I'm only going to comment on ice melee as I have experience with it (on 2 lvl 50 tanks), but no experience of mace.
I think the difficulty in suggesting changes to ice melee is that you have to consider the impact they will make when using each of the primary powers. As ice patch and burn work well together, against many foes in pve, fire tanks don't really need any buff to the ice melee set. However, with other primaries (especially inv. which lacks a damaging aura) selecting ice melee results in rather underwhelming damage and for them a buff to ice melee damage would be not be inappropriate.
So for me any changes would have to bring ice melee up to par for inv, ice & stone tanks but not result in fire tanks becoming overpowered and FOTM.
Paragon Girl
to me, the obvious thing that ice melee is missing is PBAoE damage. It has ice patch and frozen aura... but neither do any damage. Considering that ice armour has both a damage aura AND a taunt/debuff aura, it would make sense to me that ice melee has the same.
what i'd do is keep ice patch, and either change frozen aura for ice sword circle, or apply damage to frozen aura before the sleep component is applied. tbh, the idea of having a PBAoE sleep when all bar one of the tank primaries have damage auras seems pretty darned silly to me.
I'm sure that there are people who like frozen aura... but i mustn't have met any of them.
With relation to making fire/ice fotm; as it is currently with ice patch and burn, anything /fire can kill faster - especially fire/fire. so i don't see how adding a bit more oomph to /ice would hurt. No matter what happens to /ice it'd still struggle to do the same damage as fire/fire
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to me, the obvious thing that ice melee is missing is PBAoE damage. It has ice patch and frozen aura... but neither do any damage. Considering that ice armour has both a damage aura AND a taunt/debuff aura, it would make sense to me that ice melee has the same.
what i'd do is keep ice patch, and either change frozen aura for ice sword circle, or apply damage to frozen aura before the sleep component is applied. tbh, the idea of having a PBAoE sleep when all bar one of the tank primaries have damage auras seems pretty darned silly to me.
I'm sure that there are people who like frozen aura... but i mustn't have met any of them.
With relation to making fire/ice fotm; as it is currently with ice patch and burn, anything /fire can kill faster - especially fire/fire. so i don't see how adding a bit more oomph to /ice would hurt. No matter what happens to /ice it'd still struggle to do the same damage as fire/fire
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It's possible for me to defeat a standard mob spawn of 3 orange minions on my fire/ice tank with an attack chain of 4 powers. So really I consider that pretty good damage using ice melee in combination with a fire tank.
Currently, /fire set uses high damage to mitigate incoming damage (a defeated foe can't harm you). Ice melee on the other hand, from lvl 20 onwards, has ice patch to frequently use to mitigate damage and later on freezing touch for foes like the sappers. As such ice melee has always been seen as the less damage & more control trade of set when compared to /fire.
A sg colleague of mine had a lvl 50 fire/SS tank and then leveled a fire/ice, he finds the ice melee survives much better in comparison. I still consider that adding to much more damage to ice melee with encourage fire/ice tanks to become more FOTM as they will be seen as having both good damage & good control compared to say /fire which will be seen as just good damage.
Paragon Girl
My first post is just to get peoples feelings on the subject.
I do not believe the Devs would change any power completely. I do believe all sets are really balanced for PVE purposes. That comes from me finding common quantities between sets. For most common relationships I mainly go:
Ice melee --> Stone --> Superstrength --> Energy Melee
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__________________________!________________!
__________________________!________________!
____________Fire---------> Axe ------------> Mace
In a roundabout way it is possible to compare Mace with Ice. However I gather there will be unknown quantities but I dont have a hard time in finding things relatively well balanced even if I have to look outside of the set.
The two melee sets I have picked on have been picked on by many as being lacklustre. Lacklustre in damage mainly.
Concept, a particular niche with concept and aesthetics to suit are all very important but people would still like a more glorious build up chain against a single target.
My first post was looking for ideas really. On the american forums there is a thread 60 pages long on Ice melee....probably only made up of just 8 people with some terrible math fu. Now there is another thread on what else is not balanced.
Things brought up both sides of the Atlantic may of helped influence changes to Firetanks a bit more and made mine less challenging XD.
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I have been following the ice melee thread in the US forum with interest for sometime now and like many people I would like to see changes to ice melee. Don't think from my previous posts I wouldn't like to see changes to increase the damage, as I certainly would on my inv/ice tank. I would also like to see the final power choice changed as it must be one of the most skipped (if not the most skipped) final power in any melee powerset.
However, in trying to come up with an arguement for increases to damage there are a number of issues to consider.
Firstly, the developers consider min/maxed heroes, hence ED. The damage a fire/ice tank can do is far superior to that done by an inv/ice tank. So while I certainly agree it would be far from game breaking to increase ice melee damage for tanks other than fire you have to consider just how much of an impact that extra damage will have when using a fire tank.
As I have already said it is possible for me to defeat 3 orange minions using an attack chain of 4 powers on a fire/ice tank. Including a PBAOE power may increase that to 5 minions I could defeat, making many scrappers jealous.
Also it is necessary to consider how much a certain attack power is resisted. Apart from against ice tanks and certain other powers, such as unstoppable, ice tends to be poorly resisted. So whilst the damage numbers may look small they can actually be higher in some situations than damage by scrappers. For example, a martial arts scrapper using build up & their most powerful ST attack did 55 damage to my inv tank. Looking at City of Data a tank using greater ice sword & no build up can do slightly more damage than that to me. So using this example ice melee can be seen to do more damage than a scrappers primary.
I to would welcome the comments of other players on their perception of ice melee and any changes that they feel should be made to it. If players can make a strong case on the numbers then we may get changes. The developers say that their new mantra is "give the players what they want (within reason)" so if enough players say in this thread that they want to see the ice swords do more damage then hopefully that should be taken into account, whatever the maths may say. I think a bit more ST damage in the ice melee set would not be game breaking & would do little to help fire tanks with mass herding & defeating.
Paragon Girl
I think you can draw the same line to blasters, with /ice and /dev set as being the /ice and /mace. Fit /ice with the right set (fire armor - AR ignite) and icepatch becomes 1 of the strongest powers ingame. Even without, it still is a very good damage migations power.
The discussion for frozen touch en frozen aura.. The last power is imho the most lousy power ingame. Even for blasters they get a far stronger power from the epic set (target huge aoe sleep). Same goes for tankers, as having salt crystals from the stone epic as far stronger power. Frozen touch becomes less effective by having a ranged hold from the epic set.
These 2 powers bugger me the most, as all the others are imho good in line with other sets (specialy with ice patch as extra).
As for mace, it is nearly par with the entire Axe set, but instead of KU/D it has a stun chance. With a swap around of a few powers (tier 8 with 6) and change the looks, it would be more interesting thing to play.
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Isn't the damage on Mace a bit below that of BA though? Did consider playing a Mace tank cause I think its one of the better looking sets (obviously about a million points behind Stone Melee that looks so much better than the others its unreal)
The idea of having two holds, even if one it melee and one ranged is quite appealing but a sleep PBAoE for a tank is daft IMO
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Isn't the damage on Mace a bit below that of BA though?
[/ QUOTE ]Last I checked, yes.
Ok quick checkup on BI's, rounded on 2 digs.
First number is Mace, 2nd is Axe
Mace vs Axe
2,78 vs 2,78
4,56 vs 4,56
0,69 vs 5,44 (12sec mag3 stun vs 50% chance KD)
5,44 vs 6,33
3,11 vs 2,78
6,33 vs 7,67
4,47 vs 4,28
Most powers are the same (swoop/jawbreak - aoe/aoe, Tier 8/9) animation, its merely the extra effect that differs.
So yes, minor less damage but compensate alot by having a perma stunner.
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Ok quick checkup on BI's, rounded on 2 digs.
First number is Mace, 2nd is Axe
Mace vs Axe
2,78 vs 2,78
4,56 vs 4,56
0,69 vs 5,44 (12sec mag3 stun vs 50% chance KD)
5,44 vs 6,33
3,11 vs 2,78
6,33 vs 7,67
4,47 vs 4,28
Most powers are the same (swoop/jawbreak - aoe/aoe, Tier 8/9) animation, its merely the extra effect that differs.
So yes, minor less damage but compensate alot by having a perma stunner.
[/ QUOTE ]The numbers for the last attack are wrong, the only attack mace does more with is the PBAoE, others are same or less, at least according to NoFuture. Also, while mace does have a stunner, axe can often keep a boss perma-KD'd for a good period of time. And axe at least 40% chance of secondary effect for every attack.
Was a typo:
4,47 vs 5,28
As for KD/U mace has 3 equal powers (the final 2 and jawbreaker), so leaves Axe with only 4 (40%-50%) KD/U left.
Where PBAoE drops as its 50%AoE vs 30% mag2 stun. leaving 3 (40/50/50) wich face a 6sec 10% & 20% mag2 and 12sec 100% mag3 stun. Added that the tier9, mace has a higher chance of knockback then Axe (60 vs 50%).
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I find that with my tank, the key power for a KD-chain is beheader. Mace lacks the equivalent of that, and thus can't (if I've done my maths right) form a sustainable chain of KB/KU/KD attacks.
I find Mace and Axe balanced enough as I have said I did in the past but a new thought came to me, a new sense of thinking, one I hope to not effect how things are with other sets in any actual way but make up for the lacklustreness that people find in Ice and Mace. The thought actually came from when looking at Ice Melee. I was just hoping for "more" opinions up to now.
Some people may say things like "Frozen Aura is worthless give me a Ice Sword Circle" and then some unknown poor sod has his beloved Frozen Aura changed overnight. I doubt that will happen. I doubt the Devs would ever change a power completely but I think a new key factor may allow parts of the rest of Ice melee get some love and still without being overpowered in anyway compared to anything else. For this I wouldnt mind knowing typical Fire Ice chains really.
Mace is not bad on AoEs, its not bad in comparison to Axe with its secondary effects but lacks a ST chain thats as economical as Axe and so is "failing" there imo.
I hope to of completely convinced myself of all this by Sunday night and do a painfully boring thing, one of those long posts showing figures 
He will honor his words; he will definitely carry out his actions. What he promises he will fulfill. He does not care about his bodily self, putting his life and death aside to come forward for another's troubled besiegement. He does not boast about his ability, or shamelessly extol his own virtues. - Sima Qian.
The thing is, Frozen Aura *is* worthless.
Even if there were regular situations where as a Tanker you need to sleep all the mobs around you and happen to either be Inv Primary or not running your damage aura *and* the rest of your team didn't have any AoEs in play, then you can still get exactly the same effect from Tier one of your APP if you take Earth Mastery.
And if you're solo and the above applies then you've got a really bad build or you're playing on far too high a difficulty.
If there was even a top tier power that needed to be changed, it's Frozen Aura.
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What if you dont want Earth mastery for an epic?
Plus whats worthless to you may not be worthless to someone else. One cant talk for everyone.
He will honor his words; he will definitely carry out his actions. What he promises he will fulfill. He does not care about his bodily self, putting his life and death aside to come forward for another's troubled besiegement. He does not boast about his ability, or shamelessly extol his own virtues. - Sima Qian.
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What if you dont want Earth mastery for an epic?
Plus whats worthless to you may not be worthless to someone else. One cant talk for everyone.
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If you wanted a PBAoE sleep as a Tanker and didn't have one, then you would have to take Earth Mastery or go without 
Even assuming that my reasoning was flawed, let's compare and contrast with the other T9 powers:
Axe: High Damage Cone attack with Knockback
EM: Very high damage ST attack with Mag 4 Stun
Fire: High damage ST attack with DoT
Stone: High damage ST attack with Mag 4 Hold
SS: High Damage PBAoE attack with Knockback
Mace: High Damage Cone attack with Knockback
Ice: Zero Damage PBAoE Mag 2 Sleep
In other words, it's not even close to comparable. Hell, at least Salt Crystals is a Mag 3 sleep - Frozen Aura won't even affect most Lts.
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The plus side of FA is that its easily perma, which for an Invuln is better, how many Invuln/Ice's are out there and how many milk defence off of slept foes kiting an AV though?
Id like to see a developers list of benefits. I can visualise some personally ie alpha mitigating, split herding, an only effect self moment or a few seconds of survival in a small team. If it had not been for already having a power like icepatch Id might of thought up some more.
Shame I dont really know of NPCs detoggling to take more hits or to drop in another form of mezz protection ie it had a mag 4 hold resist --> mag 2 sleep --> not anymore so use that mag 3 hold.
He will honor his words; he will definitely carry out his actions. What he promises he will fulfill. He does not care about his bodily self, putting his life and death aside to come forward for another's troubled besiegement. He does not boast about his ability, or shamelessly extol his own virtues. - Sima Qian.
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As for mace, it is nearly par with the entire Axe set, but instead of KU/D it has a stun chance. With a swap around of a few powers (tier 8 with 6) and change the looks, it would be more interesting thing to play.
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It has both KU/KD and stun chances and it sucks with both. I can't for the life of me figure why it would be interesting to play.
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As for mace, it is nearly par with the entire Axe set, but instead of KU/D it has a stun chance. With a swap around of a few powers (tier 8 with 6) and change the looks, it would be more interesting thing to play.
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It has both KU/KD and stun chances and it sucks with both. I can't for the life of me figure why it would be interesting to play.
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Its these kind of feelings that give me a feeling, that there is a je ne sais quoi, indescribable, attractive attribute or quality unfairly missing from the set.
All sets could be balanced around meeting certain criterias lets say there is 5 of them, but lets say there is a 6th hidden, possible thing most sets are getting, while a couple of sets dont and so, people arent appreciating them. I personally think it lies in the ability to do a economical ST chain within a 10 second period. Not all sets are all that economical but then maybe they dont also have so many long limiting animation times or two sets of damageless controls.
He will honor his words; he will definitely carry out his actions. What he promises he will fulfill. He does not care about his bodily self, putting his life and death aside to come forward for another's troubled besiegement. He does not boast about his ability, or shamelessly extol his own virtues. - Sima Qian.
Stone/Mace tanks are overpowered, they need a nerf.
I was hoping to show numbers by today before my working week starts again but I dont think I will be done in time. Datamining as I call it sucked a load of time out. I really really do feel sorry for all the [censored] the Devs may have to sift through. So much for them I know has been "'we need this!"*shows some perverted maths to back it up*'". I personally refuse to accept in one persons case any maths from them seeing as in their build guide they have Combat Jump 3 slotted for endurance...
Also Base figures need to be worked off from, people slot to taste, you can go 3 dam 1 acc 1 end 1 rechg keeping most of all things proportionate except for any durations, and with durations they may not in the ideal circumstance be needed at all but the ability to slot them is a matter of convenience alot of the time they simply offer the same level of control/time as you would get from a rechg, only with rechgs you may have to use the power again sooner thus costing more endurance, lowering endurance and the amount of attacks you can achieve till the endurance is 0.
I have seen quick maths using the Magnitude of an effect in a formula, which I personally find disagreeable, the important factor from Magnitude is the damage sustainability that it can offer. Mag 3 holds works on a lieut for 10 seconds, how much incoming damage is removed? Mag 2 holds work on 10 minions so how much incoming damage is removed? Controls are there for damage mitigation purposes and magnitude determines the level of rank of foe you can the lower damage per second on. In any formula in comparing level of controls overtime between sets magnitude needs to be swapped out for a new quantity SDPS, sustainable damage per second.
Id like to get numbers from numbers to simply every effect in the game down into just 2 terms, terms of SDPS and DPS (not necessarily high burst neither as sometimes the tortoise may be better than the hare).
He will honor his words; he will definitely carry out his actions. What he promises he will fulfill. He does not care about his bodily self, putting his life and death aside to come forward for another's troubled besiegement. He does not boast about his ability, or shamelessly extol his own virtues. - Sima Qian.
Basicly you cant calculate a SDPS, you forget the 'unknown factor', being the mob and its power preference. Take a rikti boss, ranged it does okish nrg damage, but melee he might grab his surfboard and can do a ouchy SL bladeswipe. This applies to nearly any mob, as its very random in what order mobs do their powers and exactly when. (refer to MM pet AI, good example). Stupid mobs like helions (baseball bat wack) are doable, but once you get to mobs with multiple attacks of different strength, imho its kinda impossible to calculate a SDPS. Added that the base tohit of a even minion is already 50%, thus you already are working in a 'lucky factor' area.
I never liked and never will like DPS terms. Too many factors playing a role to archive the pre-calculated DPS, specialy with lucky factors as tohit, defence and friendly buffs. Add the resist of a mob varies alot, for example council warwolf or hooverbot versus a grenadier using a Axe or Mace (the difference in DPS versus these mobs is over 50%).
As for Mace, the secondairy reason might be the lower (very tiny) control/damage compared with other sets, but i think the majority do not wish to take Mace because of the looks and its sounds.
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I'll be looking to assume the same criteria for all secondary effects. As long as its the exactly the same, its comparable.
He will honor his words; he will definitely carry out his actions. What he promises he will fulfill. He does not care about his bodily self, putting his life and death aside to come forward for another's troubled besiegement. He does not boast about his ability, or shamelessly extol his own virtues. - Sima Qian.
Having done some further thinking on ice melee I would welcome the comments of fellow players on some observations I have made. I will be checking the US forum thread in the hope that they also see this and make comment on it.
I don't claim my maths on this are right & any improvements & observations that fellow players can make are more than welcome.
There is no doubt in my mind that taking ice patch (IP) at lvl 20 adds alot of damage mitigation to tanker primaries, especially fire. In my opinion IP is useful to the fire primary at every lvl, owing to a combination of damage mitigation & increased damage potential to foes from the IP/burn combo.
However, I questioned the usefulness of IP on other primaries at mid to high in the game when heroes have enough power choices available to replace IP with other forms of damage mitigation. Some figures show that actually I can improve damage mitigation on some tank primaries, in common situations, by dropping IP and taking pool powers instead. By doing so I can also reduce my energy use & increase my dps.
I designed tanks with ice & inv as their primary, to work out what defense a typical tank of each primary could have.
I came up with a figure of roughly 36% def v S/L & energy/neg. energy for an ice tank and roughly 40% for an inv tank versus 10 foes.
So say I use IP as an ice tank when fighting the aggro cap of 17, and it works at mitigating the damage of 5 foes 100%. Lets say that gives a damage mitigation improvement of (50% normal chance to hit - 36% defense available from defense without using ice patch * 5 foes) 70% from total chance of foes hitting.
If I drop IP and take weave this gives a bonus of 8% to all defense. So fighting 17 foes (8 * 17) I get a reduction of 136% in the chance to hit spread over all the foes. Nearly twice the damage mitigation with using weave compared to IP.
Also without slotting IP uses 10.4 endurance every 35 seconds, compared to 5.6 to run weave over the same time. Also having to use IP uses animation time which could be used to fire an attack of otherwise.
For an inv tank the figures would work out at roughly 50 - 40 * 5 = 50% damage reduction as total percentage using IP versus 17. Using weave (to give 45% capped defense against even lvl foes) = 17 * 5 = 85%. So still an improvement in using weave compared to IP.
I recognise that these figures compared weave to IP in the best light, against S/L & energy/neg and higher numbers of foes. However, taking on higher numbers of foes is when you are more likely to be defeated and so in need of more defense. I would suggest that any reasonably built /ice tank could survive near enough any mob of 5 foes without having to use ice patch anyway.
So my observations are as follows:-
1/ Is it actually better to drop ice patch in favour of weave to survive against bigger mobs if you are an ice or inv tank?
2/ If the above is true does this mean that the previously held view that ice melee damage should be lower damage because it gives better damage mitigation false? If an inv/fire tank can mitigate more damage from large mobs by taking weave than I can by taking ice patch and do much more damage should not the damage of ice melee be boosted?
Based on the above I see no reason not to ask for the damage done by ice swords to be the same as that done by fire swords (with the changes in animation, recharge & energy use to make them equal).
As previously mentioned I would be grateful if other people could look at the maths and tell me if they agree or disaggree that taking weave gives more damage mitigation against large mobs than using ice patch, which is when tanks are more likely to be defeated, eg taking the alpha hits and shortly after.
Paragon Girl
P.S. I copied a lvl 50 inv/ice tank to test last night & respeced out of IP. I took weave and aid self & had no difficultly runing missions on inv. Also it was about 5am and the server showed only me on it (some could have been on hide) I was never defeated by the rikti invasion spawns in the zones using this build despite facing over 50 enemies per event. I was not in any danger of dying but defeating the enemy was slow and rather boring. This is I think another factor in requesting a bump to ice melee damage, to add a bit more fun factor.
Is Ice Melee missing something? That little bit of oomph for fun factor, damage? Since the changes to icepatch has it lost its ranking amongst other sets for level of control and has it still not been properly compensated if it needed any cmpensation?
I have an /Ice and I like her, her icepatch has made her able to get away with a bit more than my other tanks a bit. I think i got defeated just a couple of times, both times having been dc'd whilst soloing a large group of +2s. My stone is a little further along the first debt badge bar and my /fire is way out in front (rightfully so), a logical expectation wouldnt you agree? Does icepatch make up for the rest of the set?
Tier 9 powers are supposed to be what people are waiting for but who made that rule? Does it have to be the way?
Anyone have any good tricks/uses with Frozen Aura? In PVP id imagine the sleep detoggling some blasters knockback protection and armour, in PVE i can possibly only wish for something similar. Before any effect self only moments or things like an unstop crash it maybe a useful control and benefitting from slept minions defbuffing your invincible whilst kiting a AV is probably sweet an all, but possibly used in very rare circumstances or with little hope of great expectations.
If there is fault with the set, rather than change powers completely and upset someone, somehow, somewhere, sometime, or even change the secondary effects of any power what kind of a buff would you like to see?
I am personally leaning towards quick fixes, should a fix be needed, inv/ice possibly great in teams but horrible to solo so i thought in terms of damage ie:
Greater range on frost, itll easily hit 2 well lined up but its still "short", for someone with superpowers, strong enough for carrying iceblocks on ones body, Id of thought blowing cold air would achieve a longer distance than that, better range = less repositioning = better attack rate and chance of multitargetness increased. Or atleast change it to 1.5 - 2 times its damage per endurance for lack of range.
Freezing Touch: Instead of 6 damage ticks over 5.1 seconds, make it 7 damage ticks over 5.95 seconds and so on par with the other attacks, slightly better for those who look at the swords and think why with my concept? Just like Phoenix tanks.
Then give Mace Tanks a change to Clobber by giving it the same level of damage as Jawbreaker. This I think will give a more dpe friendly single target attack chain and make clobber not be like a babies dummy hitting you in the head but with total chance for disorient.
Numbers bore me, there was a bit of maths involved in my thinking, but the numbers and calculations came to me like flashes of light leaving no residue of how they came about.
I have played most the sets though, having 4 tanks and being able to play other peoples on other accounts.
He will honor his words; he will definitely carry out his actions. What he promises he will fulfill. He does not care about his bodily self, putting his life and death aside to come forward for another's troubled besiegement. He does not boast about his ability, or shamelessly extol his own virtues. - Sima Qian.