Why does Ice control have -KB in its AoE immob?

Seeing as Ice needs to rely so much on ice slick...
Why does Ice control have -KB in its aoe immobilze?

This never made sense to me?

Is it a legacy of its original design before it was buffed (if it ever was...)?

It makes sense for a rooting AoE ice power to prevent knockback. Plus it works great with Tornado.

Lewis

I Don't think every Ice power set should suffer just so storm can use KB.

You can use KB all you want. Unless your real concern is containment for damage? In that case I can understand. Still, ice control has arctic air for diffusing damage while leveraging containment.

Anyway, it makes sense for Ice to -kb root. Ice is hard. I have played ice/emp, ice/kin both into the 40s and I have played ice/storm and ice/FF both to 50, and the 9 seconds of -kb from Frostbite is not a huge issue.

Lewis

I think part of it is the overall concept. Ice or Rock or entangling plants that would Immobilize someone would also prevent them from being knocked back. Electrical impulses might prevent a foe from running, but would not prevent knockback. Gravity and Fire could go either way.

The -kb in Frostbite only lasts about 12 seconds, while the immob duration is double that. You can use FB and ice slick at the same time if you're smart about it.

Long post warning.


The problem isn't the design of Ice Control necessarily, but the (IMO) lopsided way Containment was implemented. Ice Control pre-dates Containment so it wasn't a consideration in the original design. Containment is a horribly designed mechanic, IMO. I sometimes wonder if the developers don't curse the day they implemented it.

Basically prior to Containment canceling knockdown wouldn't have happened on a regular basis. When the decision was made to have AoE immobilizes grant containment it set the stage for what we have now, which is a very low damage, extremely team dependent set cancelled out by a couple of very high damage, extremely solo friendly sets.

Fire Control is supposed to have worse control than Ice. The fact that Ice didn't have a good ranged mezz also wasn't as big a deal because Glacier had half the recharge, lasted longer, and was more accurate.


All of this said--

--IMO Ice Control is accidentally the best balanced Control set in the game. Ice works the way I think that in a more carefully designed game the Controls sets SHOULD work. In fact, I think it ended up working exactly the way the designers of Containment were trying to take the Controller AT, which was good enough to shut down part of a spawn but not with 100% reliability (i.e. the oft quoted "City of Statues" status quo the developers at the time wanted to eliminate).

Their mistake was nerfing the Accuracy of powers like Stalagmites and Flashfire and not changing them 100% chance to affect to 75% or 80% chance to affect or something. The latter is what Ice Control has had to deal with for most of its existence, because no amount of slotting Accuracy makes Ice Slick or Arctic Air more reliable. I sometimes wonder how much more fun this game would have been if that intent had been seen through. I do tend to think of Ice Control as somewhat weaker than the other control sets, but only the sense that I feel it is the closest to where it should be.

The other thing about Control sets is that I suspect the majority of designers feel they over-perform. Possibly even in the case of Ice Control. IMO it is generally true that the worst of the Control sets is nowhere close to as bad as the worst of what else is out there. I actually suspect Gravity Control may be equal to or functionally superior to ANY of the Blaster secondaries, for example.

Anyway, the issue with Ice Control is a bit bigger than just Immob in the cages. It's that Containment encourages people who don't need to team anyway to sideline you even further because they have to cancel your contribution. IMO the change shouldn't be to Frostbite, but to Ice Slick. Personally, I'm tempted to say it would even be appropriate to modify Ice Slick so that every other tick, or perhaps one tick every 10 seconds, was unresistable knockdown. Enemies do fall despite holds and immob powers under the current limitations anyway, so any animation objections should fall by the wayside. What I don't know is if this would do something ridiculous like let Hamidon fall over. But I'd be 100% ok with an Ice Controller (or also a Force Fielder) knocking over an AV more often than the once in a blue moon they currently do, given all they have to deal with.

The other powers I will call out while I have the podium are Jack Frost and Shiver. Shiver's duration, in light of throw away autohit power recently released in Time Manipulation, is absolutely ridiculously unrealistic at just 18 seconds with over a 2 second cast time. Meanwhile, Jack Frost next to Animated Stone is crazy--why is the set that has such low damage and a need to melee given such a fragile pet when Earth gets a Tank? I feel like the two powers got accidentally swapped. IMO the right change to Jack Frost is to pump him up a little bit, and then, in the spirit of the recent Lore pets, give him buff powers to legitimately enable Ice Control to deal with the extra aggro it's expected to handle.

BTW, if you're still in a reading mood after the marathon post above--the Hold power in Ice Blast actually conditionally causes -kb. The power is flagged to only do -KB "On targets who are held." The way this works out in practice is the first cast Holds the target without canceling kb, and the second one causes it. I have tested this many times with my FF/Ice character, who can KB an enemy hit once with Freeze Ray but not if Freeze Ray is cast again after they are frozen. I wonder if we could convince the developers to apply the same logic at least to Block of Ice, which actually has the exact same hold graphic (the big ice block).

Wow tex.

There isn't much else to say, that answered my questions.

I do agree with you that outside of sleeps(which shold keep the 100% chance to mez) the 80% or 75% chance to Mezinstead of 100% chance with lower accuracy would have been a superior change to the aoe controls.

Do you think its too late to make that change now?

Well, I like OTex and all, but I am glad he isnt in charge

Lewis