Whoops, I'm just blind then. Sorry bout that.
No problem... I posted the same response on the Avatars forums... wasn't sure which you'd see first 
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Where does the slow from CE factor into this balance, Circ?
Is it commonly used by ice armor tankers? Is it taken?
How does the slow work to balance out?
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I know you got a response from Circ, but I'll toss in that it is a staple of the Ice line, and what tanker do you know that does -not- want an autohit taunt?
However, the slow is fairly close range (semi-melee? we really need a term for the 10' range that so many powers have), and drops off very sharply with level.
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Would you consider the extra aggro and of CE and the damage of Icicles to balance out that extra 17%? It seems like it should at least be good for something. Not sure if its the whole 17%. Also, doesn't some testing show that Tough hide doesn't stack with Invince. You can check Dark Golem's post in the Tanker forumn if it isn't buried by PvP stuff.
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Tough Hide more definitely should stack with Invincbility. If it doesn't it's a serious bug and should be fixed.
What is an even level AV's chance to hit? Can we bring an AV down to the 5% to-hit cap with only Ice Armor powers? Keep in mind that EA will probably only have one target to charge from.
Let's say that we're allowed to have 2 end redux in all three of our armors, leaving four for defense enhancements. That gives us:
56.7% vs S/L
63% vs NEG/NRG
EA fully slotted with 6 def enhancements gives us 41.25% defense when used against 1 enemy, which gives us:
97.95 vs S/L
104.25 vs NEG/NRG
That doesn't really seem like enough.
I agree that a mix of def and res is better than just def. I also think that just res probably makes a superior Tank than just def. But I think giving Ice Armor res kind of ruins the concept of the set. I think the Ice Tank was meant to be the most controller-y of the tanks. They should protect their team by making the enemies less effective, not just by being bags of meat that the enemies punch. That's why I like CE so much.
I think an Ice Tanker should be able to easily reach 95% defense vs anything up to an even level AV. This includes defense vs fire and psi(although maybe not QUITE 95%) and can be reached even when there is only a single enemy present.
Then give Ice Armor more mob control. Some suggestions:
>Increase the end drain on EA
>Add an PBAoE accuracy debuff to Icicles
>Have permafrost apply a slow effect to mobs that hit you
>Have Hibernate generate agro, but shut off when your HP is full
>I really think Ice Patch should be in the Ice Primary, instead of the secondary. Add this effect to Hoarfrost, maybe? But then what do we do with the secondary?
I'm surprised no one has suggested adding PSI defense to EA. Is it really so game-breaking? Call it Slippery Mind or something.
I can see the comic book roots for leaving it out of Inv, but don't see why this Achilles heel is necessary, especially for Ice Armor. My SR scrapper has it and can still die if there are enough baddies around, if I hit an unlucky streak or if their ACC is high enough (darn eyeballs and Chimera).
Just to chime in:
My Ice/Ice tanker is level 36 now. Before I3 I'd retired it as unplayable but didn't delete it because I like the toon and thought someday maybe the'd get come help (much like my Mind controller). Post I3 I play my Ice tanker all the time, grouping whenever possible. I'm very used to having to tell teammates either what I can do (because they've never teamed with an Ice tanker before) or that I can't tank for them as well any any other tank could. In general my Ice tank is about equal to an Ivn tanker who's about 4 or 5 levels lower than I am. This is derived from game play experience on teams with other tanks, watching, as a lvl 36 Ice tanker, a level 32 Inv tanker run into fights that would kill me instantly and emerge without a scratch. Actually, as playing last night showed me, an even level Inv scrapper is almost as good a tank as my Ice tank.
Circeus' posts have done a good job illustrating the numbers, but game ballance has to be more than just raw numbers (I point this out after having applied to the Ballancer/Tuner position Cryptic had listed on their web site). I find it quite strange to see any power in the Ice set referred to as "quite massive, and probably still too powerful". Playing an Ice tanker, or just speaking to a few, should be enough to point out that the set needs help, not caps. My experience with EA has been that it's not worth the effort of hitting unless you're surrounded by more than 5 enemies, the End cost is huge and I'm already running an minimum of 4 toggles, and occasionally I might want to attack too.
Sadly, after all the complaining about changes to Inv, taking them from the best tanker by far to.. the best tanker by far, I don't know that tanker feedback is considered anymore. Ice is the weakest set, has been, and still is. EA's a decent power takes the weakest set available and makes them, for 25 seconds, still the weakest set. If you feel you have to give it a cap for some reason that only makes sense on a spreadsheet do so, but if you're really interested in doing something with the Ice set, do something constructive. The one thing it used to have going for it was mobile mez protection, an now everyone has that, and even when they didn't, the set was still so weak no one played it.
Heh for a second there I thought I was going to get bashed on there Wraithlord. But thanks, I think your post really is a strong view of how many Ice Tankers feel. The line that really hits home is:
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In general my Ice tank is about equal to an Ivn tanker who's about 4 or 5 levels lower than I am.
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To be honest, I'm speaking in numbers because geko speaks in numbers, and I thought numbers would be the easiest way to appeal to him. Invuln taking 44% less damage speaks volumes (note that another poster pointed out to me that in gekos post on this thread he lists Bosses as having 75% ACC, so this means the 44% is the proper number to be using here).
Thanks for that post though, because while I posted in numbers your post conveys what I feel.
Lot's of knee jerk reaction posts here. I'm not sure I'll ever come across a situation where having Energy Absorbtion suck power from more than 5 mobs will make any difference. And if I do it's not that hard to add more defense SO's to the power.
Nogala
Knee jerk how? The calculations I made hold now on live the same as they do on test. So Ice is that much worse off then Invuln is in any case, whether this change goes in or not.
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Also, if you don't slot your other armors
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Maybe that was the intention of this change to EA, so Ice tanker will pick up their other armors and slot them. As it currently stood, it seemed that Ice tankers could easily get by with just Wet Ice and EA.
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You have never played an Ice tanker before, have you? No good tanker is going to be able to TANK by only using those two armors (Here I'm assuming that the tanker took all his armors up to lvl 26, then respec-ed out of them)
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My Ice tank, which I leveled past 26 before the toggle armors were made stackable, used nothing but Wet Ice and EA. At 22 he picked up Tough. That's it. That's all he needed. He wasn't as effective as an Invuln tank, but he was still durable enough to tank for a team.
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Yes, pre I3 were hard times for the Ice tankers. That's why there were only a handful of those. Personally I did tried to make an Ice tanker post I2 but I just couldn't do it. Having to carry lucks with you all the time with a power set that it's suppoused to be all about defense was just lame. And that's what this change to EA is going to cause. That or take Wave... Yet another toggle :\
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Please also notice how must energy/neg-energy either lower your defense, or drains your end. In fact, most mobs are going to lower your defense (That's why putting a cap to our defense is a very stupid thing to do... Defense is all we have!)
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Negative energy lowers accuracy. Slashing/lethal attacks (like assault weapon fire, some claw attacks, etc.) lower your defense. What's more dangerous are the enemies that buff each other's offense -- aren't DE Quartz eminators a +100% accuracy boost to all DE nearby? No defensive powerset is going to be able to stand up to that.
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Yep. And that's why I don't understand why Geko thinks that EA is too powerful! There are so many way to to lower def or increace acc they're just going to kill us. Read one of my first post: We don't only have the same psionic problems that other tankers have, but we are also weak agains auto-hits, def-debuffs and atacks with high accuracy.
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If you want to be a good Ice Tanker you can't just go running around with only 2 armors! You need them all, and you need them with at least 4 Def Enh each.
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Actually you can get by with only WI and EA as armors. 'Get by', mind, not 'do well'.
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"Get by" is not enough for a tanker. A good tanker is the foundation for a good team. If the tankers goes down, the rest of the team is to follow. I'll say it again: As it is nowadays, a GOOD ice tanker needs all of his armor at least 5 slotted plus Fitness and Fighting to be able to be close, but not as good, as an Inv/* tanker (They don't need to 6 slot all of their armors or Fighting for that matter).
If this change stays for good (Because it is going live, we all know that) my Ice Tanker is to become a Stone tanker. If they're to change something there, too (I see Geko paying a visit to Granite one of this days) then I'll just go play Saga of Ryzom full time.
Hmm. Granted I didn't know how good EA really is/was. And it does explain how I survived somethings that I thought I had no chance of.
That said some thoughts on things brought up.
You can go with WI and EA. However you'll be spending a lot more time in debt. I tried to go without Frozen Armor, but I was getting spanked, took it 6 slotted it (and WI) and things were better. I eventually respec'd out of FA since I was no longer using it (pre I3).
Anyone else think it's wrong that any power set has a powe that virtually no one takes? I can understand some powers being more useful then others, but essentially useless powers?
So far I have an ice/stone at 46, invul/axe at 12 and an fire/stone at 9(need to train and he'll be 11). Up to that point the Invul has been by far the easiest to play/the least amount of deaths. We'll see how it goes as I get the other 2 up into the 40's.
I'd be ok with the change in EA if they added some fixes to the Ice set as awhole (like more resistances to Permafrost).
I don't recall being 1-shotted by an AV, but then I've had Tough for quite sometime now. Since Tough is always on and I hit Hoarfrost before rushing in, I'm guessing that's why. However I agree that having to go to a POOL power isn't cool (pun intended).
In practice that 5% does come into play quite a bit. With no way to mitigate this without resorting to Pools, it makes playing Ice somewhat a PITA. A defeated tank, does his team no good.
Daristar
on Virtue:
Darkennedy dark/sonic Def
Lena Slayer NightWidow
Vengeful Woman Energy/Rad Corruptor
Hella Effing Cool cold/sonic def
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Lot's of knee jerk reaction posts here. I'm not sure I'll ever come across a situation where having Energy Absorbtion suck power from more than 5 mobs will make any difference. And if I do it's not that hard to add more defense SO's to the power.
Nogala
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Please go back and read again the post that talk about enemies bringing a 200% defense to 0%
Just so you know what to look for: DE's pet beacons, mobs with radiation powers, heroes with radiation powers (Now that PvP is here that is important), mobs that use Leadership/Vengeance, mobs with a very high accuracy.
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Sadly, after all the complaining about changes to Inv, taking them from the best tanker by far to.. the best tanker by far, I don't know that tanker feedback is considered anymore. Ice is the weakest set, has been, and still is. EA's a decent power takes the weakest set available and makes them, for 25 seconds, still the weakest set. If you feel you have to give it a cap for some reason that only makes sense on a spreadsheet do so, but if you're really interested in doing something with the Ice set, do something constructive. The one thing it used to have going for it was mobile mez protection, an now everyone has that, and even when they didn't, the set was still so weak no one played it.
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Very nice post WraithLord. I think you sum up the sentiment nicely. (I only quoted the last part for emphasis.)
The Dark Blade
"I've felt your mouse on me before, you perv...." - Troy Hickman
Paragon Wiki
The sad thing about this whole discussion is that we (the ice tankers) have been saying these kind of things since beta. And yet, for the most part we continue to be left out, eternally the red-headed stepchild of the tanker powersets.
Overall, the patch on test puts Ice further behind. Not only is our best ability capped, but Ice Tankers are now also susceptible to Fear and Confuse effects. Plus, with all of the new -regen powers in the game, one of the main methods of Ice tanker damage mitigation took a hit; Health.
More and more, it feels to me like the devs just don't understand their own game. And we're one of the powersets that has to suffer for it, because of this. 
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Unlike Invincibility, the defense is to all Attack types (except psionics). Also, with the short recharge time, you can actually STACK this power. So although you are limited to 5 foes buffing you in one click, of you can reduce the recharge enough, you can get double the defense bonus from a second Click.
The power is still quite massive, and probably still too powerful.
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Okay...my question is this:
How was I supposed to know that Energy Absorption did not provide defense to Psionic? Unlike Wet Ice, nowhere in the description does it say that.
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Also, if you don't slot your other armors
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Maybe that was the intention of this change to EA, so Ice tanker will pick up their other armors and slot them. As it currently stood, it seemed that Ice tankers could easily get by with just Wet Ice and EA.
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You have never played an Ice tanker before, have you? No good tanker is going to be able to TANK by only using those two armors (Here I'm assuming that the tanker took all his armors up to lvl 26, then respec-ed out of them)
If there is an armor that I can see people not taking (or at least not 6-slotting) is Glacial Armor, and even so I feel that's a really stupid move! There are way too many mobs that do Energy/Negative energy only atacks (Outcasts, Vampiry, Clockworks, Sappers, Kheldians :if you're into PvP, and you get one or two "evil" Kheldians during missions, too:, Voids, Quantum mobs, Freakshow, Neuron's Grey Robots, Antimatter's Blue Robots, Rikti, many AV's... Those are the ones I can remember right now)
Please also notice how must energy/neg-energy either lower your defense, or drains your end. In fact, most mobs are going to lower your defense (That's why putting a cap to our defense is a very stupid thing to do... Defense is all we have!)
If you want to be a good Ice Tanker you can't just go running around with only 2 armors! You need them all, and you need them with at least 4 Def Enh each.
Also, you CAN NOT rely on EA to fight AV's... Unless they're -2 or lower to you.
Please, go back to the beggining of this threat and read all the posts. You're going ot find even more insigh.
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You can preach that all you want LeMoiCavalier, it doesn't change the fact that there are numerous Ice tankers our there who skip their Armors, thinking that Wet Ice + EA will get them by, probably still going off of the pre-I3 mentality. I rarely see an ice tanker with glacier armor, even though more and more are starting to get Frozen Armor. This is probably a move in the direction to get them to get ALL their armors.
Also, I didn't think of AV fights because, personally, I don't know if I would want to rely on an ice tanker, even with maxed out defenses, to go against one, especially since I usually end up in teams fighting 2-3+ AVs 
.
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Okay...my question is this:
How was I supposed to know that Energy Absorption did not provide defense to Psionic? Unlike Wet Ice, nowhere in the description does it say that.
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It's not been checked heavily against the I4 listing, but here are some outstanding Ice armor bugs. I think there was a more complete listing somewhere, but I'm too tired to find it.
I think stuff like Glacial Armor still having a broken animation (yes, on Test) but EA being mildly nerfed is really what is annoying the Ice tankers (all 5 of us).
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You can preach that all you want LeMoiCavalier, it doesn't change the fact that there are numerous Ice tankers our there who skip their Armors, thinking that Wet Ice + EA will get them by, probably still going off of the pre-I3 mentality. I rarely see an ice tanker with glacier armor, even though more and more are starting to get Frozen Armor. This is probably a move in the direction to get them to get ALL their armors.
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I disagree.
I've not seen that many Ice tankers, even since I3. However, I've never actually talked to an ice tanker in game, or even on the forums, who actually runs without even taking the other armors. I cannot imagine doing so. I've heard it mentioned as a 'possible move, but really dangerous'. If you want to be a Scrank, it's probably viable- but not if you want to tank heavily.
And hey, who doens't like being the anti-sapper tank.
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You can preach that all you want LeMoiCavalier, it doesn't change the fact that there are numerous Ice tankers our there who skip their Armors, thinking that Wet Ice + EA will get them by, probably still going off of the pre-I3 mentality. I rarely see an ice tanker with glacier armor, even though more and more are starting to get Frozen Armor.
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And THAT is the reason why everytime I'm invited into a team with another Ice Tanker (Or any tanker who is a scrapper-wannabe for that matter) I get: "Wow!" and "Damn! You're awesome!"
So yes! I'm going to keep preaching. If you want to be a good Tanker you need all of your armors with lots of slots.
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This is probably a move in the direction to get them to get ALL their armors.
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If that's the reason that's a very poor reason. And if in fact they keep this change my Ice Tanker is going to become Stone.
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Also, I didn't think of AV fights because, personally, I don't know if I would want to rely on an ice tanker, even with maxed out defenses, to go against one, especially since I usually end up in teams fighting 2-3+ AVs .
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You can't rely on an Ice tanker for AV fight is they're only using WI and EA, that's for sure. But you're right, we can't tank a lot of AV out there, when it comes to AV even Fire tankers can do better, since they can pop lucks or use any other kind of external power to gain defense.
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It's not been checked heavily against the I4 listing, but here are some outstanding Ice armor bugs. I think there was a more complete listing somewhere, but I'm too tired to find it.
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Having been the keeper of the original list and that updated one I will tell you that that is the most up to date list of bugs. But no, it has not been tested against I4 yet, and I probably won't get to that until next week.
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Also, I didn't think of AV fights because, personally, I don't know if I would want to rely on an ice tanker, even with maxed out defenses, to go against one, especially since I usually end up in teams fighting 2-3+ AVs .
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Thanks for that. It puts the whole thing into perspective really.
I know Statesman has read my PMs to him about this (thank you Read Receipts!!!), and Ice Armor in general over the last month -- he probably just thinks I'm chicken little at this point.
I want to be clear here too. I'm not at this point complaining about PvP, how the heck could I be? I haven't logged a character into test in the past few days (though I have logged in to clear some slots for copying).
This issue is clearly a PvM performance issue with how Ice Tankers stack up versus the supposed baseline of Tanking (Statesman said it was the baseline) -- the Invuln Tanker.
The simple fact is that it doesn't. And that issue needs resolution. And it should get it going into I4 because you can't have PvP balance without PvM balance no matter how much different powers can/will work in PvP -- you have to walk before you can kite (sorry PvP joke).
Here's more proof for you, Circeus. I hope that you don't mind I borrowed your post, Robot_Lawyer:
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Ok, from the moment i made my ice tank i knew that to tank the Eden Trial was gonna be one of the ultimate tests. Well, I just got done with and yikes....it was pretty rough. In response to Geko's remarks on Energy Absorb and to anyone of who has been debating the balance between the ice set and the others I say, make no further comments on ice armor until youve tanked the Eden Trial. That one TF alone is full of obvious reasons why Ice is just not the set the numbers say it is. From auto hits to overcoming defense with DE eminators, it's all there. And while I tend to side with the Dev's on most of the issues, playing the Trial tonight makes me a little confused how Geko could think EA might still be overpowered. What? Even with the EA on live (im writing this pre issue 4) that final room was a huge mess. There were so many eminators dropped that even with EA almost every attack was hitting me--for full damage of course. The critics need to understand how easily defense is overcome in this game. And every baddie in the trial was only +1 to me. I stand in utter confusion...what do the devs see that I do not?
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Here's a link to the original on the Tanker forums.
For the record guys... here's the thing we weren't told about the Energy Absorbtion change in the patch notes. Not only is it now limited to getting defense buffs from only 5 foes, but it now only drains endurance from those same 5 foes. Everything else in the radius of Energy Absorbtion no longer looses endurance.
And to boot you don't get to pick which 5 get hit/loose the end. So you can no longer use the End Drain to try to lock down bosses.
So its not just 1 nerf its 2.
I'm sorry, but even if you're going to limit the defense buff to 5 the End Drain should still affect everything -- its a major part of the power, and one I know I heavily rely on (well vs foes that don't regenerate Endurance fast).
This is frakin' silly.
C'mon, cut us some slack and give us something. The change is over the top. Who the heck spends the time to nerf a single power in a set that already significantly underperforms not once, but twice.
Sheesh.
Sorry if you missed it, but its in there:
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The Ice Tanker doesn't change from above's floor accuracy example:
100 * 0.75 = 75 hits after CE
75 * 0.05 = 3.75 hits
3.75 * 250 = 937.5 gross/net damage
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CE being Chilling Embrace. 25% less hits is 75% hits.