Personally I just pop a purple if it's a big mob.
L50s: Tanks: Cryofission - Ice/EM - Dr Celsius - Fire/Ice - Saint George - SD/SS | Controllers: Psichosis - Ill/Kin - Major Chaos - Ill/Stm | Scrappers - Neutron Crusader - DM/SR
Currently Levelling: Angelic Blade - BS/WP Scrapper | Seeds of Destruction - Plant/Kin Controller
What travel power do you have? Another strategy with Ice/ is to stealth up to the spawn (SS with Stealth proc or the Stealth power) and use the AoE sleep. That has worked pretty well for me in the past.
Edit: and as the poster above me pointed out popping a purple or two always works too. 
With ice/? There isn't, at least not as far as I can tell. You've got the two methods down: jack, and ice-slick-from-behind-cover. There are only two other possible options.
The first is the aoe sleep, flash freeze. Unfortunately, I found it to be extremely unreliable in preventing an alpha strike in practice. Even after I had enough slots in it to hit reliably, results ranged from sleeping the whole spawn before they got a shot off, to letting the whole spawn shoot at me once before they fall asleep. So not only did it not prevent the alpha, it did so in a seemingly completely random and inconsistent way, which is exactly what you don't want in a control. On average, I'd say I would usually take maybe a half alpha when using it, but as noted, it was extremely variable.
The other way would be to stealth into the spawn and use a PB and/or dom'd glacier. Unlike the sleep, the AoE hold will at least reliably prevent mobs from attacking - as long as you have full stealth and can get into the middle of the spawn without them seeing you, anyway. I don't use this trick as I have fly for my travel instead of super speed, but it should work.
Aside from that, I haven't really found any reliable way to take alphas on an ice/ice unless I just slam purples - in which case I might as well not even bother casting a control at all. I love the set, but this is easily its biggest weakness.
@MuonNeutrino
Student, Gamer, Altaholic, and future Astronomer.
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Quote:
Ranged defense set bonuses are also quite useful here. You can handle the alpha of a +0/6x spawn with a half-ish bar of health left depending on the RNG with about 25% ranged defense. It makes the purple insps stretch quite a ways.
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Originally Posted by Steel_Shaman
What travel power do you have? Another strategy with Ice/ is to stealth up to the spawn (SS with Stealth proc or the Stealth power) and use the AoE sleep. That has worked pretty well for me in the past.
Edit: and as the poster above me pointed out popping a purple or two always works too. |
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Jump backwards from max range while using ice slick or flash freeze. Once you get good at it you won't eat the alpha from most enemies. Obviously easier if you have superspeed or a jump power.
Active (Freedom): Setna (Ice/Psi Dom), Arram (WP/KM Tank), Tesmiel (Elec/SS Tank), Astredax (Robot/Dark Mastermind), Operative Vidali (melee fortunata)
Retired (Virtue): Gaav (Inv/EM Tank), Baqra (Fire/SS Tank)
I've got an Ice/Ice Dominator and it's really fun to play. Beats stuff up good-like, and keeps their speed and recharge debuffed like no one's business. But, being a Dominator, everything else beats me up good-like and it can be a toss-up as to whether or not I'll lock down all the enemies in time.
Jack Frost is good for taking some alphas, and Ice Slick is excellent for keeping things from attacking all at once... But there are times when the mission map is just so and I just have to walk out in the open and fight stuff--no walls or corners or anything--and it usually hurts.
Taking the alpha is the big issue, as anything after that is usually taken care of by Shiver, Arctic Air and Jack's Chilling Embrace. Is there any particularly effective way to lessen the pain from an alpha strike before taking Froz--I, I mean um... Shark Skin... at level 44?