[ QUOTE ]
I've seen more than a few people crying for Ice Tankers to have their own place to give feedback. And since we've already planned to change Unyielding some, a few think we're ignoring Ice in favor of Invulnerabilty. So I wanted to start this thread.
Interesting. As those drops in accuracy help the more flat rated "defense" based ATs, that's encouraging. I think that some information on some powers being bugged might be useful, so that people understand that they aren't being ignored.
The AV/Monster and Rulari "nerf" is well appreciated by the non-defense characters too though! 
Here's a couple of changes coming that I think will help:
Reduced Accuracy of Minion level Turrets from 75% to 58%.
Reduced Accuracy of Lieutenant level Turrets from 94% to 65%.
Reduced Accuracy of Boss level Turrets from 113% to 75%.
Reduced Accuracy of Snipers from 75% to 65%.
Reduced Accuracy of Archvillains from 90% to 75%.
Reduced Accuracy of Giant Monsters from 90% to 75%.
Reduced Accuracy of Monument Minions from 75% to 58%.
Reduced Accuracy of Rularuu Bosses from 90% to 75%.
BIG thanks to Circeus, for his tireless devotion to all that is Ice Tankerish. Hip hip hooray!
PLEASE keep the discussion limited to Ice Tankers. Anything else will be removed.
[/ QUOTE ]
Um, my comments went away somewhere? Odd.
That 20% off the top of accuracy does give any defense based character a fairly large boost.
I think people are still worried about a couple of powers that seem bugged or don't work though, so a comment on "fixing that" or "working as intended" may need to be handed down from on high! 
The interesting change with this is that AVs and Monsters (and Rulari!) are now not quite as tough for the non-defense based characters, which I think is good.
Still here, even after all this time!
So how is this a buff for ice tanks, exactly?
Dawnslayer on Virtue.
Dino Girl's main concern...
Please tell us if the zero defence on Wet Ice and Energy Absorption is working as intended? The patch notes say they were reduced, but it seams that they were nulified.
On the chance that they are not supposed to give appreciable defence any more, I have some sugestions...
#1 Raise the base defence values of FA and GA to their original values to make up for the loss of defense from WI and EA. The defence values against Sm/Le/En/Neg will still be much lower than I4 levels with the loss of WI & EA's defence boosts.
#2 The loss of all defence against Fire is terrible, but Permafrost can be made to take up the slack here and work as originally intended. 9% res vs. Fire is the best anyone will get from FA since slotting it for resistance will be completely out of the question in I4 (I did find it useful previously for specific Fire AV fights). Why not double the Fire resistance of Permafrost to 20%? This will help compensate for zero Fire defence. I think that should be done at a minumum, but if you gave it maybe 9% vs. Psy as well it would turn into a power well worth taking and slotting.
I enjoy a challenge, otherwise I wouldn't have got Dino Girl up to level 42. I am looking forward to some of the challenges that I5 has in store for us, but I do hope that Ice Tanks end up equal to other tank's performances.
Wow... And I had my hopes up that States had addressed Ice Tank problems.
1st, thank you for at least posting that it is a "known issue" that Ice tanks are the weakest Tank, and a good bit below the others. Now just for those fixes:
Are the changes above for Ice Tanks only? If not, everybody will love them. But Ice doesn't take special advantage of this. In fact, since Ice is supposed to be the "best" at defense, we stand the best chance of flooring a mobs chance to hit us. Thus, lowering Accuracy makes it easier for us to do that, but helps everybody else MORE.
Ice tanks on LIVE are currently having problems with AV's and Monsters and accuracy [censored]'s. We currently have tons of defense to throw at them. Assuming a good Ice tank has the AV down to 5%, we are still currently getting squished by them if they hit us one time (for some of them). Now take I5 into account, and lower our defense. No change to AV damage, thus unless we can try to maintain that 5% chance for the AV to hit us, they are now more likely to instantly kill us. Lower their To-Hit (as you post here), and we're back down to 5%... but still no better off then on live, which is a KNOWN ISSUE as to problems Ice Tankers are having.
I understand that you don't want to throw the whole set into chaos. But really... Permafrost. 'Nuff said. Hibernate?
I love the ideas for damage debuffing from Ice Tanks. I love the idea that Hibernate would be our "unstoppable" click-power for late game AV's. I love the idea that you could introduce resistance inspirations. I love the idea that Permafrost could give me a fancy looking aura and make loud sucking sounds on my PC and still do more then it currently does.
But lowering mob To-Hit, as a Helping Hand for Ice Tanks? I'm not feeling the love. 
No one's yet mentioned anything about the ice tanker's 'top' ability being essentially rest? I think that's pretty cool for a blaster APP power, but a tank? Naturally I'd like to see that go for something a little more useful (or at least stylish), but ignoring that for the moment, I think there are other more important concerns no one seems to be bringing up.
Low level ice tankering is quite painful. I needed sometimes multiple bubblers to take on spawns for a team of 8, before having energy absorption.
I noticed a few here mentioning removing permafrost. Now, even though permafrost should be "ideally useless" since if you're defending thoroughly enough you shouldn't need all that extra resistance, it's still exactly the kind of cheesy thing that just needs to exist in the ice set, just like any other elemental set (fire - temp prot).
Icicles however, dont really have any reason to exist. Ice already has a suitable and handy pbaoe-ness through chilling embrace. So I'd call that fair game for replacement (even though I tend to be a sucker for the pbaoe minor damage toggles)
Energy absorption granting endurance, that's really good. I like that. The ability to defend through offense, more endurance for more attacks, kill them before they kill you and all that. Especially since my ice tanker is stone melee, I really know how to appreciate endurance ;p.
But the lower level icing, and still through the higher levels, sometimes defense just doesn't cut it. Defense is a really hard thing to balance, it's either not good enough, or so good it needs to be fixed, there really is no middle ground when dealing strictly with avoidance-defense. Some thought's I've had was stuff like giving a +regen somewhere (like earth's rooted), or a decent self-heal (like regen's-reconstruction, or peacebringer's-reform essence) I dont exactly enjoy the thought of mis-using hoarfrost as a self-heal, instead of the hp-boost it's meant to be.
And I saw something about energy absorption being good for a group, but once it's just the single AV (or lots of considerably lethal bosses will fit this) left alive, energy absorption has nothing left to play with, and it's not long until you get cranked. so um about that.. just uh.. "yes".
ok, here's to hoping this gets well noticed, and not swamped out...
(.. why is my top ability super-rest?)
They call me the Super-Genius of Justice for a reason... but they forgot what it was.
--------------------
"Awesome... Awesome to the Max..."
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Zero Tolerance: Get your towels ready.
[ QUOTE ]
Once, twice, three times the thank yous.
For a place. For the acc changes. And for the shout out to me.
The Acc changes are nice... but they're only a start, as they also leave some issues still in place that I'd like to see addressed (specifically regarding accuracy) - each of which are strongly exacerbated by the changes on test:
1) Swarms (both regular and Devouring Swarms) need either a lower Accuracy, a lower rate of attack, or quite possibly both. They're a pet/underling. And yet, because of Taunt Aura's and Punchvoke they will stick on a Tanker like glue, and not let up in a most unrelenting fashion. They need to be reigned in big time.
This is a huge issue for DEF only since they have no way of naturally toning down the damage leaving either Tough or Health as the only ways out. This is more an issue for younger Ice Tankers. Chilling Embrace's Slow doesn't much cut into their attack rate, but its what attracts them, and yet you can't exactly turn it off, since you need it on to help protect you from other things around you.
2) Auto-hit aura's on AVs have got to go (e.g., the Envoy of Shadows). Without anything sitting behind DEF, these powers basically negate any defenses for an Ice Tanker leaving them soft and squishy. Again the only real way to help with them is Health.
3) Mobs that can buff each other's Accuracy or debuff DEF seem to have strong abilities in this area. Devouring Earth Quartz Beacons are a great example, as they seem to impart at least +100% Accuracy to other DE. I did notice that the length of time that Nemesis Vengeance lasts seems to be shorter on Test server right now, which is a big boon here. More changes like this need to come.
4) Base PvP Accuracy is 75%. This means that from the get-go an Ice Tankers Defenses are nullified come I5. Not to mention that 1 Accuracy Enhancer will cap that Accuracy for a non-AoE power. Weapon draw sets get +5% Accuracy. The prevalence of BuildUp, Aim, Focused Accuracy, etc. A DEF based melee set is utterly crippled in PvP. It'd be nice to know if this is going to be addressed somehow.
*****
Now I'd like to dive to other Ice Tanker issues. Many of which were covered in my PM to you, but I'd like to see them answered publically.
For starters... currently on the Test Server Ice Tankers look like this (base values):
Frozen Armor: 15% DEF Smash/Lethal, 30% RES Cold, 10% RES Fire
Wet Ice: negligible DEF, 30% RES Cold
Glacial Armor: 15% DEF Energy/Negative, 30% RES Cold
Energy Absorption: negligible DEF
Permafrost: 20% RES Cold, 10% RES Fire
Hoarfrost: 20% RES Toxic
Max slotted for DEF/RES as appropriate that leaves us at:
33% DEF Smash/Lethal
33% DEF Energy/Negative
134% RES Cold (90% RES Cold w/out Permafrost)
32% RES Fire (10% RES Fire w/out Permafrost)
20% RES Toxic (due to slotting concerns Hoarfrost doesn't get slotted for RES by 99% of people who have it)
So based on this I have a number of questions:
0) Why were Ice Tankers, who were clearly on the bottom of the Tanker barrel to begin with, having been on par with Invuln Scrappers defensively, hit so hard for this Issue?
1) Was the Slow Resistance fixed on Wet Ice? The patch note only mentions fixing it for Energy Absorption, and yet on live Wet Ice has the same bug.
2) Why is Wet Ice no longer offering a measurable amount of DEF? Is this intentional? If not, what can we expect here in the future in the way of DEF?
3) Question (2) but sub "Wet Ice" with "Energy Absorption"?
4) Is this the face of Ice Tankers going forward defensively? You've put us into a range defensively where we're only maginally better than an SR Scrapper (our base DEFs are slightly higher, but their DEF is total coverage, whereas ours is not). And when they pop Elude they end up with a much higher DEF than our totals.
This means our defenses are down in the low end of Scrapper range for I5, and yet we are not being subsequently provided with a compensation for this - Scrappers get their damage, what do we get as Ice Tankers?
5) Can you please! please! please! do something with Permafrost? It just sits there, and because its highly redundant with the RES in our other Armors it ends up not being taken by a large majority of Ice Tankers.
There are two things I could see you doing here:
a) Remove Permafrost completely, then either replace it with something new and exciting, and attractive, OR slide the powers that come after it down one tier (Icicles, Glacial Armor, Energy Absorption, and Hibernate). This would make room for a more exiting and melee oriented power at level 32 (more on this below).
b) Make Permafrost more attractive. Add Toxic RES to it (in addition to what's on Hoarfrost). Maybe throw in some Smashing/Lethal RES so we don't have to pool dive for Tough (a situation that the Test Server changes don't make any less necessary). How about Psi Resistance (the mind is as densly cold as the body).
6) If we are to have such a strong weakness to Fire, why must Ice Tankers also be weak towards Psi? And please don't answer this with more than "Psi is the Tanker weakness", because we both know that Stone Tanks get Psi defenses. Also please don't try to tell me that Chilling Embrace covers this, we both know Psi attacks are all ranged, and CE is a melee range effect on foes.
7) Can Chilling Embrace please be changed to not take level into account when affecting higher (or lower) level foes? It just falls off too rapidly to be as useful as its supposed to be. Even on a heroic mission with other teammates you can see mobs as high as +2, and that 25% drops down to 20% by that point, so it ends up not being as "equivalent" to RES as it should be.
8) If Chilling Embrace is really intended as a RES substitute (which is something I've always felt it was supposed to be), then can it please get a larger AoE for Tankers, to potentially affect more at range. Right now since it only affects melee range, its offers no protection at range at all.
9) The Hibernate lunch list:
a) Can it please not turn off any powers.
b) Can we please be able to turn on powers while using it.
c) In the advent that you choose to leave it the level 32 power, can you make it more melee friendly? Perhaps a Taunt Radius? an AoE "Bitter Frost" that causes a slow like Chilling Embrace? Or maybe just let Chilling Embrace work while its active?
d) Its nice that it heals, but there's no way to make that heal avaialble often enough to be of great use. The best recharge you can eck out of it is 16s and that requires perma-Hasten and 6 recharge enhancements. As most Ice Tanker deaths occur in the span of 5-10 seconds, that recharge time will never be fast enough. It basically has to be useful all the time more or less.
10) Cut the End cost of Icicles by at least half. The 1.5 EPS that it is on live is just way too high.
11) Why doesn't Glacial Armor (E/N DEF) protect vs Rikti Swords (S/E damage)? (please say bug!!!)
12) Despite all the Accuracy changes listed above, this does not at all address the fact that attacks performed by AVs and Monsters are designed to kill characters with capped or very high RES. There are some AVs who have attacks that can one shot a full green health bar of Hoarfrosted health. This has to go. You need to either reign in the attacks of AVs and Monsters to reasonable levels, or you need to provide a means whereby DEF based builds (Ice Tanks and SR Scrappers) do not get one-shot killed. Melee classes have defense, but vs large attacks DEF withouth RES is quite meaningless. And there's nothing a healer or anyone else on your team can do to alleviate this - except perhaps some RES buffs from an SB or Dark Defender, but to say we have to get those all the time is ludicrous. A real solution needs to be provided.
*****
In short, I mostly just want to know what we can expect in the way of actually being made to look like Tankers again? Because right now, on test, we don't look like much of anything anyone would ever want to play or play with.
Thank you for your time.
[/ QUOTE ]
Now that we have the Devs attention we have to make use of it. We need Answers Statesman. You gave us another global problem solution but we Ice Tanks are still waitng on answers.We are the DEF based Tanker Set remember that.
Awesome post, but 2 things:
[ QUOTE ]
First off, some unpleasantries; Paying subscribers requesting acknowledgment of issues and soliciting feedback is no where in the same vicinity as crying.
[/ QUOTE ]
First four definitions of "cry" at dictionary.com:
1. To sob or shed tears because of grief, sorrow, or pain; weep.
2. To call loudly; shout.
3. To utter a characteristic sound or call. Used of an animal.
4. To demand or require immediate action or remedy: grievances crying out for redress.
Only number 1 refers to tears. The context of his usage of "cry" seemed pretty clear to me that it was not meant as an insult. Players have not factually been insulted by Statesman in this post - they have misunderstood his choice of words. Hurray for drama.
[ QUOTE ]
This thread is located in the Tanker forum: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showf...Number=3345605 plus a bunch of unnecessary stuff that makes everyone have to scroll left and right to read posts
[/ QUOTE ]
There are two windows that pop up when you insert a link. The first is for the web address. The second is for a label (hopefully short) for the link that will be visible.
[ QUOTE ]
I've seen more than a few people crying for Ice Tankers to have their own place to give feedback. And since we've already planned to change Unyielding some, a few think we're ignoring Ice in favor of Invulnerabilty. So I wanted to start this thread.
Here's a couple of changes coming that I think will help:
Reduced Accuracy of Minion level Turrets from 75% to 58%.
Reduced Accuracy of Lieutenant level Turrets from 94% to 65%.
Reduced Accuracy of Boss level Turrets from 113% to 75%.
Reduced Accuracy of Snipers from 75% to 65%.
Reduced Accuracy of Archvillains from 90% to 75%.
Reduced Accuracy of Giant Monsters from 90% to 75%.
Reduced Accuracy of Monument Minions from 75% to 58%.
Reduced Accuracy of Rularuu Bosses from 90% to 75%.
BIG thanks to Circeus, for his tireless devotion to all that is Ice Tankerish. Hip hip hooray!
PLEASE keep the discussion limited to Ice Tankers. Anything else will be removed.
[/ QUOTE ]
Welcome to City of Stormtroopers...
Sorry, but I don't understand this change, there are better solutions for Ice Tankers. They will still be sub-par. Add some Res to them, but this solution will affect everyone.
Speaking mainly as a FF defender and as a SR scrapper, but this is also relevant to Ice tanks.
All defenses has two main problems; Scaling and Accuracy Boosting. This makes defense test better than it is in actual stress situations.
Everyone knows about the scaling problem. I won't go into it in detail, but in short; when foes get more dangerous, your defenses gets worse. This can be because the level of foes increase or because their rank increases. Thus, defense needs to be better than Resistance in run-of-the mill situations vs. Even-con minions, worsening to about the same as the situation grows more dangerous. This is since you generally die when the situation gets worse, not when it is running as usual. This point seems to have been missed in all the defense translations to I5, and it is easy to miss in testing as well.
Now on to accuracy. Accuracy buffs and defense debuffs in this game is just too prevalent for Defense to be a viable defense throughout the game. Every blaster and defender has them, most scrappers have them, all players have them in inspirations, Nemesis have them, Devouring Earth have them, Crey has them (radiologists), all bladed weapons have them (yes, even Hellions!). The situation in PvP is particularly staggering, but it is definitely bad enough in PvE that it needs to be looked at.
In other words, while defense may look good in "routine" testing, it has too many situations where it is debuffed - its Kryptonite is way too common. Once again something that easily slips through routine tests.
A fix to defense, that is quite drastic, is to change defense from a to-hit penalty to a miss chance. Say you now have a 10% defense - this reduces a minion's effective damage by 20%. This could be replaced by a straight 20% miss chance. No scaling, same to all attacks, immune to accuracy boosts, works the same way to AVs as to -5 minions. Almost evens the playing field to resistance sets, but does not address one-shotting at all. Defense would still be inferior, but at least it would be the same across the board. But I fear this is too drastic a solution.
States, just let me say thank you for taking the time to address some of our concerns and put them up a in a solid thread for us.
But (there had to be one right) I think we were looking for some actual answers here. From the testing that has been undertaken it would seem that Wet Ice is no longer providing any noticible defense bonus (please tell me this is a bug) and Energy Absrobtion is now so weak that we may as well take Tough/Weave instead (doubley please tell me this is a bug). Add onto that the fact that Permafrost is still basically useless, Icicles costs way too much end for the benefit it provides and that Hibernate does not compare well to other level 9 primary powers and well we still feel like we're getting the short end of the stick.
On top of that we're still waiting to hear if our Slow Resistance from Wet Ice is going to be fixed to is scales correctly and we're also waiting to hear is the Slow effect from Chilling Embrace is going to be fixed so it scales to higher levels correctly.
The major issue I have is that as things stand on the test server my Ice tanker can barely handle 4-6 opponents without death. For a tanker this is terrible, I know you want to stop herding but surely we should at least be able to handle bad guys into double figures.
So thanks for the changes and the little bit on info, but we really were looking for some more detailed response and some feedback on what is going to be done to address the glaring problems with our powerset.
Was this just a "I want to post about these global changes and have to make an Ice Tankers thread so I'll kill two birds with one stone" post?
Why thank Circeus for all of his work (and it is an amazing amouth) and then ignore every question, concern, and issue that were raised by his findings?
I don't think I can add ANYTHING to this thread, Circeus has once again covered all bases. However, I have to admit, after seeing State's threat to Ice tanks, I will not be surprised if most of Circeus's work goes unnoticed and unheeded.
-Kendal believes this is her first pessimistic post....and is saddened
[ QUOTE ]
Once, twice, three times the thank yous.
For a place. For the acc changes. And for the shout out to me.
The Acc changes are nice... but they're only a start, as they also leave some issues still in place that I'd like to see addressed (specifically regarding accuracy) - each of which are strongly exacerbated by the changes on test:
1) Swarms (both regular and Devouring Swarms) need either a lower Accuracy, a lower rate of attack, or quite possibly both. They're a pet/underling. And yet, because of Taunt Aura's and Punchvoke they will stick on a Tanker like glue, and not let up in a most unrelenting fashion. They need to be reigned in big time.
This is a huge issue for DEF only since they have no way of naturally toning down the damage leaving either Tough or Health as the only ways out. This is more an issue for younger Ice Tankers. Chilling Embrace's Slow doesn't much cut into their attack rate, but its what attracts them, and yet you can't exactly turn it off, since you need it on to help protect you from other things around you.
2) Auto-hit aura's on AVs have got to go (e.g., the Envoy of Shadows). Without anything sitting behind DEF, these powers basically negate any defenses for an Ice Tanker leaving them soft and squishy. Again the only real way to help with them is Health.
3) Mobs that can buff each other's Accuracy or debuff DEF seem to have strong abilities in this area. Devouring Earth Quartz Beacons are a great example, as they seem to impart at least +100% Accuracy to other DE. I did notice that the length of time that Nemesis Vengeance lasts seems to be shorter on Test server right now, which is a big boon here. More changes like this need to come.
4) Base PvP Accuracy is 75%. This means that from the get-go an Ice Tankers Defenses are nullified come I5. Not to mention that 1 Accuracy Enhancer will cap that Accuracy for a non-AoE power. Weapon draw sets get +5% Accuracy. The prevalence of BuildUp, Aim, Focused Accuracy, etc. A DEF based melee set is utterly crippled in PvP. It'd be nice to know if this is going to be addressed somehow.
*****
Now I'd like to dive to other Ice Tanker issues. Many of which were covered in my PM to you, but I'd like to see them answered publically.
For starters... currently on the Test Server Ice Tankers look like this (base values):
Frozen Armor: 15% DEF Smash/Lethal, 30% RES Cold, 10% RES Fire
Wet Ice: negligible DEF, 30% RES Cold
Glacial Armor: 15% DEF Energy/Negative, 30% RES Cold
Energy Absorption: negligible DEF
Permafrost: 20% RES Cold, 10% RES Fire
Hoarfrost: 20% RES Toxic
Max slotted for DEF/RES as appropriate that leaves us at:
33% DEF Smash/Lethal
33% DEF Energy/Negative
134% RES Cold (90% RES Cold w/out Permafrost)
32% RES Fire (10% RES Fire w/out Permafrost)
20% RES Toxic (due to slotting concerns Hoarfrost doesn't get slotted for RES by 99% of people who have it)
So based on this I have a number of questions:
0) Why were Ice Tankers, who were clearly on the bottom of the Tanker barrel to begin with, having been on par with Invuln Scrappers defensively, hit so hard for this Issue?
1) Was the Slow Resistance fixed on Wet Ice? The patch note only mentions fixing it for Energy Absorption, and yet on live Wet Ice has the same bug.
2) Why is Wet Ice no longer offering a measurable amount of DEF? Is this intentional? If not, what can we expect here in the future in the way of DEF?
3) Question (2) but sub "Wet Ice" with "Energy Absorption"?
4) Is this the face of Ice Tankers going forward defensively? You've put us into a range defensively where we're only maginally better than an SR Scrapper (our base DEFs are slightly higher, but their DEF is total coverage, whereas ours is not). And when they pop Elude they end up with a much higher DEF than our totals.
This means our defenses are down in the low end of Scrapper range for I5, and yet we are not being subsequently provided with a compensation for this - Scrappers get their damage, what do we get as Ice Tankers?
5) Can you please! please! please! do something with Permafrost? It just sits there, and because its highly redundant with the RES in our other Armors it ends up not being taken by a large majority of Ice Tankers.
There are two things I could see you doing here:
a) Remove Permafrost completely, then either replace it with something new and exciting, and attractive, OR slide the powers that come after it down one tier (Icicles, Glacial Armor, Energy Absorption, and Hibernate). This would make room for a more exiting and melee oriented power at level 32 (more on this below).
b) Make Permafrost more attractive. Add Toxic RES to it (in addition to what's on Hoarfrost). Maybe throw in some Smashing/Lethal RES so we don't have to pool dive for Tough (a situation that the Test Server changes don't make any less necessary). How about Psi Resistance (the mind is as densly cold as the body).
6) If we are to have such a strong weakness to Fire, why must Ice Tankers also be weak towards Psi? And please don't answer this with more than "Psi is the Tanker weakness", because we both know that Stone Tanks get Psi defenses. Also please don't try to tell me that Chilling Embrace covers this, we both know Psi attacks are all ranged, and CE is a melee range effect on foes.
7) Can Chilling Embrace please be changed to not take level into account when affecting higher (or lower) level foes? It just falls off too rapidly to be as useful as its supposed to be. Even on a heroic mission with other teammates you can see mobs as high as +2, and that 25% drops down to 20% by that point, so it ends up not being as "equivalent" to RES as it should be.
8) If Chilling Embrace is really intended as a RES substitute (which is something I've always felt it was supposed to be), then can it please get a larger AoE for Tankers, to potentially affect more at range. Right now since it only affects melee range, its offers no protection at range at all.
9) The Hibernate lunch list:
a) Can it please not turn off any powers.
b) Can we please be able to turn on powers while using it.
c) In the advent that you choose to leave it the level 32 power, can you make it more melee friendly? Perhaps a Taunt Radius? an AoE "Bitter Frost" that causes a slow like Chilling Embrace? Or maybe just let Chilling Embrace work while its active?
d) Its nice that it heals, but there's no way to make that heal avaialble often enough to be of great use. The best recharge you can eck out of it is 16s and that requires perma-Hasten and 6 recharge enhancements. As most Ice Tanker deaths occur in the span of 5-10 seconds, that recharge time will never be fast enough. It basically has to be useful all the time more or less.
10) Cut the End cost of Icicles by at least half. The 1.5 EPS that it is on live is just way too high.
11) Why doesn't Glacial Armor (E/N DEF) protect vs Rikti Swords (S/E damage)? (please say bug!!!)
12) Despite all the Accuracy changes listed above, this does not at all address the fact that attacks performed by AVs and Monsters are designed to kill characters with capped or very high RES. There are some AVs who have attacks that can one shot a full green health bar of Hoarfrosted health. This has to go. You need to either reign in the attacks of AVs and Monsters to reasonable levels, or you need to provide a means whereby DEF based builds (Ice Tanks and SR Scrappers) do not get one-shot killed. Melee classes have defense, but vs large attacks DEF withouth RES is quite meaningless. And there's nothing a healer or anyone else on your team can do to alleviate this - except perhaps some RES buffs from an SB or Dark Defender, but to say we have to get those all the time is ludicrous. A real solution needs to be provided.
*****
In short, I mostly just want to know what we can expect in the way of actually being made to look like Tankers again? Because right now, on test, we don't look like much of anything anyone would ever want to play or play with.
Thank you for your time.
[/ QUOTE ]
Many thanks to Circeus, and I would also like these concerns answered please.
[ QUOTE ]
Umm...anyone else wondering what a monument minion is? And I didnt know urrents had bosses, luts, and minions...
[/ QUOTE ]
Go to Striga Island. Yes, Tuirrets have bosses, lt's and minions.
'If Champions Online is what "CoH was supposed to be", I'm glad that I have what I have rather than "what it was supposed to be".' - The Alt oholic
"I solo'd Hamidon...but I also totally cheated." - Back Alley Brawler
"It is still early. Someone is going to get stabbed tonight I can feel it." - Ishmael (said in Jello Shooters chat)
first off, let me thank circeus for all your hard work on us ice tankers
some concerns that have come into my mind:
with that testing of only being able to get 33% defense, this is starting to look very bad that we cant even floor the accuracy of an even level minions with our primary set
also looking at why the wet ice and energy absorption are providing neglible def, those were our only 2 powers that covered almost everything
permafrost is pretty much useless and should be replaced with something more useful
in conclusion, some changes I would like to see:
give us some kind of ability to not get 1 shotted, maybe have a cap on damage anything can do to a tanker to about 33% of their hp in 1 hit
increase the def on wet ice and energy absorption so we can at least floor acc of even level minions, maybe even lieuts
increase the bonus of def from energy absorption based on mobs(lets say x amount for minions, 1.5x for lieut, 2x for bosses, and 5x for Av/monsters/pvp)
it is kind of sad that anyone can get the same def as an ice tank with 1-2 lucks, so i think it may be nice to have resistance inspirations(ice tanks could pop in 1-2 to survive against an alpha at least)
let us toggle up powers while in hibernate
replace permafrost with something useful(or add some more resistances to it, like 10% resist all cept psionics, invul gets a few defense powers for all, we should get a resistance power for all)
also heard an idea mentioned somewhere of letting ice armor get an increased amount of hp with each defense toggle they have up, could also help the fact of not having resist(probably be nice for SR scrappers also)
i dont expect all that stuff to be done, but just a few of them would be nice, thanx for listening
I, too, would like to thank everyone for all their hard work at ferreting out what exactly is going on with Ice/. I can safely say that I'm no number cruncher, and I don't know all the percentages, etc., that come from toggling my armor on, but I can tell when I am a Tank, and when I am Useless.
Just recently on Test, my roommate and I went on a mission in Croatoa, and against a few even con and +con minions/lieutenants, I was whacked. Now, I could have easily been hot-headed in my unflappable trust that, as an Ice/ Tank, I could take the beating necessary to allow my Blaster friend the chance to do what she does best. However, getting knocked down in barely the time it took to register what was going on, it aggravated me a bit. I chalked it up to poor tanking and resolved to use my head more, until my friend informed me of the changes to my armor set. A bit of research and reading posts showed that the changes to DEF were implemented to stop exploitations and to encourage balance.
It may just be me, so please forgive this comment, but I have been feeling unnecessary as a character for some time. /Ice isn't the damage powerhouse some of the other Tank melees are - I was okay with that. I felt the only redemption my character had was that I had the defense of a tiny god, and could be the Tank my friends and teammates needed when the chips were down. With this DEF decrease - which I have noted painfully - I feel that my character has been relegated to uselessness for good. What purpose has a Tank who cannot, in fact, tank? Should I have wasted the whole year it took for me to level my Tanker because there are (justified) concerns of exploitations from other power sets? It has been a struggle for me to work on this character (which could be mistakes on my own side, surely), and with these changes I'm considering whether or not to swap out mains for a character that can do what the AT should.
There are no hidden jibes here at the people behind the game; this has been an enjoyable game, minus the usual player frustration. But, I'd like to be able to Tank properly, without having to retire my poor frigid girl in favor of a flammable or invulnerable or rocky lady. I like Ice/Ice, I was willing to take knowing we were low on the tree of Tanks, because I knew that in the end, we could prove ourselves. Now, I don't quite feel that's the case, and it makes me a little sad. Please, look at what the others have put together, all that wonderful imput with numbers and ideas, and see if you can't do something real and tangible for us Ice/ers. I want to be able to proudly state that I play a Tank again.
"The proper office of a friend is to side with you when you are in the wrong. Nearly anybody will side with you when you are in the right."
- Mark Twain, Notebook, 1898
and
- Bart Allen, aka Impulse/Kid Flash/The Flash, Teen Titans v.3, #6
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I've seen more than a few people crying for Ice Tankers to have their own place to give feedback. And since we've already planned to change Unyielding some, a few think we're ignoring Ice in favor of Invulnerabilty. So I wanted to start this thread.
Here's a couple of changes coming that I think will help:
Reduced Accuracy of Minion level Turrets from 75% to 58%.
Reduced Accuracy of Lieutenant level Turrets from 94% to 65%.
Reduced Accuracy of Boss level Turrets from 113% to 75%.
Reduced Accuracy of Snipers from 75% to 65%.
Reduced Accuracy of Archvillains from 90% to 75%.
Reduced Accuracy of Giant Monsters from 90% to 75%.
Reduced Accuracy of Monument Minions from 75% to 58%.
Reduced Accuracy of Rularuu Bosses from 90% to 75%.
BIG thanks to Circeus, for his tireless devotion to all that is Ice Tankerish. Hip hip hooray!
PLEASE keep the discussion limited to Ice Tankers. Anything else will be removed.
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Ummm...States? How is this addressed specifically to Ice Tankers? You could have titled this Katana Scrappers and it would have the exact same meaning. Nice one. I think your 'vision' is getting a bit blurry. Maybe reading too many ancient Greek archaeology books or something.
I've only been working on my ice tank for a short time (Level 9), so I will defer to Circeus for the upper level stuff. But based on how I'm doing now, I'm gonna say that up to this point I've felt more like a underpowered ice scrapper than a tanker. I appreciate the change to acc as a whole and I'm looking forward to how you will be improving ice tanks in the near future. 
This is absurd.
We say make better stronger mobs, buff Ice tanks to make them better and they nerf every mob type.
All I can say is you want all of us to play a different game than City of Heroes. The new game is not even remotely like the old one other than in name.
I again ask - WHAT IS YOUR VISION.
If you are going to force 3 minions = 1 hero in spite of level gains and skill increases this game will become a complete grind fest.
You violated your own rules for the thread Salesman. Just what exactly does the reduction to mob accuracy have to do with Ice Tanks that doesn't also apply to all other ATs? Or are you saying that these reductions to mob accuracy apply solely to Ice Tanks as some sort of super secret inherent power that Ice Tanks have?
Oh, and the only time you can honestly say I'm crying is after I've been slicing onions.
Ice Tanks will still get hit all the time in PvP,even with these changes.
These accuracy changes affect every AT equally not just Ice tankers.
More importantly these don't address the actual questions that we are asking regarding Wet Ice and Energy absorbtion that, on test, provide pretty much neglgible defense and seriously weaken Ice Tankers.
Please could you comment on these powers and the changes in I5 letting us know whether the current situation on test was as intended or whether the defnse component will be increased again before I5 goes live.
These are our real concerns, and these are what we deserve answers to.
Thanks for at least responding, Statesman.
That said, this does nothing to address Ice tank concerns.
<ul type="square">[*]Reducing accuracy for villains is a boost to all archetypes. Ice tanks remain inferior to any other tank.[*]We lost two important armors -- Wet Ice and Energy Absorption now give no defense at all. No other archetype had powers whose defense were removed completely.[*]We still have many weaknesses -- auto-hit attacks (swarms, some auras), defense debuffs (every assault rifle and axe user), accuracy buffs (DE quartz), fire (our only defense *was* wet ice and energy absorption), and of course psi.[*]Resistance debuffs are resisted. If you have 90% resistance, you are only affected by 10% of any resistance debuff. No such mitigation exists for defense debuffs, making defense much easier to debuff than resistance.[/list]
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Defense is far, far inferior to resistance. For it to be balanced with resistance powersets, the defense must be overwhelmingly high or supplemented with other bonuses. Other bonuses you could use are health regeneration, extra hit points, mitigation of debuffs, or just add resistance to the powerset. The totally useless power Permafrost is *waiting* for a boost like this. Or just let us be inferior, but take away our weaknesses to fire and psi.
You've just made it so that every hero can better survive against special villains like AVs and monsters. Thank you. But This does nothing to help Ice, relative to other archetypes. There is no reason to bring an Ice tank into a team when any other tank -- or in some cases, a blaster or defender -- has a better chance of survival.
...
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Statesman,
Thanks for setting us up with the thread, and thanks to whoever put endurance recovery into EA, it was badly needed.
The accuracy adjsutments should help everyone adjust to the 'new' game, and it is appreciated. While we have your attention, please examine the variance in survivability between Ice tankers and the other sets. The gulf is still quite large. With the exception of malta, a well built ice tanker will underperform every other well built tanker set by a large margin. The reasons, listed previously in this thread by many players, include:
* Large number of defense debuffs/accuracy buffs
*Availability of luck inspirations to mimick (and even exceed) our power set
*Lack of cooresponding resistance inspirations to mimick resistance tanker powers
*All or nothing nature of defense, and the AV one-shot
*Severe endurance drain from running large number of toggles (probalby fixed by new EA)
*Susceptibility to fire in addition to toxic and psi
There have been many suggestions for fixing Ice, including:
*Adding more resistances
*Adding some sort of area accuracy debuff
*Adding some sort of area damage debuff
*Remove permafrost slide all the powers down a notch, and add a cool lvl 32 power
*Have Eneragy Absorption buff resistance rather than defense
*Give defense/resistance to psi and/or toxic
*Adding ablative armor
*Translating damage into DOT to give Ice a chance to recover
As far as the individual powers themselves:
*permafrost - This power clearly needs to be reworked into something useful
*hibernate - A lvl 32 primary power that is inferior to the lvl 20 pool power phase shift.
My thoughts:
Energy Absorption
First off thanks for the endurance recovery! However, when EA was changed to hit only 5 targets, Ice tankers complained about the limited number of targets being drained and the reduced taunt factor. Clearly the COH staff listened. Reducing the defense buff/mob, and increasing the number of mobs to achieve that buff to 15 would seemingly solve the broblem. And it does, except this severely aggravates the Ice Tanker AV problem. Although we can start a battle with an AV surrounded by minions, inevitiably the minions, lts, and bosses are gone long before the AV. This means that the Ice tanker will be casting EA with one mob in range at the time he most needs the defense. Ice tankers are already well known for being squishy around AVs, this will further exacerbate the problem.
I think most of the ideas for 'solutions' in this thread have merit. One thought I had was to remove permafrost, slide all the other powers down, and give ice a power similar to granite, only oriented more toward defense with a little resistance, you could even call it permafrost. This would solve several problems, but would of course introduce new ones. Another possiblility would be to turn permafrost into a 'click' resist all power which would solve most of the problems.
At a minimum I would like to see:
Reduce the vulnerability to either psi/fire/or toxic so we have two weaknesses like the other sets
Address the extreme number of def debuffs with no ability to mitigate
Address AV one/two shot problem
In short, i would like to see ice brought closer to 'par' with the rest of the tanker sets. I don't expect the pecking order to change, but it would be nice to not be so far behind.
In any case, if you are going to leave things as they are, or just do minor tweaks, please explain how Ice is the (near) equal of fire, stone, and invul. I would be really interested in knowing the build we can use that helps Ice match the other sets.
Thanks
First, thanks to Circeus for his amazing dedication to Ice Tanks. Without him, we would probably not have gotten the attention we desperately need.
I am happy to see these accuracy changes to most villians that haven't already been affected. It will help Ice Tanks feel more powerful since we won't be hit as much. These across the board changes will help everyone, especially FF defender and SR scrappers.
The next step is to realize that Defense is worse than resistance in most situations in this game. Simply because defense is less useful against higher level foes, foes with defense debuffs, villians that can boost accuracy, and other situations that come up very frequently as a higher level (30+) player. Honestly, I think the only way to help defense based sets right now is to increase the base defense of their powers. Maybe not back up to current live levels, but definately to a level higher than what we are currently seeing. Defense of 33% is nearly useless against +1 and +2 level villians, simply because of the way that their accuracy scales.
Ice Tanks need a boost to their defense as it is on test, but they also need some of their older issues looked at. The first and probably the most common complaint of an Ice Tank is the one/two shot death from AVs. Ice Armor needs a way to mitigate huge amounts of incoming damage in a short period of time in order to deal with this. I won't recap, but I've seen many excellent suggestions to deal with this issue.
Ice tanks also suffer more from endurance problems than other sets that run fewer toggles. Please consider lowering the cost on these toggles, especially Icicles. It is somewhat depressing to go into combat and lose endurance by standing still with all my armors and Icicles running. Not fun at all.
Lastly, please confirm Circeus' data (and that of other testers) and let us know if Wet Ice and Energy Absorbtion are bugged, or if the defense is just too low to be measured. This should apply to all powers for all sets from all ATs. Just let us know if there is a bug when it is discovered by your players. It will make us all sleep easier and cut down on many many posts complaining about specific changes...
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5) If tanker powersets are supposed to be (roughly) 133% of the scrapper, shouldn't Ice Tankers have far higher DEF?
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The sad part is once you cash in the RES and HEAL in the ICE set, you are at MORE then 133% of SR.
A better question is why does DEF always have to be the [censored] child of the defense types?
They finaly make some RES debuffs and the devs decide that -RES is actually a damage buff so it can kill people with no RES as well.
Why couldnt it work like the 50-odd def debuffs that stack to remove all your def armour? while leaving RES based armour untouched.
Where are the indirect res debuffs ? DEF based characters have to live with ACC buffs and To-hit buffs, where are the armour-peircing buffs ?