Ice/Thorn seems awesome so far

First Dom in a long time now, Had a fire/fire a few months back at lvl 36, but deleted for the slot. I have an Ice/torn dom now and played through the first 4 levels this morning. What I love about it, cosmetically, is the crystal thorns I colored white with blue edges for a nice icicle-shard look.

Anyway, prettiness aside, I'm looking for a nice attack chain that I can strive for with this frozen nutjob. I have block of ice, frostbite, and thorny darts. I hate wasting a power slot on a crappy power, and I've heard that there are about 6 powers worth taking in Ice control.

I'm loving this build so far, even at lvl 4 lol. Any thoughts from other ice/thorn doms? OR ice/ doms? Or /thorn doms? I was looking for a guide that's semi-updated but the newest one I can find is i9 I think. Guess no one makes guides anymore?

I have a lvl 50 Mind/Thorns, used to have a Ice/Thorns in the teens but that one's been deleted a while ago.

What may be the most important thing about Thorns is whether you can stand the redraw, it drove me crazy when I was leveling my dom. Ice/ is less clicky than Mind so it's probably less of an issue, but by the sounds of it you are using your hold + immo as part of your attack chain (at least for now?)

Also what's important to note is that Thorns is a very melee orientated set, with a shallow but wide AoE cone and a melee cone that is one of it's heaviest hitters. Arctic Air will complement the set well, but if you're planning to stick to range you may want to look at a different Assault set.

The blasts leave much to be desired. Impale is on a verrrrry long cast time and Thorn Barrage is guaranteed to KB enemies away (which feels conflicting with such a melee focused set). You can use Chillblains to negate the kb, though that won't help you much if you're using it with Ice Slick (Edit: actually, just use Block of Ice).

Thorny Assault is a beast for proc IOs, later on I would recommend loading up your aoes with Achilles' Heel, Lady Grey's, or Shield Breakers which are generally cheaper and more available than the Posi's Blast procs.

Aim and Ripper accept a lot of recipes which have desirable set bonuses for a dom, such as increased recharge or defense.

hehe. i had the same concept idea for the combo when i created my ice/thorn (for the thorns to actually be icicles), so hopefully you don't play on the same server as me =P. Mine is still in the planning stages so I'm interested to see how the sets play out for you. Even though I have spend a lot of time making plans, I almost always choose to try out every power for myself, and then respec out of the ones that are horrible. I'm pretty sure the 3 powers that are skipped in ice are the immob, aoe immob, and the aoe sleep. Out of thorn, maybe thorntrops, but again, i'd have to find out for myself what doesn't fit my style

well so far it's fun. For now I'm sticking to the ranged thorn moves since there's 3 available up to level 10, that'll keep me at a safe distance for now. My attack chain right now is frostbite, block of ice the mob it missed if any, strongest mob in the group if frostbite missed no one, then fling thorns, thorny dart them one by one and impale/block of ice any that start to escape from frostbite if I don't spam it again in time, all while running arctic air. With Domination activated, it's pretty chaotic. (currently running -1/x3/+B @ lvl 10)

I'll probably start taking melee moves more when I get into higher levels and I'm a bit tougher, and I took a look at the procs that go with the thorn moves as suggested and the wheels are turning already with what kind of fighter this guy's going to be. I'll probably take thorntrops for an escape trick, caltrops from /traps has never let me down before, and if I can swing a knockdown proc in there (purple, so maybe, maybe not) that would make them great for escaping. Thanks for the tips peeps! any other ideas, feel free to toss them in.

Quick question: What's the range of Thorntrops? Is it as stupidly short as Traps' Caltrops? Does it also has the fear component?

Maybe overkill, but stacking Trops over Ice Slick might make them try to run away when they are not tripping and shooting at you. But if the range is short it would clearly be much better to just jump in with Arctic Air.

Thorntrops is just a re-skinned Caltrops.

As for mitigation I find that Ice Slick alone works very well for those that can be KD normally (not mu, spiders, etc.), it trips enemies up much more frequently than Earthquake I find.

I could not do an Ice/Thorn now Fire/Thorn...

I hit lvl 16 last night. I picked up Aim reluctantly, but it's great for a frostbite opener. I haven't taken any melee thorn moves so far, but there's a good amount of ranged moves to play with that I can have a good attack chain. Not worrying about a travel power (NR ftw), and so far I can see which moves in the primary are skippable. I'm skipping chiliblain, shiver, and flash freeze. ST immob isn't too helpful compared to AoE immob, slow cone doesn't matter when they're held/immob anyway, and I'm just not a fan of sleep moves. Can't wait to get the thorntrops though, then once thornburst and barrage come along they'll go great with frostbite/ice slick/glacier.

EDIT: I'll try to make a guide of it once I hit 50

Just hit 35 last night and got ripper for the chosen move and loving the KB in it. Between my Arctic air, Ripper, thorntrops and ice slick/glacier the mitigation is great. Frosty takes alpha for me, survivability is comfortable. I never liked doms for their squishyness but this guy is a really good soloer, and is loved on teams I've taken him on. I'll start io-ing him when the new email function hits, right now he's common-io'd. any suggestions for procs and sets? Naturally I'm trying to get as close to perma-dom as possible, but have never attempted it yet.

For future reference Bey...after seeing a few Fire/Thorn's on team...you might want to dip in the fighting pool LOL.

They are fun but VERY aggro heavy.

Once you are ready to slot level 50 IOs, the Contagious Confusion proc is apparently very helpful in Arctic Air. I don't have experience using it myself, but I've read very good things about how it improves the effectiveness of Arctic Air, especially while on teams.

You're about to run into a slew of elite bosses in the 40s, so getting the Achilles Heel -res proc into one of your attacks moderately soon would be quite helpful. Thorny darts sees a lot of use and would proc relatively often.

Beyond these suggestions, playing around with Mids is a good way to get a feel for what sets can help your ice/thorns become a permadom.