Ice Armor + War Mace

[cipherdec]

It's been a long time since I've played. I remember really enjoying this combo. I believe I used Presence, Leadership, Leaping Fitness, and Arctic Mastery. That all said I really don't remember how to build my character for the best agro + damage. A lot changed since I played also new powers and so on. Is this still a viable Build?

[Gigajoule]

I played an Ice/Axe tanker in Beta (2004) and early in release, switched to an Ice/Ice tanker maybe a year after the game came out and that was still my main when the game shut down. Used to occasionally main tank those Incarnate raid things (don't recall what their exact term is), so Ice Armor is definitely viable for a tanker. War Mace I don't have any experience with, but it's probably fine. If I had to guess though, it is probably not top-tier for damage. (War Mace's side effect is that it causes Disorient? Am I remembering that right? WM was not very popular, I seem to recall.)

 

Concerning how builds have changed...

 

Everyone gets Fitness for free now, so that will be some slots opened up compared to how you were built before.

 

Also, Presence (I assume taking the Provoke power), in my opinion isn't necessary to hold aggro any more. I do remember the days when virtually all Tankers had to take Provoke in addition to Taunt in order to keep aggro reliably. But that isn't necessary any more. Keeping aggro is quite easy (unless there's another tanker of the same level in your group).

 

Leadership I was never too keen on for Tankers. It is possible to hit the Def cap without it as an Ice Armor tank anyway.

 

Probably the best thing to do would be to just play, take powers that seem interesting, and see what you think. Can always respec later.

[cipherdec]

Thanks for all the great information. I remember those raids and also can't remember the names. I think I did leadership for what you said the defense cap.

 

What is considered a top tier Tank Weapon now a days? Some of the new ones I've never seen before.

[Heraclea]

Dark Melee remains my favorite attack set for a tanker.  I know, I'm a bore about this. 

 

It also covers some of Ice Armor's drawbacks like the absence of a self heal outside of Hibernate, which removes you from the board completely.  It's -tohit adds defense even if your own gets debuffed.  And you can recover endurance from mobs, which helps since the set's several damage toggles eat quite a bit of it; may be redundant to Energy Absorption.

 

I have not played with all of the new secondaries so I don't know if any of them offer comparable advantages. 

[Rylas]

It also covers some of Ice Armor's drawbacks like the absence of a self heal...

 

*cough* Hoarfrost *cough*

 

But I would agree that DM pairs excellently with Ice Armor. Two heals, two end recovery powers, and plenty of -To Hit debuff to beef up your defense.

[Gigajoule]

The to-hit debuffs of Dark Melee synergize very well with Ice Armor. In fact I would say that DM synergizes better with Ice Armor than Ice Melee does. If DM had been available years ago when I was rolling my Ice/Ice main, I probably would have been Ice/Dark instead. But when the Dark Melee proliferation came down, I felt like I'd invested too much time in my Ice/Ice to start over. (As it was, that character ended up taking some dark-themed Incarnate powers, I think Void Judgment? Or whatever the dark PBAoE Incarnate power is called-- it was really handy.)

 

"What is considered a top tier Tank Weapon now a days? Some of the new ones I've never seen before."

 

Tankers back in the day were extremely limited in powerset choices. If I recall correctly, a lot of the Tanker-benefiting proliferation happened late in the live game's life, so late that I don't think a consensus ever emerged as to what the top Tanker powers were. (Compared to the situation in 2004, when ~95% of high-level Tankers were running Invuln/SS.) But surely DM is at least in the discussion for being a top-shelf Tanker secondary. Spines may give it a run for its money. Staff Fighting may also be worth a look (it has a cone attack that also buffs Def).

 

Currently my own highest level Tanker is Elec Armor/Radiation Melee. I like that build a lot, and it fits my character concept well, but it probably isn't going to ever be considered top-tier in terms of adding tankiness. Rad Melee improves the whole group's DPS though by debuffing enemy Defense (similar to Radiation Blast from other AT's of course, but not many people run Rad Blast anymore, it seems).

 

Which reminds me, when talking about top-tier Tanker secondaries (or primaries), do you mean in terms of actual tanking? Endurance-management? Soloing? Damage? Mobility? What the top is will be different depending on what your priorities are.

[Cheese Slicer]

How close to soft-capped defense can you get with an Ice Armor Tanker?

[Luigrein]

That's...actually not an entirely straightforward answer.  The armors + combat jumping/hover get you to a solid 30% defense to Smashing, Lethal, Energy, and Negative with just SOs.  You'll never have good fire and cold defense from just ice armor but you will have low fire resist and capped cold resist.

 

From there however, things get a little bit sticky with energy absorption.  A fully stacked energy absorption cast can add about 10% to your defenses, getting you within 5% of that soft cap.  Additionally, with enough recharge, I believe you can overlap a fresh cast over the end of a previous cast, you can probably get enough recharge boosts from IOs to always double stack it but I haven't done the research on it and it would definitely need lots of set bonuses.  It's probably easier/cheaper to chase defense set bonuses and ensure you hit soft cap with even a mediochre energy absorption cast up.

[Cheese Slicer]

Thanks. I really appreciate the depth you went into with your response. After asking the question, I actually played around with an Ice/Dark build on Mids (or whatever it's called now). It was an interesting build to look into. I don't claim to be an expert at builds, but I fashioned together a pretty decent (if expensive) build.

[cipherdec]

I usually roll with the same people so what I'm looking for is High Defence, High Taunt. I like Ice armor because it slows all the mobs around me, and it seems decent overall. Ice/Mace was my main back in the day but I can see the benefits of going DM.

 

As far as Primary/Secondary what fits the bill for highest Defence + Taunt I'm willing to try new combinations that best fit my group.

 

If I remember correctly you really can't Judge a tank on its Tankyness until level 20+ cause with my Ice/Mace Tank only level 12 I'm soloing all my missions to get caught up to my friends without very much health loss. Honestly, I don't believe I use any Healing inspiration other than to cycle them out for more defense, dmg, and endurance.

[Gigajoule]

How close to soft-capped defense can you get with an Ice Armor Tanker?

IIRC, you can slot up Energy Absorption such that you can keep it up constantly and also soft-cap your S/L Defense even just draining one enemy. Pretty sure this requires IOs to do though.

 

In a typical group situation, you usually won't have to worry about that, however. In an 8-man, there will almost always be someone with a +Def buff of some kind (Maneuvers if nothing else), and an Ice Armor Tanker usually doesn't need very much to get to the soft-cap (assuming they can't get there themselves).

 

I usually roll with the same people so what I'm looking for is High Defence, High Taunt. I like Ice armor because it slows all the mobs around me, and it seems decent overall. Ice/Mace was my main back in the day but I can see the benefits of going DM. As far as Primary/Secondary what fits the bill for highest Defence + Taunt I'm willing to try new combinations that best fit my group.

So far as I know, all Tanker sets have excellent taunting abilities, with the possible exception of Willpower, which reportedly has a weaker Taunt aura. (I have not tried a WP Tanker, so I don't know how well it works in practice.)

 

If you run with the same people usually, what will work best will be whatever synergizes with what they're running. If you run with a Defender/Corrupter/Controller partner who massively buffs Defense (Empathy, Force Field, Cold Dom, etc), you might want to consider a more Resist-based Tanker instead. (That is part of the reason I switched from Ice Armor to Electric Armor this time around-- my usual partner is an Empathy Defender with massively slotted up Fortitude. Since my old Ice Armor Tanker could soft-cap Def all on her own, the additional +Def of Fortitude went to waste.)

 

On the other hand, if you run with a partner who buffs +Res (e.g. Thermal Radiation), or who only slightly buffs +Def (Storm Summoning, Dark Miasma, etc), an Ice Armor tank is ideal. And I will say the slowing effect of Ice Armor is great, providing both damage mitigation and helping to control the flow of battle.

 

Of course, above all, run a powerset that you enjoy playing.

 

If I remember correctly you really can't Judge a tank on its Tankyness until level 20+ cause with my Ice/Mace Tank only level 12 I'm soloing all my missions to get caught up to my friends without very much health loss. Honestly, I don't believe I use any Healing inspiration other than to cycle them out for more defense, dmg, and endurance.

True enough. I will say, if you are just wanting to level to catch up with your friends and aren't necessarily hung up on seeing the story from the story arcs, then grouping, especially TFs, is definitely the way to go. It's like 100x faster than soloing (for Tankers at least... other ATs will have different experiences). Tankers can solo, but it's very slow and inefficient.

[cipherdec]

Thanks for the great reply.

 

With a group of friends, we have an Emp/? Defender, 2 controllers of different types, a Staff/? Scrapper and a Blaster again don't remember their skills.

 

I know the healer friend of mine is stacking something resistances for sure, and I think they also went Leadership to add those buffs to the group as well.

[Gigajoule]

Thanks for the great reply.

 

With a group of friends, we have an Emp/? Defender, 2 controllers of different types, a Staff/? Scrapper and a Blaster again don't remember their skills.

 

I know the healer friend of mine is stacking something resistances for sure, and I think they also went Leadership to add those buffs to the group as well.

The healer is probably casting Clear Mind (from the Empathy set) and/or Tactics (from the Leadership set), both of which give +Res to certain crowd-control effects, but no +Res to actual damage. I'm not aware of anything an Empathy Defender can take that would give damage resist. (It is possible there's something I don't know about though.)

 

By the way, the soft cap on Defense is only 45%. (The reason it's so low compared to the Resist hard cap is that same-level enemies start from a baseline of a 50% chance to miss, which with the way attack rolls are calculated in CoH, means that a Defense of "45%" translates into a 95% chance for a same-level minion to miss their attack: 50 + 45 = 95.) An Empathy Defender who slots up Fortitude big-time can get close to 25% Defense on that power easily with just SOs, and if they are going big on Maneuvers (from the Leadership line), that's another ~5%. If one of your Controller friends has a power that buffs your Defense another 10-12% (and there are several Controller secondaries that can do that), then you are already really close to the soft-cap (25 + 5 + 10 = 40) even before applying any of your own buffs. Combat Jumping (~3%), Wet Ice (1%), and one set bonus would put you over the cap. (Technically you could get there without CJ and WI, just from set bonuses, but you will want to be running those two powers anyway for the protection against crowd control.)

 

And, going past the soft-cap doesn't help against higher-level enemies (just in case anyone is wondering), since the soft-cap kicks in before the multipliers for higher level and/or higher rank enemies are applied. The only thing that having over 45% Defense does for you is give some additional padding against any Defense debuffs. That's why I say Ice Armor is less efficient with a group that can buff Defense massively. Ice Armor shines best with a support partner who can massively buff Resistance.

 

That said, if you like Ice Armor, it's fine. My usual group back in the day was me (Ice/Ice Tanker), an Empathy/Archery Defender, and an Earth/Storm Controller. We played together for years and did all right, in a wide variety of content types, from low levels to high levels, though I was keenly aware that our group set-up was not as efficient as it could be, due to the extreme overkill on +Def and complete lack of any +Res, and general lack of damage output. We had fun though.

 

Nonetheless, since my Defender buddy wants to stick with Empathy/Archery, I've decided a Resistance-based Tanker primary is the way to go this time around.

 

Regarding your secondary, War Mace is probably fine, but since the Scrapper is doing Smashing damage with the Staff Fighting, you might consider a secondary that is something other than Smashing, especially if the Blaster also does Smashing (Water, Sonic, and Energy Blast all do composite damage of Smashing combined with another type-- I don't think there is a pure Smashing Blaster primary). The reason for that is, some enemies are highly resistant to particular damage types (e.g. Vahzilok Cadavers are resistant to Smashing), so diversifying your damage types is a good idea, when possible.

 

Speaking for myself, my preference in Tanker secondaries is for my secondary to add value for the team in some way even if I'm not main-tanking. Spines, Dark Melee, Ice Melee, Psionic Melee, and Radiation Melee all fit this bill. (Attacks that apply Disorient or Knockdown, or that drain End, kind of fit that criteria, but I don't like them nearly as much since Archvillains, Giant Monsters, and whatnot are usually immune to such shenanigans. And damage is "nice" but not my main priority when considering tank builds.)

[Luigrein]

Did a little digging and it looks like if you go in to the fighting pool and grab weave (and honestly grabbing tough isn't a bad idea on an ice tank, layering defense and resist is always good) you can softcap your S/L/E/N defense with a full EA cast and no IO set bonuses.  Now, obviously you won't always get 10 enemies in an EA but it illustrates the point fairly nicely that ice can soft cap with minimal help.  Even with only 1 enemy tagged by EA this puts you 7.5% defense short of the softcap before figuring in any outside buffs or IOs.  You can knock 3% off with the defense boost unique IO in a resist power (which it looks like there are 2 of now?) which will admittedly be pricy but it lowers the cost of the rest of your build significantly.  I'm pretty sure that's what I did back on live, I don't recall the specifics of how I built my Ice/DB that well but I do remember her being dirt cheap to IO to the soft cap.

 

As far as aggro management goes, tanks are pretty solid overall but I do think ice had a bit of an edge.  I don't have numerical info to back this up, but I do remember one of my blaster friends saying my ice tank was the only thing he'd seen reliably keep aggro off him, and I don't remember ever really having to work for aggro on her.

 

All that being said, as has been mentioned if the team is going to be buffing your defense a lot you may want to try a resistance or hybrid mitigation tank instead of doubling down on defense.  Without knowing the support sets the controllers are flinging around can't say for sure.  If the empath is going to make sure you always have fortitude on you it's going to be defense overkill, but empathy as a set has to play favorites, you can't fort everyone (If I recall correctly my empath tried to keep 3 people with fort, one lucky soul getting the power boosted one.)  If you can softcap your own defense it potentially frees up fortitude to be used to either shore up someone else's defense or as a damage boost.

[Gigajoule]

As far as aggro management goes, tanks are pretty solid overall but I do think ice had a bit of an edge.

This has been my experience also. Keeping aggro seems a bit more challenging on my Elec Armor Tanker than it did on my old Ice Armor Tanker. I have been putting it down to being rusty at the game after 7 years, and while that is doubtless the case, I think there is something about Ice Armor that makes it easier to control aggro.

 

I found an old guide to tanking in CoH that may shed some light. It says the taunt auras are not created equal. Most Tanker primaries have a Taunt aura that pulses once a second or once per two seconds. Ice Armor's Chilling Embrace pulses twice a second. In addition, Chilling Embrace does not make a to-hit check; it just auto-hits. (Taunt auras that do damage, like Elec Armor's Lightning Field, do have a to-hit check-- if it misses, the enemy isn't taunted that tick. Also, damaging taunt auras tend to pulse only once per two seconds) So you can kind of see how if you are just running/jumping around tagging enemies with the taunt aura (hopefully doing other stuff also), enemies may sometimes slip through the cracks either because the timing of the pulse wasn't quite right or the aura itself missed when you ran past that enemy. Chilling Embrace is much, much more reliable in this regard.

 

On top of that, having all the enemies massively slowed makes it easier (from the player's perspective) to manage the glorious chaos of trying to tank seventeen enemies at once.

[cipherdec]

I had a friend play his tank last night who was 2 levels higher than me and I was holding more agro than him I can't remember his build. That said I don't know what he has slotted for his aura. Mine is half slow and the other half taunt enhancements.

 

Thanks for the info btw. I feel pretty powerful with ice armor, Lol but I'm not taking on level 50 mobs yet either. 

 

 

[Gigajoule]

I had a friend play his tank last night who was 2 levels higher than me and I was holding more agro than him I can't remember his build. That said I don't know what he has slotted for his aura. Mine is half slow and the other half taunt enhancements.

The funny thing about taunt auras is that they can't really be fixed with enhancements. Taunt enhancements increase the duration of the taunt effect but don't increase its magnitude, and (with a few exceptions) the taunt effect does not stack with itself (that is, additional applications of the taunt effect merely refresh it instead of making it extra taunty, if that makes sense; this is why taunt enhancements are not as great as people seem to think). If your Taunt aura is subpar, as is reportedly the case for Willpower (which has both a slow tick rate and low magnitude), then you will just have to work harder to keep aggro, I guess slotting up Taunt (the power) itself and spamming it.

 

As for slow, unless they changed it, Slow enhs only enhance the effect of slowed movement speed of the enemies (referred to as "snare" in some other games). It does not give extra -Rchg debuff (i.e., slowing their attack rate). Something to bear in mind.

 

I used to run with just a single End Rdx IO in Chilling Embrace. But in my case, the enemies were also being slowed by my Ice Melee attacks which were putting them at the slow cap anyway. With a different secondary, the extra snare effect of slotting up Chilling Embrace might be worth it.