Confusing Mitigation Math

It is well known that I suck at math. I am seeking help, and also posing a puzzle of sorts in hopes the Arcanavilles of the community can help solve it. I may be being too nitpicky but I dislike not being able to figure stuff out.

My "main" incarnate character these days is an Ice Control/Fire Assault/Fire Blast Dominator. I have taken the Cognitive Interface, and slotted it to Tier 4. This interface provides a 20% chance to proc Confusion per shot, lasting 4 seconds.

Here is the problem: Ice Control's Frostbite power is a possible delivery mechanism for both the Confusion proc and base -20% Recharge. However, casting Frostbite cancels the knockdown of Ice Slick. Ice Slick has an 8% chance to knockdown every 0.2 seconds. In both cases I would be standing on or near enemies with Arctic Air running. To make things more complicated, I also have the Contagious Confusion proc slotted in AA.

The question is: When dealing with incarnate enemies as a 50+3, in general, is it better mitigation strategy to spam Frostbite for the confusion and recharge flooring, or to rely on Ice Slick for the knockdown? Keep in mind that since spamming Frostbite means additional AoE damage, if the two are close, then Frostbite is the "better" method. I also do not have Shiver and we can safely assume Jack, in his worthlessness, is dead.

Here are the base stats on the powers involved:
- Frostbite: Cast: 2.02 seconds, Recharge: -20%, Confuse: Mag 3, 4 sec, 20% chance

- Arctic Air: No cast time, Recharge: -50%, Confuse: Mag 3, 6 sec, 30% chance/sec; + Contagious Confusion (33% chance/10 sec)

- Ice Slick: Cast: 3 seconds (according to Mids, but feels faster..?), Knockdown: 8% chance/sec

- Possible other AoE powers to get confusion procs from: Fireball (1 sec cast, 9 sec recharge), Rain of Fire (21 sec recharge, 2 chances to proc)


I'm open to the possibility that a combo might yield in the best results: open with Ice Slick, wait for enemies to fall, then start spamming Frostbite. Note I am also assuming I receive no interference from teammates; faced with a Plant or Fire Controller/Dom, I'd probably spam the immob just because my KD would be cancelled anyway.

I appreciate any feedback I receive!

I'm wondering what exactly you're trying to do. It seems fairly clear to me that you're not specifically talking about soloing spawns during the collection phase on a lambda, for example. I am guessing that your typical strategy is to be the first one to hit a spawn with the expectation that your teammates are a few seconds behind you?

Without doing actual math, as you specifically requested, it seems to me that leading with ice slick and moving into aoe damage is going to be the best option. Ice slick ticks really fast. Frostbite is, heh heh!, glacially slow compared to the other aoe that you're throwing around. Most of all, though, if you start with ice slick, fire ball, and rain of fire, you're getting all the benefit of the knockdown as well as the rapid proc chances. At that point you can work frostbite into the rotation and the chance that your playmates will already be controlled in some way is much greater. Frostbite can miss, as you well know. If that occurs when you're leading off with it you've basically been caught with your pants down. Ice slick's presence means that even once you do transition to the immobilization, a miss isn't a big deal.

The one worry I have is that seers do not suffer from the full effects of knockdown, and obviously neither do war walkers and such. Still, I can't imagine that relying on confuse alone is going to be better than confuse plus knockdown plus even more confuse a few seconds later.

Very good points, PR. I am so familiar with the character that I forgot to explain a few things.

One thing I've found is that against very difficult enemies, I need to immobilize them sometime early during the fight, or they will run up and melee me to death. No amount of slowing them seems to prevent this. So, we should make the assumption that at some point I am casting the immobilize at least once. It's currently slotted so it lasts a little over a minute. Often what will happen is I will leap in, Glacier the group, immediately follow with one cast of Frostbite, then Fireball, Rain of Fire, Ice Slick underneath them so they fall just as the -kb wears off (but they still can't move).

However, when Glacier is down its a bit trickier. I often open with Ice Slick, jump in with AA, while casting a Hold at the hardest boss mid-jump. Its what to do after that that has me unsure. One option is to just let stuff flop. The other is, after Fireball and Rain of Fire, to switch to immobilizes for the confusion. AA is pretty good mitigation but it has holes. And AA by itself doesn't floor -Recharge, although AA + a few Frostbites will. The way -recharge works, the closer you get to the cap, the more it means. So the difference is pretty extreme.

It's possible that this question is partially unanswerable, or at least an "it depends," because the nature of AA means I sometimes get driven back or can't cover a whole group. That's when things can get very dangerous. A loose Victoria running around means probable death; if I don't hold or confuse her before she phases, I have to run or I will die for sure. I've found I can hold out a little longer if she falls on Ice Slick, but eventually she regains her footing and the inevitable happens.

To maybe simplify it some, part of the question arose for me because I note that most other control primaries can and would spam their immobilizes most of the time. Ice Control (and to a lesser extent Earth) is in a weird position because doing that can cancel out your other controls. What I'm wondering about is at what point I cross a threshold where spamming the cages is a better idea than relying on the slick.

(Of course, an even better thing would be for Ice Slick to be able to knockdown immobilized enemies in the first place, but that's a design issue I can't fix. )

If you ask me, go play Lambda, solo the warehouse and see which build uses more insps and/or dies more often; that'll give you an answer grounded in fact, not forum theorycrafting.