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Not necessarily a reply to anybody here, but I was just curious if we have any confirmation or not about EA's change coming about due to the ... poor ... testing ground that was used to investigate regen last week or so?
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Not a word. Since Stateman dropped in and said they'd look into Tankers, we haven't heard anything else. EA is still the same on the test server as it has been since they added Issue 4. We still have this sticky thread, but all 15 of the posting Ice tankers have stopped posting in almost all the Ice threads.
We're currently waiting for changes to test, and hoping we get a boost, instead of others being taken down to our level.
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Sadly I'm sure that that's what is going to happen. Personally I think (For what I've seen Geko doing to the powersets) that they feel that Ice Tankers, Ice Blasters, DA Scrappers, Mind Controllers, and Empathy defenders are what the rest of the AT's on their respective fields should be.
It's my understanding (From another couple of thread) that the Devs are looking at the Tankers right now... That's kind of scary! But here is hopping...
I've tried to read through this whole posting tonight.. wow.. great work on the number crunching.. (mind you some of it, is beyond my understanding). I have a few observations/questions that I would like to voice.
1. I played a (gimped) blaster to level 50 and jumped straight onto an Ice tank the day after he hit 50, I was so sick of dieing and just wanted to be able to take some damage. Why Ice.. it went with the idea of the toon and I had not ever seen one... ***** Here is my first point... I made it to level 50 with a blaster (read very very long trip) and I didn't see 1 Ice tank. I saw some /ice but not a single one Ice primary. So where's the problem? Are they Hundreds of Ice tanks out there that are secretly farming 100's of wolves that I missed... exploiting a terrible loophole thats been around since day 1 with EA?????
2. A tank should NEVER be 1 shotted... AV or not... NEVER (I don't think they should even be 2 shotted). If it's possible Ice or not.. Its a programming error that should be fixed, and shouldn't have taken a year to be noticed. I have not hit the late level string of AV's yet... but if this tank is gonna be gimped against them... I'm done now... I played a blaster... I don't ever want to be 1 hit in my tank.
3. Power pools & tough - Ok... let me get this... my "TANK" has to take the power pool called "Tough" to be able to fight an AV?... Your kidding right.. where are the cameras... I'm on candid camera right? A tank taking "Tough" so that he/she isn't one shotted... lmao... <wipes tears> maybe Body armour should be one of our Epic choices... 
... Seriously though, we are forced to take 2 power pools already.. 1 for a travel power and another for frickin stamina (don't get me started on this, your freaking levels 12-20 levels are taken up on every AT for every primary except one??? Don't you see a basic logic error here?????? ). So for an ICE tank to be viable... we now HAVE to have tough as well... so 3 of our 4 power pools have been chosen for us
thats nice, talk about cookie cutter toons.. oh yeah.. another toggle power
yippee.. How many is that now???
4. PVP is irrelevant in this discussion.. let's face it.. nobody is going to be playing a ICE tank in PVP. PVP will come down to 3 things, cookie cutter builds, tactics and who has the fastest computer.
5. Lastly, I stole this link from another post.. but it sums up the "nerf" attitude perfectly. Nobody ever wants to be weaker, especially not an already "gimped" class like Ice. Read this link... its very well thought out.
http://www.memorableplaces.com/mudwimping.html
The most important thing that I don't get is WHY????? Why do this change? Was EA making Ice tanks uber ??? (shudder, I can't believe i used that word.. but the Admins seem to respond to that crap language best.) Where 100's of ICE Tanks running around ruining the game for everyone else... did EA make all the other tankers jealous? I was under the impression that we were and still are actually getting the short end of the tanker stick already.... WHY MAKE THIS CHANGE??? We had one power that worked... maybe better than you had envisioned but we still die, even more than the other tanks. The logic behind this change is mind boggleling to me.
To everyone posting here, Way to go guys! Your doing a great job and there are some great ideas in here.
Hey, blasters are gonna be looked at (nerfed) in issue 5.. lmao.. maybe we can look forward to actually tanking with issue 7 or maybe 8.
Last but not least, this is no longer "your" game, its ours now. We like it alot, please stop nerfing everything.
1. Hmm, I saw plenty of Ice Tankers.... Wasn't until recently that I saw a 50 Ice Tanker, but I've seen them all over the place since I started in October. I think there are fewer people who go with Ice really, because the major reason to do it is for the role playing concept more (and the role playing concept of ice covered warriors is probably less common than a big scorching demonic warrior, anyway), anyway. If you wanted a major herding Tanker, you'd've taken Fire (and my understanding is in pvp fire may be totally screwed if it can lose its toggles, but considering how easy it is to use in pve, I think it's much more than a fair trade off. But that's really a digression, just pointing out that Ice Tankers do exist if you look hard enough.
2 and 3. That's why some people think there should be more +res. The only way to keep from being one shotted ever is to have enough +res. Ultimately, it's all about the design of +res, which imo should never be put into a roleplaying game, but it's a little late for that, now.
4. PvP is irrelevant in any discussion, imo. The only thing it did was point out that some AT powerset combos can handle more types of players than others, which is supposed to be true. Scrappers are according to the manual the best at soloing, so you'd expec them to be able to handle more. Tankers come next, so likewise you'd expect they'd come next in pvp. The reason behind looking at pvp is saying wait a minute, that Blaster is able to solo that Scrapper (which I've had happen), so is something wrong here with those power selections? Or else, that Scrapper, yes, is able to solo the best, but somehow never goes down to anything? That's just not right, either. So, that's where you'd want them to start to look at the powers and say, okay, MoG isn't what it's supposed to be.
5. There are times when nerfing needs to be done, though. For instance, my fire tanker, level 30, I have one slotted Stamina, I have a 6 slotted Blazing Aura with 2 taunts, 2 end, and 2 acc, 6 sltoted Hasten, and all I need to do is run into a group of mobs, taunt, pull about 10 around the corner, sit there, with burn on, and then I don't even need to taunt anymore, just Burn, and they all just sorta die. Meanwhile I'm regenerating endurance, not losing it. Now, at level 30, I may want to at least look at the level of the mobs I'm herding and whether they're bosses or not. But say I was strong enough I didn't have to pay attention to the level of the mob, so if the devs might say that was the standard all ATs were set to, just hitting one or two keys and sitting back without paying much attention, I'd be a little... bored with the game. Some things actually need nerfing. Like the nemesis staff. Now, considering there's over a page of "Official" topics here, dealing with upcoming nerfs, the devs might've gone a little nerf-happy, but at least they're doing it to keep the game enjoyable, and not to just laugh at all the lower level players that will take forever to get to 50 because they can't solo -3 minions (much like the way certain other MMORPGs are set up in the higher levels).
And again, why EA? I think I tried to answer that for you, and came up with 4 possible reasons.
To quickly repeat my own possible reasons:
1) that, in pvp, even Blasters with Aim and Buildup can almost always hit any other character, and theoretically, an Ice Tanker in PvP could somehow jump into the middle of a 64v64 SG battle and get thousands of percent of defense (personally, if that's all the devs were worried about, I'd consider that a fair compromise for Ice tankers to have uber defense, but it may very well be what they were thinking).
2) when defense is pushed beyond the Test cap on EA (just one ability), it looks better than the entire SR set, which is fine for the set as a whole, but since on EA alone is insulting to SR.
3) that it is in only one power, and although most people who get to a high enough level to use it will (from what I'm told) realize that it's best to take other powers, on paper, it looks quite possible to skip all other +defense abilities.
and 4) One that apparently makes no sense with the way Ice actually plays, but that EA can consatntly drain mobs of endurance without letting them run away, which could potentially be compared (albeit apparently a very distant comparison) to Cloak of Fear and the nerf on DA Scrappers.
Ultimately, I'm told here 1-4 don't make sense with the way people actually play Ice, but again, the devs may think otherwise, and that's why people are awaiting the devs' test results, if they ever run them.
Remember, devs aren't nerfing because of the way things are used, necessarily, but because of the way things can be used and the way they personally think it's often used. I'd like to see someone jump in the middle of 20+ mobs to minimize their chances of being hit by mobs that have a huge accuracy bonus AND are higher level, without dying, because if the devs think that's possible (and likely they'll use Stealth and large cluster spawns to show that it is... watch for that) that's ultimately what their reasoning is for capping the number of mobs that can buff through EA.
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1) that, in pvp, even Blasters with Aim and Buildup can almost always hit any other character, and theoretically, an Ice Tanker in PvP could somehow jump into the middle of a 64v64 SG battle and get thousands of percent of defense (personally, if that's all the devs were worried about, I'd consider that a fair compromise for Ice tankers to have uber defense, but it may very well be what they were thinking).
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Whether this is what the devs believe or not, I just have to expose a rather gapping hole in this argument:
The whole reason that EA works as well as it does in PvE is because of Taunt and/or Punchvoke. The taunting effects from this powers forces the AI to move close to the tanker, thus maximizing their potential defense gain.
On the other hand, in PvE there are very few (if any) chances for an Ice Tanker to gain defense in the hundreds as you would suggest. At best, if the Ice Tanker can draw some of the pets to themselves, they're get few opponents to hit. But the human opponents do not draw near when taunted. If they are melee, they will use their ranged attacks (if any) from outside of EA's range. Anyone else simply uses their ranged AoEs on the tank, safely outside of the AoE of EA.
SRs with Elude, on the other hand, merely click a button. The power requires no enemy interaction whatsoever. It just gives tons of defense.
So your example is heavily flawed in this regard.
Yeah, at this point, I'm willing to say SR works differently than Ice (although it really is more than clicking one button, but is being reduced down to clicking nothing and rarely having survivable defense). But just like the other three reasons, I see the reason for this nerf not so much as what may/may not actually be in gameplay, but what the devs' perception of how EA works is and whether there's the possibility that it could even occasionally be used the way they consider it.
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The whole reason that EA works as well as it does in PvE is because of Taunt and/or Punchvoke. The taunting effects from this powers forces the AI to move close to the tanker, thus maximizing their potential defense gain.
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I'd like to point out this is not how Taunt works. Taunt only make the mob exclusive attention to the Tanker. It doesn't not force the target(s) to close on the Tanker unless it's a behaviour of that mob's AI. If a Taunt'ed target isn't inclined to close on the Tanker nothing, not even Taunt, will make a mob close in.
Hello, everyone. Play a level 42 ice tank on virtue by the name of APLE Unit T02. I must say that I am quite happy to see that ice tanks may be getting some attention in the future. In all the playing I have done, I have yet to be one-shotted, except by the psychic clockwork king and the crystal titan, but I suppose it may be possible. I know that I was able to tank the titan without ambrosia, unlike the invlun tank I team with on a regular basis. I also know that I am unable to tank such things as swarms, caltrops, and nemesis snipers thanks entirely to the auto-hit damage. The real reason I'm posting here, though, is because I saw someone make the following comment:
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4. PVP is irrelevant in this discussion.. let's face it.. nobody is going to be playing a ICE tank in PVP. PVP will come down to 3 things, cookie cutter builds, tactics and who has the fastest computer.
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On the contrary, I've played PvP with my Ice/EM tank, and I've done quite well, for much the same reason as a super reflexes scrapper. I even have the advantage of two very strong attacks that most other ATs don't even know exist. I can't tell you how many blasters got a nasty shock during the Thursday Throwdown when they got the idea in their heads that their 30% unresistable damage would put me in my place only to miss once or twice before I reached them. Then it was build up, energy transfer, total focus, and down they went. Things were similar for the poor controllers, who had a nightmare of a time trying to out-mag wet ice when none of their holds could even land on me. I did rather well, until I faced an SR scrapper with that toggle accuracy epic power. I couldn't touch her, but she could get me reliably enough, and since she was 11 levels up from me at the time ( I was 39 ), I don't really mind that.
What I'm saying is, just because we are below the bar in PvE, does not mean we are in bad shape for PvP. At this point, I see that as my final saving grace. Sure, I won't be able to participate in Hamidon raids, except as a silly sort of pseudo-scrapper, but at least I'll be able to help out my SG in the arena.
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and 4) One that apparently makes no sense with the way Ice actually plays, but that EA can consatntly drain mobs of endurance without letting them run away, which could potentially be compared (albeit apparently a very distant comparison) to Cloak of Fear and the nerf on DA Scrappers.
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Couple of things.
First off, Cloak of fear was hit up with the nerf bat because it was overwhelming in pvp. Fear in general is/was just stupidly powerful. Autohit effective sleep that reattaches itself within 2 seconds after being hit with an attack? Wheee. So...it got nailed. Not saying I agree with the change, but...
On to the other thing. Endurance drain is entirely useles in pvp, so let's remove that from the arguement (if you don't belive me, there are tons of posts about it). That leaves the pve arguement. Since it's absurdly common to be facing 1-2 foes of +3 level, bosses, when EA pops up, you need a +def enhanced EA. You need it to pop often, and you need it to have an end redux in there to make sure you always can. But even if you wanted to sacrifices the slots....
Endurance drain is mostly useless, period. Completely ineffective on monsters/AVs. Most foes regenerate endurance considerably faster than they use it, and even those that don't have a pretty minor reduction in dps because of it. You can never have 'full lockdown' with a power that cycles in 30 seconds and doesn't tag -recovery (which, by the way, doesn't actually work, but that's a whole nother arguement).
I'm basing the above on leveling to 50 as an elec/elec blaster, another much-ignored class by the devs. If you don't agree (I know Circ said he useds the end drain of EA), that's fine, but I've had a lot of experince on attempting to survive with endurance drain, and with 2 high drain powers, 1 -recovery power, and a whole arsenal of minor drains simply not being enough for a solid lockdown of more than 30-40 seconds, I have no clue how 1 medium drain power could possibly work well enough.
And with that....I think I'm done with CoH. I4 is just too much. I wish they had not quite so much slammed the game into the ground, but at this point I can't even come up with a charecter that sounds fun to play.
Good luck, and keep up the good fight. I'm not going to stick around for them to take out yet another class, whichever they decide has 'always been overpowered'- my personal bet would be Storm (Okay, I can -hear- people with stormies shudder at that). The story arcs were fun, but not -that- much fun.
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First off, Cloak of fear was hit up with the nerf bat because it was overwhelming in pvp. Fear in general is/was just stupidly powerful. Autohit effective sleep that reattaches itself within 2 seconds after being hit with an attack? Wheee. So...it got nailed. Not saying I agree with the change, but...
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It's not autohit. It has a high accuracy, but it can and often does miss. Also, the pulses come much slower than every two seconds, and suppression applies. Unless the scrapper is standing right next to you, the fear will wear off very quickly and can't be reapplied for 15 seconds.
I've tested all this in the arena. DA's Cloak of Fear is probably the weakest fear power in the arena.
Elsegame: Champions Online: @BellaStrega ||| Battle.net: Ashleigh#1834 ||| Bioware Social Network: BellaStrega ||| EA Origin: Bella_Strega ||| Steam: BellaStrega ||| The first Guild Wars: Kali Magdalene ||| The Secret World: BelleStarr (Arcadia)
Well, we tried folks. But it seems almost certain that I4 will be going live tomorrow.
So much for getting anymore play out of Halley's Comet. Almost breaks my heart. 
wait, I4 goes live tomorrow? since when?
Level 50 is a journey, not a destination.
▲Scrapper Issues List - Going Rogue Edition▲
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wait, I4 goes live tomorrow? since when?
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Extra extended maintenance hours tomorrow morning. A birdie also hinted that tonight would be a good night to complete the Calvin Scott TF if you haven't already.
*****
Arch, I hear you. As of tomorrow EA will be a thrice nerfed power: 5 mobs max, Taunt effect lessened because less mobs affected, End Drain made completely unreliable.
Massive != Powerful. geko needs to understand that better.
wow. cool. glad I got that scott TF in last weekend.
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also, just want to chime in support for ice. seems like they'd rather nerf others down to ice rather than help Ice out. it won't make me stop playing my baby ice tank though. lvl 16 and still counting!
Level 50 is a journey, not a destination.
▲Scrapper Issues List - Going Rogue Edition▲
Adding some smash lethal resistance to permafrost would help soften the blow left by the changes to EA
Sadly my Ice tanker is not the only character that has gone into Hibernation. Good luck boys. We gave it a good try and had a heck of a run.
TTR
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wait, I4 goes live tomorrow? since when?
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Extra extended maintenance hours tomorrow morning. A birdie also hinted that tonight would be a good night to complete the Calvin Scott TF if you haven't already.
*****
Arch, I hear you. As of tomorrow EA will be a thrice nerfed power: 5 mobs max, Taunt effect lessened because less mobs affected, End Drain made completely unreliable.
Massive != Powerful. geko needs to understand that better.
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geko believes very strongly in his skills and it takes a LOT of screaming by a lot of players to get him to listen to anything. Anyone else remember the war he had with the Invul tankers about whether or not boxing was more powerful than jab? Took a lot of tankers a long time to prove he was wrong...to him. He just wouldn't listen.
Jeez.... just think back about how long it took just to get an acknowledgement from geko about the earlier problems we had with Ice. Meh.
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What about the Calvin Scott TF? How is that going to be affected....I missed the relevance to that TF and I4. Little help?
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What about the Calvin Scott TF? How is that going to be affected....I missed the relevance to that TF and I4. Little help?
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It was a TF that existed purely for plotline advancement. As of I4 it no longer exists.
Changes you will note as a result of the TF if you go next to the hospital on IP:
* Sister Psyche is back in her own body
* Aurora Borealis (the body Sister Psyche was in) is now the trainer
* Calvin Scott is gone (sidelined by Statesman)
* Malaise is gone (he's now a bad guy again)
For a wrapup read: Dreams Before the Storm
Thanks Circeus. I hadn't read that report....never even saw it truth be told. Thanks again.
Ok, somebody who is lucky enough to be home, tell me if they did any of the following:
1. Increased the number of mobs EA can affect (more then 5)
2. Fixed the "bug" where EA doesn't endo drain off a mob that isn't one of the affected mobs
3. Changed anything else in Ice on Live or Training that may indicate they tried to help Ice out
I'm hoping for an updated Training Room "now testing" post, but I won't hold my breath.
And if they do push a new patch to the Training Room, and it still hasn't got a single change for Ice, then I guess we can just spam PM's to the Devs, and I'll start a "why the devs hate our Ice tanking guts" thread.
Those seem to get Dev attention, instead of the locking/ignoring they deserve.
I'll test those once they bring the servers back up (I work from home). From the patch notes though I'd say other than what you already know: EA change, Hibernate changes (that don't really make the power more useful - wasn't convinced a Heal enhancement did anything when I tried it), and the increased slow protection (need some KoA to try this) in WI we got nothing.
Well, I see that our thread got moved to the Dev Corner. I guess that might be a good thing. /sigh
Over the weekend, I tried out the Eden Trial. I got one-shotted by the Crystal Titan. Nothing new there, but the really cool part... an Invul tank that was with me got one-shotted as well. We were on even ground. (I know about Ambrosia, we just ran out of it.) He said that being killed in one-shot sucked. I told him that it happens to me all the time when I face AV's and Monsters.
The Dark Blade
"I've felt your mouse on me before, you perv...." - Troy Hickman
Paragon Wiki
So looking at this...
Put a cap on the max defense you can gain from Energy Absorption.
* There was no cap. Allowed you to have infinite defense.
I wonder if this mean the 'limited to 5 foes' isn't happening, or if that IS the limit? Stupid extended down time... inquiring minds want to know!
Of course, I thought the point initially was to NOT put a cap on EA's defense. Maybe that was easier/less bug-riddled.
Read geko's post he explains its a cap on the number of mobs not a cap on the defense itself.
It really bothers me that they capped the endurance drain aspect of the power and the innate taunt as well as the defense buff.
Was the endurance drain "too powerful"?
Was the taunt "too powerful"?
Looks like it is just to make coding easier.
The Dark Blade
"I've felt your mouse on me before, you perv...." - Troy Hickman
Paragon Wiki
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Not necessarily a reply to anybody here, but I was just curious if we have any confirmation or not about EA's change coming about due to the ... poor ... testing ground that was used to investigate regen last week or so?
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Not a word. Since Stateman dropped in and said they'd look into Tankers, we haven't heard anything else. EA is still the same on the test server as it has been since they added Issue 4. We still have this sticky thread, but all 15 of the posting Ice tankers have stopped posting in almost all the Ice threads.
We're currently waiting for changes to test, and hoping we get a boost, instead of others being taken down to our level.