Ice Is A Garbage Tank Power...

Ice Is A Garbage Tank Power... change my mind.

The mechanic is based on buffing defense which is not consistent depending on the CR difference between you and the enemies.

The shielda are trash compared to pre revamp.

No healing mechanic besides a relatively expensive SC.

No 360 pull, the ranged substitute is weak sauce. Not even close to being as effective as the other powers.

Am I missing something?

I’ve been fire and rage and I love both. Ice always felt clunky to me because you needed a ton of sodas or a healer where with fire and rage you were free of that burden. An AoE pull and self heal are sorely needed on ice

I agree on Fire and Rage. Atomic, the Aura seems to do much better damage mitigation than Ice shields and when you use Proton Remedy to activate the Aura the heals are pretty darn good. Ice is trash...

I will say that if you have the skill points and a healer, ice is pretty good. But if you’re low on SP or you don’t have a healer you’re screwed

Yup.

Having said that, if you have the SP you can add it to stats that help you with the other powers (Dom for Rage and Atomic and Resto for Fire). With Ice, since Defense (Ice Armor) is the mechanic you can't spec into it, so... still, I'd say Ice is Trash.

so back in the day, I recall using movement mode powers to AoE adds...
you only had fire and ice as tank powers at that time (oh so long ago)
especially in FOS3? or was it FOS1? you could juggle the adds to get the medic feat - really simple with movemode AoE
suck adds in - then toss them in the air (juggle) - repeat

then of course earth, then rage and then the all op atomic (at the time)
now-a-days - I'd rather not tank... it's takes too long (waaaaayyyy toooo longggg) to build up another toon
and have the right arts/augments/generator filled to be effective

also.... you guys do know that using that group debuff power is highly useful .... right???
it should be a standard in every powers load out.... really made it easier in elite - now I have no clue.... lol

Ice can solo trivialize fights that tend to roflstomp Fire/Rage and vice versa. Different tank powers are just better suited for different encounters and fights that take them outside of their comfort zone require different approaches and builds. Healing powers and DPS are somewhat similar like that. Tons of the games balance depends on content being made in a balanced way.

His opinion of Ice will change when SM comes out

LOL, been playing since launch but I'll give it a go, why not?

You may be right.

Pretty sure ice is the easiest tank power. No mechanics. I think you can carry like 5 shields. Not the greatest on large groups of NPC like rage, yes.

Are you turtle or do you try and catch blues, which is another shield?

How so? Is ice getting a self heal or AoE pull? Ice is an awesome tank if you have a healer or you’re popping sodas. SM will require a healer so ice should be valid in that content, but that’s not what we were talking about. Ice tanks lack variety and they are boring because there is only one viable load out. If ice was given some love and variety it might not be considered garbage among those of us in the tanking community

lol, ice has always been one of, if not, THE best tank for SM. just because its not the best in current content (which to be fair, its only tough in COUE first boss, the rest is a piece of cake)

SM will be full of Ice tanks lol..and i welcome it

It depends on the content. In content where countering and blocking are the most important, Ice is king. SM is the best example but there is other content where Ice really shined.

There isn't a single tank powerset that has the variety you infer, unless you consider the separate loadout for brick vs aftershocks. Rage you keep the exact same loadout except you put in 1 power if there is adds. Atomic you keep the exact same loadout besides 1 power substitution for lower content. Fire's you can substitute 2 powers normally. Earth aftershocks and brick loadouts rarely sub more than 1 ability.

So I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to any ice users I may have offended with my previous posts. I switched to ice this morning, took off my soda and used a common ice tank load out in order to prove my point that ice tanks are sorely lacking. I ran 2 alerts, 2 raids and jumped in on some Patchwork and 31st bosses. I would like to say my views on ice were horribly wrong and ice as a tank is more than viable. I’m shocked how well it performed and my point of view is completely different having tried it out on some difficult content.

I suppose it just comes down to personal preference. I prefer fire, but I will no longer speak ill of ice again. Again, my apologies to anyone I may have offended

You weren't wrong in some aspects, it depends on the content. If we have alot of raid mechanics with shield penetration like DME/PCE etc then Ice suffers the most because of the obvious reliance on shielding. If there is no shield penetration mechanics than Ice will do just as well as any power.

best way to do it, is to switch and try it yourself..so i commend you for that.
but that being said, ice does suck in some content lol...just like Rage sucks in some content..just like fire does as well...it happens.
but Ice will always be kings of the solo boss fights

Depends what your running, if your just running basic instances you won't have a problem with ice, If your running elite then ya it's not as good as other powers. Your shield will do fine in most basic content and no matter what you do your shield won't hold up against the very best bosses, So you don't need everything in dom you better off being a hybrid especially if you only run the weeklys once a week. Which gives you the ability to run might and dom and hps, 2 dom artifacts and 1 might artifact, tank gear and everything else changeable between might and dom. I have 30k dom 200k hps 64k might and as far as daily regular content i have 0 problems I can even solo the 31st 4 man although it would take some time. I also can change to 33k dom and 60k might on weeklys and again I dont have a problem. Forget about pulling and trying to be like other tanks you can pretty much stun and knock mobs in air just about nonstop and most of you instances will go good since your doing damage especially when u run instances with random people. Usually my damage is right up there with most of the random DDs while im tanking and of course when a good DD comes they double up my damage but i can go thru any basic instance being able to tank and DD. If your the kind of person wants to run elite and just be pure tank and run thru mobs and run weeklys daily with replay badges then ya other power sets would be much better such as fire. But if your just doing dailys and your weeklys once a week using ice your so much better off being a hybrid. You end up being a below average DD and a below average tank at the same time but it works surprizingly well on basic content. There is really no drop off from having full dom tank build and being a hybrid because your shield will hold up just about the same with little difference. With this build your dailys go much faster and weeklys slightly slower as your not just running thru all the mobs all the time. You can solo shadow demons and all your other daily content much faster than pure tanks and still have tanking ability for all basic content plus Damage

Just run an atomic tank. It has everything.

How did you come to those conclusions?
Healing powers like rage or fire have other mechanism involve that required you to focus on your health bar, while you manage to avoid boss attacks at the same time that you watch radar or adds spawning zones.

Sure, is super cool to being vulnerable 2 sec while doing the combo to sustain the aura.
You cant rely on combos to healing yourself while doing elites, only the aura will help you.
Aura have penetration mechanism too on some attacks.