Ice/SS critique please?

You can ignore the levels at which powers are selected, I haven't rearranged the build yet. For example I'll take wet ice and frozen armor much earlier.

I think I like the numbers but this is my first ice tank so all feedback is welcome and appreciated.

Thanks

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Build updated in my last post.

I love Ice/ tankers. I have 3 lvl 50 Ice/ tankers, and for PvE, IMO, they are at the top. Self sufficient set and defense based. Defense is better than resist in many cases, if not most, than Resists based primaries. Having said that, go for Aid Self instead of tough and weave. You are a defense based toon, you will get to use, if you need it, Aid Self, a lot more reliably than resists toons. Why? Because you are not getting hit all the time, and Aid self is a great damage mitigation tool when dmg does get you and hoar frost is down. I use Aid Self before I use Hoarfrost, I use Hoarfrost if it gets bad, and I only use Hibernate if those two options just cant save me, and I take thow whole 30 sec's. In that time, those two other powers have recharged already or close enough. I only took tough and weave on my Ice/Dark because of the self heal in dark which recharges so fast. My Ice/Dark > Ice/SS in survivability.

Another suggetion, please place Frozen Armore as your very first power. Also, take Wet Ice as soon as it is available, at lvl 8, if I am not mistaken. I do not use Chilling Embrace on my Ice/ tanker at all. I use taunt to keep aggro and manage it. I also rely on the solid defense my Ice/SS has to cover me. The KD effects of SS also help. If you do take Chilling Embrace, you can place that later in your build, and not as early as you have it in your Mids.

That's it for now, since I am writing w/out too much time available. Enjoy Ice/

Great thanks. Yeah I'll reorder stuff. I love chilling embrace right now. With this build Hoarfrost is permed and I'm at capped HP with only 1 HP accolade.

I'll consider Aid self for this build.

Appreciate it.

You 4 slotted Permafrost and 2 slotted Frozen Armor??? Gah, no. Frozen Armor is your main source of S/L defense and is far, far more important to slot well than Permafrost, which just provides a little fire resistance. And currently, FA has no endurance reduction at all, which is not good. I'd add an LotG Def/End and Def/End/Rchg.

Lot of other slotting problems too. From the top:

Do NOT slot Hoarfrost for defense unless you decide to put the Steadfast +Def there. It should be slotted like Dull Pain; Heal and Recharge. Doctored Wounds is a good set to use if you're going for sets.

I know you said that Frozen Armor and Wet Ice would be taken sooner (MUCH sooner is my advice) but Permafrost can and should be delayed until late in the build if you decide to take it at all--and many Ice tanks don't. One or two slots at most.

IMO, Health needs some standard Heal enhancement as well as the uniques. I'd add one or two slots with common IOs at least.

Stamina is way overslotted. IMO, the small amount of F/C defense is not worth the additional slots.

Why the Kinetic Crash set in Kick? Ice Armor doesn't need KB protection and if you're going to use it, KB is the last thing you want. If you aren't going to use it, why spend six slots on it?

Touch of Death is not a good choice for Ice Armor, you can get the same S/L def bonus with 4 slots of Smashing Haymaker at a fraction of the cost. Kinetic Combat is an even better choice if you can afford them.

Energy Absorption needs Recharge and End Mod as well as defense. I recommend frankenslotting it with End Mod and Defense sets to get as close to the ED cut-off as possible for all three attributes.

Eradication is a good choice for Foot Stomp, but you do NOT want to 6 slot it; the set has almost no end reduction. Drop two of the Erad slots and slot two high-end red IOs from another set; I like Scirocco's Dam/End and Acc/Dam/End.

I think you're missing out on the AoE potential of this build by not taking Icicles. I'd drop Block of Ice or Hurl and take Icicles instead.

Regarding the advice to drop Tough and Weave in favor of Aid Self, I'd only recommend that if you're willing to spend the inf it takes to soft-cap without Weave. IMO, soft-capping is far, far more important than having an additional heal, so that should be your first priority. And while it is certainly possible to soft-cap without Weave, (I plan to do it on my Ice/Axe) it is a lot more expensive and much more of your build will be devoted to sets that give defense bonuses.

FWIW, I don't have Aid Self on my Ice tank, and I've never really missed it.

This build is softcapped for s/l and e/n. f/c diddn't seem possible to softcap. Nice catch on the no end redux in Frozen Armor, I'll fix that.

Kinetic crash in kick? I was going for the 7.5 recharge, I figured I could spare the slots.

Regarding ko blow slotting, I wanted better numbers overall than 4 slots would give me and I only needed a small s/l bonus to get over the softcap.

I actually did change FS to 5 Scirroco's and 1 Armageddon chance for Fire.

I'll consider icicles, I've heard mixed things about it.

Note that with Frozen Armor fully slotted you don't need a bonus from KoB to soft-cap, even without EA running. So you can slot it however you like.

I can see why the recharge bonus in Kinetic Crash is tempting, but IMO you'd be better off using some of those slots for other things like fully slotting FA and adding slots to EA and possibly Health. If Hoarfrost is slotted with a high recharge set like Doctored Wounds, it'll be perma without the Kinetic Crash bonus.

EDIT: Changing from the Erads to Scirocco's in Foot Stomp is a bad idea, IMO, since you'll no longer be hitting the soft-cap for E/NE except when EA is up. Scirocco's just gives you a F/C bonus, and as you noted, you're never going to hit the soft-cap for F/C anyway. If you want to add the Armageddon proc, fine, but I think a better slotting would be 3 Erad, 2 Scirocco's, and the proc.

Chilling Embrace is must for an ice tank and you definitely need tough. Keep in mind ice is squishy/weakest tank set there is thanks in part to its lack of resistance, without tough a single warhulk with veng can face plant you or unlucky back to back hit from an AV.

I'm rather baffled by your reluctance to slot FA fully, it's one of Ice's primary sources of damage mitigation and is not a power you want to skimp on. I also think your worry over the amount of F/C def you have is misplaced, to say the least. Basically, Ice has a weakness to Fire damage, and intentionally so. If you can mitigate that somewhat, fine, but it should not at the expense of your other, more important damage mitigation tools.

One of those tools is Hoarfrost, and currently it is woefully underslotted for Heal, which means that you'll be getting much less of a HP boost than you would if it were fully slotted. I think it is a very big mistake to give up a significant portion of Hoarfrost's HP boost for another few percentage points of F/C defense.

Hoarfrost will help you against *any* kind of damage, including Psi--another Ice weakness. Since Ice armor has capped Ice resistance, increasing your F/C defense will basically help you against Fire damage, and *only* Fire damage. As I said earlier, it is great to have if you can get it, but it not worth getting at the expense of other, more important damage mitigation tools like Hoarfrost, EA and Frozen Armor.

And here's the updated build based on the feedback. I put the powers in a more reasonable order now. 78% global recahrge, hasten 9 seconds off of perm, softcapped defenses except for F/C and Psi, capped HP, sweet!

I'll probably change Block of Ice for Icicles but I think Mr. Ice Tank Guy needs to encase bad guys in blocks of ice. We'll see.

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Interesting I can put HOs in Frozen Armor. If I put in some Ribos I can get up to 40% fire resistence so I might do that. I wonder why the power doesn't accept other resistence sets.

I'm going to try and go with just above the softcap and see how that plays out. I can hit the end recovery power to give me another few percent which should hopefully cover any defense debuffs. I wouldn't normally plan for more than 48% on my other defense based toons anyway. With a 20 second recharge and 40 second duration on the end recovery power it should play out alright.

What I like about this tank is that it covers the endurance issues that normally comes with super strength, hasten and rage and it's a relatively cheap build. I'll just get the LOTGs with merits.

And the attack chain is nonstop.

I'm looking forward to getting this to 50 and pimping him out.

EDIT: OUCH! Ribos are expensive!

Apropos of nothing in particular, my ice/SS doesn't even have Tough or Weave. With a +HP/heal power and Hibernate, he seems plenty durable without the Fighting pool. To be fair, though, I built him mainly for small teams and soloing. He's got like 15% of global damage bonuses.

My shield tank, on the other hand, does have Tough and Weave. Without the great clickies in ice armor, I wanted him north of the defense soft cap (right around 49% for all positions).

Sound advice, thanks ND.