Ice versus SS

Since i already have 5 SS characters, i was looking at the Ice melee set.

A while ago they gave the tier9 footstomp alike power some damage (unlike the blaster version), and if i read correcty it now has the exact same stats regarding cooldown and damage. (no knockdown, but sleep, oh well).

I want to make another tanker, a shield one, but i got a bit fed up with SS.

In terms of overal damage, can ice come along nicely now? Ice is less common resisted then SL, and the -recharge of each power should help my survivability, but i dont want to spend 20 minutes pondering on a boss just to get him down. (KO blow is awsome dmg).

Ice probably is not the set for you then. Shield/ice is a viable combo, but ice melee is very very lacking single target and fighting bosses solo is a major pain. If you saturate AAO it helps... but it is still painfully slow.

Ice Ember

Ok thx for the updates. Clearly Ice melee aint that great yet, so im kinda stuck on the secondairies of tankers. Although elec is also comming, having it on my brute is pretty much enough (ok, that teleport tier9 is plain awsomeness).

I was hoping the +dmg of the shield power might migate the lack of raw damage, but that would be just kidding yourself so to speak

I don't think Ice is a bad set, but it doesn't shine as a ST AV killer. Oodles of damage mitigation and good AoE, though, as I understand it.

The only thing I find Ice Melee lacking in is damage against robots. It does have decent single target damage - not Dark Melee or Stone Melee, but it is pretty good if you compare Frozen Fists, Ice Sword, Greater Ice Sword, and Freezing Touch with comparably tiered attacks. I also like the AoE with Frozen Aura and Frost. Others will quibble and say that it sucks, but in my opinion it's a pretty good set. There are better sets out there, to be sure, but it's still a good set. The only reason (in my view) that Super Strength may win out is Rage... though I hate the crash, so my Inv/SS tanker sees very little playtime.

Ice Melee has craptastic ST damage--worst in the game.

Ice Melee has fantastic AoE damage--only Fire & SS are better.

Ice Melee has great mitigation--prolly tops for tanks.

I dunno, 2 out of 3's pretty good for me.

If you run on Invincible Ice patch becomes so-so mitigation. Higher cons will run off of it and attack from range. It also only affects 5 enemies at a time. It is really good mitigation though.

Ice Ember

Shield/ice is probably the best damage you'll get out of ice melee.

The ST damage is very bad though, my build has like 32% damage bonus vs one target so that helps a little. The biggest problem is that they need to normalize ff and gis VERY badly. GIS is NOWHERE near the damage it should be doing for its animation time. One of the two needs to be fixed for that. Same with frozen fists, for its 1.33 second animation time its damage is far too low. If they upped the damage to match it wouldnt make sense. So they simply just need to make it a single punch like energy punch and charged brawl to match.

Regardless of the "mitigation" of the set this needs to be done. And no, its normalizing the damage, it is not making the set overpowered, just not SEVERELY underpowered in the ST department.