Well said Firebomb.
As my Ice Tank is sitting at 18 since I got back, I generally leave the comment/suggestions/feedback on Ice to those of you with much more experience. I'm currently fighting the Regen fight 
as that is where the majority of my experience lies.
I would love the Devs to get a real understanding of what Ice needs from knowledgeable players like Circeus, yourself, et al. I just haven't seen an inkling of realization in any of States posts on this thread.
I won't delete him because he's a great concept and I love the character; but I guess Fjellbjorn is just gonna sit on the shelf as a former favorite toy.
the problem with the wet ice slotting I think comes from game developers being lazy. They dont want to go through the effort of having to right code for a forced respec on level 50 ice tanks. " How do we do that ? " they say.
Same with the game itself, immagination is gone, they put a different paint job on existing powers and existing animations, calling them new arch types,...
I'm not really impressed with that at all, anyone else notice that?
Same powersets just different names?
They simply dont have the resources to deal with these issues, they need to spend their resources on stopping PLING !!!, I mean they cant allow that BY GOD !
ITS IMMORAL !!!
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the problem with the wet ice slotting I think comes from game developers being lazy. They dont want to go through the effort of having to right code for a forced respec on level 50 ice tanks. " How do we do that ? " they say. and same with the game itself, immagination is gone, and they put a different paint job on existing powers and existing animations, calling them new arch types,...
I'm not really impressed with that at all, anyone else notice that?
Same powersets just different names?
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I dunno, they don't have to even force a respec. We already know they have the tech to do powers where some, all, or none of the effects on the power are enhanceable, so they could just set a fixed value onto Wet Ice if they wanted to, and declare it unenahceable, adn then it wouldn't matter who had how many enhancers that did who cares what in Wet Ice.
But then again, I feel the whole plan of changing Wet Ice in that manner is an extremely bad plan, and as I demonstrated previously in the thread adding 7.5% base DEF vs S/L/E/N/F/C to Wet Ice that was Enhanceable would put us into a much better positon in the defensive powerset rankings, and put us more on par with Invuln and Grante Armor. And it'd make us a little less reliant on Tough, which I think most people will end up having to take in I5 to even function.
I missed some of the older posts, so how are they explaining why the old tanks get to keep their enhancements, while the new ones will lose theirs as they level up?
I guess I got an ace up my sleeve, I'll just leave my ice tank at 34. Muhahahahah
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I got really annoyed earlier and said the devs "must hate ice" which I'm sure they don't, but I just don't understand.
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They don't hate Ice. They hate *defense*.
Defense has many advantages over resistance. A resistance tanker can be brought down by sappers, by stacked holds, or by resistance debuffs. None of those things matter to a hero with high defense, because none of those things *hit* when your defense is high enough. High defense scares the devs, because they seem to think there is nothing they can do to stop it.
Except...in reality, everything stops it. There are more defense hosers in the game than resistance hosers, by a factor of about 10 to 1. (This is not hyperbole. The only resistance debuffers are Council Sonics. Every mook with an assault gun or handaxe debuffs defense.) There are more things that totally ignore defense (Toxic damage, caltrops and swarms. The only thing that ignores resistance is untyped damage from a couple AVs, not counting the psi vulnerability that defense also has.) Defense-based sets have more vulnerabilities. Defense in PvP is a joke because player accuracy buffs are so incredibly strong. And defense is the only set of powers in the game affected by the streakbreaker, a deus ex machina that swoops down on you every once in a while and declares you naked and helpless by divine fiat.
Defense sucks compared to resistance, in practice. But the devs don't see that -- they look at spreadsheets that tell them 20% defense is equivalent to 40% resistance (with base 50% chance for a minion to hit, 20% defense in theory means you're taking 30% of the minion's damage. To get the same value in theory for resistance, you need 40% resistance.) And with those numbers in hand, they make defense worse by far than any other damage mitigation strategy in the game. In reality, to balance the game, they'd have to make defense much, much stronger than their spreadsheets tell them to, because it has so many vulnerabilities. But they don't see that, and won't do it.
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Remus, that's a very well-formed post you made there.
Personally I think the developers at Cryptic are excellent. I think they play the game, and I think they have things well in hand. But I believe you cleary sounded out why defensive powers are such a sore point between the developers and the players.
Keep it up.
--Mr. Strange
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But then again, I feel the whole plan of changing Wet Ice in that manner is an extremely bad plan, and as I demonstrated previously in the thread adding 7.5% base DEF vs S/L/E/N/F/C to Wet Ice that was Enhanceable would put us into a much better positon in the defensive powerset rankings, and put us more on par with Invuln and Grante Armor. And it'd make us a little less reliant on Tough, which I think most people will end up having to take in I5 to even function.
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I feel that giving any toggle less than 5% defense is pretty much not worth it, and giving it less than 7.5% is not worth slotting. IMO, you should be able to feel the difference between the power unslotted and the power six-slotted. As it stands on test, that's simply not possible.
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I feel that giving any toggle less than 5% defense is pretty much not worth it, and giving it less than 7.5% is not worth slotting. IMO, you should be able to feel the difference between the power unslotted and the power six-slotted. As it stands on test, that's simply not possible.
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I agree completely, but wouldn't limit it to just toggles. Any power that is enhanceable should have these lower limits, for the exact reason you gave.
-Sandolphan
"When heroes fail, the Angels will save you."
MASTERMIND NUMERIC KEYPAD PET CONTROLS
HAMIDON NUKE RAID GUIDE
Well guys, I just wanted to let you know that I will be taking off soon as well. It took me since last August to get one toon up to 39, and after playing him on test, I just don't feel like continuing to play an Ice/Ice tanker. My new defense is supposed to be my offense I guess, but it's not like I have all that much of it.
Basicaly, playing as little as I do, it just won't be as fun for me with my main now, so this poor Ice Demon will be signing off as soon as my account runs out. I would like to thank all of the Ice tankers out there for the advice I have gotten from them in the past, and would especially like to thank Ciceus for his tireless efforts to improve the lives of Ice Tankers everywhere.
I may reactivate my account at some point down the road, but until then, this is Aett Thorn, going back into hibernation. Thanks everyone!
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
"I was just the one with the most unsolicited sombrero." - Traegus
I have an idea for a hibernate fix. What if it had a built-in taunt aura like blazing aura on a fire tank. That would allow you to heal from damage and continue to hold aggro, you just would not be able to attack at all. I dont have a ice tanker so I dont know if it drops all ur toggles when you activate it, but if it does that part should be changed too so you dont have to reactivate all your toggles after you come out of it.
Dragonhawk (lvl 50 fire/energy blaster)
Flamefrost (lvl 50 fire/ice blaster)
'Snowflake (lvl 50 ice/dev blaster)
Dragons' Flame (lvl 50 fire/fire tank)
Psyshock (lvl 30 Rad/Psi defender)
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I got really annoyed earlier and said the devs "must hate ice" which I'm sure they don't, but I just don't understand.
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They don't hate Ice. They hate *defense*.
Defense has many advantages over resistance. A resistance tanker can be brought down by sappers, by stacked holds, or by resistance debuffs. None of those things matter to a hero with high defense, because none of those things *hit* when your defense is high enough. High defense scares the devs, because they seem to think there is nothing they can do to stop it.
Except...in reality, everything stops it. There are more defense hosers in the game than resistance hosers, by a factor of about 10 to 1. (This is not hyperbole. The only resistance debuffers are Council Sonics. Every mook with an assault gun or handaxe debuffs defense.) There are more things that totally ignore defense (Toxic damage, caltrops and swarms. The only thing that ignores resistance is untyped damage from a couple AVs, not counting the psi vulnerability that defense also has.) Defense-based sets have more vulnerabilities. Defense in PvP is a joke because player accuracy buffs are so incredibly strong. And defense is the only set of powers in the game affected by the streakbreaker, a deus ex machina that swoops down on you every once in a while and declares you naked and helpless by divine fiat.
Defense sucks compared to resistance, in practice. But the devs don't see that -- they look at spreadsheets that tell them 20% defense is equivalent to 40% resistance (with base 50% chance for a minion to hit, 20% defense in theory means you're taking 30% of the minion's damage. To get the same value in theory for resistance, you need 40% resistance.) And with those numbers in hand, they make defense worse by far than any other damage mitigation strategy in the game. In reality, to balance the game, they'd have to make defense much, much stronger than their spreadsheets tell them to, because it has so many vulnerabilities. But they don't see that, and won't do it.
The devs don't know what they're doing and they don't really play this game. That's the only explanation that I can think of for the defense nerfs in I5.
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Statesman got pwned in the arena by an ice tank in i4, is my bet. So it's DOOOOOOOOM for them. End of line.
Debt is temporary, prestige is forever
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I do think that ice is probably getting the shaft, but I haven't been able to see any other tanks work on test yet, so I can't compair (since I only have an ice, lev 50) However, that being said, I can still tank solo missions on invic and not even really be concerned about it. I can tank 10-12 +2 minions as is with my I4 build (on test) and I haven't even respeced into a couple of tweaks I think will make him a bit better. So until I see INV/STONE/FIRE tanks tanking 30-40 +2s in I5 I'm not going to complain. It may be that we are all just going to have to redefine what a tank can tank.
I guess those of you who have various tank builds would know better however of how bad ice is compaired to other builds. I have never thought of my ice tank as gimped (not when I could stand around 50 even minions and take a nap)
I will be the first to yell however if I continue to see other tank types herd large groups in I5
Scatterpack Rad/Rad
~ Earthguard ~
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I feel that giving any toggle less than 5% defense is pretty much not worth it, and giving it less than 7.5% is not worth slotting. IMO, you should be able to feel the difference between the power unslotted and the power six-slotted. As it stands on test, that's simply not possible.
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A great argument, but irrelevant to me. My Ice Tank is taking and 6-slotting Weave.
It doesn't matter if the power gives only 2.5% (Combat Jumping), if I feel I need more defense, I have no choice but to put my slots there.
If this means that my attacks are one-slotted at 41, that's just a sign that I'm willing to go to bizarre extremes to get my Hero Idea to work.
Currently playing:
Infaerna Who knew Fire/Fire Brutes were fun to play?
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Defense-based sets have more vulnerabilities. Defense in PvP is a joke because player accuracy buffs are so incredibly strong. And defense is the only set of powers in the game affected by the streakbreaker, a deus ex machina that swoops down on you every once in a while and declares you naked and helpless by divine fiat.
Defense sucks compared to resistance, in practice. But the devs don't see that -- they look at spreadsheets that tell them 20% defense is equivalent to 40% resistance (with base 50% chance for a minion to hit, 20% defense in theory means you're taking 30% of the minion's damage. To get the same value in theory for resistance, you need 40% resistance.) And with those numbers in hand, they make defense worse by far than any other damage mitigation strategy in the game. In reality, to balance the game, they'd have to make defense much, much stronger than their spreadsheets tell them to, because it has so many vulnerabilities. But they don't see that, and won't do it.
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I have come to learn that Geko is the man in charge of these numbers.
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Defense-based sets have more vulnerabilities. Defense in PvP is a joke because player accuracy buffs are so incredibly strong. And defense is the only set of powers in the game affected by the streakbreaker, a deus ex machina that swoops down on you every once in a while and declares you naked and helpless by divine fiat.
Defense sucks compared to resistance, in practice. But the devs don't see that -- they look at spreadsheets that tell them 20% defense is equivalent to 40% resistance (with base 50% chance for a minion to hit, 20% defense in theory means you're taking 30% of the minion's damage. To get the same value in theory for resistance, you need 40% resistance.) And with those numbers in hand, they make defense worse by far than any other damage mitigation strategy in the game. In reality, to balance the game, they'd have to make defense much, much stronger than their spreadsheets tell them to, because it has so many vulnerabilities. But they don't see that, and won't do it.
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I have come to learn that Geko is the man in charge of these numbers.
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you know i have always privately believe resistance far outperformed defense but never spoke up about it for fear of being ridiculed (especially considering my experience is not great with melee based toons)
Resistance is way better than defense plain and simple
id rather have guarenteed protection than a percentage chance of not being hurt
In some ways it kinda makes me think stone armor is a prime set since its so diverse
it has resistance and defense and regen all rolled into a nice neat lil package
Jem - Ill/Rad Controller Lv 50+3 Nic - Mind/Psi Dominator Lv 50+3 Lady Liberation - Invuln/SS Tanker Lv 50+1 Invicitx - Demon/Pain Mastermind Lv 50+1 Celeste - Emp/Arch Defender Lv 50+1 Nightsilver - DB/WP Scrapper Lv 34 Dusk Howl - StJ/Regen Brute Lv 32 Kyriani - Time/Energy Defender Lv 41Psifire - FF/Psi Defender Lv 50
Star Lighter - LB/LA Peacebringer Lv 30
I think it actually goes something like this:
Resistance < Defense < Resist + Defense
This is why Invulnerability was so good, because it stacked Resistance and Defense. (Note I think that Invuln got hit in the hammina-hamminas with I5 and am not supporting the nerf they got.) Stone is a mix of defense and resistance, but until granite, it is mostly one or the other to a damage type, not both. Once in granite, they do get both resistance and defense, but at a cost.
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
"I was just the one with the most unsolicited sombrero." - Traegus
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I feel that giving any toggle less than 5% defense is pretty much not worth it, and giving it less than 7.5% is not worth slotting. IMO, you should be able to feel the difference between the power unslotted and the power six-slotted. As it stands on test, that's simply not possible.
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A great argument, but irrelevant to me. My Ice Tank is taking and 6-slotting Weave.
It doesn't matter if the power gives only 2.5% (Combat Jumping), if I feel I need more defense, I have no choice but to put my slots there.
If this means that my attacks are one-slotted at 41, that's just a sign that I'm willing to go to bizarre extremes to get my Hero Idea to work.
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I didn't say that no one should slot them. I simply feel that if defense is that low, it's not really worth slotting. So now you're in a position to slot up your defenses for minimal gain, and at great cost to your offense. Awesome.
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I think it actually goes something like this:
Resistance < Defense < Resist + Defense
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No, Defense is definitely on the bottom. It's more like this:
Defense < Resistance < Resist + Defense
Pure Defense is inferior to Pure Resistance for many reasons, not least of which is the fact that there are 10 times as many defense hosers as there are resistance hosers. But the biggest reason is that Resistance buys you *time*.
Example: An enemy has a 50% accuracy and will kill you in 4 shots. So on average you'll be dead in 8 shots.
With 25% defense, the enemy will kill you, on average, in 16 shots.
With 50% resistance, the enemy will kill you, on average, in 16 shots also.
But here's where it differs: The defense hero will be dead after 4 hits. It's just that it will take an average of 16 shots for those 4 hits to happen. They *could* happen right away, and the hero will be dead after only 4 shots. Every shot that does hit is still 1/4th of the hero's health. After the hero is hit 3 times, there is a 25% chance that hero will be killed by the next attack.
The resistance hero will be dead after 8 hits. On average, that will be after 16 shots...but it will never be less than 8 shots. Every shot that hits is 1/8th the hero's health. After the hero is hit 3 times, he can still take 5 more hits and is in no immediate danger.
Defense is random, and fighting a hero with defense just takes luck. Resistance is reliable, and fighting a hero with resistance takes *time*. And time introduces a factor that you cannot stick into any spreadsheet -- player reaction. That player has time to eat an inspiration, get healed by a teammate, turn on another power, or just run away. The defense hero doesn't get those options. Resistance gives you time to play this game interactively. Defense is just like rolling dice.
Defense sucks.
It boggles me that the devs don't understand this, but it's infuriatingly obvious that they do not. At all.
...
New Webcomic -- Genocide Man
Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass slaughter can be hilarious.
I know what happened. The head dev told the intern to test the ice tank and see if there was something wrong with it.
The intern thought, "50 lvls of ice tanking." Heck with that, that's boring soloing for 50 lvls, plus ice tank is so broken, I'd have so much debt it would take me 3 years to lvl him. So he told the dev ice tank is fine.
Okay, I understand what you mean, and since my main is an Ice tank, I know personally how much different defense feels than resistance. So let me clarify what I was trying to say. On paper, 40% defense is better than 40% resistance. And 40% of both is better than 40% of just one. However, you are absolutely right that that level of defense will most often FEEL weaker than resistance.
This is for the reasons you mentioned: the prevalence of defense debuffs and mob accuracy buffs (especially in the late game), and streaking of hits. Basically, in Ice armor, you're usually either fine, or dead, and that is a problem that almost every Ice tanker has faced. We don't usually have time to react when things start going south.
Thus, defense will always feel weaker than resistance, but look at the formula that you used: 25% defense versus 50% resistance. Thus, a 25% defense equates to 50% resistance. So an even level of defense is better than an even level of resistance. That is all I was trying to say, and I apologize for the confusion.
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
"I was just the one with the most unsolicited sombrero." - Traegus
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In some ways it kinda makes me think stone armor is a prime set since its so diverse
it has resistance and defense and regen all rolled into a nice neat lil package
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Correct. That also includes psi defense and endurance-drain resistance. Stack Health with the regen they already carry, and the results are even more amazing. Slot up Swift (affording the slots is easy when you have Granite), and movement is no problem, either.
Many people are frantically PLing their stoners even as we speak. I almost, almost made my only tank a Stone instead of Inv, but Inv fit his theme better and an sg friend had already started a Stone. Now, my friend has left CoH because of I5, and my Inv (at 37) is watching the sun set on his resistances. C'est la vie.
-FCM
Please try MA arc ID 351455, "Shard Stories: Scavenger's Hunt." Originally created for the Dr. Aeon contest, it explores the wild potential of one of the City's most concept-rich but content-poor settings: the Shadow Shard.
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Thus, defense will always feel weaker than resistance, but look at the formula that you used: 25% defense versus 50% resistance. Thus, a 25% defense equates to 50% resistance. So an even level of defense is better than an even level of resistance. That is all I was trying to say, and I apologize for the confusion.
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No need to apologize. We're on the same side, here.
I used 25%D vs 50%R because they appear equivalent to the dev team spreadsheets. But let's look at actual values. I only have I4 numbers, but in I4 an Ice tank could get a maximum (not counting EA or power pools) of 31% smash/lethal defense pre-slotting. An Invuln tank could get a maximum of 65% resistance pre-slotting -- not counting power pools or Unstoppable. Add to this that the Invuln tank also got large defense numbers from Invincible (10% per enemy) and Tough Hide (15%) and it's pretty freaking obvious -- the devs are *terrified* of giving players high defense, and they consider defense balanced against about twice as much resistance.
And that's a *fantasyland*. In reality, defense numbers equal to resistance numbers *might* be balanced against each other. Considering that defense scales badly against enemies with increased accuracy, that there are 10 times as many defense hosers, that defense is given extra vulnerabilities (to fire, to ranged attacks, to AEs, etc), that the few resistance debuffs that exist are actually *resisted by resistance*...considering all that, I think you'd need higher defense numbers than resistance numbers to balance the two.
Anyway, I feel bad discussing this now. Because it's too late to change their minds before I5, and they're all off at that expo or something anyway. CuppaJoe's the only dev reading this, you know. Maybe they'll see it when they return next week. But even then I doubt we'll be able to change their minds -- Statesman in particular strikes me as remarkably pig-headed, especially when he's wrong.
...
New Webcomic -- Genocide Man
Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass slaughter can be hilarious.
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Defense is random, and fighting a hero with defense just takes luck. Resistance is reliable, and fighting a hero with resistance takes *time*. And time introduces a factor that you cannot stick into any spreadsheet -- player reaction. That player has time to eat an inspiration, get healed by a teammate, turn on another power, or just run away. The defense hero doesn't get those options. Resistance gives you time to play this game interactively. Defense is just like rolling dice.
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Well said. I would add that some players like the fast paced feeling that defense can offer, but its upsetting that when were performing comperably to resistance based sets, its usually because we're doing something we're not really expected to do, notably 6 slotting all your primaries as an Ice tank(which in I4 has devastating results), or using perma-elude with an SR scrapper. I can accept that sometimes I will go down fast, but it would be nice to have the same average staying power as a resistance set, which I don't feel we currently have.
That being said I'd offer up this idea, what if defense based sets got an ability to mimic the staying power that res gives? If each attack that lands through def gave a % bonus to defense against the next (and only the next) incoming attack, you'd be less likely to get those 4 blows right next to each other. Getting hit means your less likely to get hit again the next time, so that average of 16 attacks will probably still result in 4 getting through, however, theyre more likely to be spread apart.
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I think it actually goes something like this:
Resistance < Defense < Resist + Defense
[/ QUOTE ]
No, Defense is definitely on the bottom. It's more like this:
Defense < Resistance < Resist + Defense
Pure Defense is inferior to Pure Resistance for many reasons, not least of which is the fact that there are 10 times as many defense hosers as there are resistance hosers. But the biggest reason is that Resistance buys you *time*.
Example: An enemy has a 50% accuracy and will kill you in 4 shots. So on average you'll be dead in 8 shots.
With 25% defense, the enemy will kill you, on average, in 16 shots.
With 50% resistance, the enemy will kill you, on average, in 16 shots also.
But here's where it differs: The defense hero will be dead after 4 hits. It's just that it will take an average of 16 shots for those 4 hits to happen. They *could* happen right away, and the hero will be dead after only 4 shots. Every shot that does hit is still 1/4th of the hero's health. After the hero is hit 3 times, there is a 25% chance that hero will be killed by the next attack.
The resistance hero will be dead after 8 hits. On average, that will be after 16 shots...but it will never be less than 8 shots. Every shot that hits is 1/8th the hero's health. After the hero is hit 3 times, he can still take 5 more hits and is in no immediate danger.
Defense is random, and fighting a hero with defense just takes luck. Resistance is reliable, and fighting a hero with resistance takes *time*. And time introduces a factor that you cannot stick into any spreadsheet -- player reaction. That player has time to eat an inspiration, get healed by a teammate, turn on another power, or just run away. The defense hero doesn't get those options. Resistance gives you time to play this game interactively. Defense is just like rolling dice.
Defense sucks.
It boggles me that the devs don't understand this, but it's infuriatingly obvious that they do not. At all.
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If you have enough defense to mitigate against 90% of all damage, and compare to something with enough resistance to mitigation 90% of all damage (basically, 90% resistance) then of all possible circumstances you are likely to be in, the effects of resistance will tend to be superior to defense.
In actual practice, there's a catch. The to-hit floor is set to 5%, while the resistance cap is set to 90% (75% for scrappers). This means that defense has the potential to exceed resistance damage mitigation. When it does, the "time factor" can swing strongly in the opposite direction: because of "bad luck" defense might fold quickly, but resistance might fold even quicker even with "good luck" because of the mitigation disparity.
But even with equal defense and resistance numbers, there are other factors that seem to come into play, some of which even surprise me. I'm working on an update to my scrapper secondaries comparison, SR vs invuln vs regen, that uses simulations instead of equations (because time-to-live equations were starting to make my head hurt). Those are telling me that even when defense and resistance have equal mitigation, as you change variables such as incoming damage, speed of attack, and the speed at which the scrapper defeats things, you can get interesting situations where (keeping defense and resistance numbers static) changing a single one of those variables creates a situation where defense starts off better for survivability than resistance, then resistance gets better than defense, then defense gets better than resistance again. Its very non-intuitive, but also not uncommon among all the scenarios I've looked at so far.
But it actually matches up with reality quite well: most people who have played very high defense and very high resistance heroes seem to know intuitively that sometimes, you run into the odd circumstance that for whatever reason seems almost engineered to "magically" hurt you a lot more than you predicted it ought to, and it doesn't appear to be an unusually bad luck streak in and of itself, but something more inherent to the situation.
The notion that defense is subject to bad luck, but resistance is not, and that's a critical flaw with defense, is common, but not usually important in actual play. Much more important are the environmental factors that hurt defense: to-hit buffs, defense debuffs, and the purple patch (including team scaler and mission slider mandated) accuracy increases.
There are situations where resistance will *never* get killed but defense has a *chance* to get killed. But those are balanced by situations where resistance is *guaranteed* to get killed, but there's no actual guarantee that defense will be. The reaction time factor is a potential deficit to defense, but it isn't universally a good thing that resistance gets hit constantly for a little while defense gets hit occasionally for a lot: within those gaps is where a defensive set (like my SR scrapper) can use interruptible heals like Aid Self.
Whether you like the probabilistic nature of defense or the steadier nature of resistance is a personal perference, not an absolute or provably better preference. Defense as a concept and as a mechanism is fine: defense sets just need to not be overwhelmed and hit in the head by literally everything higher than an even level minion.
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Defense sucks.
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I5 defense sucks. I4 defense is below average in a lot of cases. I3 defenses, at least sometimes, were absolutely stellar. Perma-elude was fantastic. Perma-MoG was no slouch, either. The strength of invuln comes/came partially from resistance, but *mainly* from invincibility.
In your example, you compare the situation of the defensive hero after three hits vs the resistance hero after three hits. That's not quite fair, since on average in the time it takes for the defensive set to be hit three times, the resistance set will have been hit six.
Here's the actual survivability chart for both of those heroes, assuming no health regeneration and equal starting health:
<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>
Time (in attacks)/percent chance for defense to be dead/percent chance for resistance to be dead
0 0% 0%
1 0% 0%
2 0% 0%
3 0% 0%
4 0.4% 0%
5 1.6% 0%
6 3.8% 0%
7 7.1% 0%
8 11.4% 0.4%
9 16.6% 2.0%
10 22.4% 5.5%
11 28.7% 11.3%
12 35.1% 19.4%
13 41.6% 29.1%
14 47.9% 39.5%
15 53.9% 50.0%
16 59.5% 59.8%
17 64.7% 68.5%
18 69.4% 76.0%
19 73.7% 82.0%
20 77.5% 86.8%
21 80.8% 90.5%
22 83.8% 93.3%
</pre><hr />
Notice, defense starts off with the lower survival odds, because resistance can "defer" death a bit. Then as the actual odds start to kick in, resistance catches up and then passes defense in terms of probability of death. Interestingly, resistance is referred to as "buying time" but in actuality, its short term time: defense buys better long term time. This particular example is a bad one because the numbers are so huge it makes it seem like defense is only better than resistance when its hopeless anyway, but that's not true: you see this seesaw behavior almost all the time in more realistic situations. Notice, this is for defense and resistance numbers that are *exactly even* in terms of average damage mitigation.
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It boggles me that the devs don't understand this, but it's infuriatingly obvious that they do not. At all.
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I don't think anyone fully appreciates the nuances of defense and resistance, because probability and statistical iteration isn't really intuitive. Even as I continue to look at it from different angles for balancing analysis, it occasionally throws me a curveball.
[Guide to Defense] [Scrapper Secondaries Comparison] [Archetype Popularity Analysis]
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1. Damage Resistance scales well with higher con.
2. Defense does not scale well with higher con.
With a DR-based set, you don't tend to get hit all that much more often by deep purples ... just harder, but you've got the soak to endure it effectively. With a Defense-based set, you get hit more often and much harder, without the DR to effectively mitigate the damage. Then there's auto-hit powers ... heavy caltrops will melt an SR but barely tickle someone with good S/L resistance.
To say nothing of the effects of inspirations, and the rarity of resistance-debuffing mobs. I really don't understand why these facts don't add up in the City designers minds ... but apparently they don't.
Doesn't have an Ice Tank,
But my first 50 was a FF Defender,
FCM
Please try MA arc ID 351455, "Shard Stories: Scavenger's Hunt." Originally created for the Dr. Aeon contest, it explores the wild potential of one of the City's most concept-rich but content-poor settings: the Shadow Shard.
I hate to see you go man, but I can't say I blame you. More and more I see that the developers either a) doesn't understand this set, or b) doesn't want it utilized.
Statesman has yet to take the Firebomb challenge*, he has yet to explain his vision for the set, and he has yet to tell me why I should be happy playing a character with lousy damage and lousy damage mitigation when I can play any other tanker set - or heck, any other set - and be at least 3x more survivable.
Big deal, I can grab aggro and have two endurance recovery powers. So what, if I can't live through regular missions on heroic without a min-maxed build? I play ice/ice, and I feel like I did back when I was level 3, as ineffective as I am on test. My damage is poor, and I'm getting the crap kicked out of me by regular spawns, since half of them are now +1.
May whatever supreme being you worship save you should you fight ANYTHING not your level with a +def set now, especially if you're attempting to tank for anyone besides YOURSELF.
That doesn't feel like a tanker to me. I don't know what it feels like. At least with my blaster, I can decimate things before they can whale on me. They get a shot or two in before they drop, but hey, DoT set. The point is they can't KEEP hitting me because my damage is ludicrously high. Mmm assault rifle. Crazy Hate didn't lose out on issue 5, even with his full auto being changed for no explicable reason (STILL not explained).
The same goes for my scrapper. He is an unholy terror on the test server now. With parry - and only parry - I can tank better with Dash Apostrophe than I can with my ice tanker. And survive bigger/more enemies. And he doesn't need to for long. With his cone and AoE things are almost dead before they can get more than one shot in. Dash lost IH, but... so what?
The point here is that these two characters have defense in the form of offense. Their defenses are stripped bare, and they rely (for the most part) on their damage-dealing primary to keep them alive. But with my ice tanker, I can't do that. I have lousy damage, and am attempting to rely on my damage-mitigation primary to protect me.
But I can't. I can't protect me nor my team-mates. All I can do is absorb an alpha strike as I drop dead. And that is not tanking. It does not feel like I'm helping my team, it does not feel like I'm having fun when I can be out-damaged by controllers and out-defended by scrappers.
It feels like after having worked a character up to level 50 using an exceptionally tricky power set, fair and square, I'm being punished for it. And harder than any other tanker set, all of which were more survivable on live to begin with.
So I say wreck energy absorption. Wreck wet ice. And go ahead and finish wrecking hibernate while you're at it, because you know there's still 20 ice tankers out there, and we can't have that. I know I'm done with the set when i5 hits (just finishing loose ends on Crystalline).
Come issue 7 when the developers can't figure out why nobody is playing ice armor yet again, I'm not going to be the one to bother telling him they botched things ... yet again.
* the Firebomb challenge is, of course, to get a level 44 ice/anything tanker on test, get an eight man pick up group that only has one defender and one controller each (preferrably not sonic, since they won't be in range for quite a while sans power leveling), and run through the second shadow shard task force as the SOLE tanker.
Eight man. Start to finish. Sole tanker. Only one or two non-sonic de/buffers. I want to see if he feels a QUARTER as effective as any other tanker in that spot. This is how I did the first shard task force, and hoo boy, on LIVE was it ugly. And half of THAT was Crey/Nemesis!