Ice and Why?

Ok Making this simple.......Why Take Ice Armor......Now my main is a Ice/SS so i'm not hating on ice i'm just asking all the Ice Armors out there why Take Ice over any other Primary? I'm also asking this cause i feel like the only Ice tanker on any server anywhere some times.

I've had an Ice/Axe tank for a while and he's one of the more fun tanks i have.. He's very Theme build (he's a viking and i made him before the SD/ Influx of them) and i love not having to worry about endurance thanks to having a full set of Performance Shifter in Energy Absorbsion... 3 baddies and i'm full again...
I can imagine a lot of people not playing Ice because
A) they don't like the look of the ice armor
or
B) Defense based tanks take a while to get going and you need to understand how Defense works to get the most out of them..

besides let everyone ignore the set... i like having a non-FOTM character

There are several reasons to take Ice Armor:

a) It has the best taunt aura of any tank primary -- if you want to skip Taunt, this armor set can do it more easily than any other. Plus, Chilling Embrace adds Slow and -Damage, too!

b) Some people like the concept of Ice Armor. And some people want a Defense-based armor that is typed instead of positional and isn't Stone.

c) Endurance -- wonderful endurance recovery makes it a good pairing for a high endurance-using secondary.

d) A nice AoE damage aura -- and the other armors with a damage aura are Resistance based, except Stone, which is ugly.

edit: It seems I type too slow.

Possible 100% slow resistance. An ice tank can walk right over caltrops or a quicksand patch and not notice them.

Endurance: With the exception of electric armor, ice armor provides so much endurance through energy absorption and hibernate that even if recovery is floored the ice tank can still continue with only minor adjustments to endurance management.

Taunt: Chilling embrace is arguably the best and most useful taunt aura available to tankers. First, it activates every half a second, faster than any other tanker aura, making it quite easy to quickly run around a room and taunt everything; this is in contrast to slower auras like blazing aura and mud pots where something can walk right by the tanker without ever being taunted.
As well, chilling embrace adds a visual indicator of what it's hit. While the duration of the taunt and the duration of the visual effects will not be the same, it is as close to an indicator that any tank will ever have of what is or is not taunted. This is all in addition to the fact that it is the earliest available taunt aura and adds survivability that is superior to most early toggles (by itself).

Defense sets such as ice armor are cheaper and easier to gain significant gains through invention set bonuses by reaching the defense softcap. The available powers lend themselves very well towards high amounts of recharge, if however expensive, without sacrificing survivability... and unlike some powersets large amounts of recharge do not present a problem with endurance management that has to solved with additional expensive IOs.

When someone sees an ice tank, they know they're looking at an ice tank without having to click on the character. $$

I think folks tend to avoid it for three reasons.

1.They don't realize the EA is a a great way to alpha a spawn and is more important as a +def power than it is as late in the fight recovery power.

2.They don't quite know how to effectively use Hibernate, which is a great tier 9 if you slot a bit for taunt duration and time it properly.

3.Perhaps most important, it totally obscures any costume you might have.

From a numbers standpoint, anyone can get pretty amazing defense through IO sets now. If you use a resistance-based set and slot for defense, then you get significantly tougher. With Ice, you'll never be able to get your S/L/E/N resists even to half the level of your resistance-based peers and 1/3 is likely out of reach for all of them. You'll be able to softcap defenses, but so will those resistance-based sets (they just have to spend more). The debuffs are nice, but don't match the combo of high resists and high defense for survivability.

And, of course, the set just looks terrible. The armors desperately need a more form-fitting look.

now i've talked to alot of people on champion about why they don't take ice over any other set and it comes down to mostly that ice "Looks Crap"

i can understand in 2006 that is all they could do to make ice look better but in 2010 with GR coming out and the change to the graphics engine why can't they do something to make Ice armor look more fitting

If Iceman looked like a ice tanker he would of got killed off of the X-men comics the issue he got put in

Dev's its time to redo the look of Ice Armor

You guys tell me what you think?

I did have a Ice/Stone tanker for a while that I got to quite a high lvl (44 I think) but at the time I didn't want to invest the time/Inf to soft cap him as other projects came along and after running an ITF and several missions involving the original Rad blasting Clockwork and having cascading defence failure every single mob I deleted him.

I retconned the character into a Willpower/Ice tank but I do miss my Ice Armour tank because of the sheer agro pulling power he had. I am thinking of rolling a new one with a different secondary and try it again.

I would love a tighter fitting Ice Armour look to but thankfully because of power customisation you can make the bulky armour less obvious now.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger Quote: 16. Has Paragon Studios redefined "player" to require your mouse to subscribe separately from your keyboard? If your mouse has greater processing power than your gfx card, the answer is yes.

1. I made an Ice/Electric Tanker to combine endurance drains. This can be done on an elec/elec, but Ice/ is defensive based and has a max hit point power.

2. Theme! Ice/Kinetic Tanker for a praetorian-robot police theme (I colored the kinetics and ice shields to look like force fields).

3. I like having defensive-based toons prior to IOs so I don't have to go billionare crazy to softcap.

4. The new tanker hit point cap means you get more out of Frostwork.

I gave an Ice/EM tank in the upper 20's. I initially built him for PvP but as my altism took over, i left him behind. I think that /Ice coud use a graphics overhaul but other than that, I say it's fine. All of the power sets have there strengths and weaknesses, it's up to the player to make best out of them to match their gaming style

I have an Ice tank that has stalled in the mid 40s. I haven't had a chance to get him to 50 yet.

If you want to know the problem with Ice tanks, take one into the Imperious Task Force. Every single enemy there has a defense debuff. The Cimerorans will hack you to pieces in no time, even if you have capped defenses, unless you have team support to keep you alive.

Defense debuffs have been made very frequent in this game, possibly as a response to IO-ed out defenses. Every enemy with a gun, claw, blade or radioactive blood breaks defenses. This means the defense-only sets are beginning to suffer.

When fighting enemies that have few defense debuffs, Ice is a terrific set. It's combination of extreme slows, taunts, and saps create a tanking experience like nothing else. But it has a vulnerability that's too common right now. Still, it's viable with a good balanced team.