Circeus_NA

A lot of the planners report Frozen Armor at 1 per tic. Its only about 1/3 of that.

FA 0.33
WI 0.33
GA 0.33
CE 0.33
Icicles 1.0

Inv 0.3
TI 0.4
Uy 0.4

So Inv is at 1.1 per tic (every time End is removed), and Ice at 1.33ish (w/out Icicles) and 2.33ish with Icicles.

Letting people here know that I just put up the following:

Ice Armor Bug and Fix Update (03-25-2005)

We picked up 2 bugfixes, and 5 new bugs, 19 bugs total, 16 are Not Fixed or New.

Conceivably you could triple stack it if you did perma-Hasten and another 6 rechargers in Energy Absorbtion. But its going to cost a lot of Endurance to do this, and most mobs will be floored in Acc with a much lighter application.

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Do you think that if Icicles ALSO had a Slow effect it'd even things out?

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It could. vs. 5 mobs with an even level boss attacking, to bring the 44% down to 0% would require a total -Recharge (not Slow) of 58%. So that's an additional 33%.

Now with that said it also flubs the overall numbers up even more.

Right now the numbers are pretty disparate. It is my estimation that without something seriously new coming into the picture DEF can never be balanced vs a mixture of DEF and RES.

With that 58%, the picture for Ice starts out very strong, but gets steadily weaker at a much steeper pace. In this case (which does not exist for real -- I just like to clarify for people who only read the end of threads) Invuln vs Ice looks like this:

First column is # of mobs, second column is % Invuln vs Ice

1 -142.86
2 -107.14
3 -71.43
4 -35.71
5 0.00
6 35.71
7 71.43
8 76.19 (anything past 8 mobs is the same)

So the picture would look great going in, until you see that more mobs means Invuln gets better and really shines. Which is no different than when Chilling Embrace is at 25%.

The devs need to come up with something where no matter how many mobs, and no matter how many levels above or below the character level they are, Invuln and Ice always stay at 0%.

The only way to do this is give something to both that boosts Invuln more at first and less later on, and that boosts Ice less initially and more later on in the charts.

What the heck that would be I don't know. Like I said they've designed themselves into a hole.

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But everyone I've ever talked to uses con to refer to numerical level, not color/arrows.

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Likely because they don't really understand the difference. A lot of people I speak to in game don't even understand there is a difference.

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I understand the rational behind the 44%, but thats on one 'round' of combat.

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No your missing the following statement I made in last nights huge post:

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Now with a little prodding, damge itself doesn't matter, just that there actually is damage, and the affect that the damage modifiers (Resistance and Defense) have vs the amount of damage taken. I didn't really figure this out until I plugged everything into a spreadsheet and started playing.

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The amount of damage coming in doesn't matter, just that there is damage. That's very important towards understanding this issue. It doesn't matter if its 1 hit doing 2000 points of damage or 100 doing 2000 damage or 2000 doing 1 point of damage. That 44% number will remain consitent.

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You are assuming that a inv/* and a ice/* take the same number of attacks in a given combat.

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For this to work you have to. I'm sorry if you don't understand that, but we're talking from pure defense. Secondary sets can't enter into the equation here, which is the mistake you're making. An Ice/Energy is going to be as effective at killing as an Invuln/Energy. You're muddling the waters, and forgetting that Ice and Invuln have equal access to the same pools, the same secondaries, etc.

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Really, the Inv tanker has more end to play with to throw more attacks, plus an acc buff to hit better.

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I'll give you the ACC buff, but really the End usage running CE/FA/WI/GA at the same time is only 0.2-0.3 more than Invulns Inv/TI/Uy. Its like 1.4 per tic from Ice vs 1.1 for Invuln. Icicles though is another 1 End per tic. That is huge, and the benefit from Icicles is not much (again more End then and less damaging then Blazing Aura). But really a DEF buff makes more sense on Chilling Embrace -- slow things are easier to hit.

Combat for Ice is not slow. Its slow if you expect Icicles to do all the killing for you. If you play like this you will never be sucessful. Mobile Caltrops approach works, but you still have to use your other attacks. If you don't, the approach fails long term.

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But what about the idea of having EA's bonus scale up with the relative level of the mobs you hit?
IF we're only allowed to hit 5 enemies per EA, would scaling the absorbed defense make EA worthwhile? Overpowered? Or would it still be pretty bad?

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Once ACC is floored its floored so extra DEF doesn't enter into the equation unless ACC buffs and DEF debuffs start to. Then it depends on how much of those buffs/debuffs you want to allow the Ice Tanker to compensate for. -100% DEF? Then you have to make sure that they always exceed flooring by 100%. +200% ACC? Then you have to make sure they compensate by guarteeing that flooring is exceeded by 200%.

That said, an interesing thought I just had... with all these new Resistances going into game -- none of which an Ice Tanker has gotten -- maybe it'd be nice if another was added. Something that rebuffs an opponents ACC buff and rebuffs DEF debuffs. This would certainly make Ice Armor stand out from every other set if no other set had at this ability.

I'm using 25% base for FA and GA. And then the same 9%/12.5% for WI. The 2.5% is not going to make tons of difference either way you slice it.

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What if the defense per from EA scaled per level? Scaled UP per level, I mean.
I'll just throw out 5% per level.

So hitting 5 even level enemies would give you;
5 x 18.75)) = 93.75& defense

Hitting 5 +2 level enemies would give you:
5 x (18.75 + 10) = 143.75 defense.


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No... those are just the numbers from EA. You're forgetting the additional DEF provided by Frozen Armor and Wet Ice. Its okay, I know we're so focused on EA here we're forgetting the other DEF powers we get, but don't worry all of my calculations are taking them into account.

vs Smash and Lethal, with FA and WI going and slotted for 1 End and 5 DEF (typical slotting post-I3) you're getting 55% from FA and 19.8% from WI for a total of 74.8%. You have to any bonuses from EA to that.

With that in mind it only takes 2 enemies to to floor the defense of any Boss mob from +0 to +6 in level -- meaning pretty much any boss, lt, or minion you encounter will have floored accuracy if they are in a group of 2 or more when fighting you if they are doing Smash/Lethal damage.

Those 2 mobs will bring you from 74.8% to 112.3%. And a +6 mobs accuracy is 116% (based on the spreadsheet at FOP).

Of course, none of this takes into account any acc buffs or def debuffs that occur at higher levels all the time.

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One other thing, was this adjustment supposed to balance PvP?

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Maybe, but it doesn't make a difference there really in a 1v1 battle. I mean it may have been the intent, and there is an Ice Armor character in the PvP video. But in 1-2 enemy battles its not even effective to kick off EA unless your defense is debuffed or their accuracy is buffed. At even level, another character has the same base accuracy as an even level boss 75%. That means out the door, without EA, their Accuracy is floored against you (75%-74.8% = 0.2%).

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I can't imagaine a situation where you could get more than 5 actual human players to stand near you long enough to EA them all. So the live version of EA would be as effective as the test version in PvP.

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With the lag that is likely involved in a large enough Battle Royale? I bet you could hit 10-20 with EA if it wasn't for the 5 target limit. Also modem vs broadband vs overseas... all those things will factor in. Local Broadband will likely be able to dive in and use EA far more effectively than an overseas modem user.

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If this change does go through, EA definitely needs to agro and end drain all the enemies in melee range regardless of whether it's getting def from them.

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Absolutely agree here, but the 5 person limit should be bumped up so we can compensate for acc buffs and defense debuffs. With 5 our max defense is 168.55%. This much defense is not effective vs Swarms, its not effective vs even a single Quartz beacon. At this much, the sting from getting debuffed by a Radiologist or a Rikti Guardian is going to hurt too.

At the very least it should be bumped from 5 to 7 so we can generate 200%. We should be able to generate significantly more defense with EA then an Invuln Tanker can with Invicibility.

Right now with 5 mobs we can generate 93.75% with EA.

At 10 mobs an Invuln Tanker is generating 80% with Invincibility (and heck, they might be able to get buffed by more than 10, who knows unless geko says).

80% is 85% of 93.75%. Including all defensive powers they're at over 50% of an Ice Tankers defense at this point, plus they have Resistance.

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the important thing here is that we all need to realize that you can't rely on Defense only (Or cap defense for that matter) when there are so many ways for mobs (And other heroes if you're into PvP) to lower your defense to 0%.

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You and I both know we're in agreement on that

I will point out though that despite lucks running out, they do last longer than EA's duration, and a Blaster can kill stuff much faster than a Tanker can.

That said, I'd also like to point out that for all the calculations I've run none of them do well to reflect the effects of an Ice Tanker's glass jaw. All the calculations reflect a large number of attacks over time.

However, generally speaking, higher level attacks do more damage than lower level ones, and once this kicks in, vs a Single attack that hits, if the attack is designed to hurt a max'd resistance character like an Invuln Tanker, it has a pretty good chance of killing an Ice Tanker.

For example, in order for a higher level attack to do 200 damage to something at the Tanker Resistance Cap of 90% it has to be doing 2000 damage before the Resistance is applied. If that same attack hits an Ice Tanker, the Ice Tanker is dead (at 2000 health or less). And it doesn't matter how much Defense or how many healers are standing behind you.

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You're still incorrect. An Even Con Boss is one who's level is identical to yours. They should show up Orange. Geko stated a Boss's to-hit forever and a half ago with the Issue 1 Super Reflexes changes, and it's 75% Base for a Boss who's level is identical to yours. Some attacks have accuracy bonuses of course, but the Base to-Hit for a Boss is the same as it is for Players.

Sorry it took me so long to reply though.

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And all I ask is that you play catchup. I already accepted what you said and rolled with it (about 75% accuracy). In fact, I found a nice little spreadsheet over on FOP that gave me all the values I needed from -10 to +10 for minion, lt and boss.

However, I'll correct you back. An even level boss is +2 con. An even con boss is -2 levels. I see people mix these up all the time. but level is the number shown as level. And con is the color/arrows. An even level boss will con orange or 2 arrows, and therefore be +2 con. An even con boss will con white, have no arrows, and be two levels lower than you. The exception being prisoners.

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I was doing some testing tonight on the Live Servers. I went and found 10-15 Devouring Earth that where even level and -1 to me. I got them all to atack me and hit EA. That was between 150-250% def with EA plus my armors.

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Just a note that geko provided us with a number of 18.75% per mob. So 10-15 mobs, on the live server, puts you at 250%-350% DEF (presuming you're also running the various Ice Armors in addition to EA) -- presuming that you hit all 10-15. I'm guessing from your 150% number that you feel you hit between 5-10 of the DE with EA which would put you at 150%-250%.

Beyond that, can you be more clear on the chain of events here? Because for me every time I'm in the middle of a group of DE and a Quartz beacon is dropped so is my Ice Tanker unless a healer is around. Now since you had Tough, vs DE which mostly do S/L damage then sure, you're probably fine. All they do is S/L with the exception of the mushrooms and spit which do Toxic.

Now, as you said, 4 lucks is a better defensive buff than EA vs 5 mobs. Its 100% to all as opposed to 93.75% to all except PSI. That means any character on the test server can beat the bonus of EA by popping just 4 lucks. Just think, a Blaster can pop 4 lucks and get more defense that the key power in our primary powerset will provide, and then on top of that have RES to Smash and Lethal from their ancilary pool.

[ QUOTE ][*]It's a toggle, unlike RPD and Stone Skin; so, like Firey Aura tankers, we can lose this if we get stunned. It also means it requires Endurance to maintain it; thus, running it with 6 damage resistance SOs would only add a further endurance burden to an already toggle- and endurance-management heavy set.

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Actually I have a build on test that on my Ice/Stone ditches Hasten and drops in Kick/Tough (pushing off Hibernate), and I actually had a worse time endurance-wise than I did with Hasten.

Now you'd think dropping Hasten would help even if you are picking up a Toggle and another attack, but nope. And I had only DamRes in it it. I haven't had a chance to try out an End slot in it, but I plan to. Though based on what I was seeing, I don't expect it to help tons.

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Circ, I dont' completely agree with your reasoning.

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Initially I thought there were three bits of data missing to calculate this properly.

The first missing bit being how much level difference affects damage. For example, I picked the damage amount 250 for an even level boss. Presumably a +1 level boss does 250 * some factor, a +2 does 250 * a larger factor, etc. So that means as level increases overall damage increase.

The second being that as level in the boss increases, the amount to which Chilling Embrace affects things falls off. For example, does it fall off completely in 5 levels (meaning 5% loss per level if linear), or in 10 levels (meaning 2.5% loss per level).

I don't even know if these two things are a linear progession or an exponential one, though I suspect linear for both.

The third is if there is a cap to the number of mobs Invincibility will provide a cap from. geko kind of implied there was, but then again maybe there isn't.

Now with a little prodding, damge itself doesn't matter, just that there actually is damage, and the affect that the damage modifiers (Resistance and Defense) have vs the amount of damage taken. I didn't really figure this out until I plugged everything into a spreadsheet and started playing.

The only three factors that really affect the results are how many mobs there are, what the caps on number of allowed buffs from mobs are for each power (EA and Invinc), and the affects of Chilling Embrace.

Its like this, if Chilling Embrace's 25% looses 10% effectiveness per level difference, then by 10 levels out its at 0%. So the question becomes: how much less effective is it per level? If it tapers out in 5 levels you get much different results than if it tapers out at 10 levels.

For the sake of argument here I'm going to say that Chilling Embrace looses somewhere between that per level and looses it in a linear fashion. So I'll go with that versus +7 mobs CE would have no effect. Again, this is an assumption, not fact. I'm guessing.

Now, before I go forward, I'm going to be 100% truthful here and flat out say this whole thing is completely sporked. There is simply no effective way for the devs to ever balance Ice Armor and Invulnerablity simply based on the way they are designed. They've designed themselves into a corner.

What follows is long and took me hours to plug into a spreadsheet, and only about 30 minutes to present to you. Please take everything that follows with a grain of salt, but understand the real results are something like this and makes me wonder if geko and Castle aren't going prematurely bald over this stuff...

The following assumptions are made:

* The damaging/attacking mob is a boss, things would be different for a lt or a minion. I suspect that there is no fixed accuracy value for Elite Bosses, ArchVillains, and Monsters and that each has its own special accuracy (makes the most sense to me, but I could be wrong here). Though any accuracy higher than 75% will hurt Ice more in the long run as it will be flooring accuracy less often.

* The level of the boss runs from +0 to +6

* results are presented from 1 mob to 10 mobs (EA maxes at 5, and I figure if Invinc has a cap its likely twice that or 10), at 2 mobs Ice is always flooring an opponents ACC in the +0 to +6 range.

* vs +6 mobs Chilling Embrace is at its minimum effect with out being zero

* Chilling Embrace looses 15% effectiveness from its 25% base per level (3.75%) (this is a guess don't forget)

* We are not taking into account, accuracy bonuses (which severly hurt Ice Armor), defense debuffs, or resistance debuffs, or auto-hit attacks.

* any mobs beyond the boss are not attacking, but since the amount of damage doesn't matter, just as long as there is damage it doesn't matter if they hit or not.

* keep in mind I'm calculating best standard def/res for both characters vs the most common types of attacks in game -- smash and lethal

The first number preseted is the +level the mob has vs the character. The second number presented is the %more or less effective Invulnerability is then Ice Armor damagewise in the case presented. There's no need to figure what life would have been like if we could go beyond 5 mobs because of the assumptuions made above (no debuffs vs character, no acc buffs for attacker).

Versus 1 mob:

6 57.97
5 41.33
4 -2.56
3 -64.64
2 -57.58
1 -47.43
0 -36.00

Versus 2 mobs:

6 -73.34
5 -65.34
4 -56.67
3 -47.25
2 -39.40
1 -28.38
0 -16.00

Versus 3 mobs:

6 -57.95
5 -49.34
4 -40.00
3 -29.86
2 -21.22
1 -9.33
0 4.00

Versus 4 mobs:

6 -42.57
5 -33.34
4 -23.33
3 -12.47
2 -3.04
1 9.71
0 24.00

Versus 5 mobs (the 44% case I've been touting - this is geko's point of balance):

6 -27.18
5 -17.34
4 -6.67
3 4.92
2 15.15
1 28.76
0 44.00

Versus 6 mobs:

6 -11.80
5 -1.34
4 10.00
3 22.31
2 33.33
1 47.81
0 64.00

Versus 7 mobs:

6 3.58
5 14.66
4 26.67
3 39.70
2 51.51
1 66.86
0 84.00

Versus 8 mobs:

6 18.97
5 30.66
4 43.33
3 57.10
2 69.69
1 85.90
0 86.67

Versus 9 mobs:

6 34.35
5 46.66
4 60.00
3 74.49
2 87.87
1 87.30
0 86.67

Versus 10 mobs:

6 49.74
5 62.66
4 76.67
3 88.41
2 87.88
1 87.30
0 86.67

*****

What you will notice is this:

The sweetspot of Ice having any real superiority over Invuln is versus 2 mobs.

Versus 1 mob, Ice is superior from +0 to +3, and then more or less even with Invuln at +4, and then Invuln takes over for +5 and +6 level mobs.

However for each mob that is added after the 2nd, Invuln gets progressively stronger versus Ice. And after the 5 mob cap that EA has, its all uphill for Invuln, and all downhill for Ice by comparision.

Please note however that even without the 5 mob cap the numbers are the same -- floored Accuracy is floored accuracy and if there are no buffs/debuffs to be had then it only takes 2 mobs for ACC to be floored vs +0 to +6 mobs for an Ice Tanker.

Also based on what we know about how well Ice Tankers faire vs ArchVillains, I'm going to wager that AVs typically have around a 120-125% accuracy if not more. This would mean that 1v1 versus an AV that Invuln would come out 50-60% ahead of an Ice Tanker.

This is all about Energy Absorbtion. My calculations are all entirely based on the change on test. Notice how I limited the mob calculation to being 5 mobs. Also like I said to Crenson we can't look at the single power, we have to look at how the powerset itself functions with respect to that power.

And the answer is Invuln is 44% better.

Crenson, I'm going completely by the point of balancing that geko provided us here. If that's how he's balancing Energy Absorbtion, which is without argument the key power in Ice Armor, then he has to look at the whole of not only how that affects the powerset, but where the powerset is today in comparison with other powersets, and where the change puts it.

Yes, as levels between a character and an opposing mob become more disparate the effects of Defense and Chilling Embrace do fall off. However, the effects of Resistance do not.

That means though that an Invuln Tanker will approach the effectiveness of a pure Resistance Tanker with maxed resistances (say a Fire Tanker that has also taken Tough).

However since Defense and Chilling Embrace are the only legs an Ice Tanker has to stand on, the Ice Tanker approaches the effectiveness of a Blaster/Defender/Controller Defensively. And even then a level 44+ Blaster/Defender/Controller will now have more Resistance than an Ice Tanker actually potentially putting them in a better position then the Ice Tanker.

So yes, the effectiveness of both will get worse, but Invuln will taper out, Ice will keep getting worse.

Since we're looking for alternatives to adding Resistance to an Ice Tanker, and egarding that Ice would need 178% the health of an Invuln Tanker to compensate. A modification could be made to Hoarfrost to do this (now you have to take both Hoarfrost and Dull Pain into account).

What I'm saying is this. Take the 1000 health example above.

Hoarfrost and Dull Pain both raise that to 1400 health.

But in order to compensate for the needed extra health if Hoarfrost gave an additional

1400 * 1.78 = 2492 health needed.

So to compensate if Dull Pain were left at a +40% health increase, to compesate, Hoarfrosts increase would need to be +149.2%

1000 * (1 + 1.492) = 2492

1000 * (1 + 0.4) = 1400

2492 / 1400 = 1.78

Just wanted to work out for everyone how Hoarfrost would need to be modified to handle this discrepency.

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Wait. I thought it was just 17% less than Invincible,

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No its 44%. 17% was if a Boss hit with 85% accuracy. But since an even level Boss hits for 75% accuracy then 17% is no longer right, and it jumps to 44%.

Meaning Ice Tanks take 178% of the damage an Invul Tank does. And they have no way to recover from that. So as nice as the other things are, they're not compensatory enough to make up that difference -- also note Chilling Embrace is already factored into the 44%. So the only things left out are Icicles which doesn't kill stuff fast enough, and possibly the now neutered End Drain on Energy Absorbtion (it no longer hits everything).

Okay since this is now an "Official Thread" I thought I'd repost this info here. It shows how much additional health would be needed to compensate if we were not to get a fix through Resistance or Healing:

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You can rule out Hoarfrost from the equation healthwise because Invuln has access to Dull Pain, and other than the Toxic Resist on Hoarfrost, they are the same power. Both have access to the Fitness and Medicine pools, so again these can be ruled out.

Okay because of the 44% discrepency, that means that for every 100 damage an Ice Tanker takes an Invuln Tanker has taken only taken 56 damage. The Ice Tanker is taking 178% of the damage that an Invuln Tanker is taking.

This means that an Ice Tanker would require 178% of the Health of an Invuln Tanker to be able to take the same amount of damage over time. Let me put this into some simple numbers:

If an Invuln Tanker has 1000 health, an Ice Tanker would need 1780 health to be able to take the same amount of damage. If the Invuln Tanker has 2000 health, an Ice Tanker needs 3560.

Its just that simple to figure out. Ice Tankers need an excessively higher health to compensate without resistances.

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Not to mention us Ice tankers don't even get a sticky for this thread while the regen scrappers do for theirs.

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I've asked. It probably won't happen because since there's so few of us (I suspect that Regen Scrappers outnumber us 1000:1 to be honest), and we tend to be more organize because people like myself have already made an attempt for us to be more organized. And because of that we're not starting 1000 threads about this. We have 3. One here, and one in the Tankers forum. And then another for the bugs (though I plan to start a 4th just for bugs that are active on the test server soon now).

Edit: Can that, CuppaJo rules!!!

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I'm just curious whyEnergy Absorption balanced on flooring even con bosses, while most powers are balanced on +2 AV's.

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Can we please get our terminology right here so we're all on the same page with geko when discussing this.

Geko said:
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If those foes are your level, that is...

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That's even level not even con. An even level boss cons 2 levels higher and orange. An even con boss would be 2 levels lower then you and white.

This is very important for purposes of the discussion.

Now with that said. Yes, this fails to take into account that at Heroic and not soloing you're often fighting bosses that are +1/+2 levels higher than you depending on the size of your team (+0/+1 if team size is 4 or less and +1/+2 if its over 4). Same at Tenacious. At Rugged/Unyielding it can be +2/+3 and at Invincible its +4/+5.

Balancing for even level bosses is ludicrous.

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There also hasn't been much mention of what Ice does better than Invulnerability. We have great Energy defense so sappers are much less of an issue.

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Becuase we really don't do it all that much better than Invuln does. Sappers are a minion. Minions have a 50% ACC. Tough Hide alone brings that close to 30%, plus invinc brings it to 25%, and then standing next to the Sapper 18%. If the Sapper has 2 friends with him like he usually does the Sapper ends up with his ACC floored. So sorry, nope I don't see this.

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Energy Absorption being a click power also gives us some protection in cases where toggles do get dropped and without the negatives of powers like Unstopable.

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I'm sorry... but can I laugh at that a little. You do realized how much more effective Unstoppable is at allowing a Tank to do its job then EA is? Even now with the way its been changed. And lets not forget its comparitive power is Hibernate. Is Hibernate really as effective as Unstoppable for a Tanker?

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And on days when things just don't go right Hibernate can let you sit there and meditate for a moment on just how cool life can be.

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And watch your teammates die horribly when you activate it in combat. Unlike... oh... Unstoppable? Or Granite Armor? Heck even Rise of the Phoenix, while being a self-rez, is an attack that pretty much disorients everything around you.

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I also love not having to chase runners for five blocks because with Chilling Embrace they aren't going anyplace fast.

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Who's arguing there? No one, but then again, to me runners are not a big deal. I have follow, and I have sprint. Even without Chilling Embrace, there's nothing that out runs me on the ground on any character. Being worried about runners is just a Space Invaders mentality.

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When it comes to Arch Villians I love defenders. Kinetics, Dark, and Radiation Defenders can all put Archvillian damage output to something manageable no matter what the type and frequently a Storm Defender can also help in many cases.

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And yet... being an Ice Tanker, the AV will still kill you dead with one shot, just like it will the defenders standing around you when you fall.

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To me the game isn't about always being the best. It is about being damn good and my Ice Tanker is definately that.

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y'know... when I became Bar Mitzvah, once I was done reading from the Torah the Rabbi turned to me and said, "You were great!" My response was, "I know." The Rabbi stopped for a second, and then said to me, "No, I'm sorry, you were good. Moses was great." (true story)

Ice Tankers are good. Invuln Tankers are great.

I'm sorry but to me the problem here is Intra-AT balance. We will likely never have Inter-AT balance (Scrappers vs Tankers vs Blasters vs Controllers vs Defenders vs Kheldians), but there is absolutely no reason for any member of an AT to be any more effective at doing their job then any other member of the same AT.

From there the numbers speak. It doesn't matter how good your Ice Tanker is, people know that by comparison Invuln is great. And on the cutting room floor when putting together a team to fight PvM if its an Ice Tanker vs an Invuln Tanker people pick the Invuln Tanker.

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Are you serious? I did a lot of testing last night (On test), but that's the one thing I didn't pay attention to (I was too busy surviving half of the things that I can usually survive).

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Just tested it a few more times to be certain. Yes only things you get DEF from get End Drained. Nothing else does. In fact its unclear the unaffected mobs are even Taunted by EA anymore either.

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Wanna lay even odds that EA's base end drain got lowered as well?

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It didn't get lowered near as I can tell all end bars look about the same as they do now on live. Though it did get lowered for PvP, but all End Drains got lowered for PvP.

For the record guys... here's the thing we weren't told about the Energy Absorbtion change in the patch notes. Not only is it now limited to getting defense buffs from only 5 foes, but it now only drains endurance from those same 5 foes. Everything else in the radius of Energy Absorbtion no longer looses endurance.

And to boot you don't get to pick which 5 get hit/loose the end. So you can no longer use the End Drain to try to lock down bosses.

So its not just 1 nerf its 2.

I'm sorry, but even if you're going to limit the defense buff to 5 the End Drain should still affect everything -- its a major part of the power, and one I know I heavily rely on (well vs foes that don't regenerate Endurance fast).

This is frakin' silly.

C'mon, cut us some slack and give us something. The change is over the top. Who the heck spends the time to nerf a single power in a set that already significantly underperforms not once, but twice.

Sheesh.