Help me love my ice tanker

[arcane]

My Ice/Staff is not as good as my SR/BS or my Shield/EM, perhaps, but I wouldn’t say it sucks. I run Ageless Radial on it to pad the DDR and it’s usually pretty tough. The silver lining to a Fire weakness is that it’s the most plentiful type of Res/Def set bonus. If you get Permafrost, Might of the Tanker procs, and other fire-related bonuses, it’s just not that bad. I do find Hibernate necessary to have just in case, but I rarely use it. I would say its mitigation is approximately the same as Shield’s for me, after accounting for the fact that my Shield needs Ageless Core where my Ice can easily go Radial. Ofc Shield wins offensively, but I guess not every set can be that awesome.

 

I have at least one tanker of every primary now, pretty neat.

Edited August 13, 2021 by arcane

[Haijinx]

2 hours ago, Psyonico said:

Energy Absorbtion provides (base) .45 defense per enemy for a scrapper on a 60 second recharge/45 second duration

Energy Drain provides (base) .38 defense per enemy for a scrapper on a 60 second recharge/45 second duration.

 

How is Energy Drain better than Energy Absorbtion?

 

I used scrapper because it gets both Ice and Energy Aura

What is EA from ICE for a tanker?

 

There is a definite disconnect in the sustained numbers.   Thus Capt PH saying a EA port would be OP on Tankers. 

[Psyonico]

According to Mids its .6 defense per enemy

 

I suspect its not EA/ED that are of concern, but the fact that Energy Aura gets resist to everything and ice only gets resist to Fire/Cold.

[Haijinx]

25 minutes ago, Psyonico said:

According to Mids its .6 defense per enemy

 

I suspect its not EA/ED that are of concern, but the fact that Energy Aura gets resist to everything and ice only gets resist to Fire/Cold.

 

The thread is way back where Capt PH discusses things.  Maybe someone remembers it. 

 

It wasn't the resist it was the defense that was an issue.  And there were tons of screenies with crazy solo brute EA def numbers.  

 

[siran]

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.

 

 

 

[UltraAlt]

On 8/12/2021 at 4:17 PM, Seigmoraig said:

That's Ice Melee, Ice Armor doesn't get it 

 

I'm always Ice/Ice when I'm an Ice tanker.

Slow and more slow.

 

This is an Ice Tanker thread and not an Ice Armor thread.

[Seigmoraig]

51 minutes ago, UltraAlt said:

 

I'm always Ice/Ice when I'm an Ice tanker.

Slow and more slow.

 

This is an Ice Tanker thread and not an Ice Armor thread.

OP is clearly talking about trying to like Ice Armor and wondering what secondary to pair it with

Edited August 15, 2021 by Seigmoraig

[UltraAlt]

On 8/15/2021 at 9:22 AM, Seigmoraig said:

OP is clearly talking about trying to like Ice Armor and wondering what secondary to pair it with

 

Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realise that Ice Melee was not an option for Ice tankers.

My bad.

 

 

 

Sarcasm is lost on some or they simply can't follow logic.

Not on me.

Edited August 18, 2021 by UltraAlt

[Sovera]

As you've realized Ice Armor is like Stone Armor and a bit outdated. Not impossible to work with because the game is not -that- hard but there are better options. For theme it is not bad and definitely pairing it with Ice Melee fixes part of the problems. If the enemies start flopping with Ice Patch it gives time for the defense debuffs to elapse.

 

One of the problems with Ice Armor is that it does not help killing faster either. It was like my experiment with Shield. I had much better defenses than my usual Fire Armor, but I took so long to kill stuff (early/mid levels) that I died more often than I did on a Fire Armor character.

 

In the same way I've soloed the ITF on a squishy Fire Armor on a pure basis of 'kill them so fast that they don't hurt back because they are dead' which ends being a defense in itself.

 

Unfortunately it has also spoiled me because I can't do other combos. Everything just feels slow and 'tanker damage' with me whittling things. This is the point of view of a soloer/self sufficient Tanker, not a 100% Tank team-kills-while-my-job-is-surviving-and-grabbing-agro.

 

 

Other things you've noticed is how Ice Armor is no longer the agro magnet it used to be a few patches ago. I don't remember exactly what was changed but remember others who played Ice Armor noticing it. For a regular team this is fine though.

 

Now the good news is that Ice Melee has no particular downsides. The damage is just a bit worse than other options if at all but not hugely so (both my Claws and martial Arts have the same 4-minutes-without-using--res-procs pylon times), the AoE is good and obtained early, Build-up is obtained early as well and allows to both speed things up and also punch through some walls like Circle of Thorns, while Ice Patch is a very nice extra layer of protection.

 

Overall I'm close to ranking Ice Melee as overall best set Tankers get with Martial Arts as most defensive (allowing even resistance based armors to reach 45% defense to melee/ranged/AoE). When I soloed the ITF it was on the Martial Arts. I'm probably doing it again on the Ice Melee just to compare notes.

 

Which brings my monologue to an end saying that MA is definitely something you can also look into. Adding +10% defense allows for a buffer against debuffs and MA is also chockful of CC between KDs from the AoE, KD from Crane Kick and stuns from Crane Kick.

[Android Nim]

Yes yes....ice is terrible. You should all stay away from it. Dangerous. Keep away.

 

/s

 

 

 

if you want to see ice kicking ass against whatever....arachnos even....hit me on global. Always happy to break out my ice/spines. 

[JasperStone]

I remade my Ice/Ice/Ice tanker from live.

best to treat as a superiorly armored ice controller.

Ice patch, 2 holds ...plus being an aggro magnetic.

Life is good.

[Hyperstrike]

On 8/18/2021 at 7:42 AM, Android Nim said:

Yes yes....ice is terrible. You should all stay away from it. Dangerous. Keep away.

 

/s

 

 

 

if you want to see ice kicking ass against whatever....arachnos even....hit me on global. Always happy to break out my ice/spines. 

You're skating on thin ice there...Glad they got it to lose some weight!

 

[Seigmoraig]

On 8/17/2021 at 10:10 AM, UltraAlt said:

Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realise that Ice Melee was not an option for Ice tankers.

My bad.

Buddy, the fact the ice melee exists doesn't change the fact that OP is talking about Ice Armor. Just because you exclusively pair Ice Armor with Ice Melee doesn't mean that everyone else does

[siran]

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... 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[ninja surprise]

On 8/14/2021 at 9:44 AM, siran said:

I deleted my scrapper. Made a new one: ice/ice.

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. 

 

 

It's kinda hard to follow the stream of thought... were you on an Ice/Ice Scrapper with a Fire/Something Tank?

If so, it's a given that the Tank will take Aggro from a Scrapper, regardless of the Scrapper's powersets. Tanks have the highest threat level and every Tank attack pops an AoE taunt which pulls all the aggro their way.

If you were both on Tanks then it just boils down to whichever was attacking the most. Burn + Blazing Aura > Icicles + Chilling Embrace. However, Burn patches don't move, vs your Ice tank can run around and "tag" a bunch of mobs with the double auras to get aggro and pull spawns.

[ninja surprise]

On 8/17/2021 at 5:44 PM, Sovera said:

Unfortunately it has also spoiled me because I can't do other combos. Everything just feels slow and 'tanker damage' with me whittling things. This is the point of view of a soloer/self sufficient Tanker, not a 100% Tank team-kills-while-my-job-is-surviving-and-grabbing-agro.

 

 

This is why I've kinda slid into having a Bio/Dark Melee and Fire/Savage as my two main tanks. They aren't the toughest tanks in the game, but they can still survive if I pay attention and they do enough damage to keep my Scrapper-brain happy.

[siran]

@ninja surprise

Quote

It's kinda hard to follow the stream of thought... were you on an Ice/Ice Scrapper with a Fire/Something Tank

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

 

 

[UltraAlt]

On 8/21/2021 at 2:58 PM, Seigmoraig said:

Buddy

 

No buddy of mine. You are stalking me and attacking me.

[Seigmoraig]

On 8/23/2021 at 10:16 AM, UltraAlt said:

 

No buddy of mine. You are stalking me and attacking me.

Wow, just wow. Never though I would hear that online. Talk about having a victim complex, please get over yourself

Edited August 24, 2021 by Seigmoraig