okay in response to your questions
Frozen Armour: Looks pretty good, although I'm not sure about it blocking fire attacks. It's thematically supposed to be a big weakness, y'know? The lightning thing is really interesting, though. Never knew that. What do you mean by "ice counter", exactly, though?
okay I'll give the fire thing may not be all that thematically alright it was best thing I could think of at the time could probably replace it with light or something.
and the ice counter is ice elemental retaliation damage that you do to those that attack you frozen scales has it.
Ice Adaptation: Would this be replacing Winter's armor? If not, the numbers on both would have to be tuned down. While cold immunity would fit, it might not exactly be balanced. Could make one slow resistance. Was considering adding that(even if slow doesn't seem that common, seems sorta fitting).
yes it would be replacing it when I made this tree intended for it to be a replacement defensive tree for blizzard taking damage from your own ice is a big part of the classes overall theme didn't intend to mess that up by giving the class the possibility of ice immunity should of made that clearer my bad.
also was considering giving ice adaptation some kind of berserker mode so that you could use this for more than just temperature management but didn't since it might end up generic could throw in status resist if you want.
Bloodfrost: I really like the idea of this! I almost feel like there could be sorta a small damaging factor to this(perhaps added in a separate passive) that causes the bloody ice to form spikes, dealing cold damage to the attacker if they're in melee range.
glad you like it didn't consider something like your damage to the attacker if their in melee range since that would be covered in frozen Armour.
did consider something like that ranged counter attack ability in solipsists discharge tree either as a temp draining passive for when this was off or as an alternate sustain option of this talent since really don't think the countering and defending should work simultaneously.
could just have it do your thing though.
Adv. Ice Armory: Seems interesting, although I'm not entirely sure how the armor hardiness thing works. So, if Frozen Shield can block say...lightning, then it'd let armor take 33%(at cap) of the elemental damage?
yeah if you wanna get an idea of how this works look at stone warden their stone fortress talent lets their resilience of the dwarves racial give them the ability to block elemental damage with their Armour.
just to clarify if the talent can block the incoming damage type it will reduce the damage by a max of 33% at cap but by no more than your max Armour value like Armour works for phys damage.
the talents meant to give you the ability to take more damage of more types and encourage the class to always have some kind of shield by giving you a big benefit for investing in frozen Armour up to the ice shield point.
also just realized this talent combo would reduce self inflicted ice damage not sure how to feel about that.
Bunker Down: Seems interesting, would just need good numbers tuning to make sure the lost movement speed isn't a death sentence.
I'll admit this would stop you from just outrunning enemies, but unless your a speed boosting class that's rarely all that good an escape option especially late game, also this talent wouldn't interfere with the much better idea of teleport escapes and a solid movement infusion would more than make up any loss from this, so overall by the time you get this you should have much better escape options than just running.
this talent is more for helping you survive when your debuffed into complete helplessness.
though it might be a good idea to put a bit more status recovery and prevention into it maybe a flat save boost with smaller per debuff save boost, maybe give negative life for each debuff with some healing per effect removal or time out so you don't cure yourself to death. I dunno this is the status handling part of the tree but its more for surviving mass debuffs until your escape option is available.
and as for "frozen form" yeah it should be a metaclass wide generic utility tree with things all cryomancers need like ice resistance, ice + maybe ice block penetration, ice damage boost, maybe ice affinity so you heal a bit with ice damage though that would probably be better as a class specific thing, maybe ice based healing and or status recovery talents just general utility things for a single element based meta class.
and as for tankiness in tome here's a quick rundown of defensive and how to tank methods feel free to mix and match
health based
the method most classes end up using to survive casters. health based survival is all about massive one shot proof hp bars and high recovery.
Armour based
yeah this is common to most melee classes it's good for resisting most melee damage but aside from stone wardens implementation of it it does nothing to block spells so its typically done along side the health based for melee classes
defense based
exclusive to rouge and agility based classes this approach is about avoiding damage in the first place is tested against the opponents accuracy to avoid the attack entirely. typically does nothing to reduce damage you can't avoid but can avoid ranged attacks, don't think it works on spells.
generally not good for tanking typically its given to melee classes with dex instead of strength along with health based defense
resistance based
flat damage reduction of specific elements is implemented by most classes through thick skin but the only class that I could say really specializes in it would be wyrmic.
max damage limit
some races/classes have limits on how much damage they can take in one shot
talent based
catch all term for class specific defensive ability's that aren't just extensions of the above methods with the exception of fungus users pretty much all truly defensive classes use some thing like this typically alongside other methods a few examples are
solipsism + feedback
that generic mage tree about shielding
light generic tree + chants
sunpallys second life ability plus counter shield
Oozemancers Oozes
berserkers/marauders unstoppable
defilers bone shield
and that's all the general methods of protecting yourself in the game aside from Armour and defense based which normally have stat conflicts with each other you will typically try to gather as many of these various methods as you can in order to survive.
also just so its clear pretty much every class has some kind of defensive talents, talent based is just for the ones that are distinctly not based on one of the other methods also this list only deals with direct damage you should also consider status resistance and recovery.
for true tankiness you need to be able to take a lot of damage, block a lot of damage, avoid getting one shot, manage statuses, be able to recover quickly, and prevent damage in the first place.
to varying degrees of course.
