Cold Defense for Ice Armor

[WeatherLord]

Ice Armor is a cool set (literally), and was recently given some helpful adjustments within the last few Pages. The ability to select between Rime (+Absorb and +Regen) and Hoarfrost (+Max HP) makes for some fun build choices. Rolling Hibernate and Icy Bastion into a single power is also great and gives more decision power to the player, which I'm always a fan of.

 

The unique thing about Ice Armor is that it's a hybrid Defense / Resistance / Utility set, which is fine. But there is an oddity I have noticed while playing a few Ice Armor characters - For certain Archetypes, Ice Armor isn't that great against enemies that do Cold damage.

 

That may seem to be a weird claim to make, and it's certainly impacted by what type of content and difficulty the character in question is facing, but first I want to establish what my understanding of Ice Armor's Strengths and Weaknesses are intended to be:

 

Strengths:

-Capped Cold Resistance

-Immunity to Slow Debuffs (because these are often attached to Cold damage)

-Good Smashing, Lethal, Energy, Neg Energy Defense

-Very Good utility powers (Icy Bastion, Rime, Energy Absorption, Chilling Embrace)

 

Weaknesses:

-Little to no Fire Defense or Resistance

-Little to no Psi Defense or Resistance

-Little to no Cold Defense (?)

-Little Resistance to other damage types

-Mid Defense Debuff resistance, and no Endurance, Recovery, Regen, Tohit Debuff resistance

 

So to me, Ice Armor seems to be a more polarized Strength vs Weakness set. You're good at what you're good at, but really bad at what you're bad at. And to be clear, I really really like this. I don't want my character to be OP to everything. Having Weaknesses is both healthy for the game and fun for storytelling purposes.

 

But, considering Ice Armor has 2 pretty big holes (Fire and Psi), shouldn't it be better at Cold? Why doesn't it get more Cold Defense?

 

Archetype Comparisons:

The first thing I expect to hear is that Tanks and Brutes will easily cap 90% Cold Resistance with Ice Armor, which is true. At 90% Cold Resistance, they are pretty much immune to most cold damage, I won't argue against that.

 

But Stalkers and Scrappers only cap at 75% Cold Resistance, which leads to this strange situation I described at the outset. My Ice Armor Stalker has 45% Def against Smash, Lethal, Energy, Neg Energy, but only ~15% against Cold Defense. This results in the character being more survivable against those damage types than Cold damage.

 

Example math, assuming an enemy has 50% hit chance before defense is factored in:

• Smash/Lethal/Energy/Neg Energy at 45% Defense, 15% Resistance
  • 1,000 input damage * 0.05 hit chance * 0.85 resistance = 42.5 damage taken
• Cold at 15% Defense, 75% Resistance
  • 1,000 input damage * 0.35 hit chance * 0.25 resistance = 87.5 damage taken

 

So that's about double the damage taken from Cold damage compared to the other 4 damage types.

 

Back in the days when attacks had multiple damage types associated with them, this wasn't as big a deal. For example, an enemy using Ice Sword had both a Cold Def check and a Lethal Def check run against you. Since your Lethal Def was high, it would probably miss, and the low Cold Def didn't matter. But now that most enemy attacks only have 1 typed defense component, this becomes much more glaring. (It also stings from an RP perspective... My Ice Armor Stalk/Scrap is more likely to die from an enemy using Ice Sword than an enemy using a Katana )

 

My Proposal:

Give Frozen Armor OR Glacial Armor +Cold Defense. Not a massive amount, perhaps just 12.75% total to align with the other damage types.

 

While this would make Tanks and Brutes even better against Cold damage, I don't think it would imbalance the game or be overpowered, since they were already great against it anyways. But this would help Stalkers and Scrappers using Ice Armor actually specialize against the one damage type they are designed to be good against, while still retaining all their previous weaknesses.

 

What do you all think, am I off base here?

Edited Friday at 06:01 PM by WeatherLord

[Razor Cure]

Does Cold def matter that much with capped resists to it? There are not that many cold attacking baddies (or ones that just have cold tacked onto their attack powers).

Just looking at FA compared to IA (on a tank), Ice Armour gets better resist to fire, than Fire Armour (which has no def at all, and no psi def or res) does to Cold. 

Honestly, I think it would make more sense to give IA better fire res or def. Obvious comic powers..but Iceman vs Pyro in xmen 3. He gets so cold that almost any source of fire is doing nothing (besides the sentinel fire..)

[PoptartsNinja]

1 hour ago, Razor Cure said:

Does Cold def matter that much with capped resists to it?

For Tanks and Brutes, no.

For Scrappers, Stalkers, and Sentinels it very much does. Ice Armor was originally designed with tanks in mind, and getting a "tune up" on the squishier melee ATs might be worthwhile.

[WeatherLord]

15 hours ago, Razor Cure said:

Does Cold def matter that much with capped resists to it? There are not that many cold attacking baddies (or ones that just have cold tacked onto their attack powers).

Just looking at FA compared to IA (on a tank), Ice Armour gets better resist to fire, than Fire Armour (which has no def at all, and no psi def or res) does to Cold. 

Honestly, I think it would make more sense to give IA better fire res or def. Obvious comic powers..but Iceman vs Pyro in xmen 3. He gets so cold that almost any source of fire is doing nothing (besides the sentinel fire..)

 

1 hour ago, PoptartsNinja said:

For Tanks and Brutes, no.

For Scrappers, Stalkers, and Sentinels it very much does. Ice Armor was originally designed with tanks in mind, and getting a "tune up" on the squishier melee ATs might be worthwhile.

 

Yes, PoptartsNinja summarizes the answer well. Because Ice Armor was designed for Tanks and Brutes, the very high Cold Resist works well and the 90% Cap allows them to be very effective against Cold damage. For Scrappers, Sentinels, and Stalkers, the Cold Resist isn't enough due to the 75% Cap.

 

My intention is not to start any arguments around the 75% Resist Cap being low or trying to prove why Defense is objectively better. I also don't think it's fair to compare Fire Armor with Ice Armor directly, since Fire is designed around giving offensive options at the cost of defensive capabilities.

 

While I think the Homecoming Devs have done a really great job with improving Ice Armor already, all I'm asking is to give the set some +Cold Defense in one of the toggles so it can really shine against the 1 damage type it was originally designed to work best against.