Kruunch

You're on Justice right? Come run with me one night and we can compare builds.

I'm usually on 7 PM est til about 11 PM est most nights.

Yeah the random number generator can be unkind at times.

I was thinking of using Caltrops (had in my first version in fact but that was before heavy IOs). I might give it another go ... how do you like it?

(I love Impale but mostly because I'm lazy )

You wanna spank me?

(_x_)

Are you still crying in the corner about me dinging your precious charts?

Good lord man get over it (they made you produce better charts didn't it?).

Sheesh.

What can I say ... you win. Grats. (this is killing you isn't it?)

However I will relate a story about the figurative "the customer is always right" that's stuck with me over the years and that I think is relevant to this thread.

Back in the 80s I had a chance to meet Tom Monaghan, who is the founder of Domino's Pizza and a former owner of the Detroit Tigers. He told me a story on this exact topic. Back then Domino's Pizza had a guarantee that if you weren't satisfied with your pizza for any reason they would give you another for free (this was spoofed on in the movie Fast Times At Ridgemont High in fact). In one of his stores a customer started abusing this ... he would call in every week, order a pepperoni pizza and a two liter bottle of coke ... have it delivered and call back 2 minutes later saying the pizza was overcooked/undercooked/missing pepperoni/too thick/too thin/what have you. And every week that Domino's store sent him another pizza. This went on for a couple of years until a local newspaper ran the story which was in turn picked up by a local TV station, which in turn became a national news item when ABC aired it.

At a press conference he alluded to the fact that while yes, they gave a person who obviously was just abusing their policy (i.e. wrong) free pizza every week, it had in turned more then paid for itself with the amount of free press the subsequent story had engendered in the various news outlets.

Talking with him afterwards, I couldn't help but point out that he (Tom) couldn't have known that this story would have circulated as much as it did, especially given the fact that this had been going on for years (in other words it wasn't obviously a press stunt of the moment).

He replied back that while it was true that he couldn't have known that the story would become as pronounced as it had, it still didn't really make a difference ... his store still made out.

You see the price of a large pepperoni pizza and two liter coke delivered was about $10.00 at the time. Dominos Pizza would write off the entire retail cost of the pizza as a loss amounting a tax credit of about two dollars and change. The pizza (with overhead and delivery expense) cost about a dollar fifty to make and deliver. And then you had the full price (and profit) of the soda (which by the way was their top profit margin ... not the pizza itself). For two years.

Additionally they tracked 13 new customers who mentioned the "bad" customer specifically, some of whom went on to do the same scam from time to time and others who just laughed about it but were "good" customers otherwise (this was before the story aired btw).

So Tom looks at me and says, "remember, the customer is always right ... even when he isn't." And winked.

BTW the cost of equivelant advertising as to what that story generated in print and TV amounted to somewhere along the lines of 10 million dollars (back then).

Anyways to make this relevant to the change I originally proposed in this thread (since this constantly goes off on tangents), some people have mentioned it *might* unbalance the game for that level of content, and it *might* give the new player an indication that this game is easier then it is (!).

My point to all this is who cares? the majority of the game isn't L1-20. This is the extended tutorial of the game for all intents and purposes. And too easy? Virtually every MMO starts their games off on a curve of easy ramping up to whatever difficulty the game is supposed to culminate at. This is one of the very few exceptions where the hardest parts of the game are in fact at the very beginning (due to clunkyness no less ... not very customer friendly eh?).

In other words ... make the customer happy .... you will retain the customer. And that's what recurring billing (CoH's primary mode of income) is all about.

Why? Apparently you know I'm wrong.

Arc anyone can come up with a scenario where any axiom is not 100% correct. That's the nature of axioms ... they apply as a thought process, not a literal.

The customer *is* always right. Your (the merchant's) job is to make sure they are "right" in whatever you and the customer come to agree upon. If you've done your job correctly the customer is *always* right.

If you're the fry guy at a White Castle and nerdrage over what anonymous fools say on a message board, then I'm thinking you not only don't get it but don't want it either.

Shrug.

Which is why I told the person who posted his build after mine that you don't want to totally ignore Ranged Defense.

Having said that, running about at about 20% or so Ranged defense seems to have taken care of most stuff I face (TFs and full group MAs) in that melee damage is always the more immediate concern (I don't think I've fact planted once with this build due to ranged damage yet).

Virtually any of the AT power sets that can go Stamina-less, do better with Stamina (make that all of them in fact).

Warshades included.

The customer is always right is an axiom used by those who understand that they are depending on other people for their livelihood. Failing to understand this is why I assume your management experience is in the past tense.

As mentioned earlier, need and desireable are two different things. Technically the most endurance intensive builds don't *need* Stamina. From a game playing point of view, Stamina increases the performance of virtually every build by quite a bit (and some of your examples are awful btw).

Epic fail.

I would so kick you off my farm team but your wife is hawt in vent.

Wow you're just a font of bad information.

Assuming that it is enhancable for recharge and heal/regen (as that tier power should normally be) this should have a huge impact on Electric Armor as a tanking set.

Power builds can get this to perma status.

One thing that I'd like to point out is that if you have even 25% S/L defense with no foes in range, on a Invuln Tanker that has Tough and Weave you will survive any content outside of some ridiculous MAs.

And you will easily survive the popular MA farms (my Invuln Tanker can afk while I change the oil in my car on a full group L54 boss farm).

People seem to get fixated on hitting soft and hard caps, but in this case it's basically overkill. If you wanted to bring up your offensive numbers (which you seem to want to do) you can easily afford to sacrifice some defense in your build.

Just an FYI.

Burn doesn't scatter the mobs past your auras (much less Spine Burst or Throw Spines (or even Ripper)).

And the difference between your experiences and mine is that I don't have to pray that the right inspiration drops in my tray

The OP said he was using this character for AE farms.

To that extent DSarrow's build will physically survive but is not a particularly good farm build.

The point made here usually is why would you choose to run something that isn't fun to play (subjective to be sure) versus something that is if they both can cruise through the same content?

People are talking about penalties to Stone with regards to how "un-fun" it is to play compared to a Tanker without penalties. Not as a handicap to actually completing content.

If the penalties don't bother you, then obviously we know which one you'd rather place

Nope you pretty much summed up the steps a person has to go through in planning their toon.

And of course playing it

Welcome aboard

That's all well and good (and I agree from a personal standpoint) but doesn't go far in answering the OPs question.

Assuming the OP wasn't looking for metaphasic hooplah of course.

Yes via IOs, however you might find it expensive getting those Kinetic Combats to do it. Check out Call_Me_Awesome's guide to Invuln Defense (the IO choices would apply for you by and large).

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=126983

Shannon: Not precisely true ... Fire Tankers and WP Tankers would have an extremely hard time doing a lot of full group content without Tough/Weave as the main Tanker. So would Shield Defense for that matter.

I would highly suggest Tough and Weave for any Tanker (including Ice) other than Stone and Invuln planning on full group and/or TF tanking as the main tanker.

*EDIT* Most of the (US) servers don't offer up the population to be able to hand pick cherry teams in my experience.

I wouldn't call this a big mistake (desirable in some circumstances maybe). Invuln Tankers have been skipping passives for years and doing just fine through all of the content of this game.

If you're tight on power choices, the passives are usually the first skippable powers in an Invuln build (along with Unstoppable if you want to get right down to it).

I would skip REl, RE, Unstoppable and then RPD in that order of skippable.

Absolutely.

However the scope of this conversation was started with "my Ice Tanker feels squishy *at times*" and has quickly devolved into the merits of Ice Armor on its own and stacked against other Tanker primary sets.

Without saying that the OP totally doesn't know how to play his/her toon (which I couldn't possibly know and wouldn't be inclined to say unless given some wildly outrageous set of circumstances) I tried to indentify why they might be seeing this on their Icer and in what circumstances they might find themselves having issues in (based on personal experience).

Neither right nor wrong ... just stating what I've experienced (as is Darrow ... our experiences just differ apparently).

Having said that, I agree that any of the Tanker primaries can be taken through all of the content in this game if driven by the right player/group.

P.S. - I don't think the devs *know* that Tankers are not supposed to be able to afk on CL5 (re: Stone and Invuln, both of which I can afk on most any content in this game) but rather were trying to come up with novel approaches on the same role and something I think they've done a pretty good job at overall. But the by-product of this development is that some sets are more durable out of the box then others.

It's not a bad idea, but like many Gauntlet revamp ideas it involves more work then the management of CoH is probably prepared to devote to it.

That and as posted in Starsman's Gauntlet 2.0 thread by Castle, he doesn't feel there is a need to adjust Gauntlet (and I take that to mean "add to it" as well). I'm of the personal opinion that no idea will get much attention from the devs that includes an across the board damage buff for Tankers (no matter how situational).

I agree with you about Brutes ... they don't have near the end probs Tankers do for the reasons you've mentioned.

This is about the only thing you've said that I can really agree with.

Ice Armor isn't "squishy" ... but it isn't as reliable as other Tanker sets either.

To that end, the OP should know to expect this with his/her Icer build and that it is not their "fault".

Either of those are fine. It really comes down to what turns you on about the character you're playing.

Get past 20 ... Tankers are horrid to play until after Stamina.