What primaries go well with Ice Melee?

I am thinking of making a new Tanker using Ice Melee, which is a fairly rare set (due to low damage, I imagine). Mostly because it's a Tanker-only set.

I was thinking of going with Shield defense for the primary, since it will give it a little extra oomph through AaO and Shield Charge, but I'd like to hear the thoughts of anybody else who's used it.

I went with Shield but as always Ice primary is very thematic.

Ice/Ice is definitely a fun combo, though I might be a little biased there.

However, Ice can go well will Shields, Invulnerability, and Willpower. Why? Because they don't have damage auras, and therefore you can actually use the sleep in Frozen Aura as mitigation against minion attacks, which can be handy.

Fire/Ice can be good, too, since Fire/ will help out /Ice's lower than average damage, while /Ice helps Fire/ with some more mitigation.


I've never seen a Dark/Ice Tanker before, and while nothing would really be a poor combo there, there's also not too much direct synergy going on, either.

I'd say the worst pairing would be Stone Armor, since it generally doesn't need the higher mitigation than /Ice provides, and the slightly lower damage of Ice Melee would be felt more when in Granite Armor.

I'll agree with Claws and Effect. I'm still leveling my Da/Ice tank (27 at the moment), but he's pretty survivable so far. /Ice doesn't seem to do a whole ton of damage at once, but I can definitely survive to grind things down. It's all a matter of whether (first) my red and then blue bars can let me last long enough to do it. I don't have OG yet, but I do have CoF (took it because I'd never used it on my /DA scrappers and figured that the tohit debuff could make for a bit of nice layered mitigation against the bosses/lts). CoF and Ice Patch lower the incoming damage quite a bit. Taunt, Gauntlet, and Death Shroud all pull things in closer, right onto the Ice Patch.

While I may take more damage per hit than a pure resistance set and get hit more often than a defense set, the combination of moderate resists, some debuffing / fear, knockdown on Ice Patch, slows in my attacks, coupled with a MASSIVE heal makes for a sturdy character. He has a few weak spots to be sure- ranged attackers with slows (Council Marksmen, I'm looking at you!) or the ever popular tohit debuffing enemies (Tsoo Sorcs, Storm Shamans). It's a combo that works better than I hoped it would (I chose /Ice mainly because I had never played it before and I figured the slows would add a bit of mitigation to DA).

I went with shields. For 2 reason. One being I was making "elemental" warriors wanted an Ice melee guy but hated how ice armor looked. So, Shields, with the ice shield, worked thematicly for me. Second, Shields adds +dmg and aoe to a set that's light on dmg in general.

He's 50 and tough enough to, last i checked, tank pretty much anything. I haven't played him in a long time, and he'd need an I19 respec at this point... if i get around to it... to many alts i have...

First, please see my Ice Melee guide if you think Ice Melee is really "low damage", unless you mean low ST damage, which it fully is. AoE-wise, it's actually one of the better secondaries for tankers, behind SS, Fire & Elec (possibly Mace too depending on how you play). It has of course one of the best mitigation of all tanker secondaries (Stone Melee fans often think it's the best--I think it's a tossup bet the two).

Second, Claws makes a great about about the DA/Ice combo that I hadn't though of before. I still think Stone/Ice (which is what I run) is the ultimate defensive force in the game, but if you want more offense, SD/Ice & Fire/Ice are also excellent alternatives. Once you pick up & slot FA, AAO + SC (or FE + Burn) + FA + Frost will absolutely wreck things in your path.

Well, I always believed there were 3 pillars for melee secondaries, ST damage, AoE damage & mitigation. Of the three, I think ST damage is the least valuable for a tank, so having a very high mitigation and high AoE damage puts Ice Melee towards the top overall sets in my book, even w/pi** poor ST damage. Also, cold damage is less resisted than, say, smashing, so IM has that going for it.

True that a good enough primary leaves mitigation not as important, but that mitigation also helps your team, even if you're perfectly fine (and as a Stony, I'm usually perfectly fine). Of course killing things faster also helps your team, which is why I also love Fire Melee & SS.

I will say my least favorite tanker sets are ST-oriented sets. EM, SM, DM all do little to excite me, despite having decent-to-great mitigation (and my first 50 tank was a Fire/EM). Slightly different priorities for scrappers, and likely brutes too, though I still like AoE damage best.