siran

I updated my Mids to download the build... and it's broken. Something about the gui. I can read some of it,... Does this build still have perma DOM?

I've been playing a little with how to surive the hardcore modes. I do get that it needs a team 🙂 I would though like to do as well as possible. I am torn between shield and super reflexes. On balance though I prefer super reflexes I think. I am not very good at designing characters. It feels my goals should be 'lots of recharge' so that I can get perma souldrain (for the to hit mainly). I would like lots of hit points and resists, but I'm not sure how to get them and get the recharge, or even which is the most important I'm not very worried about damage: I have a team for that. I sort of expect there to be a kinetics on the team anyway. Procs as far as I can tell are contra-indicated for hard core. Specific questions: Should I go for more heal in siphon life? How should I go about building for more hp/resists and which resists are most important? Is recharge actually important? I picked Nerve for the alpha slot: i understand hitting things can be hard, and I like defence buffs. Is there a better choice? I picked up Elude for the 'EEEKKK' moments. I'm OK at monitoring it and 'getting somewhere else when it drops'. Will it actually help if I accidentally pull a second EB? (I don't really understand the defence mechanics at this high level end of play) Click this DataLink to open the build! Copy & Paste this data into Mids Reborn : Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1552;703;1406;HEX;| |78DA6594594F135114C7EFB453B150965A28205B0B02A5B5D38E9AC8EA120B89481| |302C6D75ACB2D3634B469ABC177717953707971FD0CBE19DFFD068AFA19041337A2| |E278CAFFDC809949DADFDC73EE59EFB9935C4978B2D9A93342F39CCBA7CBE5D4C5F| |4F2922CB992E9C55C46D0E39D9F0BC40289642021B372B99CBB2E6B48DA856D2908| |A5317FAD48AB3999CDCB15596E656D52E6A53412E9D2125E8567B650C81B33325DC| |C2D2F62315F286564E9462D16452917EA775FA7728B572BB4CB3759CC658CB3A54C| |25974925D3E50A6D6EA30CC2F43BE9A73FAD9AA5B09CE2BC530853178E29E605509| |F067FB8F736BBC43D1DCAFBE08135E63A78F001F321384C913436D6B44D78ACDD02| |B7C9B3537976BE83B0E13DD8B4C1FC001EFAC8FC048E906797F2EC6AD17685CDCDE| |028296B94B22622A064FAE920DCAC74B8D9D2CF96FE9DEA29E9628C3CD4290F75BC| |A98D378D93B25E79A8E7AADAB82AF32BF88BAA6B54D5355E46ECC3927905ECCC301| |7C0EE61A2EE141314C1ABC27B397C37875FEB17C287AE5ABACF74401905030633C6| |8C83EB64D4A23CB6B423C76007D84B2D6955CA56EE5390F9882CDB054F4BFB37B6F| |C0EF6FD646E837FA8EA0ECC8BE5EAB88929E85B058FDC62DE66DE0107EE82BFC9B8| |4BB5ACAB8CC4074698A3E0E018739C39013AA8861E4E53F4AC42B8431E7B553ABD4| |F1066E829F319F339187EC17C09FE25E37E954E7F041EC383E0D11073881906A39C| |B693D20929E310772DCA5D8B72D762DCB558B5F93475B1637CF7C838A2CE23C2036| |6F2809DA2D93058298C280EE93409E35CBD16E78131BDE090BE7785AD4E5DA8C7AA| |AE2D4BCCD845B3BAB22091B62BFA5CBB779759B469176DED1339B420DFF84B48C43| |34D1CD4C597FF363D46C73C6B60430025BDA54F558853B0C2F614E3769169171DB7| |8B4ED845EE26FA14A9586F7C145FB56B72FFE2D5FEC56B1A2C53D9FC03047CF736| |-------------------------------------------------------------------|[/code]

Dark is my absolute favourite armour. I get the three healing enhancements and touch of the no tus and never look back. It's the toughest thing in the game in my experience. At lvl 50...Fantastic resists a total heal with two targets every 10s or so. I usually get some control with it... So can stun or fear bosses with one attack (handclap is my favourite.. Bounce them as well) only thing to fear is end drain and DDR. The P2W recovery serums as stated above helps enormously. As also stated above pairing with staff or savage is great as they remove all the end issues leaving you with just awesomeness I've taken a brute staff dark to 50 and had more fun than I expected. Not yet tried tanker (I tend not to repeat combinations) dark/martial arts is surprising good... I often Exemplar to 20 and she's great. Dark/SS has lots and lots of bad guys bouncing on their backsides around you. Dark /electric melee the same plus you get lightning rod... Dark/Titan weapons was... Too hard to do. Too much end... But maybe with the changes to TW its better now. Dark/claws is brutally effective...

It was a PUG and very disorganised. Splitting two or three ways sometimes. I took ageless at first(as a fortuanata I don't normally get hit much so just wanted DDR) but changed to a T4 barrier second mission onwards. For the rezzs as much as anything... . I saw some rebirths go of and at least one other person had barrier I changed judgement to void with half damage as well (basically trying everything) Mostly though she didn't have enough hps. Even at 85 smashing and negative resist in melee with romulus she got blasted. Not talking about the voids... Just melee. The judgements got me two or three times but I think I understand them now) Next experiments... Dark/super str Stone/super str Super Str for the rage and the bouncing... The first tank stacks a lot of stunning the second bounces more. Usually the dark is tougher than stone (the heal... So very very good) but I think DDR is important. Kiting the voids might be interesting with stone/ but a teleport macro should do the trick I think (GET ME OUT OF HERE). I use that with the blue patches of doom fighting battle maiden.. And mostly it works

Well I gave it a go at 2 stars. I foolishly tried a VEAT rather than a tanker. Vet level 160 and never dies on normal content. Can solo +4x8 ITF. So I thought she would be tough. I think I died over 20 times... Some of them I still don't know how or why. I couldn't get within a few feet of romulus even when 85% resists and def >100. Just 'smash' and down. In the end just hover and ranged attacks. Still we got to the end and bashed the (much tougher and much cooler romulus) into next centurty. Next time I'll try dark/ma tank and see how that goes.

Thanks for the advice. I will indeed give it a go 🙂 Time to start experimenting with each tank primary I think

I'm going to prefix this with 'I've not tried hard mode yet'. I do get it is hard mode, especially after reading this thread My question: will dark armor work. I have found in normal content that Dark Armor is superb. I can cap the defences (normal content), cap most resists (even energy with the P2W Kinetic armor if I really need to, which I hardly ever do), the best heal in the game (total heal every 10 seconds or so) and level 4 stuns AOE all the time (paired with super str, stone or electric melee) On normal +4x8 ITF these guys usually don't loose any hps, and if they do the total heal every 10 seconds or so helps a lot. Of course they don't have any DDR which a lot of this thread has been about... but I find after a handclap and an oppressive gloom most things aren't hitting me any (on normal difficulty) . Clearly EBs and AVs are not in the 'most things'.... but that heal helps a lot. Edit: oh and soul transfer is great for standing up quickly if you do fall over. (as the previous post said about Rise of the Phoneix) But I've only used it once or so every 50 veteran levels... I suspect I will use it more now... Is the hard mode such that 'it's all about the DDR?' at the highest level of difficulties?

Now that there are noticable improvements to ice/ (artic ice respects dominiation, toggle supression, ice slick does damage, cold snap does fear) do any of you have ideas how to change this build I have an Ice/Claw that mostly follows your build and it's the only dominator that I have felt 'great' on. It just got a whole lot better with this, but (for example) I don't have cold snap, and only one recharge in ice patch. I took mine out last night for an old fashioned +4/x8 ITF and it was glorious. In the ambush in the first scene all the bosses seemed to be dominated most of the time (I was running world of confusion and would often get two dominates). There was a plant controller as well, and quite often the elite bosses would be confused What changes would you make? is it worth slotting a little damage in ice patch? Is cold snap good enough to take (it was ...meh... in the last)

I'm just doing a little bit of thread necromancy @Sir Myshkin I remember reading that you had a 'radiation armor/dark melee' tank that turned out to be a good proc monster. I had a look through this thread but couldn't find it. Did it work out, and do you have a build? Thanks in advance 🙂 I've been playing with Rad/Dark Melee and having a surprising amount of fun. I've turned off double xp and just slowly leveling through the mid 30s at the moment. That's way before the proc monster is going to kick in (not a lot of spare slots in the mid 30s), so I am quite looking forwards to that

I think the last issue should be renamed 'Lots of love for stone tankers'. The changes to rooted were enormous in terms of quality of life and removed almost all the disadvantages of granite. It used to be that I would play dark/ or maybe invuln/ for a tough tanker because the cost of granite was so high in real terms (playability not numbers). But now I can be in non granite form most of the time doing more damage/better recharge, and if the going gets tough just press the granite button and it's like god mode in a first player shooter. Leaping and bounding in non granite form is important for fun game play (for me anyway) and having combat teleport is the icing on the cake: my stone tanker is now my most manuverable tanker I don't share the desire for more damage... Granite is the ultimate defence form in COH, and we can stay in it all the time. Stone in granite is so tough it makes invulnerability look weak. Granite's theme is 'slow, ponderous, inevitable defeat to the opponents' and more damage would not be in line with it. I like the swapping into the other armours for different purposes, with the option of turtling up if my hitpoints bar starts to move. All that said COH doesn't need ultimate toughness... the weakest tanker in the game (ice) can do most content...

I'd like to suggest a minor change. In exchange for defending from psi damage you've reduced your normal defences. Smashing/Lethal/energy/negative are all 38.5%. most damage is smashing/lethal/energy. Even with an agilty alpha slot you are 43% (and you'll probably spend a lot of time at less than level 45). The difference between softcap and not soft cap is enormous. The last 1% of defence translates into 20% less damage. That 43% instead of 45% is around 40% more damage taken in exchange for a tiny bit less psi damage.. (Mind you...probably some one has manuvers if you are teaming, but i like to be 'ok' without teaming). The 38.5% instead of 45% in non incarnate content is over 100% more damage If you replace a single impervium armor in granite and replace it with a defence/end from luck of the gambler you will just reach soft cap.Another thing I like doing in granite is not using attuned IOs but using crafted and adding +5 boosters. that makes quite a nice difference as the numbers in granite are so big. A red fortune (or other) at +5 instead of the impervium, and +5ing the defence would make a noticable difference. It's also worth being aware that 45% isn't incarnate softcap. In the build I have above I almost reach incarnate softcap (and I have boosters not shown which nudge me closer) . The reason I like the granite form is so that I can tank incarnate content without support. I've had more than one tank crumble when going to fetch Seige in the BAF for example (willpower I am looking at you). I would like another 10% over the incarnate cap but the only way I know how to do that is with a martial arts primary or by reducing my psi resist / recharge a lot As a stoner I have more than one build. The one I did above is my 'serious tanking' mode (I don't have taunt because that's yesterday's power...when they make taunt more effective than just hitting the baddies I'll go back to it). It's worth having a 'high damage' one as well with lots of procs and few set bonuses. The thread on 'proc rocks' is very good at talking about that with stone/SS, but a lot of it will translate into stone/spines.

I would add to the comments 'its all about how you build it'. My granite is typically running at 80% (with tanker ATO) against PSI. I do the Maria Jenkins 'all diviners' at +2x8 and didn't even bother with an armour... just relying the IOed psi resist and had no problems. One orange inspiration and I'm capped.... but I never seem to need to do it.... I have a similar experience with my peacebringer. I have at about 60% psi resist (and obviously everything else is capped at 85%). One small orange and she'll go running into any psi encounter and not worry about it. https://www.midsreborn.com/builds/download.php?uc=1540&c=718&a=1436&f=HEX&dc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his is with one tanker ATO and no barrier (I use ageless not barrier anyway). I have of course gone overboard with defence resist... but I have another build for doing damage. There's something very nice about being in granite with all the psi damage and laughing

As you mentioned @grass Elec control just doesn't work well as a confuse engine. By a few seconds into the fight nothing has enough endurance to even breath. Even elite bosses are standing there weazing and not able to get into god mode. But.... gosh it's a lot of fun with Elec/Trick arrow. As long as you get the drop on them... nothing can hit you. poison gas does seem to stack some of the time with static field (still haven't worked out how they interoperate... but I do get bosses sleeping which I never before). I haven't got to oil slick (still two levels away) and I think it will make a huge difference to damage output. As I mentioned above I am now quite taken with plant/trick arrow. My problem with plant / has always been that it is a one trick pony with nothing to fall back on when the confuses work. I suspect trick arrow will offer enough control that when fighting hard targets there are still effective options. And fighting Rularuu / Nemesis is only a tiny part of the game. I'm quite slow leveling (I often don't even double xp) as I like to enjoy the journey, and one nice thing about plant/trick arrow is that some of the best powers come really early

My very favourite dominator is my ice/savage. AA is absolutely top notch. I 6 slotted it with the AT set by about level 10 and never looked back. Maybe 2/3 of every non boss opponent was confused. It's not 'perfect' but it does really take the bite out of the bad guys as mentioned above. At about level 41+ (I might have the level wrong) I had world of confusion which stacks with it, and nothing less than an elite boss is unconfused. The very best part about it is that 'there is nothing to do'. You get top notch control just by leaping into the middle of foes. At levels before defence soft cap if soloing I would open with a sleep, but as soon as your defences are good you don't need to. I only use ice patch for laughs before AA is that good As mentioned the purple contagion proc makes it even better, but it's not needed: it's good with just 'confuse + end reduction' I've just started an ice/storm and it's great. As mentioned freezing rain is one of the best powers. All the powers are good (I'm in the 'O2 boost is the best heal in the game' camp rather than the 'O2 is skippable' - but then I team a lot) except maybe hurricane which is situational. I do herd using it, but I make embarressing mistakes.... Against AVs it's great.... but all in all it's the least impressive power for my play style.

So I can report on how well this went. The goals were to have a character that can confuse every swarm and debuff their def/resistance increasing the damage they do to each other. To not be a one trick pony (like plant) so that if you meet confuse resiliant opponents there are other options I just duoed (with a titan weapons/bio scrapper) a moonfire at +2/x8. I had the two damages in a six slotted synaptic overload and had disruption arrow and acid arrow. (not enough for the second hold) I had a couple of damage procs in jolting chains and four in one of the holds We experimented a bit where 'I was doing most of the damage' and 'where the scrapper tanked first to group them and then blast'The results were interesting Electric control is so very good at sapping .Even with the aura off within a few seconds almost everything was sapped. Perhaps that's because every sapping power had end mods in it... and I could 'not do that' but that gives up the protection when against confuse resiliant opponents It did work surprisingly well. The synaptic overload is a great power, and i think it's better without the damage procs as it doesn't alert them without the damage But... to get rid of an aggro cap bunch of werewolves took about two minutes to solo. Nothing to write home about. I think a large part of it was the endurance drain being so good... most of the time the bubble headed wolves just stood around The bosses weren't a problem with two holds rapidly recycling. I did get defeated a couple of times... but that's normal for me with a controller... It takes a lot of sustained situational awareness when your defences are 'get them first'. I think if I had been using sleep more it would have gone a little smoother The most important thing for me was how enjoyable it was. Trick arrow lifts elec control's damage output noticably. Obviously my elec/kinetic can do more... but only really at level 33+ and I exemplar a lot. On the whole I think it's not going to work the way I wanted, but the character is surprisingly enjoyable to play. I'll probably spend a while getting to 50 and then try again with a plant/trick arrow and see how that goes.

I've played quite a lot of electric control. In many ways it's superb: the sleep power is (I think) the only sleep power that's actually good, and the endurance game is another layer of defence. it's not perfect, but it dramatically reduces damage coming in. I'm particalarly fond of using it to stop bosses or elite bosses going into god mode (works great against paragon protectors, minotaurs/cyclops...) I'm not sure it's great on domiators as very little of the control benefits from dominate I did think about ice... but as you say ice intrisically reduces the damage coming in. I want to see if I can get a confuse power that does serious amounts of damage, and thus debuffing damaging causing ability isn't a started. Mind... isn't even a starter. I know a lot of people rave about it for dominators. Having tried it... it's just not as good as a fortunata or a dark/xxx for my personal play style. The arguments about 'you can spend forever and do a taskforce by stealth' don't cut it for me. And the recharge times on it's powers are laughable. It just doesn't have the 'deal with the spawn every time' power that dark or plant or even fire have. it doesn't even have a way (other than mass hold every x mins) to set up mass containment. The 'iconic power' of TK is the most skipable power because it's frankly crap. The mass confusion is on such a long timer that it's not going to work for this project. There are a couple of places in the entire game where it feels good (Miss Liberty TF/Lord Recluse TF) and for me thats it. Some people are in the 'it's the best dominator primary camp' and I'm in the 'well I deleted my character because it sucked compared to every other controller/dom and when they buff it I will try it again camp'. Perhaps they will give it the same love they gave trick arrow, then it will be good I am trying with the elec/TA now... up to about level 25. So far it's been fun: but a large part of that is that elec is crazy strong after level 12. I'm looking forwards to getting synaptic overload and finally oil slick. It's going to be interesting to see if synaptic overload is actually usable if you build for it, which means we can leave static field and endurance draining for the encounters that are full of bosses or hard targets like rularuu/nemesis

Thanks for the details about how the powers work @Uun: really helpful. I'm still not sure if poison gas works with static field, but I'll go do some experimenting (I've created the toon now, and am 20ish). I'm looking forwards to seeing if EMP arrow helps me against a load of elite bosses. That's quite some time in the future (I tend not to double xp anymore and just enjoy the ride) but with that, conductive aura, static field and chain fences there is a lot of drain going one before we mention patron powers. I half agree with the comments on confuse. I have an electric kinetic... and everything I do as that character control wise is about end drain. I just drain everything, do FS and other people do damage (And kinetics is so busy that it's a lot of fun to play). Although I 6 slotted the synaptic overload it's pretty much an afterthought, and by the time I do it the bad guys can't attack anyway as they have no endurance. My problem with the only other real candidate( mind doesn't come close... it's a confuse every three swarms or so,) is plant. The problem with plant is that it feels like a one trick pony. It is a good trick. Especially at low level when at level 6+ you just rule the battle field. But against dangerous opponents I find that even as a dominator with permadom I end up face planting a lot. That might just be I am not very good at playing the toon, but I think it's more about the nature of being a cone, and that often there are 'more bad guys out there'. The nice thing about electric is that it has multiple control strategies... and they are all good I usually duo and run at around +2x8. I find at that level we don't 'just wipe out the baddies'. It takes us time. Actually I've never had a controller that can 'just wipe the baddies in a few seconds'. I'm kindof interested to see if I can make the confuse do serious damage, and for that I think I need to debuff the baddies defence/resist as I can't increase their raw damage After reading the above though I think I am more taken with plant/trick than I was . Trick arrow has a lot of control and debuffto compensate for plants one trick nature. It might be nice to see how it would fair against rularuu/arachnos/nemesis at reasonable difficulty levels. Also both of them do well at range...and with glue arrow they tend to stay at range.

After the recent significant buff of trick arrow from being (In my opionion not universally shared) the worst power set in the game into a pretty decent set I've been experimenting with it. My trick arrow/sonic defender is just great (if a little fragile) and seems to offer a lot to players. I'm now looking how to use trick arrow with a controller. A goal I have been trying to accomplish in a controller is to be one that can Confuse large number of opponents in every spawn (perhaps twice in a spawn) Debuff those opponent's damage resistance and defence without debuffing their to hit and damage done Deal with adds when the mass confuse power is on cool down (static field) Handle large number of bosses (static field/poison gas arrow/end drain) ITF first mission ambush: I am thinking of you Can do large amounts of damage in a burst Ideally a nuke (oil slick ) Can do decent damage to a single target I'm hoping to accomplish these goals with electricity / trick arrow. I consider plant but I have a number of issues with it: while I love the damage and the simplicity it's not fun playing against the Rularuu or against Nemesis. And as a controller it's not great in that ITF ambush! I have a couple of high level plant/ (1 dominator and 1 controller) and both fold like paper bags in that encounter (maybe that's a reflection of my personal low level of skill... but there are so many bosses even dominated seeds of confusion doesn't cut it) So it seems to me there would be two modes of play: Mode 1: Using sleep/endurance drain/lockdown This is the traditional electrical control... and it's great for locking down opponents. Again in the ITF example as an electrical controller it's straightforwards to drain even the elite bosses and stop them going into god mode. This is where we get a nice synerge (potentially) with poison gas arrow as it two does a pulsating sleep field (I think) although quite low ranking. Trick arrow helps here with it's fantastic to hit debuff/damage reduction and so on. Questions about mode1: Does poison gas arrow and static field 'stack'. i.e. will bosses go to sleep if I hit them with both How does EMP arrow work when draining endurance: the text says '-xx% to endurance / unresitable' and -xx% endurance. I don't understand the two listing... the text says '-xx% strength to... a lot of things'. Is that for friend or foes? Ice arrow says '-xx% endurance'.. but I haven't seen any endurance loss when I use it. What's happening? Mode 2: Using confusion Much more interesting. Here we can open with synaptic overload. When it has spread enough... dropping an acid arrow and a disruption arrow does great things to allow the targets to do much more self inflicted damage. And dropping an oil slick should helpdo quite significant damage Questions about mode 2: Is the contagious confusion good or bad in synaptic overload? Does the acid arrow actually debuff defence... the text says lots of things, and I know some of it is 'special' like 'reduces your debuff resistance'. So is this debuff defence or debuff DDR? Ice arrow says -'xx% confuse'. What is this actually doing oil slick arrow in the main text says '-def' but in the detailed text I can't find anything just 'does damage' and '-run speed' Is there anything to remove the knockdown from oil slick arrow (I can't think of anything but I thought I would ask) General questions Is there any milage in the 'heal self' proc in Conductive Aura Jolting Chains Chain Fences Is there any milage in Performance Shifter proc in The same list.. The most interesting power from the point of procs looks to be jolting chains How would you slot it? Is there any advantage in putting procs into gremlins? What patron would people select for this? Obvious Mu would give great endurance drain... but is there a better synergy Thank you in advance for any help

@ninja surprise Sorry. I'll be clearer * I was trying to like ice armor so I started two toons. One a scrapper and one a tanker. * I started them as reflections of each other: one ice/kinetic melee, one kinetic melee/ice. * But as a consequence of this thread, I was persuaded that ice melee would be a better pairing so I deleted my kinetic melee/ice scrapper and started a ice/ice The only relevance of fire armor is as a comparison point. If an armor is weaker than fire armor in 'survivability' (like ice armor) then presumably it has some goodness that makes up for it. Fire armor trades survivability for huge amounts of damage. Ice armor is notably weaker than fire armor in survivability... * certainly in my journey with this tanker I have died more than most of the rest of my tankers put together (ok exaggeration: it just feels that way) * My fire tankers can easily tank +2/8 arachnos / carnies especially with a team along doing healing but my ice tanker folds like a paper bag at the first whiff of defence debuff. It starts with about 60% defence usually (there are always people with manuvers or something) and in most encounters it ends up in the red with defence numbers because of the negligable DDR. The same is true with the fire tanker (ok it will be starting in the 50s not the 60s with defence) but it has a decent heal every 15s, 90% resistances and things are being arrested very very quickly. ** I picked +2/8 because on the lastest attempt at taking the tanker out that's what we were doing. After the fifth death in a row in the same mission I decided that enough was enough and switched to a real tanker (dark not fire). My fire/darkness/sr/stone/bio tankers can all tank that content at a much higher difficulty. Sure if I mess up at +4/8 vs arachnos most of them can die... but that will be because I wasn't paying attention * On my fire tanker I am hardly ever out of endurance: consume gives insanely high endurance resistance... on my ice tanker vs enemies like arachnos all my toggles constantly switch off. Energy Absorbtion is great for recovery, but against draining foes I usually don't have enough blue to even activate it. As stated above: the reason I want to play a tanker is to tank hard content. If I am just going to have blaster level defences (sure a tanker gets more hitpoints... but when you have negative defences and no real resists that doesn't matter for more than a second or two of survivability) then I might as well play the blaster. Hence my statement 'it was a partial failure'. I am like a number of people in the earlier thread and given up on ice armor for tankers. The good part of the experiment is that ice armor works great on scrappers. I was partly successful. Now I do like ice armor, just not on tankers

Well I have to admit to a partial failure, partial success: Partial Success: Ice armor is fantastic on a scrapper. All the endurance management you could want, slow resistance dripping out of every power so no need to do funny things with winters, decent defence and perhaps the best T9 in the game. I'm absolutely loving my ice/ice scrapper: far tougher than my ice tanker (which is interesting... but because of the T9 and shadowmeld, I think it's absolutely true) Partial(?) Failure I failed to love my ice tanker. All the comments about 'it's a controller' are really about ice melee. Ice armor isn't much of a control set at all (compare it to dark armor which absolutely is). Ice Armor slightly (I think immeasurably and inconsequentially but other people might be able to demonstrate I was wrong) reduces incoming damage by slowing down recharge... but only when you don't care about the incoming damage, because most of the dangerous enemies have high resists to it. Same with the very small amount of 'debuff incoming damage' (less than my scrapper... the scrapper gets 15%, the tanker 14%). If you take away the ice melee (all of the comments I agree with: ice melee is a great defensive power) then you are left with .... nothing. My blaster has similar levels of defence and can have a hibernate. Ice armor is less defensive than fire armor, has less endurance management than fire armor (fire armour's end resistance of well over 90% is great) and really weak DDR. I'm picking fire armor because it trades protection for cruel brutal damage. Ice armor trades even more protection for .... well ... nothing as far as I can see. It used to get great aggro management, but now it's no better than any other tanker. There were comments above about ice armor being in a similar state to stone armor. But that's not true any more. Stone armor got a huge amount of love in the last release, and is now absolutely top tier. You can leap, hop, superspeed/fly everything you want unless the going gets really really tough, and then you go into granite and ... well ... nothing gets you. Sure you need to have teleport in granite but you only stay there while you are in trouble (and combat teleport is love in a power) There's no need for a psi hole: my granite is running at 80% psi resist most of the time. Ice armor for tankers... well ... I suppose some power set has to be the worst power set, and I guess this is it. I'm not sure what I would do to fix it. Perhaps give you a choice of T9 (the awesome scrapper power, or the fully skippable T9 from tanker for those that like it for sentimental reasons). If the recharge reduction had more effect that would be cool (pun intended) if the almost immesurable 14% before resistance damage reduction was higher that would be good too. But for now... I think the experiment is over. I folded like a wet paper bag too many times, and I can't see it ever getting any better. Sure it's good enough for most content... but so's my blaster. If I have a tanker I want it to be able to tank in hard content so that I can keep the team safe. Ice armor to me seems to give IOed out blaster resiliance with little extra Perhaps someone has a build that shows me those statements are wrong. I know some people are awesome at building... Hyperstrike's got up to blaster levels of S/L resistance which was pretty good... I couldn't do that on my own. But it was only S/L...

Progress ====== I deleted my scrapper. Made a new one: ice/ice. I'm fairly convinced at this point that the damage mitigation from kinetic melee is ' nice to have/extremely unreliable in most content/not worth designing for'. I do like EM on the tanker though: lots and lots of knockback, and against single hard targets like AVs/GMs then I think it the damage reduction will make a big difference. I'm going to use scrapper to see how the slow down works. Task forces ======= Just completed a moonfire.. There were two of us at x8. and it was great. Really enjoyed it. EA made all the difference: I was gobbling endurance like mad (like most tankers) but every 30s there was a total fill. Because of the extra defence even though there was only one manuvers I was constantly at mid to high 50s in the big four... and in moonfire it's all about the big four (not a lot of psi/toxic/fire/cold). The heal from hoarfrost came back fast enough to handle the small amount of damage that came through. Of course these are council, and being great against council isn't hard, but the major issue for me was the enjoyable game play: Kinetic Melee requires constant moving away to get that repulsing torrent lined up, and that worked extremely well with ice.... the bad guys were constantly moving around to get to me... which combined with all the knockback meant that they weren't spending a lot of time hitting. I suspect that will be even better with ice/ice as frost is a decent aoe with lots of extra slow I'm looking forwards to seeing how the scrapper does on moonfire. Probably really well as it too will be defence capped by then I suspect, and the bad guys will go down a lot faster giving the scrapper survival ability similar to the benefit the tanker has of extra hitpoints. Aggro management ============= The myth of 'you get all the aggro' is just that. it's a myth. My companion on the moonfire was a fire tanker. And once the burn went down they had all the aggro on anything hit by it. There was nothing I could do to get it back. We experimented a bit with it, and anything that wasn't being burnt or hit upon was mine, but anything the fire tanker hit.. if I didn't hit it they got the aggro. I suspect that can be summarised as 'chilling embrace + icicles > just a damage aura but punchvoke easily steals aggro from it'. Vs Energy Armour ============ When I finish this I think I'll take another look at it. Probably on a stalker with something like elec melee because stalker = solid ST. Elec melee + energy armour= level 4 stun on everything around me.... Plus lots of bouncing of bad guys... and elec melee has great AOE and lighting rod which is fun to play. I think there is little doubt that Energy Armor is significantly better than ice armour on a brute, but with the scrappers/stalkers/sentinals I am not so sure. The T9 for them is awesome, and the T9 for energy armor is not so great and fully skippable I think. Conclusions so far ============ Ice armor is definitely the weakest armor set that a tanker can play. But it's quite a lot more fun to play than is obvious from Mids. It wouldn't take a lot to make it better; giving a choice of T9 would be a great thing. Making perma frost give some resistance to everything would also help a lot. I'm sure other people have made similar or better thought through suggestions.

All things being equal a scrapper does far more damage than a brute. All things aren't equal in that example: shield does far more damage than dark armor So you have two ways in which the scrapper is doing much more damage: * It's a scrapper * It has shield armor In the old days (before the over buffing of tankers, and the slight nerfing of brutes), brutes were utterly uber. they did far more damage than tanks and were tough enough. When IOed out then can be tougher than a scrapper because of the higher maximum resists (resist cap is 75 for a scrapper and 90 for a brute). Nowadays as far as I can see in general tankers do more aoe damage than brutes and are enormously tougher. Shield is far better (if you want damage) on a scrapper than a brute because the shield gives x% damage bonus. Brute base damage is very low, so x% of not very much isn't nrealy as much damage as a scrapper. Summary: * actually both are good. * I have a dark melee, dark armour brute and tank. Nowadays I play the tank, but before the tanker uber buffing I really enjoyed leveling the brute, and it would still be just as much fun (but you get far far more at the top end if you were a tank DA/DM I think). The synergy of touch of fear with cloak of fear is a blast. I once had nosferatu afraid of me, and I loved the RP of that * Dark melee shield is one of the absolute top best builds on COH.

Ahem: Stone is the toughest. It is far far tougher than invulnerability. It is the gold standard for toughness. And with the recent changes to travel powers now has no significant movement penalties (if you have combat teleport). The latest patch could have been renamed 'lots of love for stone tankers'. . All that said invulnerability is tough enough for anything other than 'all psi +4/8 with some nasty carnie style debuffs' in it (my stoner has capped defence and is one orange away from capped resist against them). I've tried being the cop a couple of times. Once as a dominator, once as a scrapper. The scrapper was better. I took shield defence (the SWAT shield). MA is great (very cops show) but I think that you are right: war mace with the baton would be better. I wouldn't be a tanker though. Tankers for me take being resiliant to supernatural levels, and no mortal cop is that tough. That's just a personal view of course I'd play a scrapper with shield (swat shield) and war mace (baton).... and now I'm tempted to remake my PC character... I didn't know about the baton costume option

Ice DDR ===== Just what Bubba said. 50% Damage resist halfs the debuff. Say we have a debuff of 20 defence, then it's halved to 10. If you are just at defence cap you are already into cascading defence failure. Two hits and even if you were 10 over the cap, then you are into cascading DDR failure and there is no comeback (apart from hibernate or death or somehow getting a break). Compare that with Super Reflexes who have (I think) 95%+/- a point or so DDR. That 20 defence loss normally (which ice would take 10 from) is actually just 1 defence lost. SR has a lot more defence anyway. Summarising that SR basically doesn't suffer from cascading DDR, ice suffers from it terribly. That's what killed the ITF Ice tanker I saw before. Most of the time he was fine, but every now and then he was unlucky, and once unlucky because the DDR resist is so poor he has no real comeback. Adding surplus defence over the 45% helps of course. But with such puny... almost non existant Defence debuff resistance it's not something that is really viable.. All that said I have been on teams in the ITF where we all had over 100% defence. With that kind of team... well even the weakest tanker is fine Long term I think hibernate will help enormously with this. As soon as you go red in the defences (that's about two hits after you loose your cap in my experience) then you click the hibernate button. Everything resets. And hopefully the aggro that you had lasts while you are hibernating. You just have to be watching and be really really quick because with poor resists and every blow landing, and 'you have all the aggro' you aren't going to last long. My controllers do this a bit already: just need to be quick Ice Patch ====== Ninja surprise was saying 'use ice melee' and that ice patch was very synergistic. If I was starting again I would go ice melee and explore if that works. As I've started, I'm going to run to 50+ and see how the ice/kinetic melee works Haijinx's comments on energy armor ======================== Yes. EA is just better. It has just as good endurance management (I think), it has really only got psi as a hole. And instead of slowing down their recharge it has a great stun aura that stacks with your primary power stunning. Handclap/lightning clap/or similar, plus the stunning aura mean that even bosses spend a lot of their time stunned. It doesn't slow them down, and it doesn't do the 'damage reduction debuff', but I think in general it's tools are better. Edit: forgot that tankers don't get it. And I think only stalkers get the stun power... so most of the above doesn't matter. Build === It is a little ad-hoc as I tend not to respec very much and just get things as they seem good. I think I am at 41..42% S/L/N/E. That's not bad because in every team I go in there is at least someone with manuvers! I'd post it, but I am in a hotel today and can't log in (firewall issues) to check what the build is. All of my damage resists except ice are terrible. Your build is much better than mine at this level. I have really just got the tanker ATOs and put them in places, got a few nice IOs and stuck them in places, and don't have much in the way of IO bonuses yet. As an example I really like the KB-> KD in repulsing torrent, and I do like the big recharge buffs when the ... I forget the name ... knockback -> recharge bonus. The combination lets the hoarfrost and Energy Absorbtion come back quicker, as well as keeping the baddies bouncing lots.

The good stuff ========== Well I played a little more. I'm now level 27 so have Energy Absorbtion. And wow... I have to say that even though (IMAO) ice armor is the weakest armor set of all (including fire)... EA is fun. It certainly transforms the set. Even though it's hardly slotted yet it solves all endurance problems (most of my tanks at this level are clicking blues and recovery serum like mad).. Kinetic melee is very synergistic. Lots of knockdown. Against hard targets there is a lot of -damage going in. I'll be getting the 'soul' for darkest night and that will be around -60% damage to most things in the debuff range. That sounds quite interesting. It's like KC4800 said about EA 'use it...use it lots'. It's interesting that it can be proced for stun, and for heal self... as well as a bit of damage. Since I will be casting it every single time it comes back it would be nice if it had that extra utility. I think I will try that 'double stun proc' and see just how effective it is (might be a dud might be game changing) The bad ====== I faceplanted three in the same mission. Arachnos at +2 just ate me alive... I had capped defences to everything but psi, had hoarfrost on for extra hps, but it didn't matter. They just ate me up and spat me out. There were two healers in the party and it's only because of them that I didn't just eat carpet in every encounter.I have no idea how this will survive against high level banished pantheon / circle of thorns / rularuu. Ideas from above =========== I don't have a feeling for how much 'recharge slowness' enhances survivability. My feelings at the moment are in line with Frankenstein's above. BUT this is a place where I could easily be wrong. The source of my doubt is because.I've played a lot of psi and while I know that (as a player) recharge debuff utterly sucks, I've never seen it really have any effect on the bad guys. I think the ones that you want to be debuffed are the ones either immune to it, or with such high resists they might as well be immune. That said I am very tempted to try ice/ice now. I like ice melee (I have a ice/bio stalker that can +4/8 almost everything - I haven't tried the 801 etc though). It would be interesting to get as much -recharge as I possible can and see if that measurably impacts survivability: my test will be to go into a S/L farm at +4/8 and see how long the character survives. Every other tanker I have the answer is 'however long you want and the baddies will just be arrested'. This one... not at all sure but at the moment I would be willing to bet a beer that it wouldn't be long.. I can get a good feeling for it from the patron pools I think as ice 'shiver' will stack with chilling embrace and hit the cap (I think) A couple of people mentioned electric. I was REALLY surprised at how much endurance EA saps. If that was slotted for End Mod, and the electric attacks slotted with a little end mod. Plus a little agility Alpha slotting (another 45% end mod) then... well... I suspect that the bad guys aren't going to have a lot of endurance. I've found sapper more hit than miss in general if you view it as 'just another layer that reduces the damage a goodly amount'. I never thought of ice armor before this. My best sapper by the way is a sentinal. Elec/elec/mu.... Prior to that it was an electric controller, but the sentinal is just far more brutal in getting the sapping done, and does plenty of damage as well. I heard stone melee mentioned as well. I think kinetic melee and stone have a lot in common. Lots of bad guys bouncing around. Kinetic Melee puts in the -damage, Stone melee has some more hard controls. I haven't played stone enough to know how it would feel... One observation is that stone melee is traditionally end heavy... and ice armour solves that problem with EA... so it might be really nice. (Same argument with TW as well) Build ==== I am aiming at a build similar to Xandr above. It looks very easy to get super-capped E/N/S/L. Hyperstrike was far more resist than I've managed to easily do, so I might see about canibalising his. Psi will of course be an absolute pain all the way down the line, especially with very little psi defence, but usually that can be managed by paying attention I find. I do have a stone/granite build with 80% psi resist most of the time (part of my 'can afk tank the rularuu goal') and that could probably be done with ice armor if I wanted... but I think the number of slots it takes is too limiting. What's next ======= I need to get my scrapper up now. See how the ice armor feels when 'you aren't the main aggro magnet'. It's mainly for the T9 so I think it will only be at ITF that I really get a feeling for how potent, or more importantly, how fun ice armor is. I'm also keen to get to hibernate and see how long I can keep agro while hibernating. If the answer is 'long enough' it might be that it's transformational in turning the weakest tanker in the game to somewhere in the middle