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Well like I said up stream. Its not as bad as some folks make out and most of the issues people have are solvable with tools all ready available (not that I don't want Ice to get a needed buff).|
Originally Posted by Tater Todd
-Dmg in Shiver would work nicely. I understand what you are saying Knight but Shiver has a long animation and you have to cast it twice on a mob...and even then they can get off their attacks before the -Recharge really start to shine. It's not a good reliable alpha stopper like Ice slick but even against some foes like Warwolves Ice slick doesn't help with much and Glacier is a bit Risky.
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Slotting range in Flash Freeze can prevent an alpha if you slot enough range that you can cast it from beyond mob perception radius.
Casting Shiver as you close takes a good chunk out of their recharge and stacking the slow from AA on top of it pretty much floors even cons and they start to get hit with the confuse. Dropping Ice Slick at the right time wakes the mobs and spreads the alpha out over a few seconds and spreads it to other mobs in the spawn.
Its not as safe as other primaries but it can be used safely if used wisely.
-Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein.
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I mentally associate Shiver with Earth's Quicksand power. They are very similar overall.
I don't have Shiver on most of my Ice characters. The cast time to effect time is horrendous.
I don't have any issues with ice control. Yes, flash freeze sucks, but I don't use it unless its the last thing left to use, which is never basically. It's not too difficult to farm +4/x8 with ice/ice, given you know how to overcome or redirect the alphas.
I use 2 "control" chains depending on what is on cooldown. The first is: spring attack, power boost (or boost, spring) glacier, ice slick, then AoEs and mopping up the stragglers. The second one is: summon Jack Frost in the group, ice slick, spring attack, AoEs, clean up.
Never do I face an alpha strike, which is crucial for efficient farming. Glacier has no animation, and Jack Frost usually survives the alphas. Ice Assault has zero animations and good damage. Chilling Embrace does what Shiver should do, making mobs so slow and so lacking in attacks that I can stand still and melee the "runners".
I see the problem with shiver and flash freeze, but they aren't even necessary to make ice control beastly. The player makes or breaks the primary, and that goes for every power set.
I don't think we should consider the set from an incarnate point of view...I mean heck incarnate powers can even make an Empathy/Electric Defender look like a boss.
I would be satisfied if the only change made was changing Arctic Air to a guaranteed confuse and removing the fear effect from it. That would give Ice comparable control to the other sets, at least. I'd LIKE to also see it gain a damage component similar in magnitude to Hot Feet and to lose the -recharge slow (to better leverage the confuse effect for damage) too, though.
@Draeth Darkstar
Virtue [Heroes, Roleplay], Freedom [Villains], Exalted [All Sides, Roleplay]
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I24 Proc Chance = (Enhanced Recharge + Activation Time) * (Current PPM * 1.25) / 60*(1 + .75*(.15*Radius - 0.011*Radius*(360-Arc)/30)) Single Target Radius = 0. AoE Non-Cone Arc = 360.
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Member since 2004 and this is your first post! Nice.. and I agree with you. Any primary control can be very good depending on how the user adapts to it. Glacier is actually one of my favorite powers in the entire game and I think it defines ice control. The quickness of the hold, the slow, the FX/animation are all very awesome. It definitely feels like it should! All of the other power minus Flash Freeze are very good. Ice slick, jack frost, and arctic air are definitely unique and very useful.|
Originally Posted by Mindstrike
I don't have any issues with ice control. Yes, flash freeze sucks, but I don't use it unless its the last thing left to use, which is never basically. It's not too difficult to farm +4/x8 with ice/ice, given you know how to overcome or redirect the alphas.
I use 2 "control" chains depending on what is on cooldown. The first is: spring attack, power boost (or boost, spring) glacier, ice slick, then AoEs and mopping up the stragglers. The second one is: summon Jack Frost in the group, ice slick, spring attack, AoEs, clean up. Never do I face an alpha strike, which is crucial for efficient farming. Glacier has no animation, and Jack Frost usually survives the alphas. Ice Assault has zero animations and good damage. Chilling Embrace does what Shiver should do, making mobs so slow and so lacking in attacks that I can stand still and melee the "runners". I see the problem with shiver and flash freeze, but they aren't even necessary to make ice control beastly. The player makes or breaks the primary, and that goes for every power set. |
So all in all Ice Control doesn't really need a revamp, just the one power everyone agrees on in this post: Flash Freeze. At least I would like to see the useless damage removed. It always proc's my reactive interface DoT and wakes the baddies up... so I haven't touched it since.
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You should put a fear enhancement in AA and see what it does.|
Originally Posted by Muon_Neutrino
If I recall correctly, since AA doesn't actually have fear (the cowering) but has afraid (the running away), slotting fear probably doesn't actually do anything. Regardless, even if it did, it might enhance the duration of the 'run away' behavior from 3s to 6s, which really isn't significant, especially since the slow will persist for the first 2.25 seconds of that anyway. I'm fairly sure that being able to slot fear is just an oversight that they never got around to correcting rather than something that's actually intended to do anything functional.
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As I recall, I put fear in AA long ago, and it caused foes to head for the hills. My teammates complained, because it turned orderly battles into chaos and chases.
I have mixed feelings about fixing Flash Freeze. On the one hand, the power is really bad. On the other hand, what makes Fire and Plant (and Illusion) so powerful isn't a wide stable of powers to pick from, but instead typically two or three really really good powers that define the set. Plant and Fire both have a couple of powers that are pretty situational: Smoke, Bonfire, Tree of Life, Spore Burst, etc. They pull ahead mainly because their good powers are sooo good.
Arctic Air and Ice Slick, I believe, have the potential to be a Seeds of Confusion, Creepers, Flashfire, or Hot Feet. At the same time, I don't want Ice to lose its identity as the crazy set that ventures into melee range. I just wish there were more incentive to do it, and less conflict built into the set (which is why I have focused on making Ice Slick's knockdown unresistable for boss level enemies and below).
Edit: Derp reading fail
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I don't think, though, that fixing flash freeze would harm the set's melee character. The thing about sleeps is that (with the partial exception of static field) they don't really provide useful mitigation on their own - what they do well is *set up* other mitigation. And in the case of ice, that other mitigation is, to a large extent, melee based. Even if flash freeze were a functional sleep, after you freeze them from range you've still got to run up close to put AA to work if you intend to actually fight the spawn. I mean, I suppose it's possible that you could take some spawns purely from range with FF + ice slick only, but if it's not tough enough to demand the use of AA you can probably take it purely from range even with the set as it is now.|
Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex
I have mixed feelings about fixing Flash Freeze. On the one hand, the power is really bad. On the other hand, what makes Fire and Plant (and Illusion) so powerful isn't a wide stable of powers to pick from, but instead typically two or three really really good powers that define the set. Plant and Fire both have a couple of powers that are pretty situational: Smoke, Bonfire, Tree of Life, Spore Burst, etc. They pull ahead mainly because their good powers are sooo good.
Arctic Air and Ice Slick, I believe, have the potential to be a Seeds of Confusion, Creepers, Flashfire, or Hot Feet. At the same time, I don't want Ice to lose its identity as the crazy set that ventures into melee range. I just wish there were more incentive to do it, and less conflict built into the set (which is why I have focused on making Ice Slick's knockdown unresistable for boss level enemies and below). |
Heck, I could even see a functional flash freeze as an *incentive* to go into melee, in the sense that the prospect of getting in untouched with AA running might encourage people who don't currently make heavy use of AA to try it out.
@MuonNeutrino
Student, Gamer, Altaholic, and future Astronomer.
This is what it means to be a tank!
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The counter-argument to that is Elec and Dark. What makes those two sets good is the fact they have several layers of control which gel well together to make a very effective Control set. Telling both are fairly low damage sets and both are the most recent additions to the Control sets. Therefore I see Ice occupying the same area, if its tweaked to support that better. I think Flash Freeze, Arctic Air and Ice Patch, with support from Shiver, could serve the same purpose but at the moment they don't quite gel together. |
Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex
I have mixed feelings about fixing Flash Freeze. On the one hand, the power is really bad. On the other hand, what makes Fire and Plant (and Illusion) so powerful isn't a wide stable of powers to pick from, but instead typically two or three really really good powers that define the set. Plant and Fire both have a couple of powers that are pretty situational: Smoke, Bonfire, Tree of Life, Spore Burst, etc. They pull ahead mainly because their good powers are sooo good.
Arctic Air and Ice Slick, I believe, have the potential to be a Seeds of Confusion, Creepers, Flashfire, or Hot Feet. At the same time, I don't want Ice to lose its identity as the crazy set that ventures into melee range. I just wish there were more incentive to do it, and less conflict built into the set (which is why I have focused on making Ice Slick's knockdown unresistable for boss level enemies and below). |
I honestly don't see Ice becoming something like Fire, Plant or Illusion, but rather something closer to Dark and Elec.
Flash Freeze and Shiver should be the sort of "alpha soft tool" which things like Fearsome Stare, Static Field, Synaptic Overload and Jolting Chain are, imo. They should be your alpha moves, designed to let you set up so that you can follow up with Ice Slick and an AA which can be fueled by Domination. That's the reason I like the idea of making Flash Freeze an AOE sleep with no delay or damage and a 45 second recharge and giving FF and Shiver some -damage. Flash Freeze em, Shiver em, then jump in to let Arctic Air do its thing, dropping Ice Patch on top of it to add to the chaos (I'd like to see something added to Ice Patch but the idea of an unresistable knockdown probably won't fly with Arbiter Hawk given his comments about how Flash Arrows unresistable -ToHit seems broken to him).
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Originally Posted by Carnifax_NA
The counter-argument to that is Elec and Dark. What makes those two sets good is the fact they have several layers of control which gel well together to make a very effective Control set. Telling both are fairly low damage sets and both are the most recent additions to the Control sets. Therefore I see Ice occupying the same area, if its tweaked to support that better. I think Flash Freeze, Arctic Air and Ice Patch, with support from Shiver, could serve the same purpose but at the moment they don't quite gel together.
I honestly don't see Ice becoming something like Fire, Plant or Illusion, but rather something closer to Dark and Elec. Flash Freeze and Shiver should be the sort of "alpha soft tool" which things like Fearsome Stare, Static Field, Synaptic Overload and Jolting Chain are, imo. They should be your alpha moves, designed to let you set up so that you can follow up with Ice Slick and an AA which can be fueled by Domination. That's the reason I like the idea of making Flash Freeze an AOE sleep with no delay or damage and a 45 second recharge and giving FF and Shiver some -damage. Flash Freeze em, Shiver em, then jump in to let Arctic Air do its thing, dropping Ice Patch on top of it to add to the chaos (I'd like to see something added to Ice Patch but the idea of an unresistable knockdown probably won't fly with Arbiter Hawk given his comments about how Flash Arrows unresistable -ToHit seems broken to him). |
The problem with this is I already have Ice builds that aim to max out survivability. Unless the tweak to Shiver or Flash Freeze is massive, the powers won't outweigh the much better strategy of building for personal survivalibility. For most of my characters specifically, it means whatever Shiver or Flash Freeze does has to outweigh the benefit of having Aid Self and several armor powers. Meanwhile my Fire and Plant characters can still happily skip several powers, still take the additional survivability powers, and come out on equal footing if not ahead. Having skippable powers is a good thing if the other powers make up for it. In Ice's case I don't see what you could put in Shiver or Flash Freeze that would outweigh Combat Jumping, Aid Self, or Tough/Weave unless we're aiming for a massive departure from current mechanics.
I still really want to see an awesome flash freeze. That power has so much potential as a very quick, reliable aoe sleep. The animation, delay, and damage tick ruin it entirely... but this has been said already.