Ice/Ice what am I doing wrong?

I personally fall into the 'take and slot heavily' group. In my opinion, the damage mitigation is more than worth the endurance drain. Mine has a mix of slow, endredux, and confuse slotting. Some people put damage procs in, but I'd prefer to maximize the inherent effects of the power.

Basically, the merits of taking AA are good mitigation against anything nearby you - note that the radius is very large. Between the slow, avoid, and confuse effect, you've got mobs running away very slowly (so attacking less), being recharge slowed (also attacking less), and then when they do attack, sometimes wasting it on one of their allies. The cons are, basically, the end drain. However, while arctic air costs 1.04 end/s and this is a lot, consider that ice bolt, for example, has a 5.2 second end cost and a 5 second cycle and so also costs about 1 end/s when being used at maximum rate. In general, this reflects a truism in this game - attacks almost *always* cost you more end over time than toggles do. Where toggles fall down is that they still cost end while you're not fighting, so you just turn off arctic air when you're not using it (which is why I've got 2 end/slow/rech pieces in mine so that it comes back faster - also helpful if it gets dropped by mez).

If you don't take arctic air, in my opinion you're seriously compromising the mitigation of the set. At that point you're basically forced to rely heavily on shiver, but shiver carries no avoid or confuse effect. As a click it does continue working even if you are mezzed, but overall I still think it doesn't provide nearly as much overall mitigation. The end drain of AA is high, but it *is* manageable, and I prefer to have the option available - although I *would* probably put it off until after you've got stamina.

AA, yes. Chilling embrace, no. Chilling embrace has a very small radius, and all it does is provide some extra slowing in a powerset combination already overflowing with those. Given that it operates the same way as AA, the only time something will be affected by it that enemy will already have been pretty neutered by AA. I wouldn't bother taking it.

In my opinion, the skippable powers in ice control are frostbite, flash freeze, and possibly shiver, chilblain, and glacier. Frostbite and flash freeze I would skip regardless - frostbite does nothing useful for you besides draw aggro, and flash freeze's only real possible use (suppressing the alpha) is compromised by the fact that the tiny tick of damage delays the sleep by enough to let the mob shoot at you.

Shiver, chilblain, and glacier, on the other hand, aren't must haves, but I think they can be useful. Unlike frostbite, chilblain finds a niche in immobilizing tough melee-oriented PToD EBs to prevent them from tearing your face off - give it a couple slots of damage and it can also help fill out a purely ranged attack chain against those same too-dangerous-to-melee opponents. Shiver, while partially redundant given the presence of AA, does have some uses thanks to its 'sticky' nature as a click. Shiver will slow things even if you can't stand next to them (i.e. a spread out spawn) or don't want to stand next to them (very scary meleers, a spawn you're running away from). I didn't slot it heavily, but it's there as a backup. Glacier could easily be skipped in most cases, but the presence of power boost in the ice secondary turns it from mediocre into a very nice backup control - it's the only AoE hard mez in the set. Given that the rest of ice doesn't really benefit from or need domination and power boost very much, it's relatively easy to have both available when you need to tell a spawn 'STOP' and have them listen.

Yes. The dominator melee modifier is higher than the ranged one, so we do more damage in melee than at range. As well, it'll be somewhat difficult to build a complete attack chain without them, unless you have quite a bit of global recharge. Ice sword is somewhat more efficient than ice slash overall thanks to the latter's somewhat long animation, but they're both still pretty good.

Not at my main computer right now, but later I can post my current build, which I consider to be a relatively middle of the road frankenslotting build. I don't usually deal in mega-expensive purple/etc global recharge type builds, but I'm sure there are plenty here who can help you with those as well.