Dont See many Ice/Ice doms.. is Ice bad ??

just never see many of these at all and it seems like a natural thing to build like Fire/Fire or Earth/Earth and I see plenty of those.

It's not bad. I've soloed one from level 1 to 41 so far and it's been good fun. What did get annoying was the huge amount of endurance that gets used up. Ice Control has Arctic Air whilst all the attacks in Icy Assault are fast animating, this means that you can empty your blue bar very quickly if you're not slotted properly. The combination also isn't the safest as far as control is concerned; Block of Ice, Ice Slick, Arctic Air and maybe Glacier. I've found that if you're not careful you'll end up taking on more than you can handle if you're in teams because of Arctic Air, Ice Sword Circle and Frost Breath. Using Arctic Air also means that you should be in melee, this may put some people off - especially if they think that Dominators shouldn't be in melee (I've seen some who are like this).

Ice isn't like Fire, Earth or Plant where you can just use Flashfire, Stalagmites or Seed of Confusion and then run in and kill them everything, it's more like Electric where you have to layer up multiple forms of control (in Ice's case this will most likely be Ice Slick + Arctic Air with Block of Ice and Glacier supporting). So it's not bad, it's just different.

Ice/Ice does get one cool thing that Fire/Fire and Earth/Earth doesn't get though - Power Boosted Glacier. Go into Domination, hit Power Boost and then use Glacier; they'll be held for ages. I believe the only "thematic" combination to get the same type of thing is Gravity/Energy (Fire gets Embrace of Fire, Earth's Volcanic Gasses can't be boosted because it's a psuedo-pet, Psionic gets Drain Psyche, Electric gets Build Up and Thorns gets Aim).

Is ice bad? I don't think I would necessarily say that. It is definitely *different*, though, and even after 50 levels of ice/ice I still can't make up my mind whether that's a good or a bad thing.

Part of it, I think, is the reputations (or lack thereof) of the particular sets involved. For better or worse, fire and earth control have fairly strong 'name recognition', for lack of a better term. People know (or at least think they know) what the sets do, and they have a reputation for being pretty *good* at what they do. And then, as you note, they each have a naturally thematic secondary, and boom, commonplace sight.

Ice control, on the other hand, while it isn't as well known, does have somewhat of a reputation as an odd set. And that's fairly justified, because it *is* kinda an odd set. Ice/ probably has the lowest amount of *hard* control of any control set, matched only by illusion/. Instead, like illusion, it relies heavily on misdirection and soft control. This doesn't fit with many people's idea of what a control set 'should' do, and it is somewhat counter to what you might expect from the example of the other ice themed sets in the game, which tend to be the *most* controllery set of their type. Icy assault also has a bit of a reputation for being endurance heavy and low damage, which isn't nearly as true, but it still might have something to do with the combo's overall level of popularity.

In terms of actual *effectiveness* rather than reputation, I personally find it a bit hard to actually rank ice/ compared to a more 'traditional' set, simply because they're so different. Overall I'd probably have to say it's *slightly* weaker, mostly because of the difficulty it has dealing with alphas, but not very much so.

Easily the biggest weakness ice/ has is that it just doesn't have a good way to defuse the alpha strike. Casting ice slick under an un-aggroed mob will result in you eating about a half alpha strike from the mobs which aren't knocked down instantly, and if you're solo you'll be eating the rest of that alpha strike over the next 5-10 seconds as individual mobs manage to keep their feet long enough to get a shot off. The way to prevent this is to cast ice slick from around a corner or behind an obstacle so that they can't retaliate, but there isn't always such a handy terrain feature available. Assuming you can handle the alpha, combined with your slows it's good mitigation. But that alpha is still a problem, and it's one that ice's other control powers don't fix. Glacier is PBAoE, and flash freeze has that incredibly annoying trivial tick of damage associated with it. That means that the sleep is delayed by 0.25 of a second so that the power doesn't break its own sleep, and *that* means that the enemies usually have time to get off a shot before they're slept. The only *guaranteed* way the set has to defuse an alpha is to summon jack in the middle of the spawn, and he's not robust enough to survive that sort of treatment.

Now, ice/ does have strengths to offset that weakness. It's bad at alpha control, but it's quite good at sustained control. Arctic air is a toggle so you can keep it going indefinitely, and both shiver and ice slick have very good uptime ratios. It's also good in situations where foes resist some of the more traditional controls, such as ITFs. Where something like earth/ doesn't have as much to fall back on when they're resistant to holds, KD, and stuns, ice/ can still slow and force avoid behavior.

Overall, I'd say that ice/ makes a better team set than a solo one. It is very good at slowing and limiting attacks, but it can't really *stop* them, and solo that means that your HP bar will feel it if you can't eliminate the enemy fast enough. Being solo also amplifies ice's weakness to alphas. On teams, on the other hand, your weaknesses will be covered for, and that lets you put your strengths in sustained and unconventional control to best use.

Icy assault, on the other hand, is a much more conventional set. In many ways, it's actually the 'vanilla' or most standard assault set. It's got 3 average ranged attacks, 2 average melee attacks, an average PBAoE, an average cone, power boost, and a throwaway skippable 'utility' power. It doesn't lean especially hard towards ranged or melee, ST or AoE, and doesn't really have any special focus or trait. In my opinion it is very much a 'jack of all trades, master of none' type set, and I suppose that might throw off some people who are looking to specialize a bit more. It's still a *good* set, in my opinion, but I think it suffers a bit in perception compared to some of the more... flamboyant assault sets.

Ice is a great set. I'm usually very happy to be on a team with an Ice Controller or Dom who regularly uses Ice Slick. As pointed out before it is an endurance hog...but hopefully inherent fitness now helps with that.

You won't be dissapointed if you go Ice/Ice. You won't be doing the crazy level of damage of a Fire/Fire but you will have a form of mostly non-resisted control (-recharge). The problem is most people won't realize what the massive amounts of -recharge, you dish out, is doing for the team. Also, Jack Frost is a pretty damned good pet these days...

So overall I'd Ice/Ice is fun to play but you'll be an unsung hero most of the time....