Ice/DB

I've been wanting to make a tanker and this is the only combo I was really curious about, but I've heard nothing on it and there aren't any guides for this combo specifically.

Would it do well for a tanker? Too END heavy or anything like that? I was at first considering Ice/Ice but Ice Melee has no AoE and that's what I want most.

Ice Melee DOES have AoEs, but the true AoE comes at level 38, so that might be a bit late for you. Frost is a cone, but it's good AoE damage in the lower levels, especially once you learn to angle it right.

That said, Ice/DB could be good, but there might be a problem area for you:

If you're trying to fit in some pool powers, it's going to be a tight build. Ice Armor really only has one semi-skippable power, Permafrost, and even that can be handy at times. Dual Blades, in a similar vein, requires you to have certain powers to get the various combos. So, you tend to want to have a decent amount of the secondary set as well. This can make for a pretty tight build.



If you don't mind that, it should be fine. Any endurance problems you may be having would go away at level 26, when you pick up Energy Absorption. After that, you'll never need to worry about endurance again, unless fighting very tough AVs.

Thanks for the heads up on the tight build, but all the powers DO seem pretty interesting so I won't be too upset about taking them all. I can do my best to live without Stamina until level 26, and I just picked up Ninja Run so even going without a travel power for a while is plausible. What power pools did you feel I'd need or want, besides a potential travel power?

Well, I still think that you're going to want Stamina. Against tough, single foes, Energy Absorption won't be as useful, and you'll want Stamina as a backup at those times.


Also, I can definitely suggest some power pools, but if you can tell me what you want to do with this tank (are you going to be solo? doing a lot of TFs? tanking for full teams or small? etc) I can probably offer better advice.

I'm an AoE fanatic and as such I only really enjoy full teams with tons of enemies. If I can't get a team, I don't play. I have barely any experience with TFs, but I'm probably going to do them all at least once to learn the lore and experience the game's story.

I don't see myself soloing until I can handle x8 missions. Otherwise I'd be bored!

Reading what you plan on doing, you may REALLY want to go with Ice Melee over Dual Blades, Ath.

I've got a Invuln/DB tanker I'm running right now, and to be honest DB is a rather tricky tanking set. Given the nature of your combos and how tanking works in general, it'll be difficult to really leverage DBs Cone AoEs to full effect. Basically, everything crowds in around you, meaning at best your cones will only hit half or less of the spawn. Dancing around can let ya hit everything, but it takes time. Time that means you may lose aggro on some things, or even worse, miss the chance for your combos.

I find my DB works better as really accurate single-target DPS if I use my Attack Vitals combo on just one hard target (i.e. Boss or Lt.). If Sweeping Strike hits multiples when I fire it, great. But I don't bother dancing about to maximize it. It's proven more important on any team to stand there and take as much heat as I can. Taunt only hits 5 critters now, so using your Taunt auras for aggro is important. Damage is really a secondary concern for Tanks on a full team. One or two Blasters easily blow through stuff before your AoEs ever will. That said, AoEs are always worth having. Damage is additive, so any you can bring helps.

As Aett says, Frost is some really decent AoE (the cone's very very wide and the pure cold damage isn't resisted by a lot). Frozen Aura isn't much in the way of mitigation, as the Sleep component gets cancelled out by your Icicles damage. Still, Frozen Aura does Moderate cold damage to anything around you.

The main reason to go Ice Melee though? Ice Patch. It's that good. Especially if you plan on tanking for full teams. It's easy to perm, and will drastically cut the incoming damage you're taking. That's key when you're facing purples with a Defense set. Not only will you be very hard to hit, but with an Ice Patch out your enemies rarely even get to TRY to hit you.

Can't do any AoE damage if you're dead!

Thanks Blood! I understand now why DB probably wouldn't be the best. I haven't ever read up on or tried the powerset, same with ice armor, so I thought it'd be cool to combine the two. But I haven't tried Ice Melee either, so I achieve the same effect either way.

I assume that Ice/Ice is also less tight of a build that will allow me to take the power pools I need? Is Frozen aura also a "taunt aura"? I thought pretty much everything tanks could do offered some sort of taunt.

Some commentary as the player of a lv 50 Ice/DB

The build is very tight, admittedly I took things a bit to the extreme. My tanker has all the primary/secondary secondary powers and until epic levels only had a travel power from pools, even after epic levels that didnt' really change, just added hurdle to the mix.

re: the combos. I will agree that when they tend to surround you the cones lose some power, although they can still make good openers. However, the end of the sweep combo is also a PBAoE knockdown and can help with mitigation. DB can chain a lot of knockdown on single targets actually. Though nothing will ever beat ice patch on the knockdown defense front.

If you do what I did, I highly reccomend having 2 seperate attack chains. For AoE I tend to cycle attack vitals and sweep, against single foes I stick to the single target attacks (usually trying to use empower) because, as said, while energy absorption will keep you going against groups it loses some of it's shine against single targets. And all those AoEs aren't cheap.

Watch you end bar! I'm guilty of occasionally getting lost in the attack-attack-attack mentality and forgetting to watch my end bar to know when I need to click EA, it's never pretty.