Stats Revamp: Ice

Based on what I have read here, I might actually let my ice tank gather dust. Just what the game really needs, more reasons not to tank.

I wrote a wall of text, which I condensed into a small list to make reading better:
- They are removing 2 of 4 Ice shields and changing Ice armor, to force you into battle tanking.
- Unlike Atomic/Fire/Rage, Ice has no self heals.
- If WW is still broken, that makes Reflection the only actual shield we can use.
- Reflection is IMO outdated with the fixed 10k + DOM, that dont scale very well. At least make it a health percentage or pure DOM multiplier.
- Since Reflection has its sort of long cooldown, we will be playing unshielded - relying on the Ice armor only - alot more.
- The long pull cooldown is to force tanks into taunting alot more than they do and make adds walk to you. That doesnt annoy me that much as long as the taunts that dont hit the enemies are full range. Hope the other tanks get the same treatment.
- Power usage should skyrocket, even with a power return.

Of course we dont know what they are removing from the other tanks, including Atomic, but if they're kept the way they are with self heals and absorption while Ice lost its shields... Ice will be at a huge disadvantage.

My guess is WW is not broken because it doesnt shield 3 other people anymore which was what caused the bug.

With the first power on Braniac's Bottle Ship, snowball, I felt more powerful initially one shoting adds. The sense of more power grew as I progressed to the next power and off the ship.

Initial thoughts

Ok after a bit more playing (I was able to get past Lex) I answered some of my own questions already off playing a bit more and I missed out on some reading. Dominance is not doubling for Tanks nor Controllers so I'm assuming this is intended. It seems like all in-game shields have been changed to Dom + Resto with Dominance being more important to the stat number. How much of a stat number? Not sure, wasn't able to figure out the numbers on my end with my limited time. Hopefully I can get another stab at it tonight.

Defense across the board being 85% (when not blocking) for all tanks is now the innate stat. Ice armor grants you an additional 25% defense when you are not blocking. During gameplay, with the low stats...I definitely needed a healer in alerts. With no defense cap, the more defense you get, the more effective health you get (10% by 10%). What is the mitigation for when you are blocking?

The shield rotation is an issue in my opinion. Reflection and Winter Ward, being the only 2 shields available, need to be able to be rotated on a consistent basis and they need to be strong in strength to take the hits, in tougher content they will break easily if the stats aren't there. The cooldown on Winter Ward is 20 seconds (it's no longer a breakout so why?) and the shield duration is 6 seconds. The cooldown on Reflection is 12 seconds and the duration is 6 seconds. There's 14 seconds there of vulnerability.

The pull cooldown is an issue in my opinion. There's plenty of instances where I can point out instant cooldown pulls that are needed. Frost Snipe having a bit longer of a cooldown is not an issue in my opinion since single target taunts last for 12 seconds anyways and there's a 8 second to 12 second to refresh the taunt.

The powerback is working as intended. Obviously with more stats and more specced into power and you will see more returns in power. Playing from the tray shouldn't be an issue if the spec and stats are there. Playing with the weapon seems fine as well, except I wonder if the DPS Ice Bash increase is intended to be 6 seconds long compared to it's 12 second cooldown? Shouldn't the buff last for the full duration as well? Supercharge working as intended as well, though I believe that Freeze Ray is not doing enough damage as a supercharge. The other ones are fine though. Maybe Deep Freeze could use a buff or two as well. Not sure though since we have very low stats to figure out the comparison and there's no sparring targets around to compare base damages.

How are we supposed to test the damage parses now? Is there a intended developer method since we aren't supposed to use Sparring Targets?

Some bugs?

• Ice elemental also has a bug when where you can't customize the loadout at all. I'm not sure if this is happening to anyone else. There's only Tank and the DPS loadout that you can edit. And "Return to normal" is not working.
• Abilities with long cooldowns such as Frost Slam don't do enough damage to have such a long cooldown. An ability like Ice Boulder does a similar amoun in damage with a much lesser cooldown. Melee abilities such as Frost Slam and Bitter Winds need to be increased in damage to justify their range.
• The power interaction damage increase seems like a 10% difference in damage, is this the intended amount on the developers end? Just wondering since it changed from what it is on live (50%).

Will be testing more tonight with the DPS aspect of things. But these are more initial reports with the tanking.

Hello everyone,
I'll give you what i thought from 3 days leveling up with a bit of T1 done.

Good points :

• We can feel the challenge, we feel the difference between us and adds (leveling up was nice).
• Without AM, we get back the feeling of a good gameplay (Ice finsisher was pleasant to use).
• Supercharge power generator is not a bad idea.

Bad points :

• The supercharge generator power is cool but totally useless except for raise up SC (it would be great to have a usefull power for that spell).
• Powers cooldown are way too long. For DPS role it was quite ok but for tank role, it was horrible (Inescapable Storm and Frost Snipe cooldown are too long so it gives you the feeling to not be reactive and slow).
• New system of tanking is not really pleasant, it was already good before by playing with block and immunities (Orange parenthesis system and PVP brain against adds and boss are awesome).
• One big problem i felt in alert, was the power. As DPS or as tank, i was all time without power, and i was of course spamming cold snap (personnal power). Also troll could'nt do anything because all his powers were in cooldown, which totally bring out that reactive feeling of the game (We did not have good stuff but still it was impossible to play correctly).

To conclude, I would say that the overall idea is nice, but there are still few things that need to be change in my opinion. I largely prefer a game that need you to be reactive, than a game that depends on cooldown time.
I would also like to thanks devs to have been with us all the weekend and to hear us.

Today i tested the Shatter Restraints heal (according to description, Shatter restraints is not a shield anymore but heals)

Currently i only have mainly dps gear, so i put on tank role and my stats were as follows:





I went to an adds zone, let them hit me to 60% health, and pressed Shatter Restraints button: + 89 heal (1 tick). Tested a second time with the same heal tick.

I know i am tier 1, not properly geared and with not optimal stats but...it healed me barely 3% of my health, and its cooldown is around 12 sec.

I don't know if working as intended; maybe someone with experience on atomic or fire tank selfheals can compare and tell if this Shatter Restraints is potentially similar to the other tanks selfheals.

Just my 2c

I wouldn't pay too much attention to this if I was you. I have an atomic tank on live and im pretty sure my breakout heal only heals me for like 500 but I have over 30k health. I think this skill for ice tank will mainly be used for its group breakout rather then its heal.