Ice/?

I'm working on a new Ice/ toon and don't know what to use as his secondary. I'm stuck between FF, CD, Thermal, Rad, and TA. All of them seem like they would work well, but I need some opinions from the community. I plan on mostly teaming, and normally I rarely solo anything. Any advice on which to take for a mostly teaming build, but also comes helpful control and debuff options would really help.

Of the options you listed I would reccommend either /FF or /TA, though I think FF would be better for pure buffing. I love both sets, but nothing adds survivability better than bubbles and it's pretty easy and inexpensive to cap def with /FF, making soloing (when you have to) easier. I personally love my ice/ff troller and my teams almost never have problems between dispersion bubble, the other 2 bubs, and manuvers. Plus ice has great control, ice slick is up for every mob and when things become a little more difficult you have glacier to back you up. I don't have problems soloing with Ice/ff either (then again having ran solo missions on a mind/emp way before ED has made me a patient person) but for those times when you have to solo ice/ff may seem painfully slow to some. TA on the other hand will make soloing easier with its debuffs and offers insane control and great survivability as well. You will constantly have mobs locked down with ice slick, glacier, oil slick, EMP arrow, ice arrow and the mobs won't be able to hit you much in between those mezzes with the other debuffs in TA. TA is a much more active set than FF is, because in FF you are a buff bot for your pet and teammates, whereas in TA you will constantly have powers to use to keep your opponnents debuffed with -acc, -res, -def, -dmg etc. Whereas FF will let you keep your allies alive, TA will let you defeat enemies much faster. As always it comes down to your playstyle, anything would go well with ice but FF and TA get my vote out of the choices you listed.

Another thing with TA is that glue arrow will go very nicely with the -recharge in ice and entangle arrow will help set up containment. Only drawback i can think of with TA is the lack of a heal, but such a great set hardly needs one.

Any of those should work well. The Ice/Therm is probably the most independent of them after getting the pet. Though that's not saying much.

I have never played an Ice Controller without a heal of some kind so I don't know how well Ice/Cold works in practice. My tactics (lots and lots of Arctic Air) sometimes cause me to take hits on Ice/Therm and Ice/Rad. Ice/FF meanwhile is very low damage but if you spend some money you can get excellent defense.

Ice/TA I have never seen in the field. I imagine it has some trouble keeping the pet alive but that's a guess based on what I've seen with other sets. Jack is unfortunately rather fragile. An advantage would be the option to switch off between melee and ranged though, depending on the situation.

It is interesting to see the difference in opinion. I really enjoy my Ice/Storm -- it has such flexibility to be able to mix it up in melee or throw around the chaos. Plus, the added damage from the last two Storm powers makes it probably the best combo with Ice if you want to solo in the upper levels.

Ice/Rad has some really amazing synergy with Arctic Air and Choking Cloud. Between the two powers, you can pretty much neuter the foes in your area. Ice Slick to keep them distracted, then move in with AA+CC and the foes can't do much of anything.

Hmm, I'm considering Ice/Therm and Ice/Rad after reading your descriptions. I don't want a pure team buffer, and would like something with a mix of control (or buffing) and Debuffing. Both seem to offer just that after looking at the abilities. TA is also in the running.

I would reccomend Ice/Rad as a close/melee range controller. Especially since you will be teaming almost 100% of the time.

1) Open with Rad infection as the tank/melee toons start the fight. This will severely decrease the mobs chance to hit.

2) Next drop Ice slick to disrupt any attention that you picked up in step 1.

3) Approach the spawn and cast shiver. This will, when combined with Arctic Air, put the spawn (for mobs all the way up to +3s) at the slow movement and -rech caps.

4) Jump into the fray with AA and CC running. This will lock down most of the spawn that hasn't all ready been neutered. (It is even better with the Contagious Confusion proc in AA and the Lock Down proc in CC). Your single target hold applied to any bosses in the spawn should instantly lock it down as well. (Even more so if you have the lock down proc here as well.

5) Apply Frostbite to make sure the spawn doesn't have any chance to move out of your debuffs/toggle controls. (Better still if you have the Grav Anchor Proc in Frostbite). This also makes sure that +4 mobs are at the -rech cap. Don't worry about over riding ice slick at this point. It will all ready have done it's job.

6) Let your team clean up the spawn.

Your only problems will be a stray mez that detoggles you and damage between step 1 and 2. Glacier solves the first problem as you can cast it (even better with the lock down proc) to give yourself time to retoggle. Radiant Aura lets you heal up damage taken between steps 1 and 2 and +ranged defense set bonuses from sets like Lockdown and Blood Mandate (for Jack Frost) will also assist in reducing any stray damage between step 1 and 2.

All in all /Rad is my favorite pairing with Ice

And one nice advantage of */Rad -- you don't have to wait until late in the build to get some of the best powers. An AoE Immob (Frostbite) + Radiation Infection with its ToHit Debuff is nearly an AoE Hold since the foes can't move and have trouble hitting you and your team . . . . and the combo is available in the first 6 levels.

The strategy is discussed in my Earth/Rad guide.

My favorite Ice Controller is Ice/Storm. However, based on the conversation, I think Ice/Rad is probably the way to go, though Ice/TA is pretty interesting too.

Ice/Rad and Ice/TA are, by coincidence, my current projects. Well, I'm working on Ice/TA and Plant/TA as the mood strikes, and then I've got Ice/Rad and Grav/TA waiting in the wings. My Ice/TA is only level 20 or so. Its a neat combo. I've played Ice/Storm and Ice/FF both to 50, and I've got Ice/Emp at 36 or so.

I'm pretty sure you'll have fun no matter what you do, but I think Ice/Rad would be best. It has the synergy that everyone is describing, and you can never go wrong with Rad.

Lewis

I have an Ice/Storm and an Ice/Cold. Both are excellent. The Ice/Cold particularly on teams is very good because he can basically slow a mob down to a crawl and buffs with shields and debuffs as well. However he didnt do damage until very very late in his career ( like 45-47 ) So he needed teams all the time. The Ice/Stom has the flexibiity of both hard and soft controls and did damage earlier once he got Tornado @ 35 and Lightning Storm @ 38.

All that being said Rad wold also be an excellent choice but then again its ALWAYS an excellent choice. Now you can even color the rad effects white to make it look like snow or ice....

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

runs off to look at Mid's.....

Top of my head without looking up anything: I vote /TA. I don't see FF as being a good match. And while I doubt any synchronicity with /rad, it's always nice to have one around in bad craziness.