But Ice melee can do IP AND Weave!
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But Ice melee can do IP AND Weave!
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I agree but that takes extra power slots and heroes that use other secondaries can also use those extra power choices to select powers which mitigate damage.
Take an inv/ice & inv/SS. Say both have taken the fighting pool. Inv/ice then takes IP. Inv/SS takes hand clap which works on up ten, more than the number that it is being currently reported are affected by ice patch.
Or you could say Inv/ice takes IP, while inv/SS takes resist physical damage, nearly capping damage to s/l damage as well as slotting to provide defense & resist to psi.
As such while ice melee can add to its survivial with ice patch on top of fighting pool so other melee toons can also add to their damage mitigation. Also they then usually have better damage mitigation via defeating enemies quicker as well.
However, my question still remains, is ice melee that good that IP provides more mitigation than using the fighting pool when fighting large numbers of foes. If I take weave and cap out my defense at about 48% is it worth taking IP still as it will only reduce incoming damage from the foes slipping on the ice by about 5% (the difference between their chance to hit and my defense). As such are /ice melee toons better off taking weave & dropping IP as then it adds so little damage mitigation?
So although, "Ice melee can do IP AND Weave!" is there any point to IP or should you just go fighting pool & drop weave?
Paragon Girl
The point of IP is taking certain enemies out of a fight- could perhaps include bosses, annoying enemies, or higher level enemies. It's not just safety for the tank against those enemies, it's safety for the whole team from those, it's like a mez, the tank no longer needs to attend to those enemies as much when getting aggro. He can then "Tank" over the aggro cap by distracting some enemies with IP, then keeping the rest taunted.
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The point of IP is taking certain enemies out of a fight- could perhaps include bosses, annoying enemies, or higher level enemies. It's not just safety for the tank against those enemies, it's safety for the whole team from those, it's like a mez, the tank no longer needs to attend to those enemies as much when getting aggro. He can then "Tank" over the aggro cap by distracting some enemies with IP, then keeping the rest taunted.
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Agreed IP is a form of damage mitigation. However, some other sets present as having as equally good damage mitigation as ice melee, if not better, and do more damage, eg stone has fault, tremor and seismic smash among other methods of helping to reduce damage to the tank & team mates. Therefore, assisting with allowing tanking over the aggro cap. Indeed some of these now seem to affect more enemies than IP is reported to. As such I think there is a case for reviewing the damage done by ice melee.
Personally I don't play over the aggro cap. If there are 2 spawns near to each other I will taunt 1 spawn and pull it away from the other to avoiding going over the aggro cap. I find this to be a better method to manage aggro than relying on ice patch to manage any numbers over the aggro cap. However, I agree IP can help here, but I would hope you would also agree that some other tank secondaries have powers that can help mangae this.
The issue of whever /ice melee tanks should be dropping IP if they have to in order to fit in weave matters for the issues you have raised, namely damage mitigation. An undefeated tank holds more aggro than a defeated 1.
So if the figures above show that an ice tank is more likely to survive with weave than with ice patch and they only have room for 1 then is it better to drop IP and take weave? If the tank is defeated when using ice patch damage transfers to the rest of the team, possibly resulting in more deaths in the team. However, if the tank would have survived with weave instead of IP then he can hold aggro from the team.
As such I agree IP & tough & weave altogether will help a tank survive. However, I suspect there are many tanks with IP & not weave, should they be taking both where possible, but where this is not should they be taking weave instead of IP? Does IP give the illusion of helping tanks survive more than it really does in the later game. I know there will be occasions when it will help more than weave, eg against 5 psi using carnies who can be knocked down on ice patch, but in most large teams should tanks be swapping out of IP for weave (or going for both when they can)?
At the moment my own limited testing on the test server is suggesting I am not really missing IP that much. For example, herding up & managing a half a map of carnies on solo. But defeating them does take its time, which is where the more damaging sets have an advantage. /fire can go to the fighting pool for added damage mitigation, but I can't go to pool powers to get good ST damage like greater fire sword.
Paragon Girl
An additional consideration here is that Ice Patch is not directly comparable to Weave. Not because of the oft nebulous comparison of Damage Mitigation, but because on top of said Damage Mitigation Ice Patch also effectively holds the mobs it affects.
This means that other people in the team a) don't have to worry about AoE/Cone damage from the mobs and b) don't have to worry about the mobs running off (and subsequently returning out of taunt to wreak havoc).
Solo they may be comparable, but in a team you have to look at the additional benefits that IP provides to the team as a whole, rather than just for you.
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Now first, stop talking about the 50% softcap.. thats only even lvl minions , wich i hardly .. ok wich i never see with my tanker 
Actualy i got wondering, is Ice really that weak? Take SS/Mace/Axe as issue, against high SL resist you can better start trowing napkins because it does more damage. (I SO SERIOUS HATE COUNCIL... thank you).
As for damage, inv already lacks massive there, as its the only set not having a damage aura. Many /sets do less with Inv due lack of that aura (refer to high SL mobs). Same kinda goes for axe/mace, as they only have 1 stupid tiny AoE power and the rest is quite ST (lining up perfect to get a 5% cone working...).
If you take granite with ice melee, it will be the weakest wacking around, but he is able to break the final issue.. psionic damage using ice patch. So perhaps way more situational, but if i ever would make a /ice (that would definiatly be fire/ice) i will and keep ice patch. So perhaps a ice/ice wont need IP that much, a fire would greatly benefit, inv is pretty situational. Like how often can you cap out your defence on a inv tanker?
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Now first, stop talking about the 50% softcap.. thats only even lvl minions , wich i hardly .. ok wich i never see with my tanker
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Well not really, no. The 50% Defence softcap is fixed even since they modified the ToHit calculations to make 1 Def = 2 Res (More or less). See here http://uk.boards.cityofheroes.com/sh...;Number=349211 and here http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showf...Number=5759413
As all mobs have a 50% ToHit and the basic ToHit formula is "NetToHit = Accuracy * (BaseToHit - Defense)" then any Net defence above 50% is worthless as the ToHit will always be 0 (Well, 5% as you can't get below that).
So, even up to +4 AVs, you're looking at 48.3% being the soft cap (2.9*50-48.3=4.93%) and below that it drops down to 45% for an even level minion (1.0*50-45=5%). Obviously, ToHit & Defence buffs and debuffs will affect your actual values, but basically that's it. YMMV.
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Melee sets are melee sets. People build to taste, slot to taste and play to taste. Id stick with looking at just the base numbers in melee sets.
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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An additional consideration here is that Ice Patch is not directly comparable to Weave. Not because of the oft nebulous comparison of Damage Mitigation, but because on top of said Damage Mitigation Ice Patch also effectively holds the mobs it affects.
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Personally, I would have to say yes and no. Yes you are totally correct in that IP can reduce damage to team mates via the methods you outline below, when compared to using weave. No, in that if having weave instead keeps you alive (when you would be defeated with having IP instead of weave) then the team is likely to face less damage with you alive than dead and having laid ice patch.
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This means that other people in the team a) don't have to worry about AoE/Cone damage from the mobs and b) don't have to worry about the mobs running off (and subsequently returning out of taunt to wreak havoc).
Solo they may be comparable, but in a team you have to look at the additional benefits that IP provides to the team as a whole, rather than just for you.
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But does this mean that the control that ice melee brings to a team equals or even outweighs the reduction in damage compared to some other sets? Should ice melee be given a boost, if it should what should it be, and if not why not?
Could an inv/fire actually provide more damage mitigation to a team than a inv/ice? The inv/fire could stay alive by using the fighting pool, and so suck up more aggro than the dead inv/ice using IP instead of weave. The inv/fire could grab more aggro by using more aoe attacks than the inv/ice. The inv/fire could reduce damage to the team by defeating foes quicker.
Paragon Girl
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Now first, stop talking about the 50% softcap.. thats only even lvl minions , wich i hardly .. ok wich i never see with my tanker
Actualy i got wondering, is Ice really that weak? Take SS/Mace/Axe as issue, against high SL resist you can better start trowing napkins because it does more damage. (I SO SERIOUS HATE COUNCIL... thank you).
As for damage, inv already lacks massive there, as its the only set not having a damage aura. Many /sets do less with Inv due lack of that aura (refer to high SL mobs). Same kinda goes for axe/mace, as they only have 1 stupid tiny AoE power and the rest is quite ST (lining up perfect to get a 5% cone working...).
If you take granite with ice melee, it will be the weakest wacking around, but he is able to break the final issue.. psionic damage using ice patch. So perhaps way more situational, but if i ever would make a /ice (that would definiatly be fire/ice) i will and keep ice patch. So perhaps a ice/ice wont need IP that much, a fire would greatly benefit, inv is pretty situational. Like how often can you cap out your defence on a inv tanker?
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I think I was the first person, looking at times of post, out of both the US and european threads to raise the issue of resistance. I do think it allows ice to catch up with s/l melee sets in a number of cases and as I pointed out it can even out damage them. However, it would take a lot of leg work to find out the true impact of resistance to damage figures. What is evident though is that there some players using ice melee who report that the damage they do is rather under whelming and they would like it to be reviewed in the hope that changes can be made to make it more enjoyable to play. This may mean increasing recharge times & energy costs of ice melee powers in order to counteract the benefits of any higher damage.
The thread in the US has several players asking for a bit more ST damage potential in their attack chain. Is that what players in europe want? This thread gives players in europe a chance to enter into discussion about any changes they want or don't want to ice melee.
I agree with you sinergy_x that fire/ice make a good combo and personally I have no difficultly with ice melee in that combination. Personally having both a fire/ice & inv/ice at lvl 50 I choose between which tank to use given the team composition and missions to be completed. I don't mind that the inv/ice has low damage as I only use him in teams whenever possible & concentrate on holding aggro rather than damage output. If I want damage output I go fire/ice.
Hopefully my posts to date have stimulated this thread and encouraged people to think though the issues around ice melee so that the developers can better understand players views if they review ice melee.
However, to date there has not been an overwhelming response to this thread. Is that because most people are happy with ice melee or that so many people believe it to be low damage they select an EM for big ST damage and accept how ice melee currently is?
Paragon Girl
I suspect it's more that the number of players on the EU servers who:
Speak English
Read the forums
Read the Tanker section
Have a /Mace or /Ice Tanker
Actually "care" enough to participate in what often seems to be a futile process (i.e. Trying to get changes made to powersets)
Is pretty low - I can only think of 5 or 6 people off the top of my head who read the forums and even have the sets.
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Have a /Mace or /Ice Tanker
[/ QUOTE ]Or would have one, if they weren't so gimped
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I suspect it's more that the number of players on the EU servers who:
Speak English
Read the forums
Read the Tanker section
Have a /Mace or /Ice Tanker
Actually "care" enough to participate in what often seems to be a futile process (i.e. Trying to get changes made to powersets)
Is pretty low - I can only think of 5 or 6 people off the top of my head who read the forums and even have the sets.
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Ive done it since the beginning, but only change that ever came forward was the swapping of clobber and jawbreaker in the power list. While nice chance in that it improved the enjoyment of the tank while progressing lvls (didnt have to wait til lvl 20 for the second damaging attack) it didnt help mace overall.
ps. Ice patch is a lot better damage mitigation than weave, whenever its there.
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Have a /Mace or /Ice Tanker
[/ QUOTE ]Or would have one, if they weren't so gimped
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I dont wanna know the ammount of fire/ice tankers though
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I have a level 35 stone/ice tank, the damage is OK, not the best but it's enough to go through a defeat all mission with +2 enemies. I've not got the tier 9 power in Ice Melee yet, but from what I have seen (numbers and people talking 'bout it) it is utterly useless and only useful in the right situation, like about to die whilst being chased by minions who all have -recharge so you can't use Ice Patch (damn you Crey!!) 
I have to agree with some of the original ideas though, increasing the damage/range of Frost and damage of FT.
If Frozen Aura were to be replaced, I believe a power which does Energy Transfer level cold DoT but which has an AoE -speed -recharge would fit the bill. Oh and on the issue of changing Ice would make Fire/Ice tanks overpowered, just make Fiery Embrace not enhance cold damage but instead debuff it.
I am the Blaster, I have filled the role of Tank, Controller and Defender
Sometimes all at once.
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Giving it a ET style makes it quite too powerfull, perhaps more the dominator ice power, that aoe ice sword one. (would match with the fire set).
As for damage output, stone itself generaly already drops your damage output alot (-30% dmg, -60/70% recharge).
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As for damage output, stone itself generaly already drops your damage output alot (-30% dmg, -60/70% recharge).
[/ QUOTE ]Assuming one uses perma-granite, that is.
I only use Granite as plan C due to the damage/recharge debuff (Plan A is earlier shields, B shields + insp), but with or without the damage is OK but still lacking a little.
I am the Blaster, I have filled the role of Tank, Controller and Defender
Sometimes all at once.
Union EU player! Pip pip, tally ho, top hats and tea etc etc
to be honest, i dont see why people keep coming back to fire/ice being 'overpowered'. even with a damage buff to /ice, fire/ice would still be lower damage and lower survivability than ice/fire, inv/fire or stone/fire...
overpowered my [censored]
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to be honest, i dont see why people keep coming back to fire/ice being 'overpowered'. even with a damage buff to /ice, fire/ice would still be lower damage and lower survivability than ice/fire, inv/fire or stone/fire...
overpowered my [censored]
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For the same reason that people still think regen is overpowered, because at one point in the past it was. People have a funny way of assuming that what they were told at one point is always true, to the extent that they discard contradictory statements. Never really understood it myself, but it certainly seems to be the case.
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Giving it a ET style makes it quite too powerfull, perhaps more the dominator ice power, that aoe ice sword one. (would match with the fire set).
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agreed. an attack of that damage using elemental damage type and (presumably) slow in combination with BU and GIS would be a PvP combo of d00m. I think ice sword circle, as i have said before many a time, would fit very nicely. It keeps the set as a PvE oriented set, but allows it to be a little more interesting to play without making it 'uber' or any nonsense like that.
comparable attacks:
scorch - frozen fists
FS - IS
BoF - Frost
taunt - taunt
BU - BU
Incinerate - Freezing touch
GFS - GIS
Combustion - Ice Patch
FSC - Frozen Aura
all the ice attacks do slightly less damage than the fire ones, but do slow on the enemy. it would figure than swapping Frozen aura for ISC would be the obvious choice. as frozen aura is the only one that is completely uncomparable to its fire counterpart.
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to be honest, i dont see why people keep coming back to fire/ice being 'overpowered'. even with a damage buff to /ice, fire/ice would still be lower damage and lower survivability than ice/fire, inv/fire or stone/fire...
overpowered my [censored]
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For the same reason that people still think regen is overpowered, because at one point in the past it was. People have a funny way of assuming that what they were told at one point is always true, to the extent that they discard contradictory statements. Never really understood it myself, but it certainly seems to be the case.
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Regen isnt underpowered neither, so any "OMG MoG needs a fix" is asking to be overpowered.
I am explaining MoG on one of my regens by saying they have extremophile bacteriums which fits in nicely with regeneration and would be corrupted if it had any usefulness against psionics.
Lag has hindered my progress on this subject of ice melee and mace and the new content on test server just tempts me. Add to that I got 3 weeks off after Friday anyway which is better in the way of uninterrupted time.
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.
[ QUOTE ]
to be honest, i dont see why people keep coming back to fire/ice being 'overpowered'. even with a damage buff to /ice, fire/ice would still be lower damage and lower survivability than ice/fire, inv/fire or stone/fire...
overpowered my [censored]
[/ QUOTE ]
Not likely overpowered, but it has a very huge button 'I WIN' on it. Fire got boosted massive with healing flames, having icepatch drops incomming damage by like 70-80%. Its the combo burn/icepatch that makes it 'stronger' then all the other classes.
The 'nerfed' burn is massive compensated by the fact mobs cant even run away on ice patch, having 2 buildups increase the damage more. So even if they just replace the aoe-sleep by the ice sword circle, the damage increase makes them among the higher damage dealers.
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If Fire/Ice was effecting the balance of other sets then its not fair. Itll be better to have the fear component making mobs try to roll off the ice (which is fast and easy) not having most other ATs be less effective (and I am not saying they are). Id give the burn on icepatch giving a 1/3rd better damage output than burn on a fire/fire and then there is burn in teams, blasters can patch, controllers can patch and aoe immob etc etc reducing that 1/3rd slightly.
Its a 1/3rd to me cos I use a small AoE but high gauntlet then Burn then larger AoE and so they run out and run back in if they run.
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.
Dont get me wrong yet, but i think you go wrong on the IP migration part. As i saw from 30 lvls on my nrg/ice blaster, i can roughly say (with execption) it can stop mobs from attacking for a close 90%. The 10% they do attack, they will face your 40% defence.
But i as i might read wrong, i think thats your 5x100% part kicks in.
I cant think up any maths to do around here, but basicly i would say you have a 6% chance to get hit with 40% def and icepatch. Do note i never tested 17 mobs, as most likely they wont be able to fit all on the patch
But if you consider dropping IP just by taking the maths versus 17 mobs on even lvl and equal tohit (so minions), i think you looking the wrong way.
A 48% ice def stand not much of chance versus a +7 lt, however icepatch will do the same thing as it always does.. knock it down just like a even lvl lt. Add 3 +7 minions, the difference of Weave vs IP is getting even greater. Offcourse +7 is overdone, but it wasnt very rare that me tanker or blaster was facing +3 upto +5 mobs where defence gets a harder job and IcePatch will work just as it would on equal lvl.
I prefer taking ice patch as example from /ice blasters, as their set is also very low damaging compared to the others (how i was mistaken on tripmine.... but they have targetdrone and stealth also).
As for the copy to test, many tanks dispite their sets do not fear much, hardly fear missions on invincible. Ice patch for tankers isnt really made for solo style (everyone can nearly solo), it has way greater use in team play.
(asume you get a double group agro, drop 1 ice patch to keep 6 mobs 100% busy that wont be able to hit the team nor you).
But i really like your story, it shows a very different aspect. Although its fully based on defence, where resist-base is still important too, even though fire is the only one fully relying on it. Taking fire as example, weave will loose 10 times from icepatch.
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