Frost Sheath/Iron Plating feels in need of some improvement

[Kozuki]

In term of Party Protection, Frost Sheath/Iron Plating has an advantage when your party need to deal with bosses that deal a lot of room-wide hits within a short time (5-hit attack of Xanos/Dark Vicar...).

 

However, it has several notable flaws that look like a bug:

-They do not work on all attacks. For example, Volberus' room-wide freezing howling that can cause you lose the Fire buff even if you get frozen. Or the triple Acrimor bosses before Hive Queen raid that can instant kill you even with sheath on.

-For some classes with 5-hit iframe like Warlock/Summoner..., they can still DPS during bosses' room-wide AoE. It is annoying when sheath is registered first, if you use 5-hit iframe half of a second before the sheath effect take in.

-For Summoner, sheath is a hell. Shealth freezes their taunting cat, thus stop cats from taunting. Also, a frozen cat cannot CC, which is bad if the FM/Des randomly sheath before a crucial CC moment takes place (like people sheathing Numok when he pulls, thus make the cat cannot contribute to the CC bar). If a cat get sheathed alone, it is impossible to unsheath it unless the Summoner calls it back, which is annoying to do.

 

Most of these things are only annoying in PvE, so I don't think they affect anything PvP-wise.

[Arcsine]

The triple Acrimors, my hypothesis is that the hit that should put up the sheath kills you anyway such that it acts similar to a soft enrage, you're better off relying on HM Block or Stealth anyway since they technically activate before the hit goes off. This should also hold true for when Volberus tries to cleanse the fire buff, the hit that would activate the sheath only recognizes the fact that you're not already in an iframe and inflicts freeze anyway. 

 

It's not really an issue with the attacks, it's the fact that party sheath is the only type of party protection that requires getting hit to activate. HM block goes up as soon as the skill is triggered, even party stealth skills technically go off on cast although from what I've noticed require more precise timing.

 

You get pushed even when in sheath on Numok and it doesn't really do much damage, so anyone that uses it there is wasting effort. Cats and Thralls are just a crutch method for that boss though. You're best off keeping people in the bubbles since the bubble absorbs the pull for them, allowing them to CC.

[OPECI]

Also for VT Zulia if you try to protect yourself from idignity debuff with sheath you will still get one stack.