ice/ice leveling

I have a 20th level ice/ice blaster. Recently I've been having trouble leveling. On large pulls, my toon can't kill fast enough and gets quickly overwhelmed.

I try to limit large pulls but on the first mish in Talos island ("Find Susan Trent", IIRC) I enter the mission and see a yellow and two oranges. OK, tough, but doable. I pull and two more oranges spawn. That the toon can't handle. So she's stuck in a mission she couldn't possibly handle and may drop it.

She has a combination of 15/20 IO and 22-23 DOs from AE missions. Is there some way to know ahead of time which missions she needs to wait a bit or get help for - aside from the mish text saying 'get some friends' of course.

Also the AE missions she's tried are real variable. She was level 19 and tried a mish for 25-40 that was labeled 'can be soloed easily' and got killed four times. some of the pulls seemed impossible for a solo blaster - maybe ok for scrapper / tank / or defender. Or did she just need the extra skills (she didn't have ice patch) and slots (freeze ray was missing at least 50% of the time) and needs to wait till the minimum level?

Well for starters, don't forget to use inspirations. A few purple defense ones before a tricky pull can make the difference between succeeding and the hospital.

Ice/ice is a nice mix of blast and control. Have you taken ice patch yet? Drop that and stand behind it before firing off your initial attack. Most mobs are going to slip and fall on it when they run into it.

What particular type of mob are you fighting? Are you on Infinity?

I love my 50 ice/ice/nrg blaster. I have just the right amount of control and the damage is decent especially when you pick up Interface - reactive.

(Caveat: been forever, well years anyway, since my signature ice/ice hero passed through that range.)

My tried and true tactic is always to freeze (and keep frozen) the highest in the spawn, and clear the minions. Then finish off the leader.

At 20, you probably do not have enough stacking holds for that, though.

Dropping ice and pulling them into it (as Ryo_Takenoko mentioned) is handy mitigation.

Ice Storm is also good mitigation, they will stop attacking to exit the area of the storm. You can peg them with blasts or freezes during that run around phase with more freedom.


And I've always found that my blaster eat inspirations like candy.

You can breeze through the 20-35 duldrums by running tips at whatever difficulty you like.

Ice Storm is a lifesaver. Mobs ignore you and run out of it. Ice Patch is invaluable.

Another thing I've always done is to keep build one as a leveling build, and build two as my IO build. I'd only slot what recipies that drop for you, and save for SOs.

Slot for... accuracy, recharge... then damage. You are single target. You need those attacks up asap and you want to hit often. If you're heading into the orange and reds, you'll need 2 accuracy.

Wish they would change /ice frozen aura into the froststomp tankers get.

By level 20 you should have Freeze Ray and Ice Patch both (plus Build Up, but that's only a control power to the extent that dead mobs don't fight back). You should also be slotted with lvl 20 IOs unless you are 20-ish and actually are 22, in which case slot up 25s. I'm boring and with IOs in attack powers at the early levels I just do the 1x Acc, 3x DMG, and then Rechg as slots become more available.

Ice Patch should help a lot with the pulling issues you describe.

Thanks everybody for their replies.

Dropping ice patch before the pull has helped. The mobs fall down, clump up for frozen breath.

I have freeze ray, but it was constantly missing. So much I didn't bother. I'm 21st level now and so dropped two slots with two 20th IOs into them. Freeze ray misses a lot less now and its very helpful.

I do not have Ice Storm. The guides gave me the impression to skip Ice Storm. Going back over them I notice that some guides note Ice storm is useful to solo leveling. So at 22 I'll probably take it. Not sure what else to take. Combat Jumping and Chilling Embrace would help some at melee range, but wouldn't help with ranged attacks (Gears don't hit hard but 8 or 9 of them do).

20th Level IOs cost a lot more than 15 and I just couldn't afford it. The DOs from Mission Architect tickets are way better than TOs and MA tickets are pretty easy to get. Sort of hoping to save up Inf and skip the 20th level all together, go directly to 25, but it doesn't look feasible.

I have a free respec. Do I lose all my enhancements if I respec?

Levels 20 and 21 I find kind of annoying since mobs seem to step it up a little in terms of difficulty and you haven't switched to SO level enhancements yet. At 21, you can depending on influ/patience, start to slot level 24 dual IO enhancements if you want. Ice gets the advantage of using IOs from the slow sets which means you can get them on the cheap for acc/end. A level 24 dual IO gives you just over +3 SO level of enhancement so you can slot two acc/end IOs and never have to reslot them again unless you fully want to IO out the build with sets. I have been looking at sets that give the best set bonuses for slotting 3 and then using two sets for each power if I'm going to 6 slot it.

If you do the Penelope Yin arc in Faultline, after you rescue her dad you open his store and can get SOs for your specific Origin, i.e. Magic gets access to Acc SOs, Science gets Recharge SOs. These are available well before 25 and can help. Also you can sometimes pick up lower level SOs at Wentworth's, but of course that is hit-or-miss.

I know it may sound silly, but do you use Chillblain? Its damage, though DoT, is somewhat decent, and it does help survivability insofar as most mobs (especially early 20s like the Freakshow) hit FAR less hard from a distance than they do in melee. Of course, don't target one on your ice patch, since it'll negate its mitigation, but it's also a nice way to keep that pesky Lt both off your back and under your Ice Storm.

When I hit that range with my Blaster, my tactic solo was to jump into a cluster of mobs, Ice Patch them, drop Ice Storm then jump back and Frost Breath the lot. Anything left standing I'd Freeze and Blast in relative safety. It made for a fun and bumpy ride, but then I'm a daredevil with my blasters.