Hmmm, ok, I'll take the accuracy response. I don't feel that my Icicles misses nearly 40% of the time, but whatever.
And I wasn't meaning to start a fight on the end drain thing, I just didn't know if anyone had tried it yet.
That's really sad that you've been rejected before, I guess I'm lucky never to have had that experience.
Just to be absolutely sure, I retested EA on the test server this morning. I went out to Dark Astoria (since it was the nearest hazard zone to where I logged in), and found the first big group of enemies. It was a group of 8 Banished Pantheon, L22.
Since they would not draw aggro unless I did something, I dropped into the middle of the group, and fired EA. As soon as I had, I counted how many enemies had lost end.
It was only 5.
Please don't feel I'm trying to be snide with you Bluefan, or that I'm attempting to single you out. I do realize that you have a different point of view, and have had a different experience playing an Ice Tanker than many others who have posted to this thread have. This is the main reason why I re-tested, just to be absolutely sure.
Well thanks Archimedes for confirming that. That really sucks then because I loved the ability to drain the end of all minions and lieutenants, and to some extent bosses. I could easily live with the five enemy cap for def, but not for end drain.
You know, if I could ask for three changes to the Ice set they would be:
1)Some sort of Psy Res/Def and more toxic Res for Permafrost.
2)Icicles to posess a mild either DefDebuff, Enddrain, or Acc Debuff, and for Icicles to do Cold damage.
3)Something for Hibernate. I'm not sure what, maybe a mega taunt as it's activated, a shorter activation time, and maybe a shorter duration that would force a player to slot it for more recharges or heals, thus making it an active power in the set.
> Basically, EA should still be able to floor defense on a
> single +4 boss. Otherwise, how the hell is an ice tanker
> supposed to keep a team safe at all?
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?
Between the eyes and the massive amount of psi guys, do they stand a chance? I can't test this myself, being only 34, so I'm not sure this is even feasible. I know those overseer bosses give my regen scrapper a run for his money at +3 when they've got backup - and he can heal very fast (a change I WAS testing, since Dash can get out there).
I won't know this until I at least hit level 40, and that'd be a long time to wait to find out I can't even touch four zones in the game, zones that, well, I suppose a lot of people don't anyway. But still.
I always liked it out there.
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.
The Dark Blade
"I've felt your mouse on me before, you perv...." - Troy Hickman
Paragon Wiki
Heh, ya. I know I have been dodging the bullet a bit, but I might as well say it: we don't handle Monsters/AVs well. I, personally (so this isn't a universal Ice Tanker proclamation) can handle just about any AV as long as that AV isn't psychic or has Def Debuff. But I do have Tough, and I enjoy it. But I do feel we can tank everything but monsters/AVs a lot better than nay other Tanker set, and since 99% of all enemies aren't Monsters/AVs, I feel pretty good.
I wasn't willing to wait that long. My first tanker was an ice/ice, and I loved him.
Got him to 24th and then started to die time after time. "[censored]?" I thought. Still kept at it for a while, then I saw my friend running a scrapper tank stuff better than I was.
So I quit my ice tanker. It is without a doubt the WORST set in the game now. Still. I like it a lot, but the noise and massive holes in the set will keep me from ever playing it again.
Least til it's fixed.
Edit: And to reply to Blue's post, I thought my ice tanker was kicking [censored] too. Til I ran an Invulnerability up to 32nd in two weeks without dying. My stone tanker I've gotten to 25th in two weeks as well, and he can tank 42 Rikti when sidekicked. Ten at a time. Plus Mentalists. Ice tankers don't even tank minions as well as the others, and they use more endurance to do it. Something BIG needs to change.
"I'm flying free with my beautiful butterfly wings!" ~ Randy Marsh
Between levels 1 and 40 I averaged about 3 deaths per 10 levels. I didn't get my first debt badge until lvl 38. I've gotten to lvl 46 in 2 months. I love Ice 
. But then again, I like to play the defensive sets no one likes, aka Ice and Dark Armor. My Scrapper may run through end faster than anyone, and at only lvl 35 I still don't have enough slots and can drop like a fly, but I kill faster than any scrapper around.
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Between the eyes and the massive amount of psi guys, do they stand a chance? I can't test this myself, being only 34, so I'm not sure this is even feasible. I know those overseer bosses give my regen scrapper a run for his money at +3 when they've got backup - and he can heal very fast (a change I WAS testing, since Dash can get out there).
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Frankly, this is why my Ice Tanker is now stalled out at 39 and I'm starting a Stone Tanker. I remember watching Invul tankers crumble under Carnies, Rularuu, and Psychic Clockwork. My Ice will have all the same problems, PLUS the absence of resistance.
Much as I'd like to hope that as well, if geko believes that Energy Absorption is overpowered as it stands now, it leads me to believe that he's looking at this power in a vacuum; that is, he isn't considering how much an Ice Tanker depends on this power to function with the rest of his/her powers in order to try to do their job.
He must see something like, 'oh, an ice tanker with 6 end drain SOs can take any minions/lts/bosses +X levels to zero endurace, this needs to be fixed.'
What he doesn't realize is:[*]AVs and Monsters are immune to end drain. I have EA 5 slotted, I took out all but the one end drain SO I had and replaced them with 4 more end drain SOs, then hung around Crey's Folly on Test until Jurassik spawned. His end bar barely quivered when I hit him with EA.
[*]End drain doesn't last long even against minions. All enemies seem to regain endurance at a fairly fast clip; without taking Hasten (which I have not, no real point when I already have my character set up to a point where I don't have too much of an end problem) EA needs at least 2 recharge reducers in order to effective keep enemies below monster class drained.
[*]Surviving the alpha strike: it's not so much a problem these days with stacking armors, but it still happens. The alpha strike can drop an ice tanker before they get EA off, thus negating any controlling effects EA may or may not have. A tanker can't do anything if they're kissing concrete.
The fact of the matter (in my eyes) is that, in designing the tanker primaries, the devs left Ice substandard by not including a useful and necessary amount of resistance into the set. All of the controlling abilities in the set are moot when you're defeated. And having to go outside of our sets to get this? I thought the devs had figured out already that we hate having to do that when they made Taunt work like it used to do, thus making it not necessary to pick up Provoke.
It seems they still haven't figured that out completely yet. 
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He must see something like, 'oh, an ice tanker with 6 end drain SOs can take any minions/lts/bosses +X levels to zero endurace, this needs to be fixed.'
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If the reason for the change was based on the Endurance based I'd believe that was his line of reasoning. However his presented answer was completely based in the defense buff provided by EA. Which has been clearly shown to be a poor line of reasoning on his part because floored accuracy is floored accuracy.
And no matter how many defensive buffs from EA an Ice Tanker has today (and even if throwing lucks on top of that), they still die when fighting things of:
- superior or buffed accuracy (occurs in the game a lot)
- defensive debuffs (occurs in the game a lot)
- certain pets (Swarms) or other powers that appear to be auto-hit (though these may just be insanely high accuracies, this is unclear and unproven)
- Archvillains/Monsters (due to large attacks designed to overcome the resistances of high Resistance, these attacks will one-shot an Ice Tanker)
Not to mention we have more weaknesses than any other tanker:
* Fire
* PSI
* a glass jaw
* the fact that our primary buff is something we have to manage rather than something that works automatically for us
* streaks in the RNG
So this change makes no difference vs minion/lt/boss mobs, and only exacerbates the issues above. The same issues above all still exist and nothing has been done to change them.
With that said, I have to say from playing with the spreadsheet I now have that in short the devs have designed themselves into a corner with this one.
Most standard PvE tanking scenarios involve 5 or more enemies. And thats the problem.
By the time 2 (for Smash/Lethal) to 5 (for the rest) enemies are in the picture, and assuming Energy Absorbtion can get fired off before dying, accuracy is floored for any minion/lt/boss being fought.
However, since the cap for Invuln is higher (most people figure 10 enemies), that the defensive buffs for those additional 5 to 8 enemies are all icing for Invuln because they getting better and better because its not even until 8 enemies that they start to floor the accuacy of a boss mob.
And thats the problem. They've provided Ice Armor so much Defense, and they've provided Invuln such a well balanced combination of Defense and Resistance that the two can't be balanced.
As soon as you start adding Resistance to Ice it at first looks like you can in fact start bringing things into alignment. However, what happens is you start to push a flip/flop and Ice Starts to come out on top of Invuln.
This means that adding a flat Resistance is not a good choice. You need to add something that tapers off like Defense does when fighting higher level enemies. Or something entirely outside of the realm of either DEF or RES.
Its like this, vs an even level boss with 5 enemies, remember that you'd need 44% resistance to cover the gap? Well vs a +1 you'd need only 28.67%. +2 15.15%. +3 4.92%. But at +4 Ice pulls ahead.
That's a real pain in the rear for balacing purposes.
It gets worse too. Bump up to 10 enemies, and there's no additional benefit for Ice Armor (with or without the change on test btw), but the gap has widened to a point where vs the same even level boss, but with 10 enemies that Ice needs 86.67% Resistance to cover the gap. And at +1 they need 87.30%. +2 87.88%. +3 88.41%. +4 76.67%. +5 62.66%. And at +6 49.74%.
More mobs and higher levels both make Invuln stronger when compared to Ice Armor. Also if an enemy has more accuracy or the tanker has defensive debuffs Invuln is also stronger when measured against Ice Armor.
This all makes the whole prospect of balancing this is utterly borked. How can Ice ever come up to speed if Invuln is always one step ahead.
Something drastic needs to happen here with Ice Armor. That much is clear.
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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.
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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.
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No doubt. Remember my initial statement I said that any other Tanker AoE damage is more effective that Icicles. If its all you got, then no doubt its going to be crucial. But if you have at any of the others, Icicles isn't needed.
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.
Hmmm, a +7 AV managed to hit an Ice Tank through EA. Well I can believe that. I have never fought Bobcat with my Ice tank at any level so I was wondering if anyone has tanked bobcat with an Ice tank at any other level.
Since EA is such the "End-All" power of our set, what about this?
Sure, cap EA at 5, and we have to deal with the current survivability of Alpha-Strikes before EA goes off (my Duo controller has Group Invis, makes things easy, but Stealth could do the same). This "fixes" the only possible thing I can see the Dev's repairing the power for.
We're not supposed to tank large numbers of high level mobs.
But let's add in the fix. Put resistance in EA as well. Have it give resistance to all the damage types it gives defense against. Since EA is capped, you set the S/L Resistance at 10% or 15% per mob, and Eng/Neg Resistance around the same. Even at 10%, with lots of resistance slots in EA, you'd need all 5 mobs to get close to cap resistance. But capped you would be, and a much more capable tank.
But let's talk about our big problem. Against AV/Monsters, your single mob hit is not huge, but perhaps enough to survive the being One-Shotted. Without Tough. If you decide to get Tough (like I still would), it's now bonus Resistance, not practically required as it is now. I can see people who wish to tank AV/Monsters slotting FA and GA for defense, and EA for resistance.
This would even explain our need to wait till level 26 for the only Defensive power worth it's weight, where as Invul and Fire get their goods at 18.
And to be fair, limit EA so it doesn't stack with itself. And then you've got one kick-[censored] power, that scales with the number of mobs, has it's own strengths and weaknesses.
What do you guys think about this?
One of my best friends and SGmates is a lvl 50 Ice tank. He does pretty well, with our empath friend following him, but he's nowhere near invul or stone.
Invul VS Ice Damage Mitigation:
"Ideal" build capabilities:
Invul:
-Defense:
-Invincibility: 58% max (5 mobs)
-Tough hide: 16.5% max
-Weave: 29% max
-Hasten: 5% min
-Total - 103% def (~capped vs. all +5)
-Resist
-88% vs all but toxic/psi w/ +2 enhs, 90% vs. all but toxic w/ +3 enhs
VS 10 +5 mobs, 1 boss, 2 Lt's, 7 minions. (assume Smash/Lethal)
1 boss - 200 damage per attack
2 Lt's - 100 damage per attack
7 min's- 50 damage per attack
------------------------------
Total: 750 damage per round
Defense: 1 attack in 20 lands (1 attack every other round, assume boss attack lands)
Resist: 1/10 damage from attack
= 10 damage per round average
Ice:
-Defense:
EA: 95% (5 mobs)
Wet Ice: (does it matter? We're capped vs. these mobs)
-Resist:
Tough: 46.4% resist
-Slow:
-25% recharge (Chilling Embrace)
Vs 10 +5 mobs, 1 boss, 2 Lt's 7 minions. (assume Smash/Lethal)
1 boss - 200 damage per attack
2 Lt's - 100 damage per attack
7 min's- 50 damage per attack
------------------------------
Total: 750 damage per round
Defense: 1 attack in 20 lands (1 attack every other round, assume boss attack lands)
Resist: -46.4% damage from attack (153 damage taken every other round)
Attack Frequency: -25% - 1/4 attacks which land do not happen, extend 8 rounds.
153 * 3 = 459/8 rounds
= 57.375 damage per round average
So an "optimized" ice build takes nearly 6 times the damage an "optimized" invul build takes.
If chilling embrace's -recharge is wrong, here's the numbers for 50% -recharge and 75% -recharge (capped)
50% - 38.25 dam/round
75% - 19.1
So even if Chilling Embrace dropped mobs to the recharge floor, the Ice tanker would still be taking double the damage of the Invul tanker.
How can that be fair?
Ice comes out slightly better vs. Ice attacks (if he bothered to cap his resistance), and FAR worse against everything else.
Does anybody find fault with my math?
Most of these posts seem to be saying: The change to EA isn't that bad (although I keep flashing to that first wall in the Eden Trial and thinking that the End drain to all may have helped when surrounded by a thousand little baddies), but Ice Tanks aren't quite as tank-y as the other tanks.
And I agree...
My SR Scrapper can do everything my Ice Tank can do only better (the scrapper has defense to all types although the Tank has way higher HP so can take a hit better). So, if it's not broken for a scrapper to have defense to all damage types, why is it not okay for the Ice Tanks? You still have the 5% floor that is going to kill you if you have too many people around and the limitation of EA if you don't have enough of them around.
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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.
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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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Right. I understood that. I was just stating that I agreed that if Icicles is all you have for AoE damage then its great. But that any other AoE easily replaces and outpaces it.
If you read through this thread and find the experience information on how EA affects battles you can see it is not overpowered. Sure it floors mobs your own level and close but given debuffs, mob accuracy and level fall off it balances with tougher and more deadly foes.
Dont get off track here people, this isnt about problems with other ice armor powers despite how much permafrost may need a boost. This is about the proposed change to EA.
Geko one of EAs advantages you state is that its a fast recharge click, however at its huge endurance cost i dont see that as so advantageous. Consider lowering its end cost or this idea of mine that ill repeat because it seems no one caught it: Have EA return some END (it fits with the flavor/name of the power anyway and would help poor end hog ice) so that 2 drained foes made it in effect free to use and 3+ was a gain to make up for now having to slot to stack it.
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Most of these posts seem to be saying: The change to EA isn't that bad (although I keep flashing to that first wall in the Eden Trial and thinking that the End drain to all may have helped when surrounded by a thousand little baddies), but Ice Tanks aren't quite as tank-y as the other tanks.
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The problem with people thinking that the chance isn't bad is because they haven't test what having this cap means... Or maybe they don't usually fight enemies with high accuracy, or mobs with ways to lower you defense.
Wait until the change makes it online and you're going to see them crying. I have done my testing, I know that once this EA hits the Live Servers DE are going to be anything but posible to tank (Unless you're fighting even level mobs or lower), Nemesis/CoT/Crey/Rikti (The drones specially) are going to be very hard, anything with psionic damage is going to be has hard as ever (and a little more). That leaves Freakshows and a few other random mobs (Mobs w/o radiation, psionic, auto-hits and/or high accuracy)
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My SR Scrapper can do everything my Ice Tank can do only better (the scrapper has defense to all types although the Tank has way higher HP so can take a hit better). So, if it's not broken for a scrapper to have defense to all damage types, why is it not okay for the Ice Tanks? You still have the 5% floor that is going to kill you if you have too many people around and the limitation of EA if you don't have enough of them around.
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Not sure what to tell you here. I'd love to have psionic defense, but I think that if I had to choose between (Pre-I4 EA -psionic) and (Post-I4 EA +psionic), I'd take the 1st one.
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If you read through this thread and find the experience information on how EA affects battles you can see it is not overpowered. Sure it floors mobs your own level and close but given debuffs, mob accuracy and level fall off it balances with tougher and more deadly foes.
Dont get off track here people, this isnt about problems with other ice armor powers despite how much permafrost may need a boost. This is about the proposed change to EA.
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Yes, we've been kind of getting of track once in a while, but I think it's because we can't really stress enough how "bad" the whole set is.
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Geko one of EAs advantages you state is that its a fast recharge click, however at its huge endurance cost i dont see that as so advantageous. Consider lowering its end cost or this idea of mine that ill repeat because it seems no one caught it: Have EA return some END (it fits with the flavor/name of the power anyway and would help poor end hog ice) so that 2 drained foes made it in effect free to use and 3+ was a gain to make up for now having to slot to stack it.
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I did see your post before, and to be honest EA does sounds like a power that is going to let you recharge your end bar. With that I'm not saying that EA should do that! If Geko thinks that EA is too powerful as is it, can you imagine it what would happen if we had some kind of end recovery?!?!
And then it all comes down to the fact that no one here understands how EA is too powerful?! A power that is too powerful is one that lets you do things that no other can, with little effort. Any Inv/* or Stone/* tanker can do what I do and better, with the same and even less slots than those that we need (Prymary Powers, that is)
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Dont get off track here people, this isnt about problems with other ice armor powers despite how much permafrost may need a boost. This is about the proposed change to EA.
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I respectfully disagree.
This thread is in part about about the EA changes, but more importantly its about looking at the bigger picture of the powerset Ice Armor as a whole. And that bigger picture, when compared to the stated Tanker baseline of Invulnerability is pretty bleak.
Truth is the change to EA doesn't change much defensively (again floored accuracy is floored accuracy, and it only takes 2 to 5 mobs to do that with EA). It does break the End Drain completely and without cause, and it does appear to alost break the Taunt effect of EA as well.
But bugs aside, this is a bigger picture issue.
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To Circ: Icicles hit's once every 2.5 seconds!? I was just throing out 3 hits per WA, that wasn't based on Icicles or testing or anything else! If Icicles indeed hits every 2.5 seconds then my numbers would be much higher!
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No, my testing shows your 2-3 hits over a 10-15 second period is correct, but that there are actually 5-7 attacks going on. So I gave you the 3 hits as a give over the 15 second period. Remeber its not an auto-hit power, so it has to attack. I never see it hit 5 out of 6 as you say (looking at demo files vs single foes for this). So no your numbers don't get any better.
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And to Archmedes: 2 things. 1) When did Geko say that the End Drain would only affect 5 enemies? I read that we would receive a Def buff from only 5, but we can only end drain 5 now?
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It didn't say it, but testing shows it (you do realize that I actually spend time on the test server testing all this stuff right?). However I feel that that is an unintended consequence of the buff DEF from 5 change. So I logged it as a bug in the bug report thread.
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Hmmm. 2) I have never ever ever ever ever ever been rejected from a team because I was an Ice tanker. If anything I get ooos and ahhhs as I easily hold the attention of Krakens or what have you.
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I've been rejected about as much as I've been lauded. The most insulting thing I ever had happen was being recruited as the tank, and then the team leader saying "Ice Tank, you can stay, but we're getting a real tank." But long term I outshined the guy they recruited because he really didn't know how to tank (a fool with a tool is still a fool).
Truthfully though its about as annoying as getting tells on my blaster that say "Got Nova?" (90% of the time you get this tell people actually want someone with Inferno for some reason).