yoshidon

Nice reply. Clever. 🙂 Hopefully weaving the connection to the lost and rikti was intentional and not me reading too much into it but I smiled when I saw that and seemed too well crafted.

Ice / Atomic go well together. You very quickly have two quick cast single target ranged holds (1 in primary,1 in secondary) for controlling bosses and good damage output overall - I have mixed feeling about Bitter Freeze Ray due to the animation time - sometimes I'll open with it solo. I slot my primary holds for damage and secondary as normal holds. They are good for a blastroller or general blasting/blapping. I wanted a blastroller so I have 4 ranged ST holds and an aoe hold between primary, secondary and ancillary abilities - bosses and eb's without ptod get locked down. Your sustain has regen, status resists and a recharge buff, it's great. My highest character is ice atomic (vetlev 53ish). It's a bit lacking in aoe but otherwise tears things up (blizzard and judgement help the aoe issues). If you play to incarnate and like the control and debuff aspects I'd recommend trying for your alpha T4, Intuition Radial Paragon which really meshes well with almost all your powers in primary and secondary and still has a damage boost. ( For all powers: Increases Hold Duration effects, Defense and ToHit DeBuff effects, Slow effects and Damage by 33%, and Range by 20%. )

Both times so far it has been on Nemesis missions for Maxwell Christopher. The first was a hunt in the Meteorologist badge quest line. I figured I'd use a tip mission to get the necessary arrests to simplify things. Once I achieved the number by taking out Nemesis mobs in the Tip mission, it moved on to the next step but did not give me a location for the next mission (no zone or target location for the door). I used the autocomplete to get past that thinking it was a glitch. In the Nemesis Rex line (that starts with the "Stop the battle between Nemesis Army factions and make sure no innocents get hurt mission"), I got another hunt as the next mission so I figured I'd try again. Same result, once I reached the number of targets in the hunt, it gave me the clue and moved it to the next task but no location for the mission. Both times double checked after leaving mission and logging out and back in but no change in mission status (no target location). I tried to search around to see if this is a known issue and didn't see anything.

Ice / Atomic if you like control options. You have 2 ranged ST Holds in your primary, 1 ranged ST hold in your secondary (available early so easy to get that double stack for bosses), a pbaoe hold in your secondary, you can get another ranged ST hold in your epic pool. The sustain power for Atomic has a 20% recharge bonus along with the regen / end buff / status resist. The melee attacks you do get have some good oomph to them if you don't mind mixing it up (which is easy when you're beating on a frozen statue). The downside is you don't have as much aoe damage as some other sets.

I'm not opposed at all to the changes proposed as I think tanks could use some sort of buff to help their value. But thinking of this in a totally different direction I had an idea. The issue seems to be giving the tank more offensive capabilities and making taunt better. Not having a firm grasp on all the number crunching would it be possible / useful to have a system where opponents take damage for attacking the tank. Something like taunted enemies that attack the tank (hit or miss to balance def/res tanks) take 10% of the base damage of their attack to themselves - no secondary effects. So an enemy would normally hit the player for a base of 300 points (before any resists would be calculated) would do 30 points to themselves when they attack the tank while taunted. This ups the damage of tanks solo or in groups and adds value to the taunt mechanic. There would need to be some limits in place so a purple enemy can't kill itself on a lower level tank that can aggro it and maybe escape getting squashed with lots of def. You think about in comics and movies where a villain will hurt themselves while trying to punch a super tough hero, bullets ricocheting off into someone else or hitting the wrong target while swinging at a speedy target that dodges.

I have an ice/atomic blaster that I've been leveling up and it's been very safe. It has tons of control (I run a bunch of controller alts too). Two ranged ST holds really early (1 in primary, 1 in secondary) for relatively safe solo hunting from the get go. You get another ranged ST hold in your primary later (but with slow animation so mostly an opener but it hits pretty hard). Then you get a nice pbaoe hold in your secondary at 35. You can get a 4th ranged ST hold in some of the ancillary sets. I'm level 39 with this one and it's my highest level character playing through the content so I don't have a bunch of sets slotted (solo, teams and TFs though and feel productive). Not as AoE heavy as some sets but it's forgiving and it allows you to mez many targets before they can mez you (and lock down troublesome things like paragon protectors before they hit their T9 buff). The atomic ST melee attacks hit pretty hard too - especially against frozen statues. The sustain power has nice regen, end recovery and recharge boost effect. One thing I'd say is don't over slot your primary blast holds for the hold effect - they have nice damage - one hold IO is enough to keep things held until defeated or stacked for easy control of a boss - pump up the damage. The holds in the secondary I treat more like controller holds for slotting or maybe slot for procs later. Can't say how it will stand up to end game / post 50 content but it's been a fun build so far.