build ideas: ice armor/stone melee

[frobdicator]

Anybody happen to have a good build handy for Ice Armor/Stone Melee?

[CaptainLupis]

Can't help with a build, I rarely pre make builds, I tend to play through to 50, to see which powers I like and use, then create a build to get the best out of that.

 

I just happened to make a Ice/Stone tank yesterday and have duoed it with a sentinel to level 27, so I would also be interested to see what others have come up with.

 

I am really liking Fault with the FF +rech IO and an Explosive Strike damage proc in it, when I can spare another couple of slots I will proc it out more, I think, as it seems to  work well with them.

[Chalkarts]

I no longer have the build but I had one of those back in Live and LOVED it.

[KC4800]

I am working on Ice/Stone on Everlasting. Soloed him to 24 in about 3 days. Icicles baby. Slot that puppy up!

[Swoo]

On 5/1/2020 at 9:26 PM, frobdicator said:

Anybody happen to have a good build handy for Ice Armor/Stone Melee?

I'd like to see it too 🙂

[Call Me Awesome]

I've never played that combination, but I have played both sets.  For Ice Armor you'll want everything, Permafrost is useful but it's lower priority, get it when you have a free slot with nothing more useful available.  I think my Ice tank took it as a level 49 power.  For Stone Melee you'll want Heavy Mallet, Taunt, Fault, Tremor and Seismic Smash, pretty much as they come available.

 

For your build goals your first priority is getting your defenses to the 45% soft cap, then work on your resistances with S/L/E having priority, unfortunately your specialty of Cold resistance isn't overly useful since that's the rarest type of damage in the game.  After that work on things like recharge, recovery, regeneration and whatnot.  I recommend Tough/Weave from Fighting and Combat Jumping is a useful pick both as a source of a small amount of defense and a useful IO mule; I usually toss the Kismet +accuracy in there.

 

Obviously you'll want the two 3% defense unique IO's and the 6% resistance unique.  The tanker ATO's are highly useful, albeit a bit pricey.  I do recommend trying to get them as the bonuses are really nice.  The rest of the build is up to you, there's arguments to be made for several of the defense sets.  Also Fault is an opportunity to slot multiple damage procs that should fire off nearly every time, I think CMA slotted 4 Stupefy and a couple damage procs in it.

 

You'll find getting and holding aggro easier than with any other tank you've played thanks to Ice's fast tic aura of Chilling Embrace backed up by the damage aura of Icicles.  Thanks to this you'll likely want to get your defenses in order ASAP... always remember the old adage about dead tanks holding no aggro.  In the early going Hoarfrost will be a mainstay, later on Energy Absorption and when it goes into the toilet Taunt + Hibernate can save your chilly butt.

 

I don't have Mid's on this computer so I can't give you a specific build but that's what I'd work on off the top of my head.

[Hjarki]

I tend to view melee AT as a holistic set rather than individual AT - and each power set works better or worse for certain AT.

 

Ice Armor is 'Stalker set' in my mind. You lose Icicles and Hibernate, but you gain the far more useful (at least for survivability) Icy Bastion. In practice, an */Ice Stalker is actually 'tankier' than an Ice/* Tanker because the Stalker can - at for a time - hard cap their non-Cold resists.

 

Stone Melee is (obviously) not a Stalker set. So if your heart is set on this combination, you're stuck with Tanker.

 

Let's start by examining Stone Melee:

• Stone Fist. You have to take this attack, although you probably don't want to.
• Stone Mallet. Skip this - it's a weak attack.
• Heavy Mallet. Your second best single target attack. Take it.
• Taunt. Some Tankers take it, some don't. However, one of the major reasons to take it is enemies like Lord Recluse - who will shred an Ice Tanker in an eyeblink - so I'm not sure how useful it will be.
• Build Up. This really depends on your level of recharge. In general, Build Up-type abilities are much better for Blasters (who have massive burst dps abilities) than melee AT. However, it can still be useful.
• Fault. Non-damaging Mag 2 Disorient is... meh. Skip it.
• Tremor. One of the best powers in the set.
• Hurl Boulder. Worse than your epic/patron choices. Skip it.
• Seismic Smash. One of the best single target attacks in any set. Take it.

Ice can be broken down a bit more easily:

• Take: Frozen Armor, Hoarfrost, Chilling Embrace, Wet Ice, Icicles, Glacial Armor. These are fundamental powers and you'll slot them more or less as expected.
• Permafrost. I'd skip this. You don't need the Cold resist and the amount of Fire resist it provides is trivial.
• Energy Absorption. There are better ways to manage your endurance. These sorts of AE drains tend to lead towards builds that are great against large spawns and then fall apart in the final fight.
• Hibernate. This is a tough call. This would be a truly fantastic Blaster power. As a Tanker power, it's a bit less fantastic. While you can use it to heal and restore endurance, the 'invulnerable' portion is a bit counter-productive because you're the guy who is supposed to be able to take the hits.

In terms of recharge, you want to make Hoarfrost perma-. This requires +200% recharge. +100% (a bit less) can come from internal recharge. You can get 50% + 37.5% from purples and LotG. Then you can slot Force Feedback in Heavy Mallet and Tremor. This means you probably don't need Hasten.

 

You definitely want Toughness. Leaping/Concealment/Leadership can round out the set, giving you plenty of slotting options.

 

Soul Mastery is the obvious choice of epic/patron for Gloom/Dark Obliteration/Darkest Night.

 

Intuition seems a solid choice for Alpha, although this depends on endurance/recharge issues.

 

Ultimately, you should be able to reach soft-cap on all typed but your resists will be weak for a Tanker. You'll be weak against Toxic/Psi.

 

 

[Call Me Awesome]

1 hour ago, Hjarki said:

Fault. Non-damaging Mag 2 Disorient is... meh. Skip it.

Sorry, but Fault is one of the best powers in the set.  Yes, it doesn't (natively) do damage, but it's a large AOE attention getter and pause button while it dumps everything onto their butts.  It also takes a few damage procs and those procs will reliably fire almost every time on everything in the AOE.  At level 50 a pair of procs will pretty reliably dish out ~200 damage.  I use it just about as often as it's up, and it's a faster animation than Tremor, which has a similar knockdown and roughly similar damage.

 

1 hour ago, Hjarki said:

Permafrost. I'd skip this. You don't need the Cold resist and the amount of Fire resist it provides is trivial.

Admittedly it's low priority but the slow resist is the main reason for it, and the fact that it's a mule for a resistance unique.  Ice armor doesn't have an abundance of those.

 

1 hour ago, Hjarki said:

Energy Absorption. There are better ways to manage your endurance. These sorts of AE drains tend to lead towards builds that are great against large spawns and then fall apart in the final fight.

This is also a defense boost based on the number of targets hit in addition to a massive endurance recovery, slow & -recharge resist.  It's a core power in the set.  Take it, slot it, love it.

 

1 hour ago, Hjarki said:

• Hibernate. This is a tough call. This would be a truly fantastic Blaster power. As a Tanker power, it's a bit less fantastic. While you can use it to heal and restore endurance, the 'invulnerable' portion is a bit counter-productive because you're the guy who is supposed to be able to take the hits.

 

It comes in handy when you're slowly getting overcome, Taunt the bad guys, pop Hibernate and drop it within 10 seconds and you'll retain aggro.  It's situational but it will save your butt when things go sideways and a quick in/out of it won't shed aggro.  You won't need it often, but when you do you REALLY need it bad.

 

There's several valid APP/PPP choices, my default for a Tanker is usually either Pyre or Energy.  Soul will work, but I'm not sure there's a compelling reason to swap to redside and run a mission arc to unlock it.  For an Ice tanker you'll have no need for the endurance so I'd leave Energy out and take Pyre for Fire Blast and Fire Ball, a nice ranged attack and a raged AOE.

[Hjarki]

3 hours ago, Call Me Awesome said:

Sorry, but Fault is one of the best powers in the set.  Yes, it doesn't (natively) do damage, but it's a large AOE attention getter and pause button while it dumps everything onto their butts.  It also takes a few damage procs and those procs will reliably fire almost every time on everything in the AOE.  At level 50 a pair of procs will pretty reliably dish out ~200 damage.  I use it just about as often as it's up, and it's a faster animation than Tremor, which has a similar knockdown and roughly similar damage.

Fault is almost directly inferior to Tremor. If you slot the two available procs, you'll average 69 damage per target. That's not nothing, but it's a fairly trivial amount of damage. If you were going to take the power anyway, it's one thing. But Fault doesn't have particularly good slotting options and it just replicates something you can do with the far better Tremor. It's one of those powers that you only take if you have absolutely no other choice.

3 hours ago, Call Me Awesome said:

This is also a defense boost based on the number of targets hit in addition to a massive endurance recovery, slow & -recharge resist.  It's a core power in the set.  Take it, slot it, love it.

Hitting a button to restore endurance is something you only want to do if you absolutely need to. With Stone Melee, this isn't likely unless you willfully avoid slotting EndRed. Slow/-Recharge isn't really a big concern in most cases. Not only is it a relatively rare debuff, but you should be building towards defenses that will negate the overwhelming majority of such attacks. And, of course, if you wanted that status resist, you could just slot Winter's Gift.

 

Likewise, the defense is the 'wrong kind' - it's defense that only works when you don't really need it (against large spawns) but not when you do (against single tough targets). It's also mostly superfluous since you're able to push your defenses up so high anyway.

 

And again, it's a power that has few decent slotting options. You've already got plenty of LotG mules and neither defense nor EndMod sets are particularly useful. It might be worthwhile for sapping, but you've got no support for it otherwise.

3 hours ago, Call Me Awesome said:

It comes in handy when you're slowly getting overcome, Taunt the bad guys, pop Hibernate and drop it within 10 seconds and you'll retain aggro.  It's situational but it will save your butt when things go sideways and a quick in/out of it won't shed aggro.  You won't need it often, but when you do you REALLY need it bad.

 

There's several valid APP/PPP choices, my default for a Tanker is usually either Pyre or Energy.  Soul will work, but I'm not sure there's a compelling reason to swap to redside and run a mission arc to unlock it.  For an Ice tanker you'll have no need for the endurance so I'd leave Energy out and take Pyre for Fire Blast and Fire Ball, a nice ranged attack and a raged AOE.

I don't think Hibernate is a bad power. I just don't find it particularly useful for a Tanker. As a Tanker, being able to take hits is part of the job. If you're in a fight where you need to Hibernate, you might need to rethink your build/AT - or bring someone else who can actually tank the content.

 

I rarely ever take Energy. Focused Accuracy is hideously end-intensive for fairly minor buffs. On a build that's almost certainly at soft cap for Neg Defense and doesn't have heals with attack rolls, hit debuff resistance isn't all that useful. Likewise, Conserve Power tends to be a poor way to handle end issues (which, as Stone Melee, you shouldn't have) - if you really have the kind of end issues that require this power, you tend to run dry very quickly when Conserve Power is down.

 

I think Fire is a solid choice. Char gives you the option of slotting Entomb or slotting for damage. Ring of Fire can come in handy if you want an AV to stand in one place and otherwise don't have a way to do that. Fireball is the highest dpa AE attack from the pools, so it can help cover an AE hole in the melee set (which Stone has). Melt Armor and Fire Blast aren't all that great, though.

 

The reasons Soul Mastery tends to be the 'go to' choice for Tankers:

• Gloom is the best single target attack in any of the pools and is better than most of the single target attacks in the actual melee set.
• Darkest Night can solve a lot of defensive holes.
• Dark Obliteration is one of the best AE. Fireball is probably better from the standpoint of raw damage, but Obliteration has additional slotting options and helps with defense.

Those shadow effects also go up against one of the weakest resists and they have endless slotting options from very good sets (admittedly, 6-slotting Cloud Senses isn't going to give you a particularly high damage Dark Obliteration, but it's a great set of bonuses).

[ninja surprise]

On 5/13/2020 at 5:49 PM, Call Me Awesome said:

Permafrost is useful but it's lower priority

It's a great place for the resist sets' +Def uniques.  Aaand I just noticed you said that in a later post.

 

I can post a build later. Ignore all of Hjarki's opinions. He's giving some bizarre version of a dark blast / ice armor stalker with a couple of Stone attacks. You're going Ice/Stone because you want SMASH. You want to be an ICEBERG OF DOOM. You can only do that by taking all of the powers from both sets!  I'll post a build later when I get to my PC.

[ninja surprise]

Here's a level-up build that'll have you soft-capped to smashing and lethal by 20, and pretty close on E/N.  You can slot the Kinetic Combats at level 17 and even if you use level 20 Def IOs in Frozen Armor you'll be soft-capped, or close. At 22 you can use lvl 25 IOs to really soft-cap.

No pool powers necessary except Combat Jumping, because who doesn't take CJ? Oops, in the build I'd swap places of Chilling Embrace and the travel power so you can get around on Positron and Synapse while leveling up.

It's probably less than 100 mil depending on how many of the uniques you get. The ones in Health and LotG+rech are optional.

If you exep onto a Yin you'll be soft-capped to the big 4 and still have Energy Absorption in case the Freak stunners sap out your endurance.

You can take whatever Epic or Patron pool you like the most: Earth for theme, Soul for the -tohit stuff, Fire for damage, it doesn't really matter.

 

And here's the guide:

 

Ice Armor, or I'M AN ICEBERG COMING THROUGH TOOT TOOT

• Frozen Armor: Default S/L Defense. Three-slot Def
• Hoarfrost: Save it till the 20's when critters do real damage. 4-slot heal/rech
• Chilling Embrace: Take it in the teens, one-slot slow or whatever.
• Wet Ice: Take it ASAP. One-slot Rech so you can turn it back on quicker after a toggle-drop.
• Permafrost: Take it ASAP and give it both the Gladiator's Armor and Steadfast Protection uniques for +6% def.
• Icicles: Take it immediately. Three-slot with Eradication Acc/Dam/End. Eventually add three Cleaving Blow for the +E/N defense bonus.
• Glacial Armor: Gives E/N Def and +Perception. Three-slot Def.
• Energy Absorption. Gets all your endurance back for very little effort. Give it a bit of Acc and End/Rech and use it any time you get carried away SMASHING EVERYTHING WITH DIRT or a sapper gets through.
• Hibernate. You are literally unkillable in Hibernate. Some use it as a panic button but the true Avalanche can grab a full mob's aggro and avoid the alpha strike in Hibernate, then pop out with the twin AoE KD stomps and SMASH everything.  Only costs a smidge of endurance so it's another way to recover from Sappers and both recover Endurance and Health mighty quick.

Stone Melee, or WHO PUT ROCKS IN THAT SNOWBALL

• Stone Fist = Smash badguys with a fist of stone. Take it and 4-slot with Kinetic Combat
• Stone Mallet. Smash badguys with a mallet of stone. Take it and 4-slot with Kinetic Combat
• Heavy Mallet. Smash badguys with a bigger mallet of stone. Take it and 4-slot with Kinetic Combat
  • NOTE: Each of these has chance to knockdown, so with all three you'll be knocking over badguys regularly, which is hilarious and useful.
• Taunt. Take this later after you're soft-capped.
• Build-Up: take it later after everything else has minimum slots
• Fault. Three slot it with Acc/Rech and a Force Feedback +Rech. Use this as your Taunt and to keep spawns off their feet so they can't attack your team. It's hilarious.
• Hurl Boulder. Fantastic power. Same damage as Stone Mallet with the same range as a Blaster's blast: 80ft! Also does -Fly! You'll have it on the Katie Hannon TF and can knock Mary MacComber right out of the sky and on her duff, or take out flying Freaks on Penelope Yin's TF. Recharges quick enough you can almost get it perma, which is AWESOME. Make a "Here's mud in your eye!" bind for endless entertainment.
• Tremor. Good PBAoE. Give it three Eradication and three Cleaving Blow to max dam/rech with two +Def bonuses for E/N defense.
• Seismic Smash. Your big gun. Give it Crushing Impacts for the +Rech bonus, and then a dam/end/rech to help it come back quicker.

At 50 you can keep pretty close to this build so that exemping is a blast, but swap IO sets for bigger bonuses. 

 

 

Edited May 17, 2020 by ninja surprise
travel power

[CaptainLupis]

On 5/15/2020 at 5:07 AM, Hjarki said:

Fault is almost directly inferior to Tremor. If you slot the two available procs, you'll average 69 damage per target. That's not nothing, but it's a fairly trivial amount of damage. If you were going to take the power anyway, it's one thing. But Fault doesn't have particularly good slotting options and it just replicates something you can do with the far better Tremor. It's one of those powers that you only take if you have absolutely no other choice.

 

Or if you are leveling by actually playing the game and not PLing straight to 50 for an end game build. There are 15 levels between where you can pick up fault and before tremor becomes available to you.

[ranster44]

 

On 5/17/2020 at 5:41 PM, CaptainLupis said:

Or if you are leveling by actually playing the game and not PLing straight to 50 for an end game build. There are 15 levels between where you can pick up fault and before tremor becomes available to you.

 I think some people forget that there are those who's whole point in playing is to play the game through to level 50. Not just do TFs and basically bypass the game... I care more about the leveling process than the post 50 stuff.  As I am basically playing with a friend and we are new the endgame is out of reach for quite a while. I suspect that much of the player base is similar.

[CaptainLupis]

1 hour ago, ranster44 said:

 

 I think some people forget that there are those who's whole point in playing is to play the game through to level 50. Not just do TFs and basically bypass the game... I care more about the leveling process than the post 50 stuff.  As I am basically playing with a friend and we are new the endgame is out of reach for quite a while. I suspect that much of the player base is similar.

To be fair to Hjarki when most people ask for builds on here it is usually for end game builds. The OP here though didn't specify.

 

I just think a lot of people that post only think in terms of endgame, and if someone was starting an Ice stone tank and looking at posts like this they could be put off ever trying powers like Fault, when things like what Hjarki said about it are taken out of that endgame context. And they would be missing out as it is a really fun power with a good amount of utility, especially when procs are added.

[ninja surprise]

On 5/20/2020 at 9:15 AM, CaptainLupis said:

To be fair to Hjarki when most people ask for builds on here it is usually for end game builds. The OP here though didn't specify.

 

I just think a lot of people that post only think in terms of endgame, and if someone was starting an Ice stone tank and looking at posts like this they could be put off ever trying powers like Fault, when things like what Hjarki said about it are taken out of that endgame context. And they would be missing out as it is a really fun power with a good amount of utility, especially when procs are added.

The thing that bugged me about Hjarki's tips was that OP asked for Ice/Stone advice and Hjarki recommended taking as few powers from the sets as possible and replacing them with pool powers.

And sure, that's one way to do it but then why play this combo at all if the goal is to avoid the set's powers? The ultimate build along that path is "don't take any defense or attack powers just team up with defenders and blasters".