My Cold/Ice feels like a Blaster.

Iv been making Defenders, left and right, and the one I didnt like off the bat was my Cold/Ice Defender, but I went ahead and kept playing it.

My thought was that it was a Slow Riser, like some Tankers.So I kept playing till level 22, where everything seemed to change for my Cold/Ice.The moment I hit level 22, I bought Up SOs, and I was happy to be over the Stamina, and DO hump.

I went into a Mission, and fired off a Ice Storm, and a Snow Storm, and started laying into the mob with my Frost Breath, and ST attacks.Not only did I survive, but I dropped a +0 /5 w/bosses Mob by my self.So I upped the mob grouping to +0 /8 w/bosses....I SURVIVED!

That to me means im on a good track with this Defender, and I may be playing it more then the rest of my Defenfders because it acctually does damage, and gives great CC.It litterally feels like a Blaster to me.

Does anyone have a higher level Cold/Ice Defender that could toss in some insight on how much more damaging and powerful itll become?

pc guy plays his ice/cold fender like a tank/scrapper. He runs around solo on itfs and lgtf like he's made of invincible sauce. He also jumps avs without hesitation. He does, however, fail sometimes in his battles with the bushes and trees in cimerora. I think it's twice or three times he's gotten stuck out there, LOL

Just wait until you hit 26 and get sleet. Drop that bad boy on a mob before you open up with your AoEs and the carnage will be even bigger - and it keeps you even safer, to boot, with the knockdown and extra slow it provides. Sleet is, in my opinion, the keystone power of the combination. Not as flashy as benumb, heat loss or the /ice rains, but it's a very nice reliable, strong, every-spawn mitigation and damage boosting power. It's the workhorse that never lets you down.

As an aside, the reason your damage feels so good is that, when they ported /ice to blasters, the devs didn't bother to make new pseudopets for ice storm and blizzard. Thus, these two powers summon the blaster version pseudopets - you are doing *blaster level damage* with ice storm (and, when you get it, blizzard). This is, indeed, as awesome as it sounds, as you have discovered. Not to mention that you get access to damage boosting powers that blasters don't get! Heat loss + Sleet + ice storm + blizzard = mobs? What mobs? And, to boot, if you are in range of enough heat loss buffs, you can even overcome the -recovery penalty of blizzard (fully endmod slotted, 8 will let you recover at somewhat less than your normal rate, 9 will negate the penalty entirely).

The combo does feel somewhat anemic early on, it is true. You don't get the good AoE stuff out of either of your sets until the 20s at the earliest. It does kinda suck having snow storm as your only AoE mitigation tool until 26, especially given the aggro it draws. But when you do get those upper level powers, oh my.

Edit: to give some perspective on how awesome blizzard and ice storm are, at level 50 their unenhanced damage numbers are approximately 501 and 117 damage, respectively. Defender nova, which is a good example of a 'standard' defender nuke, has an average unenhanced level 50 damage of 176. Blizzard does almost *three times as much damage* as a regular defender nuke - in fact, it does more damage than every *blaster* nuke except for itself, including inferno! As a bonus, blizzard also can knock things down while it's running, as well as carrying a 20% tohit debuff.

Meanwhile, ice storm does pretty much exactly 2/3rds as much damage as a regular defender nuke, for about one sixth the endurance and recharge time. The only drawback of these two powers is that they each take 15 seconds to deal their damage, but between their own slow, sleet's slow, sleet's knockdown, and blizzard's knockdown, are the enemies really going anywhere?

depends on how you play it. Cold/ice can be pretty damaging, however most dont play it that way and do crazy stuff like take the ice shields and forstwork. with ice storm/blizz both doing blater level damage and proc slotted sleet, you're doing quite abit of aoe damage.

personally i dont think of my cold as a blaster, i think of it as how defenders should be played. a decent amount of damage and debuff (or buff) the crap outta something.

or tank mage whatever "label" you wanna put on it