Circeus_NA

That's standard for Sappers - they have an infinite undrainable endurance reserve. Even their own powers don't appear to use End. Always been that way.

Let me know if you do come up with something with frost.

You don't know the half of it, but its not as easy to discern, but if mob capping for Invincibility works in the same general manner that it does for Energy Absorption, then you can bet that Invincibility is affected also.

Another bug with the re-worked EA that I just discovered...

The 5 enemy cap does not take into account Phase Shifted enemies. What this means is that lets say you're surrounded by 6 enemies, and one of them is phase shifted. The phase shifted mob can be picked as one of the 5 to buff you and therefore you'll only get buffed by 4 mobs.

This is bad and needs fixing and I /bug'd it and it will go on my bug list when I update that this weekend (so far 2 new bugs on that list).

Hibernate used to basically have two activation times. One for the ice formations to come up and immobilize you and another for you to stop taking damage and start healing.

I think the difference now is that while the Ice takes about a second longer to come up, you now stop taking damage and start healing as soon as its up.

This change wasn't explicitly spelled out in the patch notes so its hard to be 100% sure what's going on.

My basic problem with Hibernate is its too reactive a power. Even with recharge enhancements, it takes too long to recharge to be using it often when you really do need it. For example, you're fighting an AV, your health is low, you turn on hibernate, you heal up, turn it off. 5 or 10 seconds later you're hit again by the AV and your health is back down to where it was and Hibernate is not up yet. This happens all the time.

Combine that with it immobilizing you so that if for some reason in the 10-20 seconds you take to heal back up with it someone needs your help you can't react to help. You're off the chessboard, and that is a really bad position for any Tanker to have to be in.

That's why I think RotP, despite its long recharge time comes in higher than Hibernate because its entire purpose is to keep a Fire Tanker on the chessboard. As are Granite Armor and Unstoppable.

So in the end, to me, it just doesn't play out as a 9th tier power very well. It'd make a better 8th tier power, just like Energy Absorption should be the 7th tier power and not the 8th tier power.

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Hm. I'm pretty sure. I was hibernating and the ice thing had already come on, and then it dropped and a scrapper midnight grasped me. I put on Wet Ice and ran around until dull pain came back up, was just annoying =/

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Tested this a few times in the Arena vs. my wife's MA/Regen Scrapper. She couldn't knock off my Hibernate once it was up and running. She could still try to attack me, but all attackes were either "Miss!" or "Unaffected!" on a hit.

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Why did they change it? Because the Dev teams knows better than you... apparently.

They do not need to explain themselves. Remember you are playing in THEIR world now!

Don't like what they did? Go cancel and pick up a copy of Guild Wars.

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Wow! An honest to goodness no holds barred Troll. Thanks. But y'know really, contribute or stay off threads you don't understand.

Also, I'm sorry despite what you think, the devs do need to explain any change and the reasons for it when they happen, and they think so too.

And geko still hasn't come back and convinced anyone that massive in the case of Energy Absorption ever equaled powerful.

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Yah.

Another annoying thing is that you can be brawled out of Hibernate in PvP. I mean, if that isn't freaking ridiculous, I dunno what is? You can't be brawled out of the stones level 32 power, and you can fight in it... =/

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Is that true? Hadn't used Hibernate in the arena, but now I need to go test that. If it is true, then its yet another advantage Phase Shift has over Hibernate. Are you sure you weren't hit during the wind-up phase of Hibernate?

Its listed as a bug in my bug list. Of course only two bugs on that list were even fixed since the recharge bug was fixed back in February (that's since 2/9).

From the report:

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Bug (Not Fixed):

A side effect of the change to cap the defense buff of Energy Absorption to 5 enemies has made it only capable of draining Endurance from only those same 5 enemies. This now makes the End Drain portion of the power completely unreliable, because the affected enemies are effectively random and not selectable by the Tanker.

Needed:

Even if the 5 enemy max remains in place for getting Def buffs, the Endurance Drain for all mobs still needs to be against all opponents in range (or else this effect is effectively neutered)

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Read geko's post he explains its a cap on the number of mobs not a cap on the defense itself.

I'll test those once they bring the servers back up (I work from home). From the patch notes though I'd say other than what you already know: EA change, Hibernate changes (that don't really make the power more useful - wasn't convinced a Heal enhancement did anything when I tried it), and the increased slow protection (need some KoA to try this) in WI we got nothing.

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What about the Calvin Scott TF? How is that going to be affected....I missed the relevance to that TF and I4. Little help?

[/ QUOTE ]

It was a TF that existed purely for plotline advancement. As of I4 it no longer exists.

Changes you will note as a result of the TF if you go next to the hospital on IP:

* Sister Psyche is back in her own body

* Aurora Borealis (the body Sister Psyche was in) is now the trainer

* Calvin Scott is gone (sidelined by Statesman)

* Malaise is gone (he's now a bad guy again)

For a wrapup read: Dreams Before the Storm

[ QUOTE ]
wait, I4 goes live tomorrow? since when?

[/ QUOTE ]

Extra extended maintenance hours tomorrow morning. A birdie also hinted that tonight would be a good night to complete the Calvin Scott TF if you haven't already.

*****

Arch, I hear you. As of tomorrow EA will be a thrice nerfed power: 5 mobs max, Taunt effect lessened because less mobs affected, End Drain made completely unreliable.

Massive != Powerful. geko needs to understand that better.

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And I'd bet that when the devs test the various Tanker builds to see how they stand against the Scrapper builds, they'll throw Hasten on each of them.

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Yes, that's entirely possible considering all 4 Scrapper builds they posted had Hasten. However, they were not all perma-Hasten'd.

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As for slotting EA with 2 recharges along with perma hasten being optimal, I'm curious why? Someone here said it was permanent without any recharges, so is there a reason for the recharges other than making it perma? Does EA degrade or something that I don't know about?

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EA Stacks. In fact, it may be the only self buff in game that stacks (not sure on that, but if there are others, they are few and far between).

Its also permanent without recharges if and only if you have perma-Hasten, normally its not perma as its duration is 45s and its recharge is 60s. Also, many Tankers do not take Hasten at all, so you have to consider that to make it perma for non-Hasten requires that at least 1 slot be devoted to a Recharge.

With that said, you have to conside that since EA can stack it has low peaks and it has high peaks. And the goal is to minimize the low peak and maximize the high peak while still having a decent amount of DEF to throw around.

So you have to stronly consider the trade-off between DEF and Recharge Enhancements in the power.

There is also an Endurance tradeoff as if you can fit 1 End Reducer in the power that will save you 25% of the @20 End cost bringing it down to @15 End.

Why would you do that? Well the EPS of Tanker armors is 0.36 (FA, GA, WI, CE, Invinc, Uy, TI, Rooted, Rock Armor, Fiery Aura, etc.). The base EPS of is 20/45 = 0.44 EPS. Dropping this down to 15 End cost means 15 / 45 which is 0.33 EPS. Many Tanker attacks have higher End Costs and recovery is generally blown, especially for an Ice Tanker who is generally bleeding Endurance rather than recovering it. So this EPS reduction can be crucial.

Keep in mind too that the DEF percents are based on hitting 5 mobs both times. I feel that in practice under normal conditions this is not a guaranteed thing.

Also note that "Recharge time" is generally also "Ramp time" - meaning the time it takes to attain the sustainable peak value. As you will tell sometimes the sustainable peak is the low peak and other times its the high peak.

With perma-Hasten it plays out like this:

6 DEF, 0 Recharge - Recharge time is 35s. Max DEF is 412.50% and it lasts 10s. Min DEF is 206.25% and lasts for 25s. Time at max 28.6%. End Cost 20.

5 DEF, 1 Recharge - Recharge time is 30s. Max DEF is 375.00% and lasts 15s. Min DEF of 187.50% also lasts 15s. Time at max is 50%. End cost 20.

4 DEF, 1 Recharge, 1 End. Recharge time is 30s. Max DEF is 337.50% and lasts 15s. Min DEF of 168.75% also lasts 15s. Time at max is 50%. End cost 15.

4 DEF, 2 Recharge. Recharge time is 25s. Max DEF is 337.50% and lasts 20s. Min DEF of 168.75% also lasts 5s. Time at max is 80%. End cost 20.

***** Start Sweet Spot *****

3 DEF, 2 Recharge, 1 End. Recharge time is 25s. Max DEF is 300% and lasts 20s. Min DEF of 150% also lasts 5s. Time at max is 80%. End cost 15.

3 DEF, 3 Recharge. Recharge time is 22s. Max DEF is 450% and lasts for 1s. Min DEF is 300% and lasts for 21s. Time at Max 4.5%. End Cost 20.

NOTE: I find this to be the sweet spot as its from the calcs 300% becomes the easiest DEF value to maintain. It then just becomes a tradeoff of if you want to sacrifice half of the 300% for 5 seconds to save yourself 5 End (see explanation above).

***** End Sweet Spot *****

2 DEF, 3 Recharge, 1 End. Recharge time is 22s. Max DEF is 393.75% and lasts for 1s. Min DEF is 262.50% and lasts for 21s. Time at Max 4.5%. End Cost 15.

2 DEF, 4 Recharge. Recharge time is 20s. Max DEF is 393.75% and lasts for 5s. Min DEF is 262.50% and lasts for 15s. Time at Max 25%. End Cost 20.

1 DEF, 4 Recharge, 1 End. Recharge time is 20s. Max DEF is 337.50% and lasts for 5s. Min DEF is 225.00% and lasts for 15s. Time at Max 25%. End Cost 15.

1 DEF, 5 Recharge. Recharge time 18s. Max DEF is 337.50% and lasts for 9s. Min DEF is 225.00% and lasts for 9s. Time at Max 50%. End Cost 20.

6 Recharge. Recharge time 16s. Max DEF is 281.25% and lasts for 13s. Min DEF is 187.50% and lasts for 3s. Time at Max 81.25%. End Cost 20.

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On a completely different note, the concept of 6 slotting EA for defense and running permahasten made me curious, so I ran numbers, and I figured out that running the basic armors, permahasten, permahoarfrost, and chilling embrace, an Ice tank's endurance recovery is around +0.35 or so- no attacks, not even icicles. Eeep.

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Yeah. Besides 6 slotting for DEF when you have perma-Hasten is not the most efficient slotting for sustained defense. It will get you higher DEF sure, but not for nearly as long as other slottings will go. The best sustained DEF with perma-Hasten is when you slot EA for 1 End, 2 Recharge and 3 DEF.

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You can effectively get EA to give you at least 40% defense every time you fight a single mob or more, if you 6 slot it with defense.

I kept the base 93.25% on EA because I figured they both have their drawbacks with regards to down time if 6 slotted with defense.

[/ QUOTE ]

And if you 6-slot it with defense it will not be up 100% of the time, unless you happened to also pick Hasten. Unlike its closest Tanker counterpart, by default EA is down 25% of the time.

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In fact, because mob sizes are not consistent over time because things die, EA ends up providing on average the roughly the same level of defense (56.25%) with EA unenhanced (which is okay since you stated Elude was unenhanced above).

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I highly doubt this, if you're fighting in large groups, because at least 1/10 of the time you spend fighting, you'll be fighting groups of 20 mobs or more, which gives you 375% or so defense...

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This is a training room thread. On the training room, you can't muster 375%, you can come just shy of that for about 20 seconds if you get EA to overlap, but not otherwise.

Not to mention, 20 mobs buffing you from EA can really only be done in the circumstance of herding and getting the mobs to share physical space by exploiting the inadequacies of the game engine. The actual radius of EA makes getting buffs on the live server under normal non-herding combat very difficult.

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so there could very well be less danger near the end of a battle, anyway. I.e., you need your defense more at the beginning of battles than halfway into it, usually.

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Depends on the battle right? Not to mention we need to close into large groups of mobs without EA necessarily buffing us with anything at all. If SR pumps up Elude before a battle they're entering the fray with a higher defense than an Ice Tanker, because they don't need mobs to feed their defense. In other words for most alpha strike scenarios a SR Scrapper is better off Defensively than an Ice Tanker.

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Now, this I see as a problem, not to mention the Psi problems of Ice, if it's in fact true. Certainly, the base +defense should be at least 35% on all attack types, without the big EA power.

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You'll have no argument there from me.

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Excuse me? Quote me. Where in my first post here, where I "came in" did I even come close to calling anyone here a moron? It's inferences like these that make me highly doubt the follwing statment:

[/ QUOTE ]

Sorry, your right, your first several posts showed that you hadn't even bothered to read the entire thread (seemed more like you skimmed) or follow what was going on on the thread or with Ice Tankers in general.

You also didn't suggest anything new that wasn't already covered on the thread. +RES? Been suggested several times. Speculation that DEF was too high on live, been done, and under certain circumstances refuted as being needed through the practice of actually playing the game.

You also overindulged SR on the thread steering the topic way off focus into balance issues involving SR. I just don't for the life of me understand what the heck any of that discussion matters here.

Then you said claimed that in 50 pages none of us had actually done any testing whatsoever on test when in fact we had, and then dismissed us all (that would be the all but calling us morons part btw). Then in the same post you also imply we're all lazy because we don't have numbers to support our case, when in fact we do, and have spent countless hours coming up with those numbers. In the end, all you really did was demonstrate that you did not in fact actually read the 50 pages worth of posts.

[ QUOTE ]
I'd be interested to hear it, I'd just prefer you spend the time to find the other thread in the Tanker forum, read through it. Find Havoks post on the Tanker forum and read through it. And then present your ideas on the Tanker forum thread.

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You claim to have something to contribute, but I've been waiting for your 10 or so posts on this thread to actually demonstrate your ideas. But like I said, I'd rather see them over on this thread than here.

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And again, I'm focused more on things that are happening because of the EA change than on balancing Ice in general.

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I just reread your posts on this thread, and I'm really not finding anything to support that statement.

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With Elude at a 65% base (give or take 5%), without enhancements, we're talking about 50% of our potential defense in Elude, unless we slot it.

[/ QUOTE ]

No argument there.

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EA on the other hand would be capped at a 93.25% base, which is closer to 2/3 of the defense in Ice, if I understand it correctly.

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No you're overstating the situation. Now not to turn this into an Ice vs SR thing, but since you brought it up, lets compare things more realistically.

Assuming Ice Tankers always get buffs from 5 mobs with EA shows a complete lack of misunderstanding in how Energy Absorption works. In fact, because mob sizes are not consistent over time because things die, EA ends up providing on average the roughly the same level of defense (56.25%) with EA unenhanced (which is okay since you stated Elude was unenhanced above).

Sometimes EA will be above Elude for DEF and as the mob size dwindles EA will have less DEF than Elude. Not to mention that the DEF for Elude is across the board, including Psi. As are all of the other SR powers, no holes. Meaning that SR will have better DEF than Ice in both Fire and Psi.

Also Ice's base DEF ratings are only 5% higher than those of SR for Smash, Lethal, Neg, Energy.

So overall SR compares more favorably to its cousin the Ice Tanker (in fact better off vs Fire and Psi) then an Invuln Scrapper compares to an Invuln Tanker.

[ QUOTE ]
Note, the devs have said they're not planning on changing powers just because of pvp, although I'm not entirely sure I believe this.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well... that's a simplification of what was said. They did also say that PvP would not affect PvE unless in looking at a power for PvP they found a glaring PvE issue for the power.

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I thought of another possibility why EA is getting a nerf, and it's not related at all to the defense (though it could be considered together with the defense). Remember the comment about Cloak of Fear changes? Perhaps the devs thought Ice Tankers were draining mobs endurance so much they were forcing enemies to use nothing but brawl, which they may consider effectively the same as locking mobs into place with fear. I certainly hope this is not the case, but it could be yet another one of the devs reasons.

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I've considered that, but if that were the reason (which I doubt based on what geko posted and a side conversation I had with another dev) that would only show that the devs didn't actually ever really test the End Drain. Most things regen endurance too fast (especially after level 35) for the End Drain to be anywhere near as effective as any other End Drain power in game because it does not have a -Recovery component.

I've never been in a situation using the End Drain where what I was attacking suddenly couldn't use its main attacks for anything more than maybe a single attack and that's after a 3rd or 4th use of EA on the attacker.

[ QUOTE ]
Someone's been polite? I've missed that. I've only noticed flames for trying to figure out what the devs were thinking....

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You came in here and all but called us all morons and told us we'd all proven and showed nothing. I mean did you really truly expect opened arms to that kind of an entrance?

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What I'm talking about is potential solutions (and I have a few) for mobs with bonus accuracy or defense debuffs, without including a rollback on the defense cap nerf. You've made it clear you don't want to hear it, amd that it doesn't belong, here.

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I'd be interested to hear it, I'd just prefer you spend the time to find the other thread in the Tanker forum, read through it. Find Havoks post on the Tanker forum and read through it. And then present your ideas on the Tanker forum thread.

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Ok, so you do play on Test.

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Well actually I play on both, moreso on live, but I set out strict things for myself to test on test and try out with different Ice Tanker builds.

[ QUOTE ]
And your complaint is about AVs and Monsters. So, where are your hard numbers showing that +2 AVs or lower hit you more often on Test than on Live?

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Because there is no difference in practice between an AV battle on Test and an AV battle on Live. The EA change does not affect Tanking AVs, and might affect battling outdoor Monsters if they're grouped, but other than that it doesn't come into play.

Reason? Anyone who is and Ice Tanker and uses EA in an AV/Monster battle knows that by the time you and your team get to tanking it the AV/Monster itself, nothing else is left living around it to take buffs from other than the AV/Monster. And that single EA buff is never enough to survive for very long on your own. This is mostly due to the amount your being hit, which implies that the ACC of an AV/Monster can never be floored by an Ice Tanker.

[ QUOTE ]
You complained about the changes to Energy Absorption

[/ QUOTE ]

Initially yes. But did you read further that the first 2 pages of the thread?

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but did you really run hard tests with sufficiently large samples to show that there really was a change to how often you got hit?

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I'm sorry, but exactly what constitutes a suffciently large sample size when you're talking about battles vs AVs/Monsters. Except for the Shadow Shard AVs, most AVs/Monsters are surrounded by a stock group of minions/lts/bosses (Infernal coming to mind as an exception).

One of my points early on was very simple. There is no change under normal circumstances. Throw in a situation where the mob has high acc or debuffs defense, and that all goes out the door. And its those situations that the additional buffs from additional mobs affected.

And testing shows that it is under those circumstances that the change affects us most. And those situations are extremely common in the 30+ game, enough to where these changes are detrimental to a powerset that already performs weakly.

Not to mention that at 35+ the real AVs (because anything through Hopkins really doesn't compare) of the game start to come into play as do Monsters. And enough of them not only have high ACC but also DEF debuffs or worse, have auto-hit damage auras that can't be defended against.

And without a compensatory change to anything about the powerset as a whole (not necessarily to EA) to help alleviate its other problems, including dealing with the numerous in the 35+ game where the Ice Tanker is actually in fact not flooring the accuracy of the mobs faced due to prevalence of detriment of ability of Ice Tanker during the higher levels, that taking away the one thing that helps compensate for that prevalence of detriment is in and of itself extremely detrimental.

And while it may not be a bad long term decision to make the change to EA, it is a poor decision to implement without making other changes to the set that shore it up in the absense of the additional buffs. Meaning that instead of making the change to EA in a vacuum, which is exactly what is happening now, the entire set needs to be re-examined while taking this change into account. And other changes need to be made to compensate for this change.

[ QUOTE ]
If not, you're only going on the gut instinct thtat because the Test notes say there's a nerf, you're really that much worse off. Show me.

[/ QUOTE ]

Right. Y'know just read the thread. If the mathematics of the game mechanics that I and others went through are too difficult for you to understand, tell us what you don't understand about them and we'll help teach you. But don't tell me its not a gut instinct for any post that follows my first few posts on this thread, because that only shows that you haven't bothered to actually spend the time to read the thread.

Had you read it all you'd have seen that research was done, and tests were performed and that the forumla and mathematics of the game itself were used to demonstrate that Ice is broken. Take the spreadsheet I created and in the field for adding in DEF debuffs or ACC buffs, just fill those in and watch what happens.

[ QUOTE ]
No, this topic is clearly still about Energy Absorption's defense nerf. I suggested alternatives to keeping EA's defense as is on live, and was told that Ice Armor characters want their defense from EA back. I pointed out that won't help, and Archimedes, who you're referring to, just admitted it:

[/ QUOTE ]

Ummm... no not really. Being the OP on this thread (despite the typo in the initial subject because I'm not the greatest speller), I can tell you that in fact this thread was about questioning the reasoning behind the change. That is all.

Once the change was explained the thread did indeed morph into showing that the set was broken, and where it was broken. Its not a bad set in concept, I love playing it, but it is not fullfilling the role of a Tanker as well as other Tanker Primaries do. And that is a matter of balance.

And you're only partly right. For the pre-35 game, rolling back the changes won't matter. But for post-35, with all the high ACCs from the key things you fight, AVs/Monsters, and the amount of ACC buffs and DEF debuffs being thrown around by mobs, I think it does make a difference.

Also the change breaks other things about the power:

* The Taunt radius effect of the power is broken, because now only the mobs that are affected by the power are Taunted instead of everything in the radius of the power.

* The End Drain only occurs on the mobs that are affected. And as mobs move around during combat the affected mobs shift and change enough that you can not reliably rely on the End Drain anymore as a defensive mechanism on the power.

There have also been many suggestions toward fixing the set, and as you said you even suggested some. I didn't discuss what you suggested, because its been suggested before (its not new). But that's a fundamental point of the thread...

You do not implement a change like this to a powerset without otherwise changing the powerset to compensate - especially in the case of an already under-performing powerset. Its just that simple.

I'm not necessarily all for the stupid-high defense that EA provides now on live, nor am I saying the change is bad. I'm saying that its bad when it is the only change being made to the set, and that it should not be made until the devs are ready to sit down and rework the set to perform better with the change in place. And you make sure that bad side effects of a change like the Taunt and End Drain changes don't come into play when you make a change - and they are clear examples of what happens when you target to change a single aspect of a power in a vacuum without looking at its other effects or the rest of the powerset as a whole.

For example, when perma-Unstoppable went away, the rest of the Invuln set was changed in such a way that it could perform extremely well in the time period when Unstoppable was down.

What if suddenly Elude was changed such that it couldn't be run perma anymore, and it was done withouth other changes being made to the set to compensate for the change?

[ QUOTE ]
If you can't tank AVs now, why do you care about that aspect of it? It's not being nerfed, you're still able to take +2 AVs/Monsters as easily as you ould before, and even +9 AVs will be capped if they deal any damage type that Ice gets without EA.

[/ QUOTE ]

You're still missing the point that this thread is NOT just about EA anymore. It morphed, and we really took the conversation elsewhere at this point because it did morph. But its simple, if a Tanker can not reliably tank the things that a Tanker is expected to Tank, then there is a problem with the set that needs to be resolved. In the 35+ game, those things are AVs and Monsters, and the fact that Ice can't Tank them without relying heavily on outside assistance is a problem. And it needs resolution.

[ QUOTE ]
Again, this fits in witht he theme of the thread, simply because people think the defense aspect of Energy Absorption will keep Ice closer in line with the other Tanker sets more on the Live version than the Test, and agian, I don't see this, since defense wil be capped against pretty much everything you fight.

[/ QUOTE ]

And again this is about fighting AVs/Monsters, and performing the function of Tanking as well as other Tankers. EA is the only thing that brings us close to the latter right now, and you're right AVs and Monsters won't change - which is a problem because that means we don't perform as well as other Tankers.

[ QUOTE ]
Actually, I've done quite a bit. I pointed out that the defense on Test is really not that different from Live, unless you're talking about taking much, much higher levels without using defense inspirations (would definitely need heals, but no defense insps would be useful).

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And realize that because this went beyond the training room, we moved it to threads outside the training room. So you're continuing a conversation and trying to relate it to the training room, when it really no longer is an issue for the training room.

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So, since you've said you've done testing, show me...

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Show me where I need to get into the nitty gritty of it like that with spending the time to take counts from actual test runs/demos. The mathematics of the game show that an Ice Tanker is worse off than its brethren. The numbers from my spreadsheet, or the one Havok did don't differ from actual gameplay since they use the same formulas the game does with the one exception being a guess of how CE works vs mobs of higher levels (since we don't have those numbers, so its a visual estimation of effect).

Overall, I'll just sit here and wait for you to have an epiphany and realize what we're actually talking about here and that we're doing it elsewhere. And when you do, go find the other threads, since most of us have moved on from this thread to discuss the nitty gritty of this elsewhere - since we realized that its not really a training room issue other than the change to EA itself.

[ QUOTE ]
So, bash all the other Tanker primaries you want. Ice needs to be comparable to them, and I agree with that. But keep in mind calling me a troll for not actually testing the changes on an Ice Armor build is hypocritical, since no one else appears to have actually tested the changes on Test.

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In fact I do spend time testing several different builds for Ice Tankers on Test. To the point where I put together bug reports for the entire set. And I do this any time a patch list on test shows changes to the set.

I've done several encounters which led to all my number crunching on the topic in the first place. But like Archimedes said, this is not about Minions/Lts/Bosses this is about a Tanker being able to Tank AVs/Monster with a high degree of reliability.

And Archimedes is right, we're not arguing at all about standard encounters being all that badly damaged by this. That was what this whole conversation started as, yes, but it has morphed into a conversation about the general inadequecies of the set.

This has led to several different comparisons, primarily to an Invuln Tanker since they are supposed to be the baseline Tanker for Tankers.

And we have hard numbers. That's what number crunching is all about - hard numbers. And we've done our homework, and you've done little to prove that we haven't.

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Some of you may not have noticed that Energy Absorption no longer resists Hasten's recharge, i.e., that EA recharges faster if you took Hasten. I have no idea if this means you can run EA defense perma or not.

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You do realize that that was a bug. And EA has never needed Hasten to be perma. 1 Recharge Enhancement is all it takes. Bringing up something that's a bug to try to support your argument really just kind of makes me stop reading the point you're trying to make.

Beyond that, nothing you could say would ever convince me that a Scrapper Secondary should even come anywhere close to providing the level of protection that a Tanker Primary should. Because a Scapper is not the one who has to take the damage, though they can choose to. Everyone expects the Tanker to be able to take the damage for them.

Also my arguement has never been about anything but being able to fight the primary bad guys of the 35-50 game and those are AVs and Monsters.

I 100% agree that the 5 mob thing is not going to affect how well we fight Minions or Lts or Bosses except against the things that we already have problems against (DE for example will get worse with this change). But that has never been what any of this was about.

I also don't see any reason for Tankers to do more damage then they do now personally, and its never come up on this thread, so you can try to shake us up with that, but it does nothing because its not germaine to the topic at hand.

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The reasons I thought EA might make sense as the damage debuff were that I didn't think anyone -used- it as an endurance drainer and it might seem to fit the 'feel' of the power.

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I did, but I'm not planning to count on it once I4 goes live if the current change to EA for I4 remains. Right now I can count on it draining the targets I need drained. After I4 I can't.

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On a somewhat related note, how about swapping the endurance drain for a second slow?

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Honestly? Again, its that the targets are not choosable by me that kills just about any secondary effect you could throw on the power. I mean, even if it was a damage debuff, I can't be certain I'd hit the main target. And in the case of higher levels that would be an AV - and the slows either don't or barely affect AVs anyway.

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...but even if I forget to taunt Hibernate seems to maintain aggro somewhat (unlike, say, phase shift).

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You can "hold" agro with Phase Shift just as well as with Hibernate. It depends on how in range other targets are for the mobs. On my Blaster who has Phase Shift I've managed to hold the entire end room in the Infernal mission during a wipe of the rest of my team (determined by the demons and Infernal trying to still get at me for some time while the rest of the team regrouped).

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It's very rare, approaching on never, that my team even -realizes- I'm hibernating till they see my health spike suddenly (unless an empath is attempting to heal me franticly). It does take me 'out of the fight' but it really doesn't seem to stop me being a punching bag- if they upped the base threat level while in hibernate, mind you, I'd be the last person to complain.

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I use this trick too. But I don't think the addition of being able to use Heal insps is enough. To me my problem with using the trick above is not how long it takes me to heal, its how long I have to wait to get Hibernate back up again.

If this is a power that we're intended to rely up to Tank with, then the recharge needs to be slower. I mean the fastest you can get it to come back on is 16s, but that requires perma-Hasten and 6 Recharges. Often, when tanking AVs, I've died or come close to dying while waiting on that recharge.

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I'm also fairly excited about the changes on Test for this power. I'm seriously considering 6 slotting it with heal/end/recharge so I can go from zero to full health in 10 seconds for almost no end whenever I want to- that's probably short enough that the taunt from Icicles and Chilling Embrace won't even wear off.

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Problem is that if you slot for one of the three, you can't get the other two into an acceptable range to do that. I've played with it some. And like I said they need to lower the base recharge some, neither the end usage or heal rate are major issues - I can already heal to full from about 25% health in less than the duration of a single taunt with 1 duration enh in it. To me that's fast enough for a base. But what I need is for it to be available much sooner than it is now, but when the fastest non-Hasten can get it is 20s - that's just too long.

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I'm not saying that I would horribly object to some change to hibernate, but I really don't -want- to see it become another Unstoppable, or Moment of Glory.

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I agree. Hibernate gives up a lot to get moderate results for a top tier power. You are Immobilzed, yet you have all the effects of being held (you can't act at all other than to turn off Hibernate) all for a fast heal. Yes now you can slot it, but that will be at the cost of not having it available for a period of time that can very easily mean death for an Ice Tanker. It costs as much as Phase Shift does End-wise, yet someone Phase Shifted can still toggle their powers.

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Of course, you might be referring to the moment before hibernate activates. I think this is the devs solution to deactivate toggles by having your endurance bottom out for a moment.

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Its actually kind of a bad design choice if you ask me.

Hibernate is a specialized version of Phase Shift. However it also heals. To heal we give up movement. But there are other differences that other than the heal make Phase Shift (and Quantum Flight) more usable.

Having characters that have Phase Shift and having an Ice Tanker with Hibernate I can tell you that they do use about the same amount of Endurance (this is a good thing).

But the toggle dropping in Hibernate is overkill. And to top it off the inability to turn toggles back on while Hibernated is extreme overkill. There's no reason for either, we already gave up all movement and action for the heal, and the both PS and QF allow you to toggle powers on and off at will.

Well someone posted a perma-Hasten Ice Armor build with 6 DEF in Energy Absorption. So I got to wondering is this the be all end all. So I ran some numbers and in my opinion its not the way to go... I posted this already on another thread, but I thought this would be of interest here:

The following assumes buffs from 5 mobs since this is how things will be when I4 goes live, unless something changes (and my hopes for that are dwindling).

The following is also using perma-Hasten (its in your build, and heck its in my build too - edit this references the build the OP on the other thread was posting).

I'm also assuming that coming with I4 anyone slotting for End Drain will no longer bother as the effects are so neutered as to be useless with the 5 mob cap. So slotting for End Drain will be a thing of the past.

When EA is 6 slotted for Recharge it it has low peak of 187.5% that will last 3s, and a high peak of 281.25% that will last 13s. You're spending a lot of end to keep this going though.

Now if you slotted in 1 End, 1 Recharge, and 4 DEF, your recharge time becomes 30s. You will have a low peak of 168.75% but it lasts for 15s. And your high peak of 337.50% also lasts 15s. Not really so good.

To me the sweet spot for slotting when you have perma-Hasten is 1 End, 2 Recharge, and 3 DEF. With this your recharge time becomes 25s. Your low peak is 150%, but it only lasts 5s. Your high peak is 300% and lasts for 20s. Like I said this is the sweet spot, there is little diff between 3s and 5s, and you have about 20% more DEF over the 6 slotted Recharge, and spends less Endurance to do it.

If you're looking for the most consistent DEF without worrying about lows and peaks, then you might be interested in doing 1 End, 2 DEF and 3 Recharge your cycle is 22s. Doing this your low peak is 262.50% but it lasts 21s. Your high peak is of 393.75% is higher than any other, but it only lasts for 1s. You're going to spend slightly more End than what I feel is the sweetspot and have a consistently lower DEF.

For completeness... doing 1 End, 1 DEF and 4 Recharge your cycle is 20s. Your low peak is 225.00% and lasts for 15s. Your high peak is 337.50%, but only lasts 5s.

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