Firebomb

> No one needs 500% defense. Nothing has accuracy that high.

Heh. Again, try one of those DE jobs with many quartz emanators active at once. I have, and even after having one of those 'talks' like those that debuff defenders usually have with their teams about what will make all of my powers USELESS AS A TANKER, I wind up eating dirt. And not due to any fault of the members of the team - it's sometimes hard to target those things when all heck breaks loose - especially in a cave job.

I can use my SIX SLOTTED energy absorption against everything in the room and I'm still getting swatted around like a blaster with more health.

> Keep Stone Tankers happy, and don't allow our Damage
> Debuff to work on Psionics.

I disagree with this. But then I've always been of a mind that every tanker should have one, and only one, achilles heel. Invulnerable has psionics, while everybody else seems to have a plethora of different weaknesses.

Say, make ice tankers able to defend against anything save for fire, and fire tankers completely vulnerable to cold (which would suck when you find that random Crey scientist on the job, but still), but otherwise able to tank bad guys with impunity - to be, you know, tanks.

I know it's far too late in the game to make this sort of change, but at least if everyone has ONE weakness, they're on even footing in that regard. The trick would be to figure out what stone would have as a blind spot; maybe ferric junk in their armors makes them weak to electricity, I dunno. I'm rambling here.

I personally don't see why psionics should be something that is mostly unresisted or undefended against. When you have 75 per cent of your armor sets vulnerable to a specific kind of damage, one that is rampant in the higher levels, something seems amiss to me.

> Basically, EA should still be able to floor defense on a
> single +4 boss. Otherwise, how the hell is an ice tanker
> supposed to keep a team safe at all?

See, this is what I'm concerned about. Sure, most standard baddies are covered even with the 'new' EA, but what about things like rulaaru? With their insane accuracy bonus (on at least the giant eyes that I know of), can an ice tanker even pretend to attempt, say, one of those shadow shard task forces? Say, set to invincible, like most people are in the 40s?

Between the eyes and the massive amount of psi guys, do they stand a chance? I can't test this myself, being only 34, so I'm not sure this is even feasible. I know those overseer bosses give my regen scrapper a run for his money at +3 when they've got backup - and he can heal very fast (a change I WAS testing, since Dash can get out there).

I won't know this until I at least hit level 40, and that'd be a long time to wait to find out I can't even touch four zones in the game, zones that, well, I suppose a lot of people don't anyway. But still.

I always liked it out there.

> To make that power be of any use you're going to need
> to add a few slots to it. In my case I'd take those slots
> from Icicles.

What's sad is that I DID put six slots in EA - 3 for recharge reduction and 3 for energy drain. I liked the idea of pretty much sapping everybody around me in one shot, in case I lost control somehow (thanks to the ever-lovable changes to things like freezing rain, etc...) and things get away from me.

With this 'proposed' change, I'll have to develop perma-hasten (which my ice tanker didn't have/need before), and change all those slots in EA to defense only, in order to at least partially make up the defense deficit against those rotten quartz and the like. It won't, but I can dream.

So the net effect, as I see it, is a forced reliance on not one, but TWO power pools (fighting, speed) in order to get CLOSE to where I was before, while losing the awesome crowd control ability of enhanced energy drain.

Considering all the changes in taunt so that tankers wouldn't HAVE to rely on power pools to DO THEIR JOB, this seems to be backwards thinking - unless there are MANY pick-me-ups to the ice armor line to make up the difference.

Either that, or every time I get a team invite, I'll have to tell people I'm the 'lite' tanker, and can't handle the large quantities of +5 and up villains that other tankers seem to do (yes, I know I can't hurt or even arrest bad guys that high as an ice/ice, but I can still TANK them at least).