Pros & Cons for Ice Tank vs Fire Tank

Im thinking of switching to a tank but cant decide. Can some of you fire and ice users tell me the pros and cons for both of these tanks? Does one have a better advantage? Who has better survivability?

If you like shields then go for Ice. If you want heals then go for Fire.

Both are very capable in the hands of a skilled player, there's virtually no difference. There's really only one fight in the whole game that favors ice above the other tanks but there's a lot of other factors in team makeup that its negligible.

That being said, if it's your first time learning to tank, ice will be easier for you. It's the friendliest tank powerset to play, and lets you learn the mechanics of tanking the easiest because you don't have to micromanage things like self healing or power consumption like you would with fire.

To be a fire tank you need a lot of skill points to be decent even though you want to get as many as you can anyway.

Yo! Let me put this to you straight.

FIRE IS THE BESTEST TANK POWA EVA! IT CAN DO EVERYTHANG THE OTHER TANK POWAS CAN DO TREE TIMES BETTERS!!!! FIRES IS THE BIGGEST AND BESTEST! IT IS MY FAV COLOR! DO YOU WANT SOME SALT FOR THAT BURN!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
Hope that helps you understand man

I'm out. Like a light blinking out

This is something I hate reading. You most certainly do not need to have a lot of skill points to be decent. You just need to know when and where, how and why to use a certain move for a certain situation. With a good team and good sense of tanking, you can tank any instance there is. This goes with any tank powerset including Fire.

Bottomline, skill points do help, but they most certainly are not a requirement.

What are the important innates to spec into for ice tank? Please list in order of importance. Thanks

For PVP, Ice is better.
Shields + Heals vs Only Heals

I think what he was refering to is with ice dom and def points are in the same weapon trees where as resto and def are in separate trees you do have to spec in to more weapon trees to get all the innates that a fire tank needs but that 60 extra resto is not going to be a huge factor in the effectivness of the tanks ability.

He's more referencing the fact that fire tanks use more skill points to their benefit than other powers.

Ice is the way to go if you want to be more defensive and is THE BEST TANK EVER!!!!!! I am considering becomibg one but we will see. Fire is.....ok I guess as it was boring to me but hey. I might consider going Tank if all Controller powers aren't enhanced visually or damage wise similar to ice and fire.

Shields+Heals vs Heals+60% Extra Health.

Ahh, a true fellow Tanker...it is refreshing to see one

The only Heal (without mods) power I know of for Ice is Hibernation...so it would be
Shields+Heal vs. 60% Health+80% Healing received+Self-Heals

However, in PvP, if there is a smart Healer, Ice's Shields and Defense are going to be useless and Fire's Health and Healing are going to be a non-factor anyway, but if I were to choose which is "better" for PvP, it would probably be Fire as their Health can be raised to astronomical levels due to the high Health of PvP gear

For the record, I am an Ice Tank, since Nov. 22, 2010

Health - Resto - Dom would probably be the top 3. Dom also allows you to CC mobs, so if you're low on that (shouldn't be with viable tank gear) that might be a priority. Overall though I like resto > dom, 15 points to resto or 7 to dom (14 in tank stance) when both are used in the same way on shields obviously the higher one is better, and it is twice as good in dps stance!.

They are both very good. Which pull would you rather have?

A cone effect pull - great for FOS 2's bridge and Brother Eye in Inner raid = Ice
360 degree pull with less range in one direction than Ice but greater area of effect - far superior for the healing drones in Prime = Fire

Personally, I can't live without backdraft.

Why is earth not an option for you ?

In pvp it doesn't really matter. All tanks become useless if there is a smart enemy healer. It's not fair

Defense is fairly useless to a fire tank compared to the other five skills you should take before it. We get no defensive buff so we don't get nearly as high a return as the other two tanks do.

Also, with the buff Fire got to its self heals, you heal just as much with only Dominance and Health maxed out as a pre-update 24 fire tank maxed out with all 5 fire tank innates (Dom, Health, Crit Heal Mag/Chance, and Resto) did.

There are also several weapon trees with both Health and Dominance in them.

Dominance, Health, and then it depends on what type of tank build you want to go for. If you want to be a pure tank, then go with Crit Heal Mag/Chance (doesn't matter what order) finally finishing with Restoration, then Defense. For a damage tank, after you get Dominance and Health, spend your remaining skillpoints the same way you would as if you were building up a DPS.

Ice tanks are preferred for end game pve content, though not necessarily better. I was a fire tank for a while and switched to ice. The community seems to have a strange bias. Ice tanks are easier for healers to heal. Smaller health pool and better defense means more effective heals. PvP wise fires high health and no shields makes them pretty comparable to Ices low health and spamable shields. Though again Ice seems to take the lead (slightly) at the moment do to some highly competitive ice shield builds. There are discussions about possible reworkings of fire's self heals that could change all of this though.

Play what you want because there is no telling what will be good when the next game update hits.