JJ_Jason

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So, looking at my Primary Powers; I'm pretty much taking 6 powers and only 3 need any slotting (Only would slot EA for End drain, if I wanted to).

So 15 slots to max Frozen Armor, Hoarfrost, and Glacial Armor... this gave me the oddest feeling. "I'm building a Scrapper" :O .

Is this what most people are stuck doing? Slotting attacks because most of the Primary are lost causes?

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From the Primary? Yeah, FA, GA and Hoarfrost. I put 3 recharge and 1 taunt in EA, and will use it as my aggro/endo recovery power.

But will I be moving all those slots to my secondary? Heck no... They go into 6 slotted Tough, 6 slotted Weave and 6 slotted Health. At one point, we were upset because we were "required" to take Tough and slot it, in order to properly Tank as others. Now you need Weave too!

Tanks would be so lucky, if we could get extra damage to kill mobs faster, so we take less damage. Instead, we get weaker buffs, but lots of endo recovery.

<doom>

- JJ

It's over... Ice lost.

We begged (can I use that word?) for changes since the onset of Issue 4. And only at the tail-end of issue 5, have any changes been made.

Sure, the Global Defense changes hurt everybody in melee, but that doesn't matter. We're supposed to dance around in a circle, keeping mobs "slow" but not in melee range, debuffing their damage by 7%, and having them not attack. Works great vs Hellions and Skulls. Totally worthless against anything that does more/mostly range attacks.


And I still want to know why Invincibility 6-slotted gives more defense then every power we own, also 6-slotted for defense. 14 mobs, and they have us beat. Plus resistances. We will play on because the there must be a "hard" tank to play... like setting the difficulty of a game to Impossible and still trying to win. But I expect no more help to Ice tanks.

This is final. This is the will of the devs.


ICE... R.I.P.

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I'll pop in here so you guys have a new target.

The original Task Force Datamine took 3 months to finish. That was to go over 2 months worth of data.

We now have 18 months worth of data. We looked for a more effecient solution, but our estimates still come out at 2 years to datamine and get you your badges.

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Thank you for the response, and the reasoning behind it. People may not be "happy" about it, but I think they'll be reasonable about it, and understand that it's the way it has to be.

2 years of brute force is not a solution to persue. I wouldn't wish that on the Devs.

Keep up the feedback!

Gee, I wonder how things would be if the next Zone added was a winter wonderland... Winter Lords and icy foes. At least we could hide in the snow, and be unseen by the monsters. Wouldn't want to draw aggro, now would we? We'd still have to call up a Stone Tank to help us...

It comes back to the idea that Ice has lost any sense of self...


What can an Ice Tank do? What is our benefit?


It was my absolute hope that Damage Debuff would be it. I was really hoping we'd be able to debuff mobs damage on the order of a Rad Defender/Controller. Is that really so much to ask? Rad guides are listing Enervating field at 33% damage debuff. If controllers are less effective, it can't be less then 25%. And ours is 7%! Three Ice Tanks in a room together are less effective at debuffing then a single Controller with Enervating field??

But no... We're 7%. I highly doubt Ice Tanks will be in demand for this ability. And we have no other ability but to take lots of damage quickly. EA was once our god-send, and the only power on an unpopular set that others wished they could have. It made us "close" to other tanks, but left us with a few additional vulnerabilities. And we were Masters of Defense.

Now, Stone and Invuln have better Defense then we do... but they have Resistance too.

I'd never imagined a world with fewer Ice Tanks, but I5 is likely to make that true.

Bogus...

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Well, after some quick testing, I found out that I have no staying power at all. Isn't that what the tank is there for?

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Say hello to your Issue 5 Ice Tank!

- JJ

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Think about it a second... 20-30% would be very ideal for the ice tank vrs an AV. But in regular play that would give the ice tank a huge advantage over the other I5 tanks. If Invulnerability has to use 2 powers, both 6 slotted, to get around 38% resistence to elements and energies, then giving ice tanks a flat 30% resistence (-damage) to everything in melee range (and a little beyond) for the cost of 1 power and NO additional slotting is an I5 uber power. No, I think 7% is right in-line with what I expected. Does it solve the AV problem. Of course not. (And heres the clincher) I don't think it was ever intended too. We've been reading that into it from the moment we heard about it. The -damage, imo, is another small tool to help Ice in the long-term issue of survivability, not the immediate needs presented by an AV.

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Is this a tool meant to enable us to handle AV's on our own? Certainly not.

When I took a look at the Invulnerability vs Ice spreadsheet that Circ put together, I was looking at what % decrease would allow Ice tankers to stand favorably against Invulnerability. Assuming they are strong vs S/L, and we are weak against Fire.

At 33% damage reduction, Ice was "nearly" on par with Invuln. We need that much help to do reasonably for Energy/Negative, and it put us slightly ahead on Toxic and Psi.

Now then, these numbers were created based on spawns of Minions/Lts/Bosses. No AV's.

In my post, I pointed out that level 52 minions lost all of 10 points of damage on a normal attack. Some attacks it may be as high as 12-15. But getting hit 100 times, we'd save what? 3/4'ths of our health bar? 100 times! Most fights, I'd expect to see 20-30 hits, saving us from 200-300 points of damage. Yet we'd be taking (150 dmg * 20 hits = 3000 damage), minus 210 for CE leaving us with 2790 damage taken. And that assumes everything that hits us is in range of CE.

I still fail to see how this helps us with Minions, Lts and Bosses. From my direct numbers above, a level 2 Ice tank will take half a point less of damage. Half a point! What good does that do? This is the only Energy/Negative protection an Ice Tank will have till 18!

Did I hope for more then 10%? Yes. Did I expect much more? Perhaps not. But do we need more? I say yes, absolutely.

And Snorii, how much does that AV do against you on Live? How much less is he doing now?

Ok, hadn't noticed they'd snuck in the -damage on Chilling Embrace. Went back to run some numbers.

First off, I ran Nanoc vs a level 52 Battlemaiden, to see if some kind of "one-shotting" prevention, or overall damage reduction to AV's took place. Running my new CE, her strongest attack hit me for 1270. Assumming the 7% stands for AV's, her initial damage would be around 1375.

** Against an AV, at +2 level, and her best attack, -damage saved me 105 points of damage. **

Her minions (lvl 52 Mace Minion) went from 149 to 140. Approx 9 points of damage saved on a normal attack.

Then I decided to test stacking of CE from multiple Ice Tanks. We'd debated before how it would stack, and now we can find out with a simple test.

Took Nanoc, and had my Wife get to level 2 with an Ice Tank, and take CE. Then I had her Exemplar me down to level 2.

We found a level 2 Hellion Buckshot Lt, in Atlas Park. All damage leathal.

<ul type="square"> [*]Damage with no CE running - 5.95[*]Damage with 1 CE running - 5.53 - 7% reduction[*]Damage with 2 CE running - 5.12 - 14% reduction[/list]
The damage reduction seems to stack. Two Ice tanks get double the -damage effect. I'd like to see if that holds up, with more then just two tanks, but it looks exactly right at the moment.

So, if in ~Bizarro~ World, you had 8 Ice Tanks in a room running CE, you'd get 56% damage reduction. Didn't somebody list Enervating Field at 25%?

Conclusions? 7% is a joke. 33% was my honest wish and hope. 20% was my realistic goal. Am I happy we get something to reduce the amount of damage we're taking? Heck yeah! But if each attack a mob does to a level 50 is reduced by about 10 points of damage, it's just not making much of a difference! I'll have to test this with Circ's spreadsheet, but I remember how bad the numbers looked when I plugged in 10%.

Umm, I'm just back from the Training Room server...

Did they "not" make the changes indicated? I used Hibernate, but it doesn't indicate endo recovery at all. And with most of my toggles running, I was losing endo, not gaining it back.

So, did they not push to server?

- JJ

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Looks to me like the Hibernate changes aren't even really on the test server yet...

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People have mentioned that the changes to Phase Shift are for PVP only. Is our Hibernate change only PVP as well?

- JJ

Not a reply to Yelloducky... but for the newest changes:

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Ice Armor/Hibernate will no longer disable your toggle powers when you activate it. You cannot, however, activate new powers once Hibernate is on, and any of your powers will still not affect anyone else. Hibernate will now also give you an Endurance Recovery boost.

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Ice Armor/Wet Ice no longer accepts Defense Enhancements. Base defense value for Wet Ice was increased (about doubled, as though it had 6 SOs) to compensate. Old Enhancements will continue to work until they expire. This change was done to help prevent players from inefficiently using Def Enhancements in this power.

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Ice Armor/Permafrost now gives resistance to Slow.

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Increased Energy and Negative Energy Defense for Ice Armor/Glacial Armor.

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Slightly Improved Ice Armor/Frozen Armor defense to Smashing and Lethal attacks.

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So, Hibernate still Phase Shifts, and is just as bad as before. More endo, and a timer... just as Circ mentioned it would.

Permafrost does slow resist. Not that anybody takes it.

Wet Ice now has the "have's and have not's". But with the boost at 3%, will anybody really mind?

They've increased the defenses of FA and GA. Circ mentioned 17% and 17%. Since the wording is different, does it stand that they are not equal? And how much better are they now?

And the great Unspoken? Damage debuff... still missing. I guess this is one of those "we'll get it in later" things.

I could test it when I get home. And I can also pretend to care about playing my Ice Tank on live after I5. At least he's already rich, so he can just buy a nice SG base when that comes around.

But what we're seeing with Issue 5 Ice Tanks is almost the total loss of our "defining" abilities... In I4, we were Defense masters, but had no Resistance to speak of (cold aside). We could be effective, but had a unique set of issues to overcome.

In Issue 5, our only claim to fame is endo recovery. I've run my Ice Tank, and watched my Wife play her Invulnerability tank. She can take on a spawn with a few minions and a Lt. or two. She takes damage but can manage. She can even go against +1 or +2 mobs.

My Ice Tank got slammed by 4 or 5 white minions, and 2 Lt's. I run 6 slotted Frozen Armor and Glacial Armor, and about 4 defense slots in EA, as well as 6 slotted Tough. I have not yet respec'ed Weave in, so I suppose I still need to try that. But they hit me far too often, and I really notice that Tough has been toned down. I am highly concerned that Ice is going to be unplayable in larger groups.

Did I have a defender attached at the hip? No, but neither did my Wife. Stone Tanks I accept should be total package tankers, because Granite Armor gives up so much. But Invincibility can now give a greater defense boost then all of our defense powers, fully slotted. And have resistances to boot.

Again - One power from Invulnerability can outshine all powers combined from ours, for Defense. They can get more Defense then the Defense only set. Something's gotta be wrong with that...

But should we nerf Invulnerability further? Heck no. I'd just like to see Statesman post that he's played an Ice Tank in the 40's, and can tell us that we're balanced against the other Tanks.

10% Damage Debuff? Let me test it and see... Changes to Hibernate? Hope the Phase Shift is gone, so we'll see on that too.

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While, as was said, Hibernate is a Phase Shift so powers don't interact while in Hibernate, I will note that I specifically asked that Chilling Embrace and Icicles be allowed to work during Hibernate, to make it an Active power.

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If it's now going to be a click power, I wonder if that's what they're aiming for? Since it can't be left on forever, we can't just sit in a huge pile of mobs, using Icicles to safely kill all mobs in range. Now the risk would be that at the end of the 45 seconds, things can kick our rears again.

An interesting idea. I might take Hibernate if it works something like that... It would at last allow us to maintain aggro while recovering ourselves.

- Jason

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Sorry JJ_Jason i didn't make myself very clear. I was hoping that the unannounced change to Hibernate would make it different than the current phase shift, which would make it more useful. I'll edit my post so it makes morew sense.

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If they made Hibernate an exception to the phase shift rules... I could accept it as a top-tier power. If they changed it from phase shift, kept it a self-hold power, and gave us max defense/resistance (but our auras still work), I'd say it's 10 times more useful then current build.

But from what Circ says (from Statesman himself) the power changes are for Hibernate, that's not their idea. They think Ice Tanks need more Endo Recovery powers, because our toggles are so god-awful expensive... like Icicles.


So instead of fixing our endo costs, they make Ice Tanks the "Endurance Recovery" Kings! Wow... that's just what I need now that I'll be running FA, WI, GA, Tough, Weave and CE. Six toggles, and we'll still be the weakest Tanks of all.

- JJ Jason

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If it doesn't drop toggles, then you can have CE up and running while you click on Hibernate. This means you still have some pretty good taunting and debuff there rech, damage, and slow them.

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That's not quite right... Hibernate is a Intangibility power (like Phase Shift), which means nothing you have running can affect Mobs, while it's active. That means 45 seconds where your toggles are running, but not helping the team.

If they did, Hibernate could be useful, but I'd say they will not change the way Phase Shift powers work. Thus, the power will be an uncontrollable Phase Shift, that lasts 45 seconds.

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Hibernate (Tanker and ancillary): Reduced its End Cost. Your toggles will not drop. It has a Recovery Boost. Fixed(improved) its Cast time. You can only stay Hibernated for 45 seconds.

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Stranger and stranger...

Ok, so assuming "New Tech", with a limited time Toggle, and what do we gain? Another power that recovers endo. Isn't that what EA does now? Isn't that the only thing EA does now, at all well? And it STILL causes you to stop Tanking. Of course, in light of Issue 5, and the death of our defenses, I'm sure it'll be more useful since true tanking is dead. Tanks can't survive to hold aggro, so I suspect we'll see more "Lone Wolf" types. This saves our rears, tells the rest of the party to scatter or die, and we'll get some additional endo back.

* Woot *

And what if it's a click power now (which I'd bet it really is)? You must stay in, and you can't come out. How can that possibly be better then it currently is. It would become even less effective then it is now.

Circ, I seriously hope that Statesman asked you to keep quiet on other changes to Hibernate. Like the fact that it's been turned into 45 second Granite Armor for Ice Tanks. Or has an unbelievable taunt aura. Or something equally redeeming for the Ice Tanks who still play those toons.

Or shall we start playing a game where we guess how next they will hurt Ice Tanks...?

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And let me be the first to say...

Patch to the Training Server, and no Damage Debuff to test!!! ARRGG!

Ok, I'm better now.

So it seems resistance is being removed from some of the armors. That's nice. I guess we pointed out that there is really no need for a few things Ice has, so they're finally fixing them so you can't slot them poorly.

That should help a great deal if we start to see an increase in the number of Ice tankers as the Damage Debuff goes into effect. New players trying the set are less likely to gimp themselves.

But really, I wanna see and test that damage debuff. I want to know where we're going to stand, compared to the others. And PLEASE don't hold that addition off till after Issue 5. With our greatly reduced defenses, it's about all we have to hope for.

Thank you for your time. I'll be looking for a patch in 2 weeks (8/25), as that seems to be the roll-out schedule.

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Personally, I'd prefer this effect were loaded into another like icicles.

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Please no... I beg you. Icicles has problems, so some choose to avoid the power. Now you are telling them they have to take it. And it has a hit/miss component, so if it's accuracy is not hitting targets around you, you're taking full damage. Would I have to slot it for Accuracy and Endo Reduction?

Fix Icicles on it's own.

Chilling Aura suits the Damage Debuff perfectly, as a reliable PBAoE effect. Chilling Aura also needs minimal slotting for usefulness, so I can conserve slots for other powers. It's early in the set, so you'll have it for the life of your tank. And it's the only protection you'll have till level 18 for Energy/Negative and the dreaded ZOMBIE VOMIT of the Vahz.

- Post I responded to changed -

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Weave doesn't stack with any Ice Tanker +DEF abilities. It would only protect vs. Toxic and Psionic damage.

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Huh?? I'm rather sure it does...

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I'm running some side tests calculations, trying to plan out a strategy, and so far, you get far better value now out of slotting Tough for 6 RES than you do slotting slotting EA with any DEF at all. So I very much think that will be in my plan.

I mean basically the spreadsheet I did is nice, but all it shows is that you need to Herd to still be less than an Invuln Tank or Scrapper in many respects. Realsitically solo/duo EA is crap for DEF, and it demonstrates moreso that slotting it for DEF is simply not worth the effort.

My EA plan is (after dropping Hasten and Stamina both) to slot it for 3 to 6 Recharge enhancers, so I can use it in often for End recovery. I plan on not relying on it for defense. (note: I will still be taking Health, just 6-slotting it now).

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Yeah, I'm looking at EA with 3 Recharge, and 1 Taunt. Swap out the few slots of endo reduction I have in my toggles, and go full defense/resistance for FA, GA, Tough and Weave. I'll use EA as my endo recovery/taunting (since it hits 14 targets instead of 5 for taunt).

It stinks that now I need Weave in addition to Tough. Tough was always a life-saver for Ice Tanks. But to need Weave?!? I guess this is how they're going to keep us from maxing our defense ablities. I'll drop my Epic pool power (Ice Hold), and put in Weave instead...

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DMG/Hit * (1 - Damage Debuf) (same as your formula)

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That method of calculation sounds fine to me... You're right that I can simulate my "50% Damage Debuff" by putting in 33% in your sheet. That's kinda why I chose 33% as the next example. However it's figured is fine, I'll test it tonight and return with the results.

Yeah it stinks that Invuln Scrappers would be out-doing us for some damage types, S/L the most obvious major advantage. But I'd accept our niche as a debuff king, helping others who get hit by AoE's from mobs we are engaging.

And again, I'll say I hope they BOOST our defense from it's current Training Room amount. It doesn't need to be much, but we do need to have more defense then other sets. And if it's from my base toggles or EA, it still needs to be noticable.

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I actually calculated it as a direct reduction. So if its 25% then damage is multipled by 75% (for the affected mobs only). Are you sure its done the other way? I agree that if there was a damage debuff enhancement it would work the way you say, but I think an actual reduction would be direct wouldn't it?

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I don't think they calculate it as a direct reduction, and here's why. Let's say a single Enervating Field reduces damage caused by a mob by 20% (from direct readings, like 100 damage down to 80 damage). If two were used on the same mob, he would deal 60. If 5 fields were used on any group of mobs, they would deal 0% damage. And we know that's not right.

So either they recalculate the base (First field takes 100 to 80, the second takes 20% off the 80, bringing it to 64), or they use the formula as I have it. By my calculations, two fields as listed above would reduce 100 to 71. To me, from a programming standpoint, it makes sense to do one calculation, instead of figuring out all the intermediate steps per field. Of course, perhaps that's why the Hami lags so bad!

Now I should test that with two Rad defenders, to see if it works as I expect. But for now, I'll reply assuming it's just a straight damage cut-off. 50% damage debuff means half damage taken.

In that case, I doubt 50% is realistic. It makes the numbers come out very close to even, but sounds too strong for the devs to give us. We can hope for it, but I'd be very surprised. I think a 33% reduction would be ok... and punching that into your sheet shows good results. We'd be worse then Inv in everything but Psi/Cold/Toxic(?), but very close for Energy/Negative. S/L is favored by Inv, so it makes sense, and we're weak to Fire.

If somebody else can test Damage debuff while I'm at work, please do. Otherwise, I'll try to test it when I get home.

Again, great job Circ!

Ok, one question, and then a few things I'm looking at:

* -Damage Falloff on Chilling Embrace. Is that the loss of debuff per level increase of the Mobs? So as a mobs level increases over your own, the damage debuff decreases. For my numbers, I left it at 2.5%, since that sounds reasonable, but is that what, say, Enervating Field sees?

* The Base -Damage % indicates the full damage debuff, by the formula: Damage = Total Damage / (1 + Damage Debuff), correct? So a 25% reduction would be 80% of the normal damage taken.

***

All that considered, look at the numbers if our -Damage buff is 50%, and maintains the 2.5% dropoff.

For S/L, Invulnerabiliy has us beat, big time, but that's expected. We do better for Energy/Negative energy (up to +2 mobs). We do better for Toxic and Psionic by a decent margin. We take more from fire, which again makes sense for Ice.

This looks almost perfect, as far as I'm concerned. Psi and Toxic are nasty, and we would be ahead of the game on this. Our weaknesses are still weak. But we're reasonable compared to other tanks.

How's that look to you?