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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+?
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Well with my Ice Tank I got hit by Shadowhunter for 3600 points. Twice in the span of about a minute. I was happily hacking him down one second, the next, tasting the grass at his feet. Got rez'd, starting chopping again and suddenly there's that familiar taste of turf again.. 
He did not get me a third time though.. Muahaha. 
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In that vien.....I know it's been suggested before, but I thought I'd throw it out to this crowd. Add in a small amount of resistance (being oneshotted is so not fun it's absurd- there's just not a thing cool with it), and some +regen. I know Stone has this, but I don't think anyone is about to claim that Stone and Ice are too similar. As it is, not only is Health near required, but almost every Ice tank I know slots it out- because without that, Swarms -hurt-.
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More regen would be a nice bonus, but not much help to one-shotting. And as for S/L resistance, I think most of the Ice Tanks (yeah, all 10 of us) are looking for something other then more of the same from other sets. As effective as Resistance is, we seem to reject it as a "solution".
Speaking of Stone Tanks, I would like to revise my previous idea for the Damage Debuff. I didn't mention specifically that it would not debuff Psionics. Many people said if we get resistance, we should still lack Psionics. I think the same should go for a Damage Debuff.
Stone Tankers have a major selling point, as the only tank with Psi protection. I remember how upset I was to learn that all the other Non-Ice tanks got mobile status protection, and all they did was patch our glaring "sleep" weakness. A major bonus of Ice Tanks was given to everybody else. Not that others didn't deserve it, but it was one less reason to be an Ice Tank. (I sure hope the new changes to EA don't take another away... but I don't think it will)
Keep Stone Tankers happy, and don't allow our Damage Debuff to work on Psionics. I don't think anybody would argue that... no?
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More regen would be a nice bonus, but not much help to one-shotting. And as for S/L resistance, I think most of the Ice Tanks (yeah, all 10 of us) are looking for something other then more of the same from other sets. As effective as Resistance is, we seem to reject it as a "solution".
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Well, i'd be willing to go with the damage debuff instead of the resistance route, or even bumping Hoarfrost up to 60% or so. I was merely stating the (obvious to me) fact that we need something to stop the oneshots (because, well, there's not a damn thing fun about oneshots, and ther are only 3 powersets in the game that can help with them).
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Speaking of Stone Tanks, I would like to revise my previous idea for the Damage Debuff. I didn't mention specifically that it would not debuff Psionics. Many people said if we get resistance, we should still lack Psionics. I think the same should go for a Damage Debuff.
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Hmm. On the fence about this. The thing is, I've -seen a Stone Armor running granite, Rooted, and Weave tank a psi av. The hp boost from Earth's Embrace + the regeneration from Rooted actually makes this viable, turning them into a regen tanker. This is what I didn't want to step on the toes of.
And I really don't get why Ice doesn't get -something- in the psi area. Heck, untill I hit 26 and tested, I thought we -did-. Do you really thing Stone tankers would be up in arms if we got buffed vs psi in some fashion? Seriously? Stone is nigh unkillable vs every single damage type in the game, and to take Ice to that level would be a -major- buff, and I don't think anyone here is asking for something on that scale.
However, if you want to leave psi as the domain of Stone alone, I'm fine with that. I'd prefer to be a bit more rounded, but I'm not going to freak out because we're not.
On the other hand....I agree that every set should have something special that makes it stand out. Fire has damage, Stone has psi and +regen, invul is quick moving and damage oriented. Ice has a need to cary awakens.
> Keep Stone Tankers happy, and don't allow our Damage
> Debuff to work on Psionics.
I disagree with this. But then I've always been of a mind that every tanker should have one, and only one, achilles heel. Invulnerable has psionics, while everybody else seems to have a plethora of different weaknesses.
Say, make ice tankers able to defend against anything save for fire, and fire tankers completely vulnerable to cold (which would suck when you find that random Crey scientist on the job, but still), but otherwise able to tank bad guys with impunity - to be, you know, tanks.
I know it's far too late in the game to make this sort of change, but at least if everyone has ONE weakness, they're on even footing in that regard. The trick would be to figure out what stone would have as a blind spot; maybe ferric junk in their armors makes them weak to electricity, I dunno. I'm rambling here.
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.
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I've always been of a mind that every tanker should have one, and only one, achilles heel. Invulnerable has psionics, while everybody else seems to have a plethora of different weaknesses.
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Here's what I think of as the optimum tanker's strengths/weaknesses:
Inv: almost indestructible to physcal damage, weak to Psi
Stone: No defensive weakness, but they sacrifice damage and speed for this. In fact, i would be fine with giving Granite Armor res vs psi.
Fire: over-all weaker defensively in every category, but they have increased damage. Plug their Psi-hole and lower their def to all slightly.
Ice: control and the ability to floor foes' accuracy are evened out by the constant threat of unlucky streaks bringing you down suddenly.
If we, as Ice Tanks, could guarantee that our enemies would be at or near the 5% to hit cap for all damage types including psi and fire, we could do well in most situatuions, but still have trouble spots when our luck runs cold. The problem is that even with the EA on the live servers, there are still several situations where we can't achieve this.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Do I agree with you? You bet I do. I'd like to see more people able to handle Psi, and stronger "weaknesses" per set. But the Dev's don't agree with that. I can't post a quote or a link, but I know Statesman himself said that Psionic protection should be rare. I think this is so that they can always make a "dangerous" mob, by giving it Psi.
With as much as you see in the late game, you can see it's designed around the fact that the only challenge left for "normal" tanks, is a damage type they can't defend.
If that's still the case, I would bet they'd cut the Damage Debuff on Psi, so we can't tank Psi better then others. If you look at our set currently, nothing we have gives defense to Psi. Even EA is Def+ (All but Psi). They really don't want us to go there.
I only want to see a fair power introduced, that doesn't cost 3x the Endo to run, or require extensive slotting if at all possible. The Dev's will have to decide what is fair, of course.
They could be testing this right now for all we know.
Great posts everyone. I'm running out of stuff to nitpick and debate on, but I'd like to thank all you high Ice tanks out there. I hit 47 tonight, so I'm chugging my way to be one of the few 50 Ice tanks within 2 weeks.
One thing I've been considering lately about Circeus' calculations involving Ice vs. Invulnerability; how much do teammates' buffs alter these numbers?
The reason I ask is because of my experience last weekend, when I was by myself out in Crey's Folly and happened to see Jurassik walking around. As it turns out, a good friend of mine that with two accounts was online; her player has a L50 kinetic/electric defender and a L39 peacebringer that they typically duo (if you're on Virtue, you know Kaloseidos and Kalos Eidos). Soon as she knew about Jurassik, I dropped down in front of him, Taunted, then crossed my fingers and hit Hibernate. Luckily he missed, so he was still bashing on me when the Kalos twins showed.
Over the course of the long fight (I think it went a good 10 minutes?), the kin defender twin hit Jurassik repeatedly with both Siphon Power and Fulcrum Shift, while keeping Increased Density cast on me. Even with me running Frozen Armor, Wet Ice (no sense in using Glacial Armor, all his attacks seemed to be S/L) and hitting him with a 3 def slotted Wet Ice, he managed to tag me quite a few times (don't have Hero Stats, so I can't give an exact number). But because of the buffs I got, the most damage he did to me was 700.
The reason I mention this is because of this: while there are more defensive buffs then there are resistance buffs, if Ice were given a small amount of S/L resistance, could the teammate resist buffs be enough to help push Ice to being as effective as Invulnerability?
If I have the time this weekend (I have to work, so it'll be a little harder), I want to put together a listing of all defensive and resistance buffs for a comparison. I already know that there are more of the defensive type, but I'd be interested to see how much benefit each skill grants.
By the way, sorry if the posts rambles; writing it at work.
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If I have the time this weekend (I have to work, so it'll be a little harder), I want to put together a listing of all defensive and resistance buffs for a comparison. I already know that there are more of the defensive type, but I'd be interested to see how much benefit each skill grants.
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Here You can better enjoy your weekend now 
BTW: Dark/* Defenders are our friends ... Probably Dark/Psychic the best of them all... I may actually roll one if they keep EA the way it is on test.
My ice tank is only a baby still, but I've got a question/suggestion.
What if they cut the timer on hoarfrost in half? More accurately, to the point where if you choose, you could perma double stack it without using hasten? That or raise the amount of HP it gives by 20 or 30. How much would having 40-80% more HP help?
Level 50 is a journey, not a destination.
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I don't have much to add that hasn't been said already, just wanted to throw my name and opinions out there as another ice tanker who would love to see us get some love. I've been around off and on since launch and I believe us icers have always been regarded as the worst tanker set. Different is good, but its nice to also be effective and wanted.
I am now in my 30's and definitely feel inferior to other tankers. Once I get EA to stack I'm usually ok, but the alpha strike is rough, as is tough groups where I don't get to EA a lot of mobs. As others have said, 5 buffs from EA will not be enough, especially when tanking for a large team, where more mobs = more chances for our defenses to be cut through. I'm hoping picking up tough will help, but something else obviously needs to be done.
I think the best idea I've heard so far is the PBAOE dmg debuff, it's unique and fits right in with our controllerish theme. It would have to be autohit to be effective, so either put it in CE or replace icicles with it. 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.
I'm pretty sure someone suggested something like this already, but how about making hibernate an ablative armor? It would be a click power that gives us a massive hit point buffer and possibly enhanced health regen. Let us be active and mobile, but with a drawback - reduced dmg/rchrg ala stone. It makes sense - if you encase yourself in a thick block of ice you should be much slower. Not sure how possible this would be to code ... but as they chip away at the ablative armor reduce the rchrg/dmg penalty so that when our hp buffer goes away, so do our penalties.
Thanks for listening, and sorry for jumping in here late. If there are still any ice tank lurkers like me left post and be heard! The devs are watching this thread, lets let em know we exist!
Thanks, LeMoi. It's definitely going to help, but to get a full picture, I'm also going to need base recharge times and the base buff time length as well.
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Thanks, LeMoi. It's definitely going to help, but to get a full picture, I'm also going to need base recharge times and the base buff time length as well.
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Ok. Here.
You can get the duration, the previous and some other information by using Joe Chott's CoH Planner
Anything else before I go to sleep?
Oh! And Ampersand, lvl 3 Dark/Psi Defender is ready and waiting to see what happen with EA after I4 goes live at Atlas Park (Liberty Server)
Almost! That chart has recharge times, but not the length of time the buff/debuff lasts. Thanks again though!
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Almost! That chart has recharge times, but not the length of time the buff/debuff lasts. Thanks again though!
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That's why I also included the CoH Planner's link. There buff durations are there.
D'oh! Sorry, had to read and post quick, didn't catch that second link. I'll download it when I get home and do some number crunching with Excel tomorrow as time permits. Thanks!
Archimedes... if you want my spreasheet to help you out, PM me your email and I'll send it to you.
I leave buffs and pools out of the picture because Invuln can get them just as well as Ice can. So its like with fractions, if you can reduce or increase both the numberator and the denominator by the same amount you end up with the same fraction. So the math is the same.
Some other numbers that are confirmed (source is a dev) are as follows.
1) Frozen Armor does not drain more End (as I stated earlier in this or another thread). Actual amount of End drained by all Armors for all Tankers (presumably an Armor is something that gives DEF or RES, so CE and Icicles are not Armors in this case) is 0.1835 every half second so since the number in most of the hero planners is per second that's 0.367 per second for: Frozen Armor, Wet Ice, Glacial Armor, etc.
2) Invincilibty has a mob cap already in place. Its less than 10 but greater than 5 (not given an acutal number). Also I think those numbers assume DEF enhancements in Invincibility (does anyone slot that way?) I'd have to say though that we're talking 6 mobs for Invincibility based on the numbers in (3).
2) Invincibility caps at at 120% Melee and 68% Ranged. 6 +3 DEF SOs is a 2.38 increase. Dividing those two numbers we get 50% and 28.5%. 6 mobs is exactly the generally accepted 5% plus 7.5% per mob for base defense, and that would put the ranged defense at 3% and 4.25% per mob base.
4) Tough Hide maxes at 22% (with +3SOs). That translates to a 9.25% base (9.25% * (1 + (6 * 0.23)) = 22.015) which is higher than generally accepted.
You might say who cares about numbers for Invuln? Well they're important for comparison. That said, you have to assume everything is slotted the same when. Generally the devs assume all powers are slotted for 6 DEF at +3SOs (it appears) when balancing. Truthfully you'd get the same affect assuming no enhancements on powers and using base values.
Personally, I think you have to see how people are slotting your powers and go from there. That means generally Tough Hide is 6 slotted, Invincibility is not slotted, Ice Armors are all 6 slotted, except EA which is 3 slotted for DEF on average. Stuff like that.
I'm going to rework my spreadsheet to use the numbers above and see how it changes things.
The biggest reason I want to include buffs is pretty simple; to show how much more Invulnerability benefits than Ice, just to put things into perspective.
Take Fortitude, for instance. It provides a base +25% bonus to Damage, Accuracy and Defense.
For the Invulnerabilty tanker, the damage and accuracy bonuses aren't going to be as effective as it is for Ice, simply because of Invincibility (since it allows the Invulnerability Tanker to skip slotting Accuracy enhancements into their attack powers, allowing them to slot more Damage instead). But a Tanker's job is to take damage. On the other hand, the Defense buff is of great help to the Invulnerability tanker; less hits taken means that their overall damage taken is less.
On the other hand, the Damage and Accuracy buffs do tend to help Ice Tankers more, since we generally have to slot Accuracy enhancements into our attacks. Again though, we're there to take damage, not deal it, so as far as this disccussion is concerned isn't really a benefit. And (this is really the big difference), the Defense buff is almost wasted on us. Unless we're facing lots of enemies with high Accuracy and/or Defense debuffing abilities, more Defense is just overkill and unnecessary.
Overall, this tends to further push the Invulnerability tankers ahead of Ice tankers, since now they're taking almost as few hits as we are, and receiving much less damage because of the resistances available within their sets.
Actually, tis' fairly trivial to list the various powers which give defense vs the ones which give resistance/damage debuffage. In fact, the only sets which can grant reduction in S/L damage are Dark Defenders, Rad def/trollers, and kin def/trollers, in addition to the afformentioned Tough.
On the other hand, Weave, invis, stealth, grant invis, combat jumping, empathy, force fields, dark, storm...seriously. +def is -so- common, but short of those 3 sets or tough, there's not a thing that could help Shadowhunter from oneshotting me.
I've actually counted.
If you include Inspirations (but not APPs, since no Tanker APP gives any), there's more than three times as many ways to gain defense as there are to gain resistance in this game. 19 buffs/debuffs for Defense versus 6 buffs/debuffs for resistance. Ain't that lovely? 
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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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If you include Inspirations (but not APPs, since no Tanker APP gives any), there's more than three times as many ways to gain defense as there are to gain resistance in this game. 19 buffs/debuffs for Defense versus 6 buffs/debuffs for resistance. Ain't that lovely?
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Yeah, it does stink that our defense buff ability seems so easy to come by, where as our resistances are rarely able to be buffed.
Will they rework sets to include more resistance buffs? Not likely. Thus few buffs from defenders are going to help us tank, more then they would anybody else.
A great example is my Fire tank. Paired in a duo with a Grav/FF controller, I've got 6 slotted resistances to S/L, Eng/Neg, and fire isn't ever an issue. She keeps me bubbled, and I'm nearly unhittable, and can resist anything that does.
Stone seems a perfect fit to Kinetics, that can buff your damage and increase your speed. The very weaknesses you pay for being the best all-around Tank defensively.
Right now, I'm just happy my Ice Tank has Radiation in his duo. That's how I stay alive, by watching AV's and Monsters debuffed before I get there. Knowing that it works in my duo, I think solo Ice Tanks would love it as much as I do, if they could do it themselves. And if I stacked a Damage Debuff with Enervating Field... What a wonderful life it would be.
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My ice tank is only a baby still, but I've got a question/suggestion.
What if they cut the timer on hoarfrost in half? More accurately, to the point where if you choose, you could perma double stack it without using hasten? That or raise the amount of HP it gives by 20 or 30. How much would having 40-80% more HP help?
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Currently, the boost number with Hoarfrost is 28.57% (1863.3 up to 2608.6). If it was upped to 70%, my (current) hp would boost to 3167.61. AV's could still one shot me...just much, much less.
Halfing the recharge time (I have 2 recharge SO's in it already...so maybe more to stack it) and then stacking it, with the 70%, would give 5384.94 hit points for a limited time. That might give us something to set us apart from the other sets a little more.
What other ideas have there been so far? Let's get a list going:[*]Keep EA the way it is (or better it). [*]Put a dmg and/or resistance debuff on a power of ours. (preferably an autohit)[*]Put an acc/def debuff onto a power of ours. (preferably an auto hit)[*]Maybe make Icicles autohit? [*]Let one of our powers give us some psi, along with s/l, dmg resistance.[*]Make Hibernate a wee bit more useful than a giant invulnerable popsicle. IE - Let Icicles or CE get out still...maybe as a punishment for said use let us not be invulernable but just give very high Def and Res (to all).[*]Bump either hoarfrost's recharge time, +max hp, or both[*]Seeing how we're in a block of ice, def or res to psi isn't very role-playingish. What if EA, instead of just giving def to all but psi, would give defense to whatever it was we EA'd? Ie - you EA mobs with psionic/energy attacks, you now have defense to both. You EA mobs with s/l/toxic attacks, you now have defense to all three.[/list]
almost lvl 49 Ice/Ice 
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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.
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EA is the redeeming power in our set, it's the only thing that keeps us alive. Without EA hitting (read carefully) more that 5...MUCH more than 5, being an Ice tanker becomes ridiculously harder, especially past lvl 40.
Again I tested what hitting 5 +2's would do..on +2 freaks. I barely had enough time to hit a tier 3 green and spare myself from some debt. The 2 fire tankers I was with would get hit about as much I was...with EA hitting MORE than 5. Then we herded, and herded, and herded. I'm going to take an estimate and say my EA hit 40 freaks.
I still got hit. Very rarely, but it still happens. Almost got one shotted by a Tank Swiper. Twice.
Honestly...how can EA be overpowered if, even when hitting 30 or more mobs, it allows me to tank nearly as effectively as other sets?
How can anyone think it is overpowered if it's close to bringing us up to par? We've been pretty whine-less when it comes to other powers in our set that are outright useless - we have EA and that brings some dignity to us.
If any changes need to be made to EA, then they should be adding to, not taking away, from this power. If EA is only made to hit 5, or declined in almost any way....being an Ice tank really may become a joke - we wouldn't be able to tank anything nearly as well as any other set.