Snorii

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Luddite: Go Limp!

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I haven't seen that one yet, but it made me chuckle.

When you enter a mission:

'Anyone home? It's the freakin' Avon Lady. Come get some samples.'

I can't remember the NPC name, but he is a named villain in the first Bat'Zul mission. (Not Bat'Zul but one of those bat demon guys)

He says something like "I'm going to burn you, Villain_name." Then after you defeat him, he says a simple "Oh".

Happy Birthday Arctic Sun.

Thanks for adding more background info.

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Well, i know Synapse was played by the coolness that is Captain Mako. He roleplayed his character pretty well with Synapse's Screams of Pain(tm). He also asked States to throw him at the Villians.

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Hahaha, that's great.

Who was Back Alley Brawler? (Zeb?)

Looks like a lot of heroes didn't come on the strike.
Numina
Blue Steel
Valkyrie
Mynx
Luminary
Swan
Infernal
Citadel
Moonfire
etc

More is always better.

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I loved it! I was Frost Hermit, an Ice/Storm Controller. I wasn't killing anyone, but boy did villains hate it when I was around!

I would lay down an ice patch, throw out freezing rain, and then herd them up with hurricane. I feel so evil, but it's for the forces of good!

...

I wish we could do it again.

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That sounds exactly like my evening. I wanted to be a villain but everytime I tried to load a zone in breakout, the game would crash. I gave up and made an Ice/Storm controller. I didn't kill anyone, but I had a lot of fun. Hurricane, Gale, Ice Patch... it was a lot of fun. I did feel evil by holding people though, so I stopped that. I only died once because of mapserver, but I'll be back in Siren's Call again.

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Rock!

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Paper! I win!

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I'm going to go with Wolf.

"Wolf chews up paper"

Thanks Jack.

Oh, thank goodness. I found something that will work There, we can be friends again.

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Welcome Arctic.

What's that you say? You need an avatar?

Can do!

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Doh, and I had the perfect avatar... except for one slight problem.

Welcome Arctic_Sun.

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Sounds better, but I'll have to rely on Circeus' reaction to guide my own.

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Same here. I find it much more relaxing that way.

That does sound better States and I appreciate you looking at Ice Armor once again.

I, for one, am going to attempt to rescue Jackson Turner from certain destruction in Siren's Call. (You know, he isn't as old, blind and decrepit looking as I thought) I am pretty sure he has a limp though....

"Them that don't like us, may God turn their hearts, and if he can't turn their hearts may he turn their ankles so we will know them by their limping."

May the road rise up, Gil. We will miss you.

Very good news.

Thanks Statesman.

GU Comics that features CoV

Evil Pet Rock

Edit: Just noticed how old this post is.

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For instance, there are issues with Defense builds; we’re going to look at that problem more carefully (the Damage Resistance Inspirations are a step, but there's a little more to come).

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As an Ice Tank, thanks for looking more carefully.

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I just got on live and was doing some croatoa missions with my ice tanker (level 32) and it seems the devs snuck in a change to icicles. It's damage ticks more often than previously. At a quick guess I would say is it ticking once a second now. I think the end drain is the same as before, but at least now it might be worth it.

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Gah, I used my free respec this morning before work and dropped icicles. I guess it is time to go take on the reactor then. Thanks for the info Macros the Black.

Statesman:
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We still want people to be able to solo, but in a group, every Archetype, every power, should have an opportunity to shine.

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Sorry, but I don't see Ice Armor shining. Yeah, you could say that glacial armor is shiny from the fx, but that is it. How in the world do Ice Tank powers "shine" in a group? I really don't want to hear that we can dance faster on caltrops than other archetypes.

Just my take on it.
1. Frozen Armor - Nope, it looks different, but the effect of the power is very mediocre.
2. Hoarfrost - Yes (Honestly, I want to rank it lower because it has toxic resistance.)
3. Chilling Embrace - Yes, I think you could really expand on this idea of slowing down enemies and debuffing damage. If you are scared of defense, why not add to this type of damage mitigation to ice tanks?
4. Wet Ice - Nope
5. Permafrost - I was actually considering taking this power if you were going to add toxic resistance, but instead gave us another slow resistance. Big No.
6. Icicles - Absolutely not, again this looks different, but it is a huge endurance hog with low damage in a small radius.
7. Glacial Armor - Nope
8. Energy Absorption - Different, but I don't see it shining considering the huge change in the power. It used to be the best power we had and made us feel like tanks. Now..... it is completely different and forces us to herd to maximize its benefit. Don't get me wrong, I hated the I4 version as well. Random mobs would get hit and even then, some would be phased, etc which it wouldn't affect.
9. Hibernate - yes, but I still love to hate this power. I really want something different as my last power.

Well, its live. Thanks to everyone for posting their experiences and opinions on Ice Armor.

Hopefully, I can 17-slot permafrost with my free respec tonight and I hope to see all of you next winter.

What ever happened to the developer realization that "rooted isn't fun"?

I still vote they scrap Permafrost and move Hibernate down a tier with the new changes. Who's with me? (I think this was Circeus' idea a while back before the I5 changes to the two powers.) Slow resistance in Permafrost still doesn't warrant taking the power.

Circeus, sorry about suggesting that we are the best against cold damage. I'm not sure where I got the idea that a person surrounded by ice would handle the cold better than most. *slaps forehead*

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We were golden against sappers, and other things that needed defense, rather than resistance, to nullify the inherent danger.

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I can't think of anything else personally. Naturally, our Energy Absorption gave us really good defense to energy attacks, plus we have glacial armor available to help with the alpha attacks.

(Sidenote... that keeps going)
I always hear about how we are better against sappers and that's great. It is always nice to have something... anything that you match up well with and can do better than other classes. (Cold being our other rare niche) After all, why choose a class if they aren't better in something than other classes. Sappers still do hit us and expect to see them hit you a lot more with I5. I wasn't paying attention to my endurance bar and had a sapper hit me, the other two malta chained stunned/held me and killed me just last night on live. I just wanted to point out that we aren't invincible against sappers. We do match up well against them on live.

Back at (pre-)launch, I didn't create an Ice Tank because I knew one day they would create sappers and I would be the guy to take them down. I didn't struggle through all of these levels and hours of play to herd up them and show off to my friends. I wanted to make a tank and I liked the idea of using ice for my powers. Honestly, it has been a lot of fun playing my tank, but we certainly aren't up to the level of other tanks. We have been saying this month after month after month after month. I don't see any light at the end of the tunnel. There have been a few tweaks here and there that have certainly helped us (stacking armor, sleep resistance, now AV's shouldn't one-shot us) The thing is that we are still lagging behind.

If you want to say that our special place in the world is Cold damage resistance, why aren't there more cold attacks in the game? Let's take the Crey for instance. Some of them use cold weapons which is great. What happens when you face off against the Head of the Crey? You find out that she uses Psychic powers. Certainly makes sense story-wise, but where is our cold-using AV/Monster? Yep, we had the Winter Lord for a short time and I loved it. I went around and felt like a true tank for as long as the event lasted. He thawed out and most people think negatively of the Winter Lord in regards to Power-Leveling, etc. We have yet to see the Winter King that sent them to Paragon City. Whether it is the Winter King or something else, I would love to have an AV/Monster that used cold attacks. Imagine actually getting invites to be on teams because you are an ice tank.

OK, so there aren't that many cold villains to fight in CoH. Let's say that our special ability is slow resistance. I'm not sure if I need to continue, but I don't see this as such a great thing. I don't think Wet Ice's slow resistance has ever been fixed, but being able to move around a little faster over caltrops or mudpots really doesn't seem like much to me. This also relates to the villain AI. It isn't a big deal to be slowed. Enemies still race over and stand beside you for the most part. You usually are still able to use melee attacks because they are right there. If the AI was smart enough to throw caltrops (or whatever) down and then stay out of melee range, then slow resistance would be a much bigger commodity. This would make the game a lot less fun for other tanks/scrappers though.

Honestly, now that I've reached the upper level of the game, I know why I used to see all of those signatures in these forums that said their ice tank was retired until fixed. I guess you don't see those anymore because most of those people gave up on their ice tank.

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

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With Tough five slotted for resistance, he hit me for 1906.64 smashing damage. Sorry, I'll have to check to see what level my enhancements are. Also, keep in mind that the 7% Chilling Embrace damage debuff would be in effect for those last numbers.

Before: 1906.64 damage with 5 slotted Tough
On Test: 1421.1 damage with 7% CE in effect
(I'll go check my slotting for Tough. The character I used on Test has the same slotting that I used before.)

EDIT: Tough has 5 level 40 enhancements in it.

One more post and I'm a Mentor. It appears my hypocrisy knows no bounds.

OK, I went up against Shadowhunter on Test. He is level 43 while I'm level 42. My health is 1759.7. 2463.5 with Hoarfrost running.

I turned on Chilling Embrace, Frozen Armor, Wet Ice, Combat Jumping, and hit Hoarfrost before I jumped into battle.

He hit me first with his Stone Fist for 710.55 Smashing Damage.

I hit hibernate to see how much it was for thinking this was his big attack. The text shows that I was immobilized from the hibernate.

Then he followed up with Seismic Smash for 1421.1 Smashing Damage. I guess during the animation/loading time for Hibernate, he snuck in another attack.

I waited until I was fully healed and popped out to see how long I could last. I timed it so I would pop out right after his Seismic Smash. I hit EA grabbing defense from him and two nearby wolves. I then turned on tough.

He hit me with Stone Fist for 518.7. (Smashing)
I hit a +33% defense inspiration.
He hit me with Stone Fist for 518.7. (Smashing)
He hit me with Seismic Smash for 1037.4. (Smashing)

Apparently, AV damage was reduced. Now I'm wondering if their accuracy was reduced. He didn't miss me once. This is a very small sample size, so I will test it some more.

EDIT: I went back and he did indeed miss me some. What really helped was that I herded up 11 more wolves to follow me over to him. That way my EA was getting the full defense from the 14 foes. He still killed me pretty easy, but if I can somehow convince my team to stop using AoE attacks and leave the wolves alone, I might stand a chance to tank SH. Eh, who am I kidding? Maybe I can respec my ice tank into a stone one. Please?

The change to hibernate really does help. Now it essentially gives me another round with an AV if I can turn it on fast enough. It works a lot better now that your toggles don't just randomly drop. Keep in mind that rounds as an ice tank go pretty quick. 3 hits or so.

I don't think the Damage Debuff is there to just fix the one-shotting problem although it will certainly help.

Statesman:
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One shotting by AV's. In a word, you are ALL correct. It's not a good thing for an Ice Tanker to be leveled by a single blow. So we're going back and changing the damage done by AV's so that it's no longer possible for a Tanker to be one shotted.

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So hopefully, they have indeed lowered the damage done by AVs. I didn't see it on the patch notes, but what's new, right?

If possible, I will try to test out Shadowhunter again on the test server. Hopefully, I can post some numbers and with some divine intervention, we will see that AV's damage has indeed been reduced.

I agree JJ_Jason. It is like when I walk into the wrong apartment. Sure, it looks similar, but obviously something is wrong here.

Energy Absorption used to be our powerful defensive ability. We would suffer for 26 levels and finally get something that allowed us to tank. Sure, Geko may have been right that it was "too powerful", but it was all we had. We did get stacking armor which is great, but we still need EA to give us the defense to tank especially when we were on teams fighting higher level mobs. I'm fine with bringing the effectiveness of the power down, but shouldn't we get a lot more from other powers as compensation? Circeus has went to a lot of effort to show that we don't match up to other tankers and various scrappers (even the defense scrapper SR). I'm not a numbers guy, but I certainly knew that we didn't match up just playing the game. I've watched repeatedly on teams where various builds (tankers & scrappers) would out-tank my tanker which I always slot for defense any way I can get it.

So now we are presented with Issue 5 where we are masters of endurance recovery. Is this just because Icicles costs so much endurance to run, or is this our new niche? I just feel lost right now after 42 levels of casual ice tank play. I thought we were supposed to be tankers where our powers are defensive in nature. Our primary is armor after all.

I made a concept tank way back in beta, but how it would have been easier to just change him to a broadsword/invulnerable scrapper instead. I hope to make it to level 50, but I keep finding it hard to log in after Issue 5 hit the test servers.

One other point that has been brought up a few times. I really don't like the idea of Wet Ice not accepting more defensive enhancements. This idea of the haves and the have-nots is not good. Of course, this is a minimal amount of defense fully slotted, but I just don't think it is a good idea.