Regarding power boost and the armor, since frozen armor has an enhanceable resistance effect, it's therefore flagged as 'not affected by buffs' - including power boost. Mids' unfortunately doesn't show this. So if you want S/L cap you'll have to build for it without power boost. That said, that's still a very good idea, especially with how melee-based, soft control heavy, and unaffected by domination ice/'s mitigation is. You'll be getting shot at more often than a lot of doms, especially solo, so defense is a very good idea.
Second, do *not* play ice/ice in particular, or doms in general, as a ranged character. We have a higher melee damage modifer than ranged, and a lot of our good attacks are melee. For ice/ice, for example, ice sword and ice sword circle are both key parts of your offense. Also, a huge chunk of ice/'s mitigation comes from being in melee range with arctic air running. While I wouldn't go quite so far as to say that you'd be gimping yourself by playing at range, it's definitely not playing to the AT's strengths.
End use - my ice/ice never had cardiac. End usage definitely was quite high, but managable if you slot well for endurance reduction and get some of the recovery uniques or a performance shifter proc. While cardiac would definitely be quite helpful, I don't think it'd be mandatory. Now, mind you, it wasn't a high recharge build, so I don't have any experience with how much faster you could drain your end bar if you go for permahasten levels of rech. But on the other hand that will be bringing up dom faster, so it might be a wash.
@MuonNeutrino
Student, Gamer, Altaholic, and future Astronomer.
This is what it means to be a tank!
Ok thanks for the info about frozen armor. Will keep 1 recharge in power boost and call it a day. Had in mind that frozen armor was affected so thank you for that.
And yes i understand I can pick up dom's melee powers for better powers but atleast for a start ill be going all ranged. because i am in melee range all the time on all my other guys and wanted a ranged toon.
i just like being able to freeze and shoot from far away during solo mishes 
of course teaming wise i can get up close in personal and rework a build using ice sword circle, etc.
anyway for a start i will be doing all ranged for now. gonna keep spirtual for now and see how that goes. looking for perma hasten/perma dom.
will work on getting s/l softcap.
also - pb doesnt work with frozen armor, but still works with weave, hover, combat jumping, etc. or no?
hi
Quote:
It will. The game has an odd thing in that if a power has damage resistance** in it, power boost won't work in them. As none of those powers you asked about offer damage resistance, they're all good.|
Originally Posted by rforwark
...also - pb doesnt work with frozen armor, but still works with weave, hover, combat jumping, etc. or no?
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(**For the same reason +heal globals don't work if the heal power gives resistance, if i'm not mistaken. Resistance throws off the game's coding in odd ways, so the devs tend to make +damage resistance powers exempt from many boosts effects.)
Also, power boost should help your arctic air, I believe.
even though you are planning on playing from range, i'd still heavily suggest getting your heaviest melee attack. there will be times when you have everything but the boss defeated but you have to cycle through your ranged attack chain over and over to defeat that boss when you could hit it hard a few times with your melee attack too. and that boss will most likely be held - so the danger of being in melee range is gone.
50: Ill/Kin(A+,R,J)-1047 badges RE/Dark(A) Fire/Elec Warshade BS/Regen Necro/Poison Ice/Fiery(A+) Son/Son Bane(A) FM/DA(A) DM/Nin Grav/Icy
lvling: Inv/EM DM/Sheild Arch/MM Bane NW Elec/Earth Grav/Elec Elec/FA Rad/Ice
Paragon Elite/Rogue Elite Joined Oct 2004
I'm going to have to echo the "Ice/Icy thrives in melee" sentiment, just because so very many of the major powers from both sets require you to be there. If you're really set on being at range most of the time though, here's my own advice...
Arctic Air is PBAoE, and if you're not in melee often, you wont have a need for it. For a ranged play style, either take this late or skip it altogether (*cringes at the thought*). This will make your endurance usage much more manageable. Instead, consider taking Shiver. It has a nice -recharge debuff and is perfect when used at max range.
You're still going to have a decent attack chain available to you between Block of Ice and the Icy blasts. It's not as much damage as you could do, but it's still viable.
Between Hoarfrost and Hibernate I prefer the former, but either one will certainly work. I wanted both, but had to skip one of the Ice epic powers and Hibernate was the one I dropped. Just remember that, even with obscene levels of recharge, Hibernate will have a forced downtime after it wears off due to the -phase status it applies. You generally wont have to worry about that though.
My personal preference on defense is to have it as close to 45% as possible without Power Boost running. If you can get it to the 35% range that will allow you to cap whenever you use 1 small Luck inspiration, and that's a great place to be defense-wise. If you have to choose between permadom and more defense, err on the side of permadom.
Good luck with your Ice Cubed!
Edit: Just a note about Hibernate, since you mentioned you'd be hovering a lot. You can toggle the power on in the air, but it will drop you from the sky.
I'm currently working on a ice/ice dom.. currently at level 30.
Plan on going ice mastery for theme reasons and the awesome powers it gives.
Going to be a primarily ranged toon using hover in combat (usually play a melee toon so want to be away and flying)
Just a few quick questions..
Just how good is power boost? In mid's im reading the numbers and its looking good.
With the spirtual radial and perma hasten it has a 38-40 sec recharge and 15 sec duration, so about 20-25 second downtime. Anyway my question, s/l is 33% and 51.8% w/ power boost. while my ranged def is 34.1% and 40.4% w/ pb. Should I focus on getting s/c without power boost or work on getting my ranged and other defenses up to a certain lvl where it will be capped or close to cap with power boost running.
This is really my only concern being the little downtime I'll have between power boost cycles I can focus more on other set bonuses rather than capping without. Please let me know sorry if it's hard to read and understand.
Also - about the spirtual alpha, is my end going to be ok? I'm recovering with 2.6+ end/s is the dom refill going to be enough or do i need to be looking at cardiac?
Thank you =)
Anyway, any help is appreciated and thank you.
EDIT: Also picked up hibernate over hoarfrost for a "oh crap" moment or before I'm about to die as I have no heal. Was this a good decision over hoarfrost+hp?