Next on the List: Ice Control

I know everyone is focused on dark control and dark assault and gravity tweaks, but while we have the devs' focus on control sets and set revamps, I'd like to plant a bug about Ice Control.

It sucks. Please upgrade this schizophrenic nightmare. Ice Slick as the bread and butter power? C'mon now.

Dear Synapse and Powers Crew, fix ice control next please!

The problems:

1) Frostbite and Chilblain cannibalise Ice Slick.
2) Shiver is not a control.
3) Flash Freeze deals damage first and then puts to sleep later.
4) Overall lack of damage.

My solutions:

1) Obviously change Frostbite and Chilblain. Though then the FX for Frostbite and Chilblain don't make complete sense.
2) Add a form of control to Shiver. Possibly a chance to stun.
3) Remove the damage.
4) Add a new mechanic called Cold Snap. Cold Snap would activate when an enemy is affected by Shiver, Arctic Air or Jack Frost's Chilling Embrace and would increase the damage dealt by Block of Ice, Frostbite and Chilblain.

I like the Cold Snap inherent idea. Another one I read in a different post...have SHiver upgrade itself from a slow to a slow + low mag hold, when used over Ice Slick? Lick the cold air freezes or something? Or maybe a stun, so they still flop about.

The cold-snap idea sounds borrowed. It also sounds like a good idea.

(Also, I don't really think that Ice Control sucks. It's just odd. The workhorse control packing boss-possible control is pretty tricky to balance by comparison to other workhorses.)

Heroes, Villains ♦ Reviews ♦ Retrospect

Yes, they at least need to take the -knockback out of the aoe immob.

Ice controls signature "up every fight" control power doesn't need other things in the set f***ing with it.

I have a 50 ice/storm (so sue me--honestly I play dominators over controllers at a ratio of about 10:1) and I have an alternate build without ice slick focused on immobs and containment and tornado and ice storm damage.

The thought of a fire control person without flashfire or a gravity control person without wormhole or a plant control person without seeds of confusion is simply ludicrous. It ought to be similarly ludicrous that an ice control person wouldn't take their "up every fight" control power in ice slick.

This is not currently the case however and I can easily picture ice control people who are relying mainly on arctic air and the immobs and who say screw ice slick.

I care less about flash freeze because all of the old sets have a few duds and you just have to learn to live with them and realize that you get more pool powers. Bonfire anyone (aside from as a kinetic crash mule and an occasional damaging power provided you are willing to spam the immob like there's no tomorrow)? But it is really unforgivable that its main control power doesn't sync up with all of the other major controls in the set. That said, I certainly wouldn't complain if flash freeze became a sleep patch like electric has although that would probably be buffing ice control too much.

I was just going to say make Flash Freeze a patch sleep like electric's but you beat me to it.

If that one change was made, Ice would be twice as good as it is now. Ditch the damage and make it a pulsing sleep. This way it could work with Ice Slick. They'd get slept, then fall down. Wake up. Sleep again. Fall down again.

I'd also like to see Shiver's utility increased. The Cold Snap idea is based on the Impact mechanic, so I could see that working here. Or apply something more than a -rch -spd debuff. Maybe -end, -rec, -reg or some combination. The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of shiver being a cone end drain power. The air is so cold you have your energy drained away. The size of the cone could be reduced to compensate if that's too OP.

I'd like Ice Slick to cause some minor smashing dmg to falling targets to replace the loss of FF's damage. Would give is some targeted AoE slotted options as well.

Such changes would put Ice Control on equal footing with the other control sets. Why should earth, mind, plant and elec get all the fun? Ice needs love. Gravity needs love. And even fire could use some upward tweaking.

Remember that control sets took some major hits back around I5 when the AoEs were hammered with targets caps and increased recharge penalties. Control needs to regain some of that lost power by increasing the utility of the various powers and allowing them to synergize better within a set.

A problem with Ice Control is that it's really light on control - it has immob, hold, KD, confuse and sleep. The only power that you can feasibly add a form of control to is Shiver, and a chance to stun for a few seconds would be cool. Think of it like how people have to rub themselves to try to get warmer. If you make it a pseudo pet, Ice Control is now able to work completely in melee and only misses out on Arctic Air from range; but as they both have a chance of controlling, it means you could skip one if you really wanted to. For the animation, I'd change it to look like Shadow Field but a sphere of cold instead.

So with a pseudo pet Shiver, Arctic Air and Ice Slick you'll be causing a chance for three different controls to happen at the same time. With the Cold Snap idea, using Frostbite would deal extra damage whilst turning the stun into a pseudo hold and without hampering the KD. That leaves Flash Freeze as an opener to stop Alphas along with Ice Slick from around corners.

Flash Freeze was dealt with in my first post.

That damage definitely needs to come out of Flash Freeze. Before it simply made the power clunky. With Interface powers, it utterly breaks its intended purpose.

I think you need to take another look at what ice control does wrong:

A sleep that's broken by the kd of ice slick.
A sleep that aggros because it causes damage.
A patch kd that is prevented by the immob -kb.
A patch kd that doesn't stop fliers and jumpers.
A patch kd that pulses its kd so slowly it doesn't stop sprinting mobs from running right over it.
A cone sleep that begs 'shoot me' as soon as you use it and does nothing to blunt the return alpha.
A PB AoE soft control that's an end hog, doesn't confuse all that much, slows the confused targets so they attack each other maybe once, and requires you to be in 'punch me in the face range'.
A pet that has a glass jaw.
A PB AoE hold on an eternally long recharge.
An entire set that relies on slows to get the job done, guaranteeing at least one alpha at full strength.

I'm not saying that Ice isn't low on control nor am I saying that it doesn't need a buff. What I am saying is that it is not as dire as you are making it sound.

Let's make a bit more accurate comparisons....

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Originally Posted by DarkCurrent I think you need to take another look at what ice control does wrong: A sleep that's broken by the kd of ice slick.

And this differs from Earthquake breaking salt crystals in what way?

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A sleep that aggros because it causes damage.

Sirens Song does the same thing but has a 20 foot shorter cone. Slotting range in Flash Freeze greatly alleviates the problem. You can't slot enough range in Sirens to help it.

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A patch kd that is prevented by the immob -kb.

And this differs from Earthquake and Stone Cages in what way?

I'll also note that both Earthquake and Ice Slick can be cast from around a corner and a single mob can be targeted with Stonecages/Frostbite and 12 seconds later the whole spawn is flopping yet immobilized.

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A patch kd that doesn't stop fliers and jumpers.

Neither does Earthquake.

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A patch kd that pulses its kd so slowly it doesn't stop sprinting mobs from running right over it.

And this differs from Earthquake in what way? Earthquake has a higher KB mag (.67 as opposed to Ice Slick's .5) but a lower chance to cause KB (7% as opposed to Ice Slick's 8%)

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A cone sleep that begs 'shoot me' as soon as you use it and does nothing to blunt the return alpha.

Yeah, you mentioned that all ready. You can fix a lot of the problem by slotting up some range. Earth's sleep is PBAoE. You're melee/close range when you use it.

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A PB AoE soft control that's an end hog, doesn't confuse all that much, slows the confused targets so they attack each other maybe once, and requires you to be in 'punch me in the face range'.

It costs the same amount of endurance as Hot Feet and provides a lot more mitigation. Hot Feet ticks damage and slows mob run speed (it slows mob run speed more than Artic Air which is kinda of a HUNH?!?!?! thing admittedly).

Arctic Air causes afraid effects, drastically reduces mob recharge rates, and can confuse the mobs so they do full damage attacks to each other. Arctic Air has a 5' larger radius so you are lots more likely to get "punched in the face" using Hot Feet than Artic Air. Arctic Air also has -stealth in it so that those annoying critters that disappear from view like CoT Ghosts and Tsoo Ancestor Spirits can still be targeted and hit by you.

IF you ED cap the confuse slotting it pulses every 2 seconds and has a 30% chance of applying a 5.8 second (7.5 for controllers) confuse. I don't call that "doesn't confuse much". It sounds like it confuses quite a lot. The Dom version also allows the fear component to be enhanced. You can Frankenslot Cheap IOs to maximize all the mitigation components and still have excellent accuracy enhancement and endurance reduction.

Arctic Air is VERY under appreciated for the amount of mitigation it does provide. Most people's problem with it is that it doesn't do much damage. I just see any damage that confused foes do to each other as a bonus.

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A pet that has a glass jaw.

Jack's getting buffed.

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A PB AoE hold on an eternally long recharge.

No argument here. This is what I would call the bane of the set. It's worse for Doms than controllers with the lower base duration though.

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An entire set that relies on slows to get the job done, guaranteeing at least one alpha at full strength.

Slows are one of the most powerful soft controls in the game. Capped -rech can reduce incoming damage over unit time by 75%. That's almost identical to having 75% damage resistance, it adds together with any defense and resistance that you do have to provide even more mitigation, and it slows damage down enough that any regen you have works even better. Not only that but it applies to you, your entire team and Jack. Wanna know what's even better? There's enough -rech in Ice/ to -rech cap +4 mobs.

Smart play gives you lots of ways to avoid an Alpha Strike. The problem with most players is they are too impatient to let that mitigation take hold before they start attacking.

My Ice/Rad controller has pathetic damage and has soloed +0/x8 spawns without taking a point of damage or having to use Radiant Aura.

I don't get the hate for Ice Control. It's not weak. It just requires a different (melee centric) play style.

1) Remove the damage from Flash Freeze, up the animation

2) Give Shiver a new mechanic "power loss" Every power the mob has suddenly starts recharging, as if it has been used. This would shut down the Alpha, and coupled with the -RECH, it will take a while before they do anything. ("Power Loss" should not work in PVP I'd assume, AND it should grant an auto power making them immune to another stack of Shiver so that mobs don't get locked out of their powers.

I have to agree with Milady's Knight on this one. I have three Ice Control toons.. Two controllers and one dominator and they are some of the more powerful more annoying for mobs toons that I own.

My Ice/Thorn Dominator is a beast and I made one after seeing someone destroy an ITF with one. AA is extremely powerful. I usually open with Ice Slick, then run in with AA on.. between the falling.. confuse.. fear and slow.. I can take my time taking foes apart..

The controllers are Ice Storm and Ice/Cold and are some of the more effective controllers I possess...

My complaint has always been that Jack Frost sucks.. and he is getting fixed.. I didnt take him on the Dominator because I didnt want him creating aggro I didnt want..

Lumping in your secondary makes a huge difference. Saying an ice/rad or ice/storm or ice/cold are great doesn't convince me it's due to ice control. Those secondaries are top debuff and controlling sets.

I'm looking at ice and only ice. The powers in the set contradict each other. Slows are great 'soft' control, but do nothing to stop alphas and only impact followup attacks. That's not so good when you're dead or mezzed from the incoming volley.

What is ice control's #1 anti-alpha power? Ice Slick. And you have to use that from around a corner to avoid getting shot. Then there's flash freeze, which has short range and causes damage and gets you shot in the face. Shiver? Sure. They'll be nice and slow. Right after they shoot you in the face. You could run in and hit Glacier. Hopefully they don't see you coming and shoot you in the face.

I've played ice control to 50 on 2 different doms. The primary tactic is hide around a corner. Drop ice slick from cover. Then charge in with AA running and attack with AoEs. But don't use the immob because the mobs will stop falling. Forget about shiver because you'll miss everyone with that cone. Sleep will get broken with the knockdown. Knockback tosses them off of slick.

Just because it can be made to work or combined with such and such secondary doesn't make it a good control set. And the fact you can comfortably skip half the power set and not even miss it tells you all about its weakness. Chilblain, Flash Freeze, Shiver, and the AoE imob are all pointless. That leaves Ice Slick, BoI, Glacier, AA, and Jack. And if you look at slick's weaknesses, glacier's long recharge, AA's end costs, and Jack getting rocked every fight there's plenty of room for improvement.

I'm not saying the set should be gutted. But it should be made better. The tech and the mechanics are now in game to buff ice control to put it on par with the top control sets.

Comparisons to Earth are futile because it gets access to a stun, the best AoE hold in the game, a very resistant pet and a valuable debuff from Earthquake.

Ice Control is a one trick pony. Earth Control has so many options to take.

Ice Control does have some issues. It is still my favorite Control set, and I'd love to see some tweaks to it. What I don't want to see is a ground-up rewrite that tries to turn into Plant or Fire clone. Ice has no great alpha breaker and I'm fine with that. However some of the powers could use some rebalancing.

Here are the things I'd like to be considered in any revamps:


Dominator penalty on Arctic Air Confusion duration. Arctic Air on Dominators takes a Confusion duration penalty relative to Controllers. On most powers, this value either can be increased in Domination mode, or is the same for both ATs. On Dominators, they take only the penalty, and do not receive extra benefit.

Recommendation: Set Dominator and Controller AA Confusion duration to the same value, or add some form of Domination mode to AA.


Controller Containment from Frostbite conflicts with Ice Slick. At the time Ice Control was created, Containment did not exist. It was never a balance consideration to have the conflict between cages/knockdown.

Recommendation: Change Ice Slick's knockdown to a granted proc power that causes enemies to knock themselves down if the source of their knock protection is anyone but themselves (e.g. immobilizes, etc). You can optionally do this for all powers that cause knockdown; I would use great care before putting it in Sleet or Freezing Rain though as those powers are already extremely powerful.


Ice Control is too reliant on avoiding mezz. By far my biggest issue with Ice is the curve between having and not having mezz protection. This is, IMO, the big difference in the set between people who say its too weak and people who say it's okay. Enemies with mezz are a nightmare for Ice Controllers who haven't built for mezz protection--imagine what would happen if Earth or Fire's powers just stopped working every time the caster was mezzed, then realize by design Ice is constantly mixing it up with enemies who are given short breaks where they can attack you.

Recommendation: To fix this, I think Jack Frost should be improved so that he has some limited support powers. I'll call the power "Cold Comfort": mag 3 protection to Hold, Stun, and Sleep. Jack will upkeep this power on the owner only. These specific mezzes are selected in order to limit (but not totally prevent, as the protection is only Mag 3) detoggling. No further improvements to Jack would be needed if this change were made, as it would greatly help to balance out the set and a fairly unimpressive pet.

Recommendation 2: If unwilling to do the above, at least drop the Recharge on AA from 15 seconds to 5 and reduce the animation time so that it can be reasonably replaced after a detoggle. Note, however, that Ice will still be the only set that virtually requires outside mezz protection to function.


Arctic Air's endurance cost. It's too high for a power that does no direct damage in a set that also has very poor damage. Cut it in half.


Arctic Air's 1 second delay on Confusion activation. Arctic Air's Confucsion has a 1 second delay on it.

Recommendation: Seems to be there just to make you take it in the face. Remove completely. If the player is that close to the enemy they shouldn't need additional penalty.


Flash Freeze is awful. I have no specific ideas here. The power is just loaded with reasons to not use it, including the damage portion that allows enemies to shoot you before the power even works, and the fact that enemies must be on the ground. However, what I really don't want is a generic Flashfire or Stalagmites clone here. Something in the vein of Electric Control seems appropriate, although I don't want to just totally gank Electric's power either. Making it non-notify, a la Mass Hypnosis, but with twice the recharge would be fine (it is indeed possible to have non-notify powers that do small amounts of damage, e.g. World of Confusion). You could also do something interesting with it, like have it sleep the enemies, but also return endurance/to-hit/health/defense to the caster or team. Or you could even have it do something crazy, like cause Jack to absorb it's power and receive some very powerful but temporary controls of his own. Finally, you could improve it by making it similar to Electric Control's sleep but without the "patch" part: 5 ticks of Sleep on the enemy, once every 3 seconds for 12 seconds.


Shiver's -Recharge duration.I don't want Shiver turning into a ranged mezz. It's a power on par with something like Quicksand and I think that's fine. But the power should really last 30 or even 45 seconds, not 18 seconds. I'm don't even bother casting it in its current form, it doesn't last long enough to stick for the amount of animation time involved. With auto-hit powers like Time's Distortion Field lasting 45 seconds I feel Shiver should easily qualify for that duration as well.

I'm not really trying to be the devil's advocate here but we are overlooking some basic things that the devs figure into the power sets.

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Originally Posted by Muon_Neutrino Slotting range into a power should be for the purpose of letting you use it from farther away. It shouldn't be *required* to make the power functional at all. What if KO blow required that you blow two slots on taunt enhancers to unlock the ability for it to do damage? That'd be just as silly. There is also no earthly reason why flash freeze needs to be so unnecessarily crippled. What the heck is the *point* of the pathetic tick of damage anyway, unless you're *trying* to make the power useless? Sure, if the devs wanted to add an extra 20 feet of range, I wouldn't complain. It would give a bit of extra breathing room to avoid accidentally aggroing the spawn before casting the control. But fix the actual problem with the power, too.

It's not required to make the power functional. It works perfectly well on a team where you have an alpha absorber like a tank or a brute. If you want it to work perfectly well solo adding a couple range enhancers works quite well. It solves the Alpha problem solo AND you get to use it from farther away ALL the time. That sounds like problem solved and BONUS! to me. One of the most amusing teams I was ever on I played a low level Ice/Ice Dom and was with 3 Bots MMs. All I had to do was drop Ice slick (which was slotted 2 rech 2 range) and let the Bots shoot stuff. I don't think we lost a single Bot or took a point of damage and we spent most of the time chatting about how amusing it was.

I've played blasters for a looong time. I learned quite awhile ago just how valuable a little extra range is. Why do you think none of the top of the line ranged single target damage IO sets have range enhancements in them? The devs know just how vaulable a little extra range is too.

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First, while you're talking about capped -rech being equivalent to 75% mitigation for everyone, keep in mind that a standard hard mez is *95%* (or 100% if it doesn't require a hit check) mitigation for everyone, as long as it lasts (and that's more than long enough to permanently remove quite a few mobs from the equation before it runs out). Second, slows are only 75% mitigation over the long term, where all the powers are being used as soon as they recharge. For any given power a mob has, slows provide absolutely *no* mitigation until you reach the point where that power would normally have recharged for use again. Hard controls start providing *all* of their mitigation right away.

A few flaws here. MOST AoE hard controls have short durations, long recharge, and lower than standard accuracy. If you are going to use them at all its 6 slots worth or you are wasting your time. With slows you can get lots of mitigation out of 3 or 4 slots. Ice control is probably one of the easiest control sets on your slot budget. That's what allows me to use a couple extra slots for range in Ice Slick and Flash Freeze

When you put it like that it makes it look bad. The problem is that you haven't added in all the other effects you get when you are using Ice control to cap -rech (you can't avoid them they are built in) you get that confusion that pulses and leaves things confused "most" of the time. You get the cower in fear when it ticks a large amount of the time, and it's all layered inside capped -rech and capped -run speed.

Spreading the Alpha out with a KD patch and slows is valuable. I admit its not near perfect mitigation like a hard control or soft capped defenses but spreading the Alpha out gives your regen a chance to work, gives you a chance to pop an inspiration with out getting overwhelmed with incoming damage, or a chance to activate a self heal and the opportunity for that self heal to recharge and be ready for use again before its needed.

Last, but not least, hard controls DON'T lock every thing down immediately. I frequently take some alpha damage from opening with Cinders, Flash Fires, Char, etc. The thing with Stalagmites and Flash Fires is that they have a 70' range and a 25' radius. That means that the lead mob is generally in perception range but the rest of the spawn isn't. The lead mob gets a chance to retaliate and even if you notify with a miss the rest of the spawn doesn't because they don't chain aggro because you are out of perception range..

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For fights that last long enough that a mob would normally cycle attacks many times, and which would outlast a traditional control set's ability to provide hard control, slows will start to catch up in effectiveness to actual controls, but you still have to keep their limitations in mind as well as their advantages.

You mean like the fights you have in the early levels as a solo dom when you don't have a lot of AoE and it isn't up as often? That would be when it shines. Ice, Plant, and Elec are 3 primaries where I can turn up the spawn size early when I'm still slot poor and survive for a long long time.

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What sorts of things? The ones I see are ice slick from behind cover (requires cooperative terrain), summon jack into the spawn (highly unsustainable), stealth in for glacier (which requires support from outside the power set), or waste a bunch of slots in flash freeze to turn it from 'totally unreliable' to 'only somewhat unreliable' (which is an aberrant slotting that shouldn't be required to make the power functional). All of those are much more over-complicated, clunky, and failure prone than the simple 'cast an AoE control' that most sets can do.

Cooperative terrain is available in about 90% of the places you run into spawns on indoor maps. It is alot more common than you are making it sound and even when it is out of range a strategically placed Ice slick and a single pulling attack gives it right back to you. In any case all those things plus... an Alpha absorbing teammate like a brute or tank, 2 range enhancers in Ice Slick, 2 range enhancers in Flash Freeze.

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Why is ice the *only* set which is not allowed to have the ability to break an alpha with a standard control power? Especially with the current changes to grav on test, *every single other control set* has at least one straightforward, easy to use way to control mobs without taking an alpha. Why is ice the only set which is required to go to such elaborate lengths to perform such a basic task? A melee based control set is fine, and actually quite interesting, but only if it can actually still do its job.

It isn't. It's the only set that only has 1 standard control power in it. A problem that I don't think the devs will remedy by morphing the other powers in the set into a standard control. Ice takes some thought and different tactics to use well but it has a lot of mitigation potential. I kind of like to be able to use something that is different but still powerful. I really like it as a change from the "click - hurry we have 20 seconds to kill all these stone statues" approach that most of the other control sets bring to the game.

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Originally Posted by DarkCurrent Lumping in your secondary makes a huge difference. Saying an ice/rad or ice/storm or ice/cold are great doesn't convince me it's due to ice control. Those secondaries are top debuff and controlling sets.

How about if I tell you that the only thing I was using from Rad was AM and Choking Cloud? It took me about 7 minutes to solo that spawn. My damage was all from Block of Ice (slotted for hold not damage), Frostbite (slotted for immob [grav anchor] not damage and no damage procs), and Jack, who lived the whole 7 minutes and still had 2/3rds of his health left. I only solo'ed it because I was waiting for my wife to get back from taking the dog out and was curious to see if I could. I would have run out of endurance long before the spawn was dead if I had run the other rad toggles.

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I'm looking at ice and only ice. The powers in the set contradict each other. Slows are great 'soft' control, but do nothing to stop alphas and only impact followup attacks. That's not so good when you're dead or mezzed from the incoming volley.

Lots of sets have powers that contradict each other or are redundant. Earthquake and Stone Cages, Salt Crystals and Earthquake, Fire Cages and Hot Feet, Bonfire and Fire Cages, Dimension Shift and any damage power, Mass Hypnosis and Terrify, Spore Burst and Roots, Spore Burst and Carrion Creepers. That's every control set currently available to Doms and they all have powers that contradict each other.

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What is ice control's #1 anti-alpha power? Ice Slick. And you have to use that from around a corner to avoid getting shot. Then there's flash freeze, which has short range and causes damage and gets you shot in the face. Shiver? Sure. They'll be nice and slow. Right after they shoot you in the face. You could run in and hit Glacier. Hopefully they don't see you coming and shoot you in the face.

I frequently open with Flash Freeze, then move into melee range so that AA takes hold, and then drop Ice slick where I'm standing. The mobs that start flopping are locked out of animating powers, those that aren't flopping yet are still asleep, and if the others stop flopping for a couple of seconds they are at the -rech cap, confused, or afraid.

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I've played ice control to 50 on 2 different doms. The primary tactic is hide around a corner. Drop ice slick from cover. Then charge in with AA running and attack with AoEs. But don't use the immob because the mobs will stop falling. Forget about shiver because you'll miss everyone with that cone. Sleep will get broken with the knockdown. Knockback tosses them off of slick.

I've played it to 50 on 3 different controllers and 2 different doms and I'm working on a 3rd Ice Dom. I don't have the trouble that you seem to have, but then I slot extra range in Flash Freeze and Ice Slick. Also why so impatient? Even without Domination up or using Hasten you can get Block of Ice recharging in 4 seconds and a duration of 35 seconds just frankenslotting cheap hold sets. I always lock down the most serious threats before I start flinging my AoEs.

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Just because it can be made to work or combined with such and such secondary doesn't make it a good control set. And the fact you can comfortably skip half the power set and not even miss it tells you all about its weakness. Chilblain, Flash Freeze, Shiver, and the AoE imob are all pointless. That leaves Ice Slick, BoI, Glacier, AA, and Jack. And if you look at slick's weaknesses, glacier's long recharge, AA's end costs, and Jack getting rocked every fight there's plenty of room for improvement.

Now that makes no sense to me. Comfortably skip sounds like its overpowered and you can get away with only half the stuff. Turning around and saying that its weak after you skipped half the stuff is kind of a head scratching 'duh' moment for me. My doms use everything from the primary but Chilblain and Jack. I don't need the single target damage from Chilblain with an assault secondary and I don't like the unplanned aggro that Jack can draw. If I were planning on building an Ice troller to solo I'd be taking every thing from the primary.

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I'm not saying the set should be gutted. But it should be made better. The tech and the mechanics are now in game to buff ice control to put it on par with the top control sets.

It sounds more like you are saying you don't like it so it should be made different (ie: make it like all the other control sets..... except Illusion [which doms don't currently have access to] and Grav).


I'm starting to think that most of you don't like Ice control because it's not a "click one button and rush in with AoEs blazing", easy mode, power set.

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Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex Dominator penalty on Arctic Air Confusion duration. Arctic Air on Dominators takes a Confusion duration penalty relative to Controllers. On most powers, this value either can be increased in Domination mode, or is the same for both ATs. On Dominators, they take only the penalty, and do not receive extra benefit. Recommendation: Set Dominator and Controller AA Confusion duration to the same value, or add some form of Domination mode to AA.

Wish granted. The controller version has a 50% chance of a mag 3 fear that lasts for 3.75 seconds but is unenhanceable. The Dom version has a 50% chance of a mag 3 fear that lasts for 3 seconds but is enhanceable. enhancing to the ED cap gives you a 50% chance of a mag 3 fear that lasts for 5.8 seconds. Since the power pulses once every 2 seconds most targets will be affected by fear a large majority of the time.

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Ice Control is too reliant on avoiding mezz. By far my biggest issue with Ice is the curve between having and not having mezz protection. This is, IMO, the big difference in the set between people who say its too weak and people who say it's okay. Enemies with mezz are a nightmare for Ice Controllers who haven't built for mezz protection--imagine what would happen if Earth or Fire's powers just stopped working every time the caster was mezzed, then realize by design Ice is constantly mixing it up with enemies who are given short breaks where they can attack you.

True but controllers can mitigate this by paring with Forcefields or Sonic Resonance. Dominators mitigate this with Domination which can be made permanent.

My only wish is that Glacier worked the way the power description says: you need to be near the ground, not on it...

I really like ice control. I love ice slick. But it is broken frequently by immob's that have -kb.

Removing the -kb in the ice control immobs would be nice. Other controllers/doms would still mess it up, but at least you could take and use your own powers without breaking it.

removing the damage from flash freeze and making it work instantly would be good. I don't take the power but would if it helped solo safely

Shiver: I don't have a problem with shiver but it is also kind of redundant with arctic air. What about giving it an insane -rech like -1000% but making it last only a very short time like 5 seconds. That would basically prevent the enemies from acting for that brief time (at least I think it would).

arctic air - nice power but the END cost is insane. If I am using it, I can barely use any other powers.