An Ice Blaster's Best Friend?

So I'm back to COH and, what's different this time, is that my wife is going to be playing with me.

I think I'm going to revisit ice blasters as no archtype and power set was ever as much fun for me personally. What I'm curious about is, what would be a good complement to an ice blaster? My wife and I plan to play as a team and she was curious.

I told her to play WHATEVER she thought would be the most fun but she thinks it would be fun if our powers complemented each other.

Any thoughts?

Great to have you back First of all. 99.99999999999999999999999999999999% of what i learned about blasting I learned from you and Agent Ohms and Concern.

Let see For your teammate I would go with some sort of controller.

Maybe fire/something the opposites attract sort of thing. But more control around a blaster is always good and buffs and rebuffs of the secondary can make a strong character in there own right and if you go with the level pact you will always be able to team.

My first thought when I hear ice blaster is that you should pair it up with some nice AOE. Get someone who's a nice lawnmower and they'll take out the minions/LTs in a flash while you destroy the bosses like they're nothing.

I'd say something with Fire Aura. Personally I've always wanted to try a spines/fire Aura scrapper so that catches my attention.

Also though, A controller or Dominator would help bring the control to the party while you brought the damage.

Just had another thought. A Warshade could bring both things so the party. They can control with their stuns and then switch to nova and blast the crap outta the minions while you take down the tough guys.

They can even tank in a jiffy if you find yourself in trouble. The only downside is the crazy amount of switching that you'll do. But they ARE pretty awesome.


(Waddaya know, I beat Dechs to suggesting an MFing WS :P)

Has your wife ever played?

If she's still a newbie I'd suggest something that's durable like a tank of some sort.

To the last poster a shade isnt something I'd suggest for someone that might not know the game well.

Warshades and Peacebringers are not the easiest ATs to get into and feel comfortable with but if she's up to the challenge then go for it!!

[Grr, just posted a somewhat lengthy reply to the OP and got logged out of the forums. So frustrating, wish they'd fix that.]

Anyway, there aren't really any AT's that don't pair well with an ice/ice blaster, so your first instinct that she play something she enjoys is a good one. I think I am most intrigued about the possibilities of running a fire/fire blaster with ice/ice: the two would definitely compliment one another, with ice/ice mitigating the aggro that fire/fire tends to attract. The downside of that pairing is that you'd, on ice/ice, be more of a blastroller than a blaster. Well, I guess that depends on both of your play styles, but /ice has some good aggro/damage mitigation powers that seem like they'd be ideal to run with a fire/fire blaster.

Another option that I think would be fun (and if you start in Praetoria) would be a dark/dark corrupter. The set's fun to play anyway, but it would be a good complement to ice/ice, too, and leave you to blast more than troll.

I agree with the others who said that a tank or troll would be good paired with an ice/ice blaster, but that would be slow going, especially early on, because ice is mostly single-target. But both tank and troll would be able to keep aggro off of you, a must for an ice/ice blaster duoing. A scrapper or mastermind would speed you through the lower levels with minimal risk, massive damage.

No one's mentioned defenders, but that would also be a good pairing, again, though, slow going, especially early on. Which brings us back to her playing what she enjoys To me, an ice/ice blaster is among the more versatile blasters and can pair well with just about anything, adapting as needed to the situation and powersets.

We played around with the ice and fire combo last night. A little obvious, to be sure, but fun.

It's funny someone mentioned a fire/em controller because that's what she ended up creating. Although she's still playing around with archetypes to see what she enjoys.

Something with some AOE damage to offset my single target damage is probably a good idea. Maybe a fire brute since, with Going Rogue, hero and villain archtypes can now pair up.

What's up, BD!

I think you have the right idea with your last post, pairing some AoE with Ice/EM's ST damage would be good. A Brute would be good since it pulls better aggro than a Scrapper (from my experience), and will do pretty good damage to boot (especially one with a DoT aura). Another good option would be a Mastermind, since the minions will be grabbing aggro (and MMs are great for absorbing a big alpha strike). A Controller or Dominator could be good as well, preference here would be wether she wants to do more buff/debuff or do more attacking.

If you wanted to keep a theme going, an Ice/Storm Controller is quite a bit of fun with good mitigation and controlled chaos (and decent damage). An Ice/Energy Assault Dominator is another option as well. For an opposing theme, a Dark Melee/Fiery Aura Brute could be pretty fun while dealing out some impressive damage (and be durable as heck with 2 self heals and 2 end recovery powers).

Plant/thermal, or Plant/cold would work as well for a controller. Tanks work well with a blaster. We have run tank/blaster only teams in the Hardcore SG and done rather well.

A tank or a brute because they tend to work well from day 1, and if you want to go complimentary power sets, fire/fire is worthwhile on either of those. An Ice/Ice blaster practically doubles as a mild controller, so I think you can skip the controller route unless she REALLY likes it. When duo'ing on my Ice/Ice/Cold main, there is no match for a tough melee companion.

My first thought was a Plant/Storm controller. My Ice/Ice Blaster has strong single target control and damage, but is only so-so on AoE damage. Plant/Storm has good AoE damage, good debuffs, good defensive powers (like Hurricane) to keep foes at range, team stealth (Steamy Mist). It should work very well.

Another choice would be a solid tank with good AoE damage . . . maybe an Ice/Fire tank. Nobody can gather aggro better than an Ice armor tank, with two aggro auras. Fire Melee for tanks has pretty good damage (for a tank) and two great PB AoE damage powers. Build Up-Fire Sword Circle-Combustion can wipe out or nearly wipe out minions . . . give it an extra second or two for Icicles to get a couple of ticks and the minions will be dead. (I have an Ice/Energy Tank at 49, an Ice/Ice at 32 and a Stone/Fire at 50.)

I see that you've already made your Ice blaster, so I'm a little late to the party. I was going to suggest making an Ice/Mental Manip. I've been playing a Fire/MM lately and after I'd gotten a good feel on the */MM powers, I immediately thought that */MM would pair well with Ice/*.

Ice's AOEs are lackluster (not counting Blizzard) and */MM offers 2 additional AOEs. One is a cone that will fit right in with Ice's cone for a quick double blast. The other is a fairly short radius PBAOE, but it's quick to recharge and nice to use if you get surrounded. I always found my Ice blast characters (blaster, corrupter, defender) were endurance hungry and */MM has a +regen/+recov power to help. And as a bonus, this power also does -regen on enemies which is nice if you wind up on team lacking in debuffs for an AV or GM.

Since my wife and I are going to be playing as a team, we're actually thinking about switching up the roles. I'd go fire and she'd go ice. FIRE/NRG rocked pretty hard back in the day if I recall. Paired with an ice tank...could be fun.

Would a stalker/blaster combo be viable? Stalker for the bosses and fire blaster for the mobs? It would be glass cannon city but if you could kill things quickly enough it could potentially work.

I personally would want a controller or a defender with me on any of my blasters. Preferably one with a shield on me of some sort. Therm/Cold would be great they let me play aggressively which is why I love blasters in the first place. I love having a FF with my blaster but I pity those that have to play such a boring set.

Here would be my top picks:
Earth/Therm Controller (She'll get a pocket tank later, I have one at 46 atm its just swell)
Fire/Therm or Cold Controller (Shields should help keep the gimps alive)
Cold/Sonic or Ice Defender

Probably wouldn't recommend TA anything as it doesn't add much to survivability in my experience.

Have you perhaps considered pairing a couple of corruptors instead? I could see a pair of Ice/Cold, or Ice/Therm Corrs tearing stuff up quite readily and fairly safely. I pretty much Duo all the time with a friend so we always tend to just run things in pairs of identical toons. It's always worked well for us.

Plant/Fire Dom. Great Aoe and SOC keeps every mob confused!

Welcome Back BlackDecember!

I am playing your Ice Assassin build [probably with some minor due to game updates] and loving it, so don't pass that up unless you are looking for something different then by all means go with some of the other suggestions. I myself play alot more tanks and brutes than blasters so I'm not sure I could make any better suggestions of combos.

Your wife might want to consider a brute they are alot of fun, what some poeple think a Tank should be more like if I remeber what I've read on the forums.

Good luck with your return and enjoy.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

Of some note, later in the game you will meet some baddies with annoyingly high psi resist...as my dominator is learning. With a partner it shouldn't be a problem but if you go mental prepare for the occasional moment when you're suddenly hitting for 1/3 of your normal damage with your secondary.

Just going to point this out to folks, but BlackDecember hasn't actually been active on the forums since just a couple days after his last post in this thread ... which was towards the end of July last year.

Yay for people necro-posting I guess.