Ice/Ice Tankers

I have a few question reguarding a ice/ice build for a tanker.

Whats the ranking for IA,and the ranking for IM? (Ice Armor & Ice Melee)


I have over the years rarly seen both of these used together,and never past lvl 15...why?

I guess another valid question is: how many Ice Melee we see running around these days? My experience is that there's a shortage of those, regardless of primary.

Depends on how you're ranking the powersets, and for what. Obviously there's not one single master ranking that lists Powerset A as best Tanker primary, Powerset B as second-best, etc. If there were, everyone would just play Powerset A, whatever that turned out to be.

So the better question turns out to be, what are the specific strengths and weaknesses of Ice Armor as a primary and of Ice Melee as a secondary? I've had good experience with Ice Armor (not as much as some, like Aett, but I've played several Ice Tankers), and I have less experience with Ice Melee. Still, I feel qualified to give a broad overview on both, so here goes:

Ice Armor is probably the best of the Tanker primaries for holding aggro. Chilling Embrace is excellent for this purpose, and the slow effect means that enemies have a hard time escaping the radius of your taunt aura before it pulses again, resulting in more enemies taunted for longer. Icicles is also very good both to boost your overall damage output and to help maintain aggro. I've never had an easier time holding aggro than on an Ice tank. Energy Absorption is probably worth mentioning as a plus all on its own to playing Ice, as it ensures you pretty much never run dry of endurance and provides yet one more AOE to keep attention focused on you.

The downside of playing Ice is that it is Defense-based, making you highly vulnerable to cascading defense failures from stacked defense debuffs. Hibernate helps to mitigate this somewhat, but as an Ice tank you'll want to watch out for enemies that are tohit buffed (such as Vengence'd Nems) or that wield defense debuffs (such as Anti-Matter). Every powerset has its achilles heel and this is Ice's. On the flip side, Ice handles alpha strikes significantly better than most other primaries (provided you aren't getting an alpha of defense debuffs).


As for Ice Melee, if you're looking to deal a lot of damage personally then it's not the secondary for you. There are several Tanker secondaries that deal better single-target and better AOE damage. So what does Ice Melee bring to the table? Control. It brings damage, too, of course, but what makes it stand out is Ice Slick, which will allow you to manage crowds in an entirely different way. This plus the slow component in the attacks adds to what you're already putting out in the primary with Chilling Embrace, which both helps you to hold aggro and boost survivability indirectly by slowing enemy recharge and thus slowing the rate of incoming fire.

To put it simply, I've found that Ice Melee isn't spectacular for damage but is helpful for keeping spawns locked down as a Tanker, especially on large teams. If you're building with an eye towards a team role, it's excellent. If you're building with an eye towards a high-damage soloist, less so. Though my Ice/Ice soloed very nicely, safely if more slowly than some of my other Tankers.

Ice/Ice does something that most other combinations won't ... it gives you TIME.
Specifically, in the stacking of recharge debuffs ... which slows everything else down, giving you (and your team) TIME to disintegrate everything around you. It also gives you time to regenerate and recover endurance relative to the damage output coming your way. This is a subtle but remarkably important effect that often goes overlooked.

On PuGs, I simply tell people that my Ice/Ice tanker "inhales aggro like a wind tunnel" and it doesn't take my team(s) all that long to figure it out. It's very much a "flypaper" build, designed to pull hostiles in close and then rip them apart. Consequently, knockBACK (from teammates) is a severe pain and irritation, since scattered enemies are slowed and take a long time to re-cluster up on me.

You won't be the "quickest" or the "strongest" tanker in all of Oz ... but if you build it right, you can simply "crash" the recharge of all the hostiles who fall into your icy grip ... a place they will not emerge from before kissing the floor. There's nothing quite so fun as watching a whole dogpile of mobs get off a few attacks ... and then have nothing to do while you hand them their all expenses paid one-way ticket to the Zig at your leisure. Controllers will love you. Defenders will want you on their Friends list. Blasters will want you in front of them wherever they go.

Ice/Ice is the aggro magnet from beyond space and time. THAT is its strength.

Unfortunately, Ice/Ice has "more than its fair share" of weaknesses. Defense Debuffs counter your protections directly, and you've got almost nothing to fall back on short of Hibernate. ToHit Buffs will directly "invalidate" your protections, leaving you terribly vulnerable. Fire Damage is poorly resisted, and there's but only so much you can do about this. Psionic Damage is resisted not at all, short of set bonuses. Combine all of those factors together and you've got more Kryptonite than almost any other protection scheme in the game! Main tanking a Rularuu TF with Ice/Ice is going to be ... painful, since Eyeballs have "stupid level" Defense Debuffs AND ToHit Buffs, and Wisps do Psionic Damage ... all of which you've got limited to no protection against. You'll also learn to HATE Devouring Earth Quartz emanators.

Against most everything else though, Ice/Ice is pretty decent, including Malta ... although watch for Sappers when dealing with them. Carnies or CoT aren't too much trouble either.

It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...

I'm mostly just going to echo Redlynne, so I'll just say what Redlynne said.

So, um, ditto?

=. .=??

Except on the Carnies. They can be very very mean. =@_@= Or they were last time I fought them back in '08. >.> ... <.<

Redlynne answered the Ice Armor part of the Ice/Ice question. I will try to answer the Ice Melee or the synergies of Ice Armor and Ice Melee.

What Ice Melee gives you with Ice Armor is the ability to control over a wide area. You have Ice Patch, Chilling Embrace, Freezing Touch and with the right use Frozen Aura. What that allows you to do is control multiple groups of mobs.

You can throw down the Ice Patch in one place and control a group and then move on to a another group use Chilling Embrace and then go to another group or single target and use FA or Freezing Touch. If you add stone epic powers such as Salt Crystals and Stalagmites then you can really own the place.

The difficulty in leveling Ice/Ice is Ice Melee. It is low damage so it takes a long time to mature as a melee power. Not until after you get Freezing Touch 6 slotted do you feel at home. Of course you get Ice Patch at 20 and that is great but being an Ice Patch scrapper will only carry you so far.

And if your really just set on Ice Melee. I hear the Shield and Ice Melee has decent AOE damage potential with Frost and Frozen Aura.

Good Luck with you Ice/Icer

Pez