Blaster Ice/Ice/Ice Advice

Hi Everyone,

I've got a triple Ice character on Liberty that I'm looking to spec out, and looking for advice. Where should I distribute my slots? Which enhancements do I put in there? Which travel power thematically would go with an ice character?

I tend to like to do lots of damage, and have low recharge times, as it seems ice has a bit of a long recharge compared to energy (at least to me).

Any advice would be appreciated.

Ice/Ice/Cold is a ranged fighter. I also recommend going the "hover-blaster) route. If you've been using the melee abilities, I suggest respec'ing out of them. You can easily slot up enough recharge to form a continuous attack chain using mostly your primary, and with Ice's slow effect, you will have to actively run in to use your melee abilities (as opposed to waiting for the enemies to come to you) which will just take time that could be better spent blasting.

Defensive powers are your friend, for two reasons. First and most obvious, it offers you protection. But defensive powers also offer you a place to slot the Luck of the Gambler: DEF + 7.5% Global Recharge IO enhancement. You already have Frozen Armor (I hope) so that's 1.

I recommend taking the Flight pool, since that gives you Fly (your travel power) as well as Hover and Afterburner. Use the default slots on Hover and Afterburner for the LotG enhancement, then put a lvl 50 Flight IO enhancement in Swift and Fly. By doing all of that you waste no slots, leave yourself with 3 power pool choices left, provide yourself with 15% global recharge, give yourself essentially 100% defense to melee (Hover), increase your hover speed (flight IO in Swift), and put yourself very close to the new flight speed cap (Afterburner active with Flight IOs in Fly and Swift).

At this point, your global recharge is at 22.5% (3 LotGs). But hell, why not go for the limit of 5? I recommend picking either the Concealment and/or Leadership Pool(s). Concealment offers you "ghosting" capabilities, and you can take your pick of 3 powers for the LotG enhancment (Stealth, Grant Invisibility, or Invisibility). Leadership buffs are decent but can be costly. I took Maneuvers, Tactics, and Vengeance (with Maneuvers and Vengeance holding the LotG enhancement). I find I have little use for Maneuvers at all, and I only use Tactics when I need its fear/confuse protection, but I had power choices to spare. If you don't, you may want to consider something different. At any rate, either of those choices will bring you to 5 LotG enhancments (the limit) and a global recharge of 37.5%.

Take Hasten and 3-slot it with Recharge Enhancement IOs, and that should be the end of your recharge woes.

As for the rest of your powers:

First off, read up on the Ranged Damage IO sets, found here. (The rest of that page holds useful info on all the other types of sets as well.) Ice Bolt, Ice Blast, and Bitter Ice Blast are perfect places for any of those sets. My personal favorite is Thunderstrike, as it tends to be on the cheaper side, will enhance the damage of a power to over 100%, and each full set offers you 3.75% increase to ranged, energy, and negative energy defense, not to mention other some other nice bonuses. But choose for yourself.

I recommend six-slotting all of your primary powers except Aim and Ice Storm. Lockdown is a great set for the two Freeze Rays, and Positron's Blast is best for Blizzard and Frost Breath. I covered your three single target blasts above.

For your secondary powers, it all depends on what you use most. I only took Chilblain, Build Up, Ice Patch, and Shiver. I use Chilblain and Shiver most, so I six-slotted those. (Trap of the Hunter in Chilblain and Pacing of the Turtle in Shiver, though Tempered Readiness works well too). 1 recharge is all you need in Ice Patch, and 2 or 3 Recharges in Build Up will have it up quite often.

For Cold Mastery, it is completely up to you. As I said earlier, Frozen Armor should be a no-brainer, and I recommend 4 slotting it with Luck of the Gambler (with one slot holding the +7.5% Recharge). Hibernate is great, and you only need 1 Recharge in its default slot. Finally, I recommend Flash Freeze to open the power set (Snow Storm + Shiver is redundant), plus it makes soloing a breeze with 2 or 3 sleep enhancements. If you have the slots to spare, go ahead an slot it up with the IO set of your choice.

Finally, all the +recharge can be harsh on your endurance, so I recommend 3-slotting Fitness with Endurance Mod. IOs, and 3-slotting Health with 2 Heal IOs and 1 Numina's Convalescence +Regen +Recovery.


...Sort of got lost typing there, so I apologize for the length. Keep in mind, this is just my way of doing it, one that I have found particularly effective. I offer this as advice rather than a rigid guide. Personally, I hate min/maxing, but for this particular character of mine it was necessary to get him "exactly the way I wanted." Build your character your way in the end. Good luck!

Nothing wrong with playing an S/L capped Blaster in melee range or using a Ranged capped Blaster and jousting in and out of melee combat so please lets not perpetuate the stereotype that Blasters are only equal to Ranged.


This is a sample build of an Ice / Ice / Cold (softcapped to S/L Defense with a decent amount of recharge).

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The issue with the Ice Epic is that the armor is ONLY good for a S/L defense route. If you hover blast then you go for ranged defense, the Ice Armor gives you NONE. In fact, if you are going to hoverblast then a resist armor should be your first priority. Force Mastery is great because it GIVES YOU ANOTHER LOTG 7.5% and still has a resist armor, this can eliminate the need to WASTE a pool on concealment powers that are just lotg mules. With all this said, anytime I build this Ice/Ice Blaster in MIDs my first instinct is to NOT pick Ice Mastery. If you really want to stick with Ice for thematic reasons be my guest, but a S/L defense build is silly on a Blaster that has no important melee powers.

Here's a build to a hoverblasting Ice/Ice/Force Blaster. It gets another great AoE from the mastery: Repulsion Bomb, which also does good mitigation and is a great follow up to Ice Storm due to the knockdown. All three of the regular AoEs are double damage proc'd and Blizzard got the purple set. I would hover close enough to the mob, then BU/AIM -> Ice Storm -> Repulsion Bomb -> Frost Breath -> start focusing down the dangerous single targets in the group. Aid Self is included, a MUST HAVE for ANY Blaster without another means of healing such as "Life Drain" or "Drain Psyche"

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.952
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Winterstorm: Level 50 Magic Blaster
Primary Power Set: Ice Blast
Secondary Power Set: Ice Manipulation
Power Pool: Flight
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Medicine
Ancillary Pool: Force Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Ice Bolt -- Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(7), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(7), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(25), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(29), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(29)
Level 1: Chilblain -- Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(46), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(46), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(50), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(50), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(50)
Level 2: Ice Blast -- Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(33), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(33), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(33), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(34), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(34)
Level 4: Frost Breath -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(37), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(39), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(39), Posi-Dam%(39), ImpSwft-Dam%(46)
Level 6: Aim -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(40)
Level 8: Freeze Ray -- Lock-Acc/Hold(A), Lock-Acc/Rchg(9), Lock-Rchg/Hold(9), Lock-EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(17), Lock-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(19), Lock-%Hold(19)
Level 10: Hover -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), Zephyr-Travel(11), Zephyr-ResKB(11)
Level 12: Ice Storm -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(13), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(13), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(15), Posi-Dam%(17), ImpSwft-Dam%(45)
Level 14: Fly -- Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-ResKB(15)
Level 16: Build Up -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(43)
Level 18: Bitter Ice Blast -- Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(21), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(21), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(23), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(23), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(25)
Level 20: Afterburner -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), Zephyr-Travel(40), Zephyr-ResKB(40)
Level 22: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(37), RechRdx-I(37)
Level 24: Boxing -- Empty(A)
Level 26: Tough -- ImpArm-ResDam(A), ImpArm-ResDam/EndRdx(27), HO:Ribo(27)
Level 28: Shiver -- Acc-I(A)
Level 30: Weave -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def(31), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(31), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(31)
Level 32: Blizzard -- Ragnrk-Dmg(A), Ragnrk-Dmg/Rchg(34), Ragnrk-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(36), Ragnrk-Acc/Rchg(36), Ragnrk-Dmg/EndRdx(36)
Level 35: Personal Force Field -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 38: Aid Other -- Empty(A)
Level 41: Repulsion Bomb -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(42), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(42), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(42), Posi-Dam%(43), ExStrk-Dam%(43)
Level 44: Temp Invulnerability -- ImpArm-ResDam(A), ImpArm-ResDam/EndRdx(45), HO:Ribo(45)
Level 47: Aid Self -- Numna-Heal(A), Numna-Heal/EndRdx(48), Numna-Heal/Rchg(48), Numna-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(48)
Level 49: Force of Nature -- S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(A)
Level 0: Portal Jockey
Level 0: Task Force Commander
Level 0: The Atlas Medallion
Level 0: Freedom Phalanx Reserve
Level 50: Musculature Core Paragon
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Level 2: Swift -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Health -- Mrcl-Rcvry+(A), Numna-Regen/Rcvry+(5)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Stamina -- P'Shift-End%(A), Efficacy-EndMod(3), Efficacy-EndMod/Rchg(3), Efficacy-EndMod/Acc(5)
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Defiance
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 4: Ninja Run

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