Which powerset and AT for a destructive Snow/Ice/Wind themed melee character?

Much like the title may suggest, I have a concept/idea for an ice/snow/wind themed character and I am torn between a... vast variety of choices.

Ice tanker is an option, but one that I am somewhat fearful of, mostly because of their damage output. I am not looking for a moving iceberg, but a glacier that smashes/cut things up (What I am implying is that I am kind of biased against tankers when taking damage dealing into consideration -not that I want to exclude tankers from the possible choices).

I have been suggested, and have looked at, multiple choices, such as Ice/Energy tanker, Fire/Willpower scrapper, SS/Fire brute (/Fire not really being my cup of tea, but I suppose I could give it yet another try) and a lot of other combinations within these three AT. I did notice that blasters get a few melee powers, but I've never really thought about making a blaster that relied on them. It just doesn't sound very productive... or playable, for that matter.

Due to the coloring customization available to most of the sets, one could easily color /Fire or another set to look snowy-ish and make it fit with the theme... and that is mostly where my problem start. As I am not the best when it comes down to noticing synergy (or, say, dysfunctions or negative traits -or however you want to call it) between some of the sets, when multiple sets present themselves I am easily at a loss.
So I am looking at all those sets available to the melee ATs and the only ones that I can see not fitting into the concept would be Stone and maybe Elec, although wind-electricity could somehow be linked, it'd be starting quite far from the original concept.

As a final note, combinations that seem more interesting than the others (but really, any suggestion is welcome)
-Fire/Willpower brute or scrapper looks very promising,
-Ice/Energy or Kinetic tanker seemed to fit as well, although once more I stand unknowing in front of, well, a tanker.
-SS/ brute would probably be one of the closest to what I am looking for, but I just can't decide onto which secondary to pair it to. DA looks interesting and... that's pretty much it. While I've read guides on it, I really don't know what to expect from that combination. Fire could work, although I'm not a /Fire fan, so I'm mostly looking elsewhere right now.
-Dual Blades/DA has been one of the sets that I have spend the most time looking at, but, having never even tried DB before, the combo system seems rather overwhelming, considering that taking just two combos will require most powers.

In any case, I'm trying to pair an elemental-ish primary or secondary, that could be colored into something icy or snowy to fit to concept, with just about anything else that wouldn't destroy the theme (I'm looking at you, Granite Armor).

Any thoughts, comments, questions or suggestions? At this point, almost anything would be of help.

Some things off the top of my head,

Dominators can push out good damage nowadays (guessing that is important to you based on your post), and they also have several powers that can be made to be Ice/snow looking.. Ice Control and Ice Assault being the most obvious, but they also have access to Fire, and Energy power sets..

Though my knowledge on Doms is limited, so I'll leave actual powerset synergies up to other folks who might know more.

Ice/Cold Corrs are also quite good(and has Snow, Ice, and Wind all down pat), but bloom late. Same with Fire/Cold.

xx/Storm Corr might also fit the bill.

Ice/Ice/Arctic Tanker using "flypaper" tactics.

Lure them in, get 'em stuck to you like glue, grind 'em to loess beneath your Icicles, Frost and Chilling Embrace.

It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...

How about a Kinetic Melee/Shield Brute? Use auras to add a snow effect (FYI the new Pixie Dust aura looks fantastic colored light blue) and the "chunk of ice" shield.

You can also recolor Stone Melee to look rather convincingly icy if it is colored blue. That set may have some of the same damage issues as Ice Melee though.

An ice/Storm Corruptor might be what you are looking for, good damage and very Ice themed. Or for Doms, there's Ice/Psi; you could color the Psi attacks white or blue-white and treat them as "waves of cold". Or Ice/Earth Assault, with the latter colored white. Or Ice/Ice, naturally.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex You can also recolor Stone Melee to look rather convincingly icy if it is colored blue. That set may have some of the same damage issues as Ice Melee though.

Stone Melee is a high damage set, although single target focused. Although "high damage" for a tank isn't going to mean what it does on a brute...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Narkor As for the Dominators, I must admit that I completely forgot about them (I feel ashamed). Although I feel that they are in the same bag as blasters (primarily ranged with a few melee powers) I certainly would have to look more into them, especially if some of those melee powers might be worth it.

Actually, Dominators do more damage in melee. And some of their Assault sets are mostly melee attacks.

Ice/Ice tanks are great for AoE damage and while they do lack a little bit for single targets (bosses), ST attacks from the epic pools easily remedy this. Mine is Ice/Ice/Soul and FF+FT+IS+Gloom+IS makes pretty quick work of things. And with a decent amount of recharge, you can merge this chain with FA and Frost to have a hybrid AoE/ST chain.

Right now I can run FA+Frost+FF+FT+IS+Gloom seamlessly with 152.5% recharge (Hasten up). Reactive Interface helps, too.

It's a bit of late bloomer, obviously, but well worth the wait.

Another combo that comes to mind is an Earth/Storm troller. This is something that I'm looking into making. With the right colorization on the Earth powers, it could look like snow or ice.

The question should be: Do you want it to just look like ice/wind? Or feel like ice/wind too?

To look like ice:
-Shield Defense has an ice shield option but it isn't colorable.
-Dark Melee can be colored blueish white for ice and gray for wind. Midnight grasp might need some explaining though...a snowman's tentacle?
-Weapons (sword, axe, dual blades, claws) have energy weapon options that you could color to look like cryo-energy or something.
-Invulnerability looks sparkly and glowy so with the right costume can make you look like you're made of ice.
-Fire and Stone melee have options to look like icy material.
-Energy Aura can turn you transparent like ice and with the right colors can look like a cold aura.

To feel like ice:
-Spines/Thorns using the crystalline customization colored white/blue might look well. And with their slows/immobilizes, can certainly feel like ice. However, the green toxic spray might not work well with the look.
-Ice, of course. Doms probably do the theme better since you want melee attacks and be damaging.
-Kinetic melee can be colored gray/white to look like wind, especially the tier 9 and 8. And with the knockback, it'll feel like wind too.
-Psychic colored blue might look a bit flashy but with the -recharge and the control effects, it can be either wind or ice.


My recommendations:
-Ice/Psy dominator. Its synergies lie in the range of its abilities, many of which are melee. Arctic Air is a PBAoE toggle slow/confuse power, that plus Psy's Psychic Shockwave for damage and Drain Psyche for regen/recovery. I'd probably recommend Psionic Mastery for Psionic Tornado, but since you can't color the epic pools, I'd choose either Ice Mastery, Primal Forces mastery or Leviathan mastery.

-Shield/Kinetic Tanker. You could go brute or scrapper too, but I like the feel it has on a tanker. It's very offensive solo, easy to make survivable and keeps aggro well. And you can stack -dmg from your attacks with Against All Odds.

-Ice/Kinetic Tanker. Same reasons above but you get a damage aura instead.

Well now I just have too many alts to make!
So far,

Ice/Psy or Thorns seems pretty interesting. A melee, control heavy character is definitely something I'd need to try out. Especially with mez protection...
Though the thorny effect of, well, thorns might be somewhat annoying, it'd be well worth looking into.

Ice/Ice Tanker looks promising, but I'm not too sure about /Ice. I'd probably have to ask/search on the tanker forums to get more out of this. But /SS and /Kinetic are two choices I'd be really interested in trying (not necessarily on a tanker, but still).

I was looking at a Kinetic/Shield scrapper recently and thought it might fit the bill. Will have to try out the shield options though.

As for if I want it to look or feel ice/wind, I'd have to go with a little bit of both, but at least look like it.
Power customization can make a lot of sets look icy/snowy like a no-brainer, but I'd still like it to have a 'cold' feeling. I guess an aura at level 30 could easily fix this, but I'd certainly need to reach level 30 to get it, so I'd rather have something right off the bat, in case I might lose interested otherwise.

Something that ran through my mind recently; how well does a SS/DA brute fair throughout the game?

Edit: I forgot to ask; I can't, for the love of all that is holy, or pseudo-holy, color Ice Armor's shields (namely Frozen Armor and whichever other one has the same graphics) to look even remotely appealing or, hell, just 'good'. Is there a trick to it? Would having an over-enormous ice aura over it completely hide the poor visuals? I think I'm going to do a quick search through the 'Which powers do you want alternate animations for?' and see if someone mentioned Ice Armor...

You can get Ice Armor to look good. The key is making your costume look good under it. Ice Armor doesn't go with everything, but some costume options go really well with it. It looks big and blocky, unless your character is big and blocky, and then it looks fairly good, IMO.

Also, Ice Melee isn't that bad. The key is to focus on your AoEs, and use your single-target attacks to whittle down the bosses across spawns. Meaning, drag the bosses with you, and deal damage to them as you take out the minions and lieuts quickly.

Kinetic Melee/Energy Aura/Arctic Mastery Brute for wind/ice theme

Fire/Stone/Arctic Brute is good for an elementalist. or if you don't like stone armor:
Stone/Fire/Arctic Brute

Your concept screams storm, so really the only question is what will you take with it? Ice/Storm would be my first recommendation. You've got tons of nice synergies to work with, like Frostbite confering knockback resistance, and tornado to apply lots of damage to everyone underneath it. Throw damage procs into Arctic Air and Snowstorm for further hilarity, and of course Ice Mastery to stack Ice Storm with Freezing Rain.

You'll be a consummate endurance hog, so Cardiac is what you want for your alpha slot, and you'll want to team as much as possible while you level. With good slotting and cardiac tier 4, however, you'll be fairly unstoppable.

You want the character to be destructive, which rules out most of the options mentioned so far (ice controller/tanker etc.) and you do not want Ice armor since the toggles look ugly.

I'd suggest SS/Inv brute, and rely on good costuming to carry the concept through. Temp invuln has sparkles, and with the appropriate costume beneath it can look like ice. You can give yourself the snowflakes aura (come i20.5, you can buy coupons that let your characters have auras/capes at level 1) and later on take the arctic APP for ice storm.

My Ice themed toon

Shiv'r- Ice/Thorn Dominator. Fights in Melee mostly. Artic Air and Immobilize is really effective. They stand still and confused while i take them apart.. and they even help me do it LOL

Heatsink- Cold/Ice defender ( could also build as a corruptor ). Very effective. Great team build and also quite effectient solo.. Having three rain powers is a huge plus.

Stormbringer- Ice/Storm Controller. Very late bloomer.. but when it blooms.. Enough recharge to throw out two Lightning Clouds is gold.

Coldsnap-Ice/Cold Controller ( very light on damage till late in game but excellent control and debuffs)

Shield/Ice tank.. a little heavy on the end but a LOT of fun.. and can do decent damage because of AAO.