Snorii

[ QUOTE ]

Prove that Infernal's male.

I dare you.

[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
He doesn't have a cat or a panda on his shoulder.

[/ QUOTE ]

lol

[ QUOTE ]
No Ice tanks are amazing. Its just that other tank sets are amazinger and most people played those sets before trying ice.

[/ QUOTE ]

I started beta with an ice tank and he is still my main character. I don't get a lot of time to play, but he is the only character I have above level 14. It has been very slow to level him, but I finally started to get on a roll around level 33 or so. I'm just upset with the build now that I'm facing AV's all the time and getting killed very easily. I have every primary power except for permafrost. All of my armor is six-slotted.

I took a dirt nap and watched a fire tank and scrapper tank Jurassic with absolutely no problem. Minutes went by while I thought about the absurd damage I took from one hit. My defense was as high as I could get it with my build, but down I went. I think this would be acceptable for a rock, paper, scissors sort of mentality, but every AV I come across now takes me out with no problem.

I'm fine with having Envoy of Shadows having an auto-attack that I can't be anywhere near. It was doing over 100 points a damage per tick. All tanks have melee attacks, so I couldn't get anywhere near him. So what do I do, I sat on the sideline and hopped around while some nice strangers took him down for me. It didn't feel very heroic, but it was the only way the mission was going to get done. The next time I took on Jurassic, we had two other tanks on our team. I turned off Chilling Embrace and was sure to not use Energy Absorption on him because it may taunt him into attacking me. It didn't feel heroic and my only contribution was to use my low damage ice melee attacks on him. Ice Patch doesn't work on someone like jurassic so that wouldn't help.

Someone asked me if I wanted to try the Sewer trial so I said sure. We worked our way through rikti and made it to the bottom level. Uh oh, a hatched kraken AV. I taunted him because it was my job and he dropped me like a bag of hammers. It was embarrassing but we had to call in an invulnerable tank to come do the job I was supposed to do. I was thankful that they didn't kick me off the team.

It doesn't matter if I have heal inspirations or not. One shot is one shot. Defense inspirations don't help. My defense was already through the roof. I guess time to dip into the fighting power pool to do the job that a defense primary cant. All I ask is that empathy defenders pick up the medicine power pool so that they can heal properly. This will only help with Smashing and Lethal but hopefully it will help with one-shots.

((I'm tired of repeating myself, so in my best Phil Hartman Frankenstein voice))

"Ice Bad!"

/runs through wall

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

Add Jurassik, Hatched Krakens and Envoy of Shadows. I was one-shotted by Jurassik and couldn't even come close to the Envoy. Hatched Krakens made mince meat of me with their toxic attacks even with hoarfrost up.

sorry, double post

[ QUOTE ]
I don't want to be resting with the battle going on around us. I want to be mixing it up.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree. This is also the reason I don't like being so weak to AV's and Monsters. I want to be standing toe to toe not hiding behind another tanker or scrapper when I see them.

[ QUOTE ]
I've noticed that when I turn on hibernate, if I have other toggles running, my end drops very rapidly. Why is this?

[/ QUOTE ]

Hibernate used to cost more endurance than it does now. Either that or my slotting of stamina really improved things. Hibernate uses endurance and any powers that stay activated use endurance as well. I have it slotted with one endurance reducer and stamina six slotted so I can use it indefinitely. The only my endurance drops with hibernate is when icicles is running.

Of course, you might be referring to the moment before hibernate activates. I think this is the devs solution to deactivate toggles by having your endurance bottom out for a moment.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Also, to someone who pointed out that Ice tanks are the anti-sappers: not in I4. Stone armor now gets endurance drain resists in the form of Rooted, not to mention Confuse resists

[/ QUOTE ]
Wait....we were anti-sappers?? Since when? I never knew that...sure doesn't seem like it. Sure, you can hold a sapper..if you're */Ice, and that's only one at a time...assuming you DO hit him.

[/ QUOTE ]

I've only fought one sapper and he drained my endurance very quickly. I thought I was a goner... and then I turned on Glacial armor and laughed at him. From my very limited experience with the sapper, the drain must be an energy attack and if it doesn't hit there won't be an endurance drain.

I remember a post from long ago that said that the streak-breaker code shouldn't affect us since it takes a long time to go into effect. (An old dev post that I can't find) I've always wondered if it does since we (ice tanks) have all seen moments where it seems like everyone hits us at once (non-alpha strikes). I wonder if the streak-breaker code is based on each individual enemy (offense) or if it is based on the character (defense). If this does indeed affect us, it would make a big difference.

[ QUOTE ]
But... it's got nothing to do with Ice Armor or Energy Absorption. So, it really doesn't belong here.

[/ QUOTE ]

I was getting really confused reading Havoc's post. I think he copied and pasted the wrong post.
I think he meant to copy this one.

Thanks for the info Manticore. Love the character (Manticore) in the preview so far.

I think the power is fine the way it is. As far as abuse, we can't really do that. Even if I managed to get a ton of enemies together, there is always that cap on our max defense. No matter what, everything has a 1 in 20 chance to hit us. We need to reach higher than 100% a lot of the time just to be able to stand up to various things like buffs, debuffs, increased accuracy due to con level, etc. Until other powers in the set are fixed, I think EA needs to be left as is.

There is also the streak-breaker code to consider. It isn't supposed to be a factor, but it would explain things if it was. I'm not sure if it is based off the pc or individual npcs. If it is based on the PC, it seems like it would rear it's ugly head especially for ice tanks. It would explain the "streak" that seems to happen to us so often when suddenly everyone around us gets off a hit at the same time. It is like going through the alpha-strike again after we have our defense up as high as we can get it.

I figured out what I was doing wrong with the hydra in the abandoned sewers. I had chilling embrace on and that caused them to chase after me with it's taunt effect when all I wanted to do was get away from them. I did manage to survive a normal group of them. (1 boss, 2 lts, and 3 minions I think). They were all level 39 while I'm level 38. That toxic damage is just brutal though. It has been a long time since I fought the Vahz. Is that on our list of weaknesses along with psi, glass jaw, one-shot death, etc?

I don't have it in front of me, but I was looking at the DVD box for the game last night and one of the big things it said I could do was fight Arch-Villains. I had to laugh at that thinking that my main character could watch people fight them but if I dared to use my powers, I would most likely end up dead. I'm at the point now where I think about not using chilling embrace to help the team because it will get too much aggro for me.

Here is the spreadsheet for Ice versus Invuln (version 0.1).

This fine work is from Archimedes and Circeus.

[ QUOTE ]
The kinetic
defender buffs 'Siphon Power' and 'Fulcrum Shift' are treated as
unenhanceable resistance buffs to the tanker, since the damage removed
from the enemy's attack equates to a damage resistance power. Also,
accuracy debuffs are treated as defense buffs, though this might be an
incorrect assumption (since accuracy debuffs affect the base to-hit,
not the final to-hit). Finally, for the purposes of resistances, cold
resistance was ignored (since both sets can hit the cap, and there's
so few sources of ice damage in PvE.)

[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
As an aside, I've just about gotten that spreadsheet done, with a lot of help from Circeus (thanks man! ). I don't have anyplace to host it, so I'm just trying to figure out the best way to post it here without the information being too difficult to read.

[/ QUOTE ]

PM me. I can host it for you.

I tried to pull a hatched kraken a couple of days ago and it two-shotted me as well. The controller we had was a much better tank and they finally invited a friend (invulnerable tank) to come do my job.

This sounds like something that should just be addressed in the arena instead of PvE. I tried out the arena as well and was very happy with my tank. I almost died a few times, but I got lucky. I kept cowering from fear attacks and then someone with auto-brawl would come by and drop my toggles. If it wasn't for my team looking out for me, I would have definitely died more than once.

I'd also like to see some kind of toxic defense as well. I know that toxic defense doesn't exist in the game, but I would love to see some defense for this. I had a kill 50 rikti mission in the abandoned sewers and those hydras kept killing me. I know hoarfrost offers some toxic damage resistance, but with the slow recharge time, I didn't stand a chance. As an emergency tactic, I hit Hibernate and that didn't help. As soon as I emerged with full health, I was brought down immediately. It appeared as if every single attack they made hit me. I know it may be a while before toxic defense makes it in the game, but I would much rather see toxic resistance on one of my three armors or Energy Absorption. Hoarfrost just takes too long for me to reliably use it and I honestly didn't see that it did much to protect me. Until that is fixed, I guess I will swallow my pride and ask an invulnerable tanker to tank for me.

[ QUOTE ]
No tanker should be once-shotted by anything... Not even 2 shotted by anything +/-2 levels.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree. Defense is our primary power. If we can't stand toe-to-toe, what good are we? Personally, I know it isn't my offense.

[ QUOTE ]
I personally don't see why psionics should be something that is mostly unresisted or undefended against. When you have 75 per cent of your armor sets vulnerable to a specific kind of damage, one that is rampant in the higher levels, something seems amiss to me.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree. It makes more sense to me for our weakness to be fire. If we weren't susceptible to psionics like pretty much everyone else, teams might want an ice tank for various missions. Then when we run into someone like Baphomet we would need help from say a fire tank. Instead, we have this weakness that most of the other armors have.

I think we can all agree that Energy Absorption needs to be left alone until fixes to Ice Armor come. It is our only defense... literally.

I'm all for the 50% decrease if the devs will hard code the change, but as someone already mentioned it will cause quite a stir for more hard code changes from various classes. I'm all for the damage debuff as well if they want to go that route.

I still think that they should just reduce the overall attack damage from AV's/Monsters and have resistance scale to level or have unresistable damage from AV's/Monsters. This would be a universal change that would hopefully allow us to tank AV's as well as anyone else provided we have enough defense. This would at least fix the one-shot problem.

As for Energy Absorption, I don't see any reason to change the power. I would at least like to see the taunt effect and endurance drain remain for any enemies in range.

*Edited out complaint* (sorry for my lapse)

The only thing I don't like about the damage debuff is we will still be susceptible to alpha stikes from AV's which will still one-shot us before the debuff goes into effect. (At least that is how I imagine it would be.)

Right now, it looks like the solutions to prevent one-shot death are ablative armor, damage resistance, reduced damage from AV's/Monsters or extra health. The only one that affects AV's/Monsters directly would be the reduced damage. All the others would make us very powerful against minions, etc.

I'm not sure what the number should be but would 50% be enough? Didn't I read that someone was hit by Bobcat for 3,000+?

I for one would love for this change to go into effect because AV's are a big part of this game especially in the upper levels. No one wants to stand on the sideline watching the rest of the team take them on.

The other side of this coin is to just reduce their attack damage for everyone and have damage resistance scale to level.

I tried to take on the Numina Task Force today. We made all the way to Jurassic and I got a nice one-shot death. I used Energy Absorption from him and had my defense up as high as it could go considering the circumstance. (From what I remember I had hoarfrost up, but I don't have it perma or anything.) I guess I will be forced to respec and pick up tough now. I am level 37 and Jurassic was a level 40 monster. This is pretty typical for the level difference considering we were in a task force. It is very frustrating to have this happen and I'm tired of it.

The only reason that I tell this here is that I don't see why they want to lower our best power when we are far from being up to the task of doing our job. Luckily I had someone healing me along to way to protect me from dying to all of those swarms. I'm fine with having a challenge, but to stand there and be fine one second and dead the next isn't fun. Personally I don't think I should have to resort to using a power pool to help me do what my primary doesn't. It isn't like I have a good offense and could possibly bring down something like this. Any AV's regeneration rate is far greater than my ability to damage them. Even if I tried to make an offensive build, my endurance costs are way too much to try that tact and still keep my defense up.

Also, keep in mind that I had a team around me and they did a great job. This didn't matter because he set his sights on me and killed me with one shot. I'm not sure what his chance of hitting me was, but it looked like he wasn't going to miss much. When I first started playing COH, I wanted to play a tank and be the guy that holds the line. Lately, I feel more like an underling than a hero when I face something like this.

I guess I should add that the fire tank on our team was able to stand up to him for several mintues and was never in any danger of dying. From my understanding, fire tanks are a lot more offensive and they have lower defenses than most tanks because of this. Well, from where I was lying face down in the dirt, he certainly seemed a lot better defensively and was a level below me. He was able to stand there indefinitely. I know that this has been said over and over, but Damage Resistance is far better than Defense.

EDIT: [Oh yeah, I should also add that the scrapper was able to do a lot better job than me as well. We had an invincible scrapper than was one level above me and he took shots from Jurassic a lot better than I did.]

If Geko deems it necessary to put a cap on our best power, I hope that he fixes the problems with our set first. I just want to be a tank.