PosterChild (Harmony Floe's) Guide to Sonic/Ice!

Poster Child’s (Harmony Floe’s) guide to the world of Sonic Defending!
Why me? Well, to put it in short, easy to understand terms. I love Sonic. Every bit of it. It is the set that I decided I would play till I couldn’t play it anymore (that has yet to happen), and I would learn every little thing there was to learn about the powers, and what they had to offer me, and a team.

For as long as I’ve played CoH (I really do stick to blueside mostly), I’ve had a fascination with underplayed or rare sets. I played my stone/ice tank because I never saw one, I played my ice/sonic controller for the same reason, and my dark/elec because I’d never seen the combo. I enjoy feeling like a unique hero, rather than a run of the mill fire/kin, inv/ss, or emp/* (No offense to those builds, I just don’t enjoy running in to myself).
So let us begin! Rating will be in the form of little asterisks from 1 to 5, 1 is bad, 5 is grand. I’m also going to work up my build as a sonic/ice defender, so I’ll show my leveling build at the end, as well as list ratings for ice powers and such. It’s also worth noting that I won’t be covering IO slotting, because everyone takes a different strategy with that.

Sonic!

Sonic Siphon: **** (Team and Solo) though for solo, you pretty much have to take it, so *****)
Available: 1
Slotting: 1-2 accuracy
Use: I didn’t get this power till the 20s, because a heavy single target –res power isn’t that necessary until later on in the game. This power provides a wonderful -30% to enemy resistance, but, it is only single target, and therefore it’s best use is again EBs, AVs, Tough Bosses, or minions you want to kill ASAP (I’m looking at you Sappers). Solo Sonic Defenders, this power is for you, it’ll speed up your ability to kill immensely, and I’d say for a soloer, this is the level 1 pick…because you wouldn’t pick an ally buff for your first power…that’d be weird.

Sonic Shield: Team Player ***** Soloer *
Available: 1
Slotting: 3 resists 0-1 end redx
Use: Buffs allies for hefty resist values! At 20% base value, even before SOs/IOs it is a great buff to give your friends. That warm orange glow will keep them taking less damage to Smashing/Lethal/Toxic damage for its 4 minute duration. Though people will not notice it as actively keeping them alive, you’ll know, and you’ll feel better for it, I know I did.

Sonic Haven: Team Player ***** Soloer *
Available: 2
Slotting: 3 resists 0-1 end redx
Use: Your next shield buff, 20% base value to Energy/negative/fire/cold! More orange glow for your friends, and makes outcasts early on hit like kittens. Lasts for 4 minutes like Sonic Shield, and once again, people will not see how much it does for them.

Sonic Cage: Team Player *** Soloer ****
Availabe: 6
Slotting: 1-2 accuracy 1-2 recharge
Use: Takes one enemy entirely out of the fight. That’s right, entirely. This enemy cannot hit or be hit by anyone, anywhere. The Soloer can use this to take bosses out of a fight until they are ready for them, but a teamer must use this tactically. If your team’s battles are lasting under 30 seconds, this power will only annoy them, as they’ll stand around waiting for it to drop on the victim of the bubble, before they can hit them again. If battles are slow, use it on an outlying enemy, no one will notice at all, and you’ll be helping, once again, without anyone being aware of it.

Disruption Field: Team Player ***** Soloer * (for the solo controller with a pet? *****)
Available: 8
Slotting: 2-3 Endredx
Use: Put this toggle up on a scrapper or a tank and watch all the people around that melee character to suffer -30% resistance. Love this power. Love it hard. This makes enemies weep under an AoE onslaught. Be careful though, this power eats endurance alive. The base cost is 1.04 end/sec, which is no small amount. Even still, I wouldn’t put this off till after stamina, it’s just too good.

Dispersion Bubble: Team Player ***** Soloer *****
Available: 12
Slotting: 3 resist 0-1 end redx
Use: Your big protection bubble! Offers some status protection to holds, stuns, and immob. This provides a base 15% resist to all but psionics. Get this power. If you don’t get it, you aren’t a sonic defender, you’re…I don’t even know. This power does suffer, however, from leaving you vulnerable to sleep attacks. It is also worth noting, that even though I’m not going in to IO sets, this is great place for that Steadfast –kb IO.

Sonic Repulsion: Team Player ** Soloer *
Available: 18
Slotting: 1-2 endrdx
Use: Ok, this is the much maligned power of the sonic set, the ally targeted huge KB toggle. What? You might say. What indeed. This power qualifies as super situational. I’ve used it for a variety of reasons, saving a tank that’s in over their head, to saving a blaster that somehow drew a bunch of aggro. I tried using it as a “hurricane” type power to keep enemies in a corner and knocked down, but that caused some clipping issues as enemies flew everywhere and sometimes got stuck in walls, so I can’t say I recommend this power for that type of use. That being said, this power isn’t really too much use. I kept it, just for giggles, but I’ll probably be dropping it upon my next respec use. This is a toggle that charges you for each enemy it hits. If you can find a new use for it, let me know!

Clarity: Team Player ***** Soloer *
Available: 26
Slotting: Maybe put an endrdx in the base slot.
Use: Protects allies from mezz effects. Great for squishies on a team, but also great for providing some perception buffs to those fire tankers that lack their own.

Liquefy: Team Player *** Soloer ***
Available: 32
Slotting: 0-2 acc 0-3 recharge 0-3 defense debuffs 0-3 tohit debuffs
Use: Targetted AoE knockdown, hold, debuff. This power is good at the many things it does, save for the hold, which is unreliable at best, but what it does is strange for the sonic set. No –res in the power, and a –def and –tohit out of nowhere. Slot for one or the other, not both. I slot for the –tohit because by 32, people should have enough accuracy to hit reliably. Also, the accuracy only seems to apply to the damage portion of this power, the other effects seems to be autohit, so only put accuracy in the power if you’re looking for more AoE damage, but honestly, Liquefy just is not the place to look for that.

Ice Blast! (Solo v Team not really important in blasts…don’t nitpick me on this!)

Ice Bolt: You have to take this.
Available: You have to take this.
Slotting: 1-2 accuracy 1-3 damage
Use: Mediocre single target blast, you have to take it, so you might as well use it. It’s on par with everyone else’s first blast, and recently its effects got neutered for PvP(this applies across the board for ice power).

Ice Blast: ****
Available: 2
Slotting: 1-2 accuracy 1-3 damage 0-1 recharge 0-1 end reduction
Use: Better single target blast, quickly becomes a staple for an attack chain. Quick firing, fairly quick recharging. Decidedly bread and butter.

Frost Breath: **
Available: 4
Slotting: 1-2 acc 1-3 damage 0-1 endurance reduction 0-1 recharge
Use: Good cone, reliably hits 3-4 people, but ice is primarily ST focused, and as such, this power may see a little less use than one would hope. Since Ice gets 2 blaster level rain powers, it’s also hard to justify this AoE power. Though this has some use as a good slow as well, there are better powers out there, so my current build does not have this power.

Aim: (Personal taste)
Available: 10
Slotting: 3 Recharge
Use: You should know what it does. It’s a brief boost to accuracy (to-hit specifically) and damage. Good at what it does, but I don’t like it.

Freeze Ray: ****
Availabe: 16
Slotting: 1-2 accuracy 1-2 hold duration 1-2 recharge
Use: Capable of holding a troublesome foe almost immediately, bosses will take 2 applications. It recharges quick, and holds for a fair length of time. Good power. Take it, slot it, love it.

Ice Storm: ****
Available: 20
Slotting: 1-3 damage 1-3 recharge
Use: Ok, it’s a rain, and it causes some scatter. But it does BLASTER level damage. It’s great for those with a need for AoE, and it’s generally a good power to keep with you. Wears down on AVs well too, or any strong single foe who can’t seem to escape its area.

Bitter Ice Blast: *****
Available: 28
Slotting: 1-2 acc 2-3 damage 0-1 recharge 0-1 endrdx
Use: Super blasting ability! Love this power, love it hard. It does tremendous damage and slows your enemy to a crawl. This blast is a great starter, middler, or finisher to any foe around. It animates quickly, so you don’t pay any price (other than the time you aren’t using it!) to use this power.

Bitter Freeze Ray: */2
Available: 35
Slotting: Don’t. But if you do take it… similar to Freeze Ray.
Use: This can be used to…”quickly” hold a boss. The animation time of this power feels like it takes forever. It does better damage than freeze ray, but it doesn’t feel like it’s worth the trade for the horrendous activation.

Blizzard: *****
Available: 38
Slotting: 3 Damage 3 Recharge
Use: Blaster level Nuke. Fantastic. It drains all your end, which is a shame for your toggles, mostly your bubble and Disruption field. But it lays waste to foes all over. Good, good nuke, my personal favorite. Gels well when used with Liquefy, but since they are both on long clocks, don’t worry too much about waiting to set them up together.

As far as Ancillary Sets go, make your own choice…you know what you like better than I do! When I run defenders, I usually pick Psionic APP, for controllers, usually Ice. That’s just personal preference and a love for WoC and Frost Breath.

Hope this guide helps anyone in their quest to play Sonic! And maybe even Sonic/Ice like little old Harmony Floe!

Any and all suggestions are welcome.

Apologies for lack of color or any sort of neat looking stuffs. I have no idea how to do all that

Nice work. I like the different star ratings for team and solo - very important for Sonic Resonance.

Questions from an interested party.


Do you ever run into any issues with the Knockdown caused by Blizzard and the Knockdown caused by Liquefy ever overlapping?

Have you ever tried to cage an AV during a TF to complete other objectives? i.e. Cage Lord Recluse while you take out the towers. or Cage the healing Nictus while taking out Romy. If so, how effective was it? If not, think it would work?

I noticed you didn't go into any mention of IO sets. What sets have you found that work best with Sonic Res, and/or this Combination?

that's all i could think of for now.

At least some IO talk would be welcomed though. I think one of my favorite things about Ice is you can abuse the slow sets to get slotting on the cheap. At level 21, you could grab any level 24 acc/end IOs and frankenslot them for basically +3 SO values in acc and end and never have to slot until you want to slot for full sets. You should be able to slot those on the dirt cheap as well.

Aegis is where its at IMHO.

5 pieces gives +4.69% AoE/Fire/Cold Defence - three of them in Dispersion and the ally shields makes a great start. Add in the Steadfast Res/Def IO, a Blessing of the Zephyr set and the three sets of Thunderstrike I always recommend to just about any Defender and you're sitting around 20% Def vs Ranged and AoE.

Aegis doesnt really give you much else though.
Impervium Armour in your shields could help with END issues (and you will have them) by providing +Recovery and +Endurance for 2 and 4 pieces, but it tends to be a very expensive set.

If you can't afford Blessing of the Zephyr, Steadfast Knockback IOs are pretty cheap these days, and easily slottable in your shield somewhere.

For Ice Blast, if you forego the Thunderstrikey goodness, I'd recommend Decimation as an alternative - +Rechareg and +End, and top it off with an Impeded Swiftness Damage proc. That goes quite nicely with the -Res from your primary.
My Storm/Ice Defender uses that setup.