through +10 BOSSES (assuming 5 other enemies around that can be used to fuel Energy Absorbtion or Invincibility)

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I would like to see High Tower and all the other Ice tnks out there

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High Tower, eh?

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Oh, but it IS what were are talking about. What Lady_Tara was saying, what you agreed with, and what even I mentioned, is that the 80% damage buff for Rage applies only to its base damage. If you six slot an attack for damage, that's 300%. (328% for +3 as you pointed out) Plus Rage, that's 380%, which is about 27% over what you would have gotten without Rage.

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No, not really. Here is what Lady_Tara said:

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With an attack fully slotted with SOs the increase from Rage is only around 30%. That’s less than what one SO will give you.

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The point is, it's NOT less than what one SO will give you. Regardless of how you slot a power, 80% to the base is equal to over TWO +3 SOs. She made it sound as if the '30%' increase in the damage you are doing NOW is about equal to adding another SO, which is NOT true. Putting on Rage is about like adding 2 +3 SOs.

And my comment about 'increasing the increase' was a flat ~30% increase of the enhanced damage, which it is not. I know it works out to be similar, but that's not what I was saying.

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Now, as for Ice not doing as much damage, while I can empathise, you've got far more powers to hold a foe and freeze him in place than Super Strength

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And just what are these amazing powers of holding? I have ONE hold power (Freezing Touch). Knockout Blow is a hold as well. Ice Patch is not a hold, even though it effectively makes enemies less likely to attack. You have Hand Clap and Footstomp, which do the same. I'm not counting the almost non-existant secondary Slow effect from the melee attacks, which do almost nothing against higher level foes, and I'm surely not counting Frozen Aura (which is a very rare choice even for the already very rare Ice Tanker).

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obviously you chose to go with that when you saw all those powers that hold your foes and don't damage them.

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I didn't choose this set because of the supposed uber controller powers of it. I chose it because I thought it looked good and fit my concept.

I've never asked for a extreme increase in damage. Perhaps if they raised some of the attacks to do either more damage or other secondary effect (besides the gimped slow it has). I'm not asking for an attack like Total Focus or Energy Transfer or whatever. Perhaps an attack like Cleave or Heavy Mallet, both of which still do far more damage than Greater Ice Sword.

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3) "CE Modifier" and "CE Actual" are best guesses by me. We know the effects for Chilling Embrace drop off as the difference in level increases. I arbirtrarily picked 15% per level less effect as it fit well with a +0 to +6 range. And I know it has almost no effect when I've fought +5s.

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I plugged in the values for 'Power Level Mod' from the scrapper spreadsheet for CE modifier as well, since it seems to work here (meaning a +10 boss only gets a 0.75% recharge penalty, still max of 25% for a -10). With that, the values were a bit different, but I felt it was a more accurate representation of what effect CE has on higher level bosses (or even AVs). I also plugged it into the damage modifier column as well, but that didn't change the final percentages (as you stated).

It really did surprise me to see what it looked like when an Invuln tanker 6-slotted Invincibility with DEF. It was basically an 85%+ advantage over Ice all the way until you reached +7 bosses, where it went down to 67%.

Even worse is when you reduce the mob count to 1 and leave Invinc 6-slotted. This is where it gets crazily out of proportion in the higher levels. Add in the fact that ANY of the buffs on the lower part increase Invuln's potential enormously, and the discrepancies are easy to see.

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The Kraken's Foot Stomp is an auto-hit PBAoE (Or at least one with huge accuracy)

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It's not an auto-hit PBAoE. It has missed me on more than one occasion, especially if I have a FF bubbler with me on that mission. The spit is toxic, but once you get him into melee it ain't so bad. I've never had a problem tanking Krakens before, but then again I have a self heal and they swing slow, so that could be the reason for my success.

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With an attack fully slotted with SOs the increase from Rage is only around 30%.

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Where are you getting this number? Even with all +3 SO damage enhancers in a power, that would bring you to roughly 228% extra damage, leaving you with 72% more you could enhance it with Rage. If you mean Rage would increase the increase (boy, that looks weird) by 30% (30% of 228 is 68.4), then yeah, but that's not what we're talking about.

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Super Strength is, to me, the most favorite power in the Tanker lineup because it fits best with most build concepts. I think it should be the number one powerset for the Tankers in effectiveness

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This kind of commentary makes me a bit angry. Why should Superstrength tankers be more effective than other types? If Cryptic made SS tankers the most effective, what would be the reason to even pick the other sets? What nakes Superstrength so special that it 'deserves' to do more damage than other sets?

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but with it’s low damage and no defining power it really isn’t the best choice.

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No defining power?! You got Knockout Blow and Hand Clap (which admittedly isn't taken much, but not because it doesn't look cool), both of which are pretty much the kind of things I would expect a Superstrength tanker to do. Knockout Blow is just about the only 'required' power for Superstrength tankers. They debate about whether to take Hand Clap, or Foot Stomp, or Hurl Boulder, but never whether or not to take KO Blow (unless they're a hardcore taunt bot).

Where exactly is this 'low' damage?! Roll up an Ice Melee Tanker....THAT is low damage. SS is far above Ice Melee. I'm not talking about comparing SS to Energy Melee, since EM is the high end of the spectrum. You can look at it this way...EM is basically SS with TWO KO Blow powers instead of one. Other than that, they are basically the same in damage.

My sensibilities get a bit whacked when I continuously see complaints about SS's "low" damage, and see them hit mobs for twice (or more) damage than I do.

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How about "the drawback doesn't make sense for a tank" argument, or the "it has four times the penalties of Hasten" argument?

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The drawback makes perfect sense to me. You pitch a fit and go beserk, hitting harder, so you need some downtime afterwards.

As far as the penatlies of Hasten, I think that's another argument. I personally feel that Hasten is overpowered to begin with, and think Hasten needs more of a penalty. You're basically increasing your damage by around 40%, making many powers either stackable or permanent, AND giving 5% defense. Yeah...that's comparable to something like Swift or Combat Jumping [sarcasm].

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Does it make sense for a tank to give up the ability to protect his teammates, for however short an amount of time, just to do a bit more damage?

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You get far greater benefit from Rage than 'a bit more damage'.

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Why give it an activation cost AND a 25% endurance drain AND a defense debuff AND 10 seconds of inactivity?

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Because for the 2 minutes BEFORE it ran out, you got a lot of extra damage.

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Or heck, why not make permafrost be the dmg debuff? 'Your body temperature has permanently plummeted to a degree such that those around you are left numb and weak from the cold." As a passive power it would have to be scaled down from the 50% debuff people have thrown out earlier, but if it could be balanced this would be the best solution IMO.

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Not sure if this is a good idea. There are times when you don't WANT to get aggro by passing by enemies (like when using stealth/Invis to pass by enemies). Having a passive PBAoE debuff would pretty much take the ability to 'sneak past' enemies away.

Of course, my usual 'stealth' ability is to just charge blindly through anyone I see and ignore them, but crazy is a state of mind, not a power pool

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I proposed something similar for Ice melee, attaching a resistance debuff to an attack from the set- and I like the concept (though I'd make that tohit instead of auto).

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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 also think CE would be the place to stick this effect. Of course it'd require an end cost increase, but frankly there's almost no reason to slot that power as of now in any case and this would certainly give us better reason.

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

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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As to the small string of Bobcat comments, I've fought Bobcat 3 times, once when she was 3 levels above me, and twice when she was 2 levels above me. I had 5 slotted Tough and didnt die once. Sure, I came a bit close, but nothing worrisome.

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Not counting any other buffs, you had (20% + 5*4%=40%) s/l resistances, therefore reducing the amount of damage she was doing from her max hit (2052) down to 1231. Assuming perma-Hoarsfrost, that's surviveable.

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Uh...yeah. Read my post again:

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Her first attack, 2052 damage (Eviscerate). One-shot death (mind you, this is with 5-SO slotted Tough going).

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I have 5-slotted tough just like Bluefan does. The 2052 damage I took was WITH this going (meaning approximately 3420 damage without Tough). I don't have Hoarfrost, but I do have 1940 HPs (Freedom Phalanx Medallion), so I can survive a lot of things. My problem isn't that she hit me so hard or that she killed me so easily (a +6 AV probably should be that difficult), it's that the Invuln tanker who was SIDEKICKED to me stood there and tanked her with little problem.

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Hmmm, a +7 AV managed to hit an Ice Tank through EA. Well I can believe that

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Her hitting me was not the problem (although her hitting me so often even with super-boosted defense from EA is kind of fishy...I should have had somewhere in the range of 700-800% defense...even +6 AVs should have problems hitting that). Neither was the amount of damage she did to me (I expect to get hit hard when I get hit). It's the fact that when I died (horribly fast, not once but three times), the level 35 Invuln tanker that was SK'd to me (meaning effectively one level LOWER than me) was tanking her just fine for the most part. Sure, he had to burn some lucks and respites, but he never got below 50% before he ran. THAT is what made me sigh in frustration.

Other AVs have given me trouble in other ways. Nosferatu, I didn't have any problems with. Terra, no sweat whatsoever. Hopkins, not a problem. Clockwork King...ugh. Countess Crey...well, after the initial Psi hits she was easy.Bile was easy. My problem isn't that I'm incapable of tanking AVs...I've done it before and I won't stop trying others because of Bobcat. It's that on all those I have tanked, I could easily be replaced with an Invuln tanker who could do the same job - only easier.

Don't take my statement the wrong way...I'm not arguing that you're false....just adding my two cents in there about it.

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See, this is what I'm concerned about. Sure, most standard baddies are covered even with the 'new' EA, but what about things like rulaaru? With their insane accuracy bonus (on at least the giant eyes that I know of), can an ice tanker even pretend to attempt, say, one of those shadow shard task forces? Say, set to invincible, like most people are in the 40s?

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I can give first-hand knowledge of this one, since I just did the Dr Quaterfield TF Saturday. Took 14 hours (yes, 14), but we completed it. No badge though

Team make-up was ideal for comparison, since the team lead was an exemp'd 50 Stone Tanker (exemp'd down to 42), myself (41 Ice Tanker at the time), and a 43 Invuln tanker (who picked up 44 before it was over).

It goes without saying that against the Crey minions in the TF, I had absolutely no problems. I could herd hordes and hordes and stand there reading the newspaper while doing it. Then again, so could either the Invuln or Stone tanker.

Against the Rularuu, it was a different story. I attempted to run into the mobs of Overseers/Brutes/Wisps time and again, and swiftly had to run back out again, even WITH EA hitting 10+ mobs (see the link in my sig to see how I'm slotted...5 +DEF in EA). If I could get past the initial alpha strike of Psi from the Wisps and the 'stare' from the Overseer, I'd be ok. Granted, this was against level 46 mobs. The Invuln tanker could stand in there all day, once the Wisps were gone, as could the Stone tanker. The only times I could be effective in groups like that was if we had a bunch grouped tightly together where I could get EA off before they returned fire on me (the Wisps still hurt, but they die easily).

To put another thing into perspective, I also helped someone with an AV last night, against Bobcat. Team leader was a 46 Blaster, myself (42 ice tanker), 44 dark/regen scrapper, 34 claw/SR scrapper (SK'd to the 46 blaster), 40 Rad/Rad defender, and a 35 Invuln/SS tanker (SK'd to me). The mission was set to Heroic since the team lead was the mission holder and didn't want a 49+ Bobcat AV. Unfortunately, elevator missions seem to get worse if they realize it's too easy for you on the first few levels . Started out with level 44 minions/LTs (for those that aren't familiar with this mission/AV, the minions are all Claw/Regen scrappers that look like Hellion/Warrior minions). Not a problem for me. As we went down the elevators, they kept getting higher level, and in bigger groups, until the last two levels we ended up with level 48 minions/LTs/bosses, and groups of 15-20+. Still, easy pickings for me. I was still the tanker...I was actually herding these guys...whole rooms of +6 mobs. Shameless plug for Aid Self, btw, which helped me survive this.

So, I was feeling pretty smug, and even made a stupidly anti-karmic comment about Bobcat, where I said it didn't matter if she was level 60 by the time we reached her, since she did Lethal damage and I wasn't worried in the slightest (HA!). Well, she brought me down a peg or two. Or three. Or four. When we got to her, I didn't see her at first in the room full of minions (it was a small room), but I noticed I took a 1000+ point hit and my health dropped (this was AFTER I used EA on over 20 minions, so my defense should have been somewhere in the range of 700-800%). She hit me like I was a squishy. After the 1000-point hit, I jumped away and healed myself before I could get hit again. She followed, hit me for 700-ish, then hit me again for 1152 (Follow Up followed by Slash, for you Claws Scrappers). So, death number 1. The SK'd Invuln tanker then takes over aggro while I use an awaken and recover. He keeps aggro for about 15 seconds until I can reactivate my armors. As soon as I flip on Chilling Embrace and hit EA, she turns to me again. Her first attack, 2052 damage (Eviscerate). One-shot death (mind you, this is with 5-SO slotted Tough going). Death Number 2. The Invuln tanker takes over again, as I awaken (and cry a little watching him take the punishment I can't possibly take). I get up, same routine, she turns to me, does a Swipe, Focus, Slash, I'm dead again. The Invuln tanker takes over again, and I just lay there watching. He tanks her for about 2 minutes before the defender gets one-shotted with Eviscerate (the invuln tanker lives through it, of course) and runs off because now there's no heals or debuffs. We finally had to wait for some higher level muscle to come in and help us take her down.

I pride myself on my Ice Tanker, and always feel I have something to prove to people who think Ice is gimped. So, I constantly do extremely crazy things to show that not only can I live through it, but maintain aggro and make it look easy (thus many groups see me standing in the middle of humongous mobs of villains reading a newspaper or dancing). It makes me cringe when I see that not only can Invuln tankers do this against large mobs, they can also tank the single solitary baddies FAR better than I can. I don't plan on giving up my ice tanker, as I've been playing him since beta 2 and has always been my main motivation for playing this game, but it's extremely frustrating that I'm terribly underpowered versus an Invuln (or stone) tanker.

Oh, and about Icicles. Checking HeroStats, Icicles does a full 52% of my total damage, out of approximately 290,000 damage total (from about a 5-hour play session last night). Ice Melee doesn't have Whirling Axe/Hands, FSC, Foot Stomp, Tremor, etc for AoE damage. Frost is our only power that damages more than one person, and it's a small cone. I *need* that power to turn solo'ing from tedious boredom to something actually manageable. In the time it takes me to kill a LT/Boss of a group, ALL the minions surrounding me will be dead or very close from Icicles alone. True, the end cost is still high, but I still love it.

Stop with the defense debuff stuff. We all know that putting a defense debuff of, say, even 20% would do little to make an Invuln or Fire (or even Stone) tankers care. It would, however, make an Ice Tanker without 5 or more enemies around him and Energy Absorption ready cringe. Since the majority of SS tankers appear to be Invuln, this would barely be a barely noticeable effect (Invicibility being up would negate this penalty entirely, still leaving that tanker with 90% resists plus whatever extra defense he had).

There's already enough things in the game that reduce defense. Make this one reduce Resist, if anything.

It's all a moot point anyway, as I doubt the devs will change the current implementation.

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Except that our aggro-keeping ability is directly dependent upon our damage output, which besides the mere amount of damage dealt is also dependent upon hitting accurately to deal that damage. Debuff the damage and accuracy and you'll still have people peeling off the tank, unless of course they are reduced to a tauntbot role, which I REPEAT, Issue 3 was supposed to allow us to bypass.

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You don't have to do mega damage to keep aggro on you with PunchVoke. If that were the case, I'd have mobs peel off my ice tanker all the time

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The endurance hit and a defense debuff (much more than we have now) is plenty of a penalty for Rage. The current penalty is far out of proportion with the power's advantages, and is most importantly not fun to deal with.

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If you replace the current penalty with something like an end hit and defense debuff, it would have to be pretty harsh on both accounts. Perhaps a 50+% end hit, and I would say something OTHER than a defense debuff. Why would an Invuln tanker care if all of a sudden his defense went to 5%? He still has 90% resists to fall back on....an Ice Tanker who used Rage would be gutted with a defense debuff. I say go with a Resist debuff. Defense debuffs are too easily countered in a group, with powers/buffs, or simply a few Lucks. That would just about make the penalty worthless if all you had to do was pop a CAB and a Luck or two every two minutes and get all that extra damage.

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Through my career most of the tanks I've teamed with have been of the invul/superstrength variety. In the past week, though, I've teamed with some other variants -- invul/energy, fire/ice, fire/fire, and fire/energy I think covers all of them. I have watched them closely to see how the sets work (especially since I have ten seconds out of every 100 or so that I can't do anything else).

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Is there a reason you picked the sets that are the most offensively powerful for your comparison?

Fire/(anything) will outdamage all other tanker sets, no matter the build. You just can't compare any tanker secondaries to it, since it won't match up with Burn.

Energy, while admittedly considered a late bloomer for damage output, still outdamages other secondaries, simply because of Energy Transfer. In my personal opinion, ET is a bit overpowered (compare it to Ice Melee's 35 attack, where ET does more than twice the damage of Greater Ice Sword but uses the same amount of endurance)....but I'm not here to call for any nerfs

The thing you might be seeing with Axe might be because Axe has more damaging attacks at lower levels than Superstrength. SS doesn't get its first 'heavy hitter' until 10, and then no others really until 20 when it can get Knockout Blow. Axe gets three pretty good damage attacks by the time they reach 20 (Chop, Beheader, Swoop).

Knockout Blow still outdamages any attack in the Axe line, any attack in the Fire line, any attack in the Mace line, any TWO attacks added together in the Ice line, and any attack in the Stone Melee line. The ONLY attacks that equal or surpass it are Energy Transfer, Total Focus, and of course, Burn.

Superstrength gets an almost constant damage buff for themselves. The others can get Buildup, which lasts 10 seconds. Are you telling me it's more fair for Superstrength to get almost constant damage buff to an already solid damage line, and have NO drawbacks (or very minor ones), while lines like Ice and Mace get MUCH lower damaging attacks and get Buildup as their sole mitigator?!

To bring this into another perspective, I could come fight next to you with my Ice Tanker, flip on Buildup, and do about the SAME damage as you do WITHOUT running Rage or using damage inspirations. So, for TEN SECONDS out of 90, I could equal a SS tanker's damage output without Rage.

Erm....Kind of like Iike some of the rest of us not taking Build-Up, eh? (with exception to Build Up + Energy Transfer/Total Focus tankers).

I know I used to feel a bit silly using Build Up on my Ice Tanker...crap damage enhanced is still crap damage

I would use Build Up and just barely reach the damage output of a Super Strength tanker who was NOT using Rage...what does that tell you?

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A tank without Taunt IS a solo build. If you have been teaming with folks, you have by no means been even close to average at the role a tank is supposed to have. The modest amounts of agro you get from being a punchvoker (which is a pretty new idea in this game) is nothign compared to the agro the blasters, khelds or scrappers will generate beating on the mobs-All have much higher damage curves. Get taunt and use it-or please stop compaining that your toon is broken. it works great-you're jsut asking it to do somethign it can't do unless you use the tools they gave it to do the job. Sheeesh, might as well spec my blaster by slotting only secondaries then complain on the boards about how Cryptic sucks because controllers out damage me!

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Completely false. If YOU can't control aggro without Taunt, that sounds like a fault of you, not other tankers. I do just fine without Taunt, and I am definitely a team tank. You don't rely on just Punchvoke to do your job...all tanker builds I can think of have AoE powers that can be slotted with taunt enhancers. Ice primary has 3 AoE powers that can be slotted with taunt enhancers, and 2 of them are auto-hit (meaning I don't have to worry if the mob is +20 levels above or whatever...it will always hit him). Invuln has Invincibility, which is auto-hit. Stone Armor has Mud Pots, Fire has Burn and Blazing Aura, and Consume. Those are just the primaries...if you add in the secondaries, any attack or effect can add taunt enhancers. With all of that, you STILL seem to think that a single power can be that much more effective than all of your other powers?

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And the end drain for both Invul and Boxing Strength -- er, Superstrength -- is indeed too high, especially considering the poor damage of Superstrength.

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I understand the frustrations of Invuln tankers, but why all the exaggerations?

Super Strength is not a low damage set. Ice and Mace ARE low damage sets. True, Super Strength comes in after that, but there are plenty of attacks in Super Strength which are FAR more damaging than anything in Ice/Mace (Knockout Blow comes to mind immediately...Ice doesn't have ANYTHING even remotely close to that in damage).

Invuln does not cost more endurance than other sets. In fact, it is the LEAST endurance-costing power set (Ice being the next lowest, then Stone, with Fire being the most expensive). This is for toggle-costs. The only exception is TI, which costs marginally more than Frozen Armor from Ice and Rock Armor from Stone (but still costs less than Fire Shield from Fire). Add in the fact that many of Invuln's defenses are auto.

Instead of asking the devs why you feel your set(s) are lower than you'd like, ask yourself how you compare to the other sets along the same criteria: Is your set(s) better than the others, or more cost-effective, or more damaging? Put yourself in my position.....I see a lot of posts about the ineffectiveness of Rage and how crappy it is, and yet see posts about people doing 600+ damage as a SS tanker, and wonder how they can even post such contradictory statements. I'm a bit miffed at the moment, so please don't flame me too much (my fire defense is a bit low, being an Ice tanker and all).