Are ice/kin good trollers?

Hey guys I am brand spanking new to COH and made a controler and went science ice/kin is this ok for pve and later pvp? If not please let me know what I should spec in... I like to solo a lot because a lot of times I dont hve tiome to play for an extended period of time but on the days I have no family matter to take care of and I am home from work I would also love to group and be desired in that group so I guess looking for best of both worlds if that is possible. Thanks all..

Welcome to CoH!

Ice is arguably the lowest damage controller primary, so I would not recommend Ice/Kin for a solo character. It can be a very good team character. There is another thread here where I just posted a summary of Kinetics if you want to continue forward with this character.

First, take a look at my Ill/Rad guide, linked in my sig. It will give you tons of information about the game in general, Controllers in general and specifically the build that I feel is the best for a "new" controller, Illusion/Radiation. You can solo well and team well. You don't die much as long as you use reasonable strategy. The powers are easy to understand and to use properly. And it is a very, very powerful build -- widely known as the best AV killer build.

If you look in the guides section of the boards, there is plenty of information for you. Enant just posted a guide to choosing your controller -- I think he undervalues Illusion a bit, but it's not a bad guide.

Feel free to make lots and lots of characters. That is one of the best parts of CoH . . . the opportunity to try things out. See what you like best. Some people love Illusion, while others love Mind controllers. Some people much prefer scrappers or tanks or blasters or defenders. Me? I like controllers.

Oh, and as a new player -- stay out of the AE building. Play the missions from contacts. Learn how to play your character the hard way, by doing missions. There are a lot of new players who are getting very fast leveling in the AE missions, but know nothing about the game and how their characters work. ("Remember, with great power comes great responsibility.") This game is mostly about the journey, not the "end game." Read the stories from the contacts -- there is a great underlying plot to this game.

If you want to solo with Ice Control, you might want to try an Ice/ Dominator instead of an Ice/ Controller. Dominators have damage instead of buff/debuffs for their secondary, which makes soloing with a low-damage primary like Ice Control quite a bit easier. Especially pre-pet.

I have a 45 ice/kin. As a kin, you will always be in demand for a team, which is a plus. I have enough trollers to have every single controller primary, and I have to say that ice is one that I find hard to like. As stated, the damage is not great, Jack Frost isn't anything phenomenal as a pet, and it is end heavy. I would highly recommend you switch to something else (Ill, Fire).

Ice/Kin makes a perfectly fine team character. It can also solo, although slower than a damage primary like Fire. What it lacks in damage it makes up for in safety, particulary in a team environment.

Ice may be the safest Controller primary set for constant melee, and Kinetics is a melee-heavy set. Ice also has an endurance heavy toggle, which Kinetics can make less painful.

The only major challenge is that the Ice pet is pretty fragile without support, so keeping him alive might require extra effort. This isn't an issue on teams, where the pet becomes less important.

Ice/ is a nice set. You get the basic tools all controllers get - single and AOE immobilize, single and AOE hold. You get a pet - not a good pet, but it's free damage.

Unfortunately, most of the distinctive Ice/ powers are skippable. You get an AOE sleep, which your teammates will break with AOE damage. You get a cone slow, which pales in effectiveness compared to your powers that hold stuff. You get Arctic Air, a PBAOE aura that serves to convince you go move into melee range where you can be killed and sucks the juice out of your blue bar so you can't do anything about being killed. That one gets more useful much later in the game.

On the other side of the coin you get Ice Slick, which is an awesome power that should be taken and slotted with 3 recharge enhancers right away. It's probably the best power in the set, and definitely fun to use. Unfortunately it's the same as Earthquake in Earth Control, plus a movement slow that Earth Control can get in Quicksand.

The main difference is that just about everything in Ice/ slows enemy recharge, which can be a good thing, but has minimal effect. This can stack to a degree with Siphon Speed from Kinetics, but that's about the end of the synchronicity between the sets. Kinetics is good at boosting damage and recharge speeds; Ice isn't good at doing damage and only has one or two powers you'll care about recharging.

That being said, /kin gets Speed Boost, which is basically the most desired buff in the game. You'll end up spending a lot of time keeping Speed Boost and Fulcrum Shift up, Siphoning Speed to increase the rate your powers recharge at, and using Transfusion and Transference to make the blue and green bars go up. Having a fire-and-forget control option like Ice Slick can let you focus more on your secondary, if that's what you're interested in.

As far as PVP goes.. well, first off, it's a bad joke in CoX. The 'gear' disparity (enhancements here rather than armor and weapons) is even worse than WoW, and the skill factor is nowhere close to a real PVP game like Guild Wars or Shadowbane. Second, Controllers aren't noted for being particularly challenging opponents in PVP until you get to the upper echelon of skill and gear. Third, of all the possible controller power combinations to PVP with, I expect that Ice/Kin ranks pretty low on the totem pole. Almost all of your powers can be avoided by -not standing places-. Ice Slick is one of the better powers, and can be almost totally negated with a single IO enhancement - think 'kinda expensive gear every serious PVPer has'.

I totally like my Ice Controller. I can't talk too much to the Kin part as I have Storm, but as a Primary, Ice is awsome! He was my very first level 50 and that was when you could still summon multi pets. Even with the tweaks over the years, Ice is still a very do-able primary. I'll run solo with him once in a while to farm for inf or salavage for sg. I don't play him as much anymore as I'm on to other alts, but when I do pull him out and dust him off, he still preforms well!