Even before inherent Fitness freed up some power selections, I had squeezed in Aid Self on my Ice/Fire Tanker. I know that some people dislike it, but I've always found it useful on that toon. And it helped to make my Tanker feel even more self-sufficient. (I also took Aid Self on my Shield Tanker too because of the positive experience I've had with it on my Icer.)
Winteriel Ice/Fire/Soul Tanker | @TBoxer Global | City of Heroes R.I.P. (2004-2012)
I recently added Aid Self to my Shield tank, since that set has no other heal available. I played that character last night and found it to be very useful. I also have Aid Other/Aid Self/Resuscitate on one of my Invul tanks, but that's more for concept reasons.
There used to be frequent debates on this forum about whether the Fighting Pool was a better pick for sets like Invul & Ice than the Medicine Pool, and I always came down on the side of Aid Self. However, that really changed once it became possible to soft-cap defense with set bonuses, now I think soft-capping is the better choice.
I'm a little surprised that your soft-capped Ice tank feels squishy enough that you wanted Aid Self as well as Hoarfrost and Hibernate, that has not been my experience with my Ice tank. Normally when people come here for build advice for Ice, I'd recommend soft-capping and skipping Medicine.
That said, if you're already soft-capped, have room in your build, and feel it will benefit you, go for it! I generally don't take it anymore on characters with a decent heal in their primary, but I certainly would consider it for Shields, SR, WP, etc.
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Yeah I was already softcapped and did not trade off the softacap to accomodate the medicine pool (aid-self is gravy). Regarding keeping hibernate...it only took one slot and I was not sure how I would like Aid-Self. I may respec out of it later but TBD.
To clarify, the Ice tanker was very competent on the majority of content. However, I would not have expected him to survive as easily as say my Invuln/DM or Granite tanks on that rare but exceedingly difficult content. The addition of aid-self put me much closer to those tanks is my experience so far.
Anyway, just seemed like aid-self made a great tanker even better at tanking.
I used aid self on my Inv tank when I was leveling him. It was even at the expense of some primary set powers, because I had no room for everything. But it definitely made him more powerful. Although this was many years ago, and it was pretty much a different game then.
Well, from issue 6 until issue 13 I had Aid Self on CMA, my Inv/Stone tanker in place of the res energies & res elements passives; slotted up it provided considerably greater mitigation. I dropped it with my respec into a soft capped build with issue 13 and didn't really miss it. With the inherent fitness of issue 19 I added it back into my build and it's useful for really tough content like unassisted tanking Lord Recluse on the STF... I don't need to carry many greens anymore.
With some slotting it provides ~40% of healing available every 10 seconds or so. Slot an interrupt reducer or two and once you get your timing down you can fire it off between tics of DOT from caltrops. That's rather a lot of mitigation available to you.
On CMA I only found a couple of extra slots so I frankenslotted Heal/Recharge IO's and didn't add any interrupt. It does get interrupted on occasion but with a soft capped build it's fairly reliable, and if you CAN'T get it to fire that's what the insp tray is for.
COH has just been murdered by NCSoft. http://www.change.org/petitions/ncso...city-of-heroes
It really depends on the difficulty you are set at and the amount of villains you're compared too. If say you are set at 0 and +6, you shouldn't need it. But go a step higher to a +1 and +2 of difficulty and comparision of +3 heroes/villains then you should take it opposite the fighting pool.
Hi All,
I have always prioritized building a independently tough tank and never bothered with the medicine pool and very often skip the tier 9 god modes some primaries offer.
As much as I love my Ice/Fire tanker (with capped hp, def to s/l/n/e, high regen and etc...), I have always felt like it was not quite as tough as some of my other tanks on the most demanding content. I have always felt like heavy debuffs, or a few lucky shots from +3 to +4 content could put my Ice Tanker in trouble fast.
With the free i19 respecs, I have been tweaking the build and added aid-self. Suddenly, I feel like this tank has improved its survivabilty by at least 1/3. This one addition has now made this tank so much more fun to play for me now.
How about you all? Any of you ever use aid-self on your tanks?