A Chilly Guide to Everything Ice

How are you guys Spec'ing stat points for Ice Tanking? I'm hearing many different things atm

Your shields may already get a good boost from gear stats, gear mods, base generator, and league buff. Tank role, plus activating a shield power (ice armor); will boost it some more.

Then for stat points: Dom first, then spill over to resto or health.

Personally haven't had power issues so didn't put any in might/power. You may if you're finding yourself low or if going active/battle tank builds.

Couple tips:
* Get an idea of your damage-in after raids. A rough gauge if an ice tank is on top of his/her shield rotation. ICE tanks and them pretty gray numbers.

* Players use the clock hand (on cooldown) of when to go into next shield; ex when the 100% dmg absorption up. When experimenting new loadouts, i'll have the combat log up. You'll see the white number lines and when the reds are scrolling, it's just another indicator of when the shields are starting to fail. Are the dom_resto in my shields strong enough, is my health too low...etc.

Ex: how do the shields hold up if you pull one clump vs. multiple clumps of adds. If burn is slow, can your shields and power pool withstand pro-longed abuse. Current end game content isn't bad, when we entry gear to the next tier; tanks can get tested.

Thanks for the quick reply! I switched from Rage to Ice and rotating shields is so strange to me, but alas, it's something I'll get used to.
My Tank has 334 SPs and I currently divided my stats into Dom 100, Health 100 and Resto 100. I spec'd hybrid and allocated 10 points in the each healing crits. What do you think about this spec?

In the dom or resto stat, if click into it; it will show the shield formula. Shield Strength = Base Percent Modifier * ((112.5% * resto) + (150% * dom))

Since dom counts a bit more, some players are putting a bit more in dom over resto.

p.s. congrats on all them SPs

Thanks, I'll make the adjustments.

That's a pretty good spec if you have skill points to burn. As was pointed out you'll do a bit better maxing out Dom before speccing into restoration.

For Ice tanks who don't have quite so many:
Start with weapon attacks and movement immunities.
Then you'll want hybrid mastery unless you turtle a lot (super powered in that case).
Since you really have no self-heals, go for the minimum crit points in either healing or damage (damage will likely be slightly more useful).
Then spend one skill point on each Dom, Restoration, Health, and Might/Power. One point in precision is optional.
Then spend the rest focusing on Dom. About 3:1 Dom:Health. If Dom gets maxed about 2:1 resto:health.

The reasoning behind this is you get a lot of benefit from the first skill point spent, but after that you should focus primarily on one stat because as you put more points into a stat each point starts being worth more.

I've found this loadout here, it can help?

For the first one; the parse started after the boulder first hit (didn't count the wind up of picking it up). Be better if he ran a longer parse 30s; repeating the same rotation. Can see if the average of the numbers including crits.

Yea i dont trust 10 sec parses. Here is why. I will use quantum as an example. TB hits every 6 seconds. So in a 10 sec parse u will only see 1 TB hit. But if ya keep doing it eventually u will have it where TB hits at the 2 second mark and 8 second mark w/in that 10 second window and u see a spike in dmg for that parse. Seen this with ice also when using frost blast. People should be doing 30 sec parses. Problem i find tho is getting a league mate to stand there feeding me power for long periods of time. Seriously who wants to do that instead of running content? Plus when im parsing i spend a long time trying all kinds of different stuff and i dont expect anyone to stand there for all that time giving me power.

Edit: did some 30 sec parses with the rotation in that vid. With 15.5k might. 10k a sec, 10k a sec and 11k a sec. Didnt do the ice elemental one yet tho. Only 3 pares too. But gonna do a few more. Also wondering how he has no animation for tempest. Cause i keep trying it and i see the raising hand animation every single time.

Just did a few more parses and 10k, 10k, and 11k per sec. U start to run out of power after that 2nd 30 sec parse too.

So i did some parses with this that i reported in this^ post. Got as high as 12k per doing 30 sec parses. Have 15.5k might. But i switched tempest for cold snap. Because throwing the boulder at them inflicts frostbite and so does tempest. Where snap benefits from it. Once i did that i was got over 13k a sec on a few parses.

I replaced ice elemental with snowball too. Because after the 2nd rotation the cooldowns dont line up. Throwing a quick snowball makes it line up and i started getting 14k per repeatedly.

1 thing to note is throwing the boulder at em works great on the dummies cause they get back in position quickly. This wont happen with adds tho. And the boulder bounces em back pretty far. My guess is this would work great for bosses.

The highest I got was 12.5k per second using the following.
Tempest, bitter winds, cold snap, gust, whirling dervish.

Tempest->bitter->cold snap->whirling->gust->whirling.
I use that loadout on adds. For bosses I replace bitter winds with snow devil and dervish with heat vision. I've been toying around with stuff. Love running different loadouts

Nice catch.

I did get over 15k per sec a few times too. Then i tried it on the bosses in sj/wc. It was alright. But i had much of the aggro so hard to tell. My guess is it might be a lot better for raid bosses where the tank has aggro almost the entire time.

I just don't trust the ice boulder throw. The way projectiles are working it isn't worth it to me. Looks good on sparring targets though.

from the video it looks like hes clipping something with wintry every time. Even when he goes into ice elemental.

Just wanted to mention I tried your version of this load out and it bumped my dps on the dummies up to about 11-12k. (only 198cr and about 14k might. was doing about 7k with my quick homemade load out) I was all happy with it until I dps'd in USr and the nature and elec dps were almost double me

Ikr. I actually ran with u yesterday in the alerts. I forget what toon i was on but u were definitely in the group. I tried this throwing the boulder loadout at em in raids and its not that great. On dummies its good tho. Ive been having more success using tempest>Bitter>Snap>Gust. And i clip the boulder drop with the reflection. But i swap out reflect for blizzard on boss fights. Probably not the best rotation but doing decent #s atm. Ice all around just feels clunky where before it was super smooth. And FB i cant even use it. Takes too long and gets interrupted way too much. It does hit like a truck tho.

Yea like i said above^ it does well when parsing. Not so well in content. At least in my experience so far.

Ah it was you that said you hadn't seen me in awhile, Oracle was the toon I think, or something like that. Kinda threw me for a loop lol.

Ditto on the clunkyness. Everything seems to take forever to get into the next power/animation, nothing really flows well anymore. I mean sure with AM's we were all pretty much stuck into one load out (same as every power was for that matter) but at least it felt smooth (at least to me that is). WT/CS/IB>AG, RS on the side And all the while I could move around! Half the moves now seem to glue me on the spot while casting and we are supposed to be a mobile power! (or did they drop that with the revamp? coming back from 18-24 month brake here)

I dunno, when I'm on my own, things seem to die pretty quick, it's just when dpsing with other powers, it's like I'm throwing snow and they are throwing lightning bolts

And don't get me started on FB. Oh sure the risk/reward is there, but when I need to stand arms reach from the boss and hope a feather doesn't land on me, meanwhile I got vines and bolts shooting past my head safely, ya that's BS. Still not sure why that was left as a cast and not made into a super close channel power at least, at least that I could get behind. I mean we're not hurling fire balls, casts are supposed to be fires thing (again unless I missed that change).

Uggg I love Ice to much to switch. It was my first power, always been my main, and it's tanking style was always my idea of a tank in MMO's (if I want to heal myself, I will roll a healer, if I want a pet, I will go to the pet store) Even the tanking side doesn't feel right anymore. I've only tried tanking one raid since I've been back, and I felt way squishier than I'm used to/remember so not sure whats going on there.

Alright this has gotten way to long winded

Nah oracle is an old league mate of mine. But yea i was in the group. Maybe snowball, cover girl, or half breed. Agree on everything ya said too. Wish FB was included in the hand channel mod but that might be a lil too op. Ive had no issues tanking tho. Imo its easier then it was b4 the revamp. My ice toon has always been my tank toon. Rage at 1st and then ice. I cant switch it either. Although i have thought about going earth. But then snowball sounds kinda dumb lol.

Idk what your tank loadout is but mine inescapable, winter ward, HL shield, reflect, shatter, and i usually use frost snipe cause i like the single taunt cause i feel it keeps aggro better. There is probably no difference but i find the harder taunt means i never lose aggro plus i usually tank SM too. Plus im full blackhawk and SF mods. Think my stats are like 35k health, maybe 6k resto and 6k dom. But not sure on the stats. Havent looked in a little while.