Ice Meele attack discussion

[hejtmane]

We have been talking Ice melee in other threads and i want to bring up the early attacks around Frozen Fist and Greater Ice Sword a lot of people skip these attacks i took GIS and it is very clunky and mediocre but my other option is FF. 

 

My question is has anyone tried Frozen Fist since it does have -res vs GIS or does everyone else just skip them and I am the only one that punishes myself with GIS

Going by mids Numbers  FF is 1.33 68.82 for a 51.74 DPA and GIS is 2.33  134.9  for 57.90DPA does the -res make up for the higher DPA on GIS

 

My other options are skip these attacks makes it hard when leveling and side kicking hence why i took GIS other option if you can squeeze in boxing early use that and its a set mule just as bad we force in early cross punch

 

 

[Sovera]

Just now, hejtmane said:

We have been talking Ice melee in other threads and i want to bring up the early attacks around Frozen Fist and Greater Ice Sword a lot of people skip these attacks i took GIS and it is very clunky and mediocre but my other option is FF. 

 

My question is has anyone tried Frozen Fist since it does have -res vs GIS or does everyone else just skip them and I am the only one that punishes myself with GIS

Going by mids Numbers  FF is 1.33 68.82 for a 51.74 DPA and GIS is 2.33  134.9  for 57.90DPA does the -res make up for the higher DPA on GIS

 

My other options are skip these attacks makes it hard when leveling and side kicking hence why i took GIS other option if you can squeeze in boxing early use that and its a set mule just as bad we force in early cross punch

 

It doesn't have -res though. It's just a bad copy from Tankers back when they had -res in their primary. You can check the in-game info but you'll see it's just Mids. Not even Tankers have the -res now.

 

Frozen Fists is acknowledged as terribad due to the lengthy animation and T1 damage. But Ice Melee is lacking in attacks so it tends to be used. GiS is just... like, wow, bad. It animates in the same time as Frost but only hits one target and does a whooping... nine more damage.

 

I suggest Freezing Touch, Ice Sword, Frost, Ice Sword. Repeat. You can focus on a boss and ignore the rest of the pack and by repositioning you'll be killing everything at the same time you're walloping the boss.

[Sancerre]

GiS is good for scrapper to hold the crit proc if you want to lead into freezing touch.  otherwise you can put the crit ATO in freezing touch to be a much more consistent proc... but you can never use the bonus crit chance on freezing touch itself.  if you dont want to do GiS crit proc, then you should either utilize frost in single target chain or pick up cross punch.

 

GiS is worth using, but it is definitely underwhelming.  the animation time on it is perfectly fine to fit the ice melee rotation, but the damage is just not where it should be.

[hejtmane]

Cross punch is so hard to fit in my tight build and I can make it happen even at 18 but it is also not an ice attack I want to be on theme  to slot  I guess I just keep GIS for leveling and when I SK down because it helps when in the lower TF's but I I put the chance to proc in freezing touch. Maybe we will get lucky and they give Ice melee some love like they did DA with the shadow maul changes

Edited August 22, 2021 by hejtmane

[Sancerre]

i made a thread about a month back asking for GiS to get some love... had no negative feedback.  just need to wait for the next patch cycle and try to bump it up for attention i  guess.

[hejtmane]

2 hours ago, Sancerre said:

i made a thread about a month back asking for GiS to get some love... had no negative feedback.  just need to wait for the next patch cycle and try to bump it up for attention i  guess.

I would not complain if they made FF the same as shadow punch or Barb swipe on damage an animation times

[DreadShinobi]

Ice Melee is a stalker set.

[Tsuko]

Ice Mélée is very similar to Warmace : built around 1 Big DPA power.

Freezing touch is stronger than the all mighty Clobber, can slot 2 purple Damage proc and Ice damage is generally WAY less resist than smash. Warmace have the advantage of the FF recharge io and a very strong soft Crowd control power, having nothing to envy to Titan weapons and Super strenght.

 

Ice mélée is a "baby" step behind WM in aoe but provide Frozen aura as a 360 pbaoe sleep power with almost the DPA of Crowd control, opening you Chance to heal and Chance to placate io, and being so much better than Whirling Mace. In the aoe department, the ice patch is life saver while leveling and Frost is one of the best mélée cone power, just take a look a the Fire breath... :x

 

 "Greater" ice sword is bad, but it's a T7. So this is ok.

 

Ice mélée just lack a good way to force the 50% crit io and being centered around one power, everytime FT miss, it's a disaster, Dps wise and make the rotation kinda random : a ice scrapper can overdamage allmost any mélée set or being average, but never bad.

As stated before, Ice mélée is stronger with a stalker, cause the ice Assassin strike, while not being the stronger of the game, patch the "GIS" hole and provide another Strong DPA power.

 

 

So, To be honnest, don't expect any major change to a set able to compete with the "all mighty" Warmace 🙂

Edited August 31, 2021 by Tsuko

[hejtmane]

3 hours ago, Tsuko said:

Ice Mélée is very similar to Warmace : built around 1 Big DPA power.

Freezing touch is stronger than the all mighty Clobber, can slot 2 purple Damage proc and Ice damage is generally WAY less resist than smash. Warmace have the advantage of the FF recharge io and a very strong soft Crowd control power, having nothing to envy to Titan weapons and Super strenght.

 

Ice mélée is a "baby" step behind WM in aoe but provide Frozen aura as a 360 pbaoe sleep power with almost the DPA of Crowd control, opening you Chance to heal and Chance to placate io, and being so much better than Whirling Mace. In the aoe department, the ice patch is life saver while leveling and Frost is one of the best mélée cone power, just take a look a the Fire breath... :x

 

 "Greater" ice sword is bad, but it's a T7. So this is ok.

 

Ice mélée just lack a good way to force the 50% crit io and being centered around one power, everytime FT miss, it's a disaster, Dps wise and make the rotation kinda random : a ice scrapper can overdamage allmost any mélée set or being average, but never bad.

As stated before, Ice mélée is stronger with a stalker, cause the ice Assassin strike, while not being the stronger of the game, patch the "GIS" hole and provide another Strong DPA power.

 

 

So, To be honnest, don't expect any major change to a set able to compete with the "all mighty" Warmace 🙂

I have no complaints about Frost and Frozen aura with ice patch and the damage at the top end is all find and dandy.  My issue was leveling I went from 1 to 49 without using any double xp I grinded it out all fashion style mission, teaming and TF's no farms  etc etc. The issue was Frozen Fist is terrible at lower levels for leveling and while I used GIS starting at 18 it was clunky while leveling from 18 to 49.

Edited August 31, 2021 by hejtmane

[Tsuko]

33 minutes ago, hejtmane said:

I have no complaints about Frost and Frozen aura with ice patch and the damage at the top end is all find and dandy.  My issue was leveling I went from 1 to 49 without using any double xp I grinded it out all fashion style mission, teaming and TF's no farms  etc etc. The issue was Frozen Fist is terrible at lower levels for leveling and while I used GIS starting at 18 it was clunky while leveling from 18 to 49.

 

If ice mélée have an issue, it's his leveling. As super strenght, Ice mélée is a top endgame set. Exemplar and leveling is kinda horrible.

Sort of price to pay to be top tier with a lvl 50 fully set / accolade.

 

But trust me, ice mélée is very underated and i'm sure it will shine later.

[hejtmane]

49 minutes ago, Tsuko said:

 

If ice mélée have an issue, it's his leveling. As super strenght, Ice mélée is a top endgame set. Exemplar and leveling is kinda horrible.

Sort of price to pay to be top tier with a lvl 50 fully set / accolade.

 

But trust me, ice mélée is very underated and i'm sure it will shine later.

I enjoyed the set even with the issues and had a lot of fun with Ice patch in groups and solo.  Sometimes it was frustrating leveling with GIS and it be nice to smooth that out. I am fine with a minor buff to either GIF or FF  to help smooth out leveling not looking for an all world buff.

Any future change will only help me when I exemplar down now that I hit 50 this weekend and other people that will level one in the future.  On the top end with my purples etc it is doing a lot better and yes it is a little underrated after playing the set.

[Sovera]

22 hours ago, Tsuko said:

 

If ice mélée have an issue, it's his leveling. As super strenght, Ice mélée is a top endgame set. Exemplar and leveling is kinda horrible.

Sort of price to pay to be top tier with a lvl 50 fully set / accolade.

 

But trust me, ice mélée is very underated and i'm sure it will shine later.

 

Ow. I find ice Melee pretty damn good for exemplaring, but I also use Frost for my melee rotation and have Frozen Fists slotted as a mule (which gives it the raw stats to be used as a leveling/exemplaring attack). Despite FF being bad we can plod along with Frost- FF - Ice Sword - FF until 26.

 

@hejtmane's problem was trying to use the box instead of going outside of it. My advice for using Frost stemmed from the time I used a Stalker with Ice Melee (my first serious Ice Melee experience) and found the awkward AS recharge making gaps. That's when I (reluctantly) started using Frost for ST and while not brilliant it does one thing great: smoothing the rotation.

 

Suddenly Freezing Touch - Ice Sword - Frost - Ice Sword becomes a forgiving mid level rotation that shines in 90% of the game since 90% of the game is hitting multiple enemies. Just keep hitting the boss with minimal repositioning and the rest of the spawn will be dead by the time it has been killed. This approach is good enough that I stopped using Frozen Aura (but I'm a weirdo, don't necessarily try to do this) since 'ST-ing' the boss killed the spawn around it.

 

But yes, using an AoE drags the set down. AoEs do less damage because they hit multiple enemies. They are also more expensive in endurance. The animations are long. But, consider how 90% of the game is hitting multiple enemies. GiS and FT definitely ought to change places though.

 

There are things like adding epic snipes to help the ST, but they are not available for every rotation (same problem I had with AS' awkward recharge making it available only every two rotations).

 

With more recharge from a secondary or buffs FT - Ice Sword - Frost becomes possible. I sacrifice too much to raise my S/L defenses up and so my recharge isn't the best and even so I'm half a second from making that last rotation gapless.

 

While using Frost looks all sorts of wrong and even more on a spreadsheet the numbers it puts out (on a Tanker where I tested) are just slightly behind a Claws character downing a pylon 15-20 seconds later. And we know in the 'real game' the smash/slash resistances is going to put Ice ahead.

 

Frost ends being a good place for the Scrapper crit proc too. Since it hits multiple mobs it has multiple chances to go off and will buff FT and Ice Sword, and it's a skill that will be used both ST and AoE.

 

[hejtmane]

I used Frost in my single target along with GIS and IS when I was leveling.

Edited September 1, 2021 by hejtmane

[Tsuko]

4 hours ago, Sovera said:

 

Ow. I find ice Melee pretty damn good for exemplaring, but I also use Frost for my melee rotation and have Frozen Fists slotted as a mule (which gives it the raw stats to be used as a leveling/exemplaring attack). Despite FF being bad we can plod along with Frost- FF - Ice Sword - FF until 26.

 

@hejtmane's problem was trying to use the box instead of going outside of it. My advice for using Frost stemmed from the time I used a Stalker with Ice Melee (my first serious Ice Melee experience) and found the awkward AS recharge making gaps. That's when I (reluctantly) started using Frost for ST and while not brilliant it does one thing great: smoothing the rotation.

 

Suddenly Freezing Touch - Ice Sword - Frost - Ice Sword becomes a forgiving mid level rotation that shines in 90% of the game since 90% of the game is hitting multiple enemies. Just keep hitting the boss with minimal repositioning and the rest of the spawn will be dead by the time it has been killed. This approach is good enough that I stopped using Frozen Aura (but I'm a weirdo, don't necessarily try to do this) since 'ST-ing' the boss killed the spawn around it.

 

But yes, using an AoE drags the set down. AoEs do less damage because they hit multiple enemies. They are also more expensive in endurance. The animations are long. But, consider how 90% of the game is hitting multiple enemies. GiS and FT definitely ought to change places though.

 

There are things like adding epic snipes to help the ST, but they are not available for every rotation (same problem I had with AS' awkward recharge making it available only every two rotations).

 

With more recharge from a secondary or buffs FT - Ice Sword - Frost becomes possible. I sacrifice too much to raise my S/L defenses up and so my recharge isn't the best and even so I'm half a second from making that last rotation gapless.

 

While using Frost looks all sorts of wrong and even more on a spreadsheet the numbers it puts out (on a Tanker where I tested) are just slightly behind a Claws character downing a pylon 15-20 seconds later. And we know in the 'real game' the smash/slash resistances is going to put Ice ahead.

 

Frost ends being a good place for the Scrapper crit proc too. Since it hits multiple mobs it has multiple chances to go off and will buff FT and Ice Sword, and it's a skill that will be used both ST and AoE.

 

My Ice rad tanker aoe : Ground Zero Proc bomb / Dark obli / Frozen aura / frost

 

St : Priority : Freezing touch / Gloom / frost / filler depending of what's up and if things to agro

 

And my ice rad scrapper is the same but i just swap ice sword between each attack cause i use the 50% crit on it, have Moonbeam instead of gloom and no dark obliteration, instead Shadow meld to mitigate damage spikes (to let my absorb/barrier/heal coming back)

 

Edited September 1, 2021 by Tsuko

[StrikerFox]

I put IM's attacks into Obitus' old dps calculator from live. Around +200% recharge, GIS-FT-IS-FF-repeat is the best chain. +300% recharge, GIS-FT-IS-repeat is the best.

 

Only used the attack's base damage (According to Mids') in the data. No procs, damage buffs, IO damage bonuses, incarnates, snipes etc were included. 

 

GIS-FT-IS-FF-repeat could probably pull ahead since FT can be proc'd out and still recharge fast enough for that chain. Also the chain length is 6.864s, a snipe could be integrated seamlessly.

 

[Deuce Spade]

Just popping in to say I started an Ice/Ice brute and frost is ezmode leveling with fury bonuses.  I didn't really mean to keep leveling this toon, but it's too fun to stop.

[MoonSheep]

a really interesting thread, have enjoyed reading through

 

having played pretty much only a dom since returning in 2019 i’ve been keen to invest time in a new alt - most likely to be a scrapper (tanking is probably too much responsibility after my carefree dom life)

 

i’ve been quite set on shield for AAO and shield charge, finding something to pair it with has been tricky:

- war mace is great and when i first used it on test i thought wow! however it seems perhaps a bit uninspiring

- fire melee the same, ridiculous damage which is quite ‘moreish’ however the dom is fire assault so it’s quite similar

- ice melee.. this was quite surprise, the frost power is actually a pretty good AoE smacker, freezing touch a good ST damage dealer etc

 

i found the combination of shield’s AAO taunting them close works amazingly well with the mini ice patch - the two sets combine to create a wasp trap which you can then repeatedly stamp on

 

i agree that greater ice sword seems a bit uninspiring, probably worth having just incast it’s needed

 

a slight tangent, i’ve considered ice armour but not sure i’d like it as much as shield. chilling embrace is a great power however, nice ability to aggro

Edited September 9, 2021 by MoonSheep

[JayboH]

I posted this over a year ago asking about why seeing ice melee and the ice / ice combo was so rare after the buffs to the set. 

[MoonSheep]

4 hours ago, JayboH said:

I posted this over a year ago asking about why seeing ice melee and the ice / ice combo was so rare after the buffs to the set. 

 

that was an interesting read, thanks

 

just need to decide between an ice/shield scrapper or a shield/ice tank now. (the latter could be quite good fun for posi 1 &2, synapse & yin TFs)

[hejtmane]

10 hours ago, JayboH said:

I posted this over a year ago asking about why seeing ice melee and the ice / ice combo was so rare after the buffs to the set. 

 

My issue with Ice armor is I am mainly a scrapper and no taunt aura on it so I am limited to all the better sets than ice armor /bio, /sd andf Rad are still miles better than ice armor on scrappers.

 

Ice does not really come off any better than EA or Invul or WP my other options with taunt aura so no reason for me to go outside those sets as a scapper ever.

I built a tank recently but Dark Armor pulled me in I played two /da's on live before ED, IO's or incarnates I know crazy.

 

On ice melee I can see a lot of people quit with the early levels it can be rough going with GIS being kind of clunky compared to other sets in fact the only reason I played Ice melee was the change to ice patch

[Deuce Spade]

On 9/9/2021 at 1:54 PM, hejtmane said:

 

My issue with Ice armor is I am mainly a scrapper and no taunt aura on it so I am limited to all the better sets than ice armor /bio, /sd andf Rad are still miles better than ice armor on scrappers.

I feel the same about the scrapper taunt auras, but that's one reason I was excited about ice armor.  I never used it because of the dumb graphics, but now you can mostly get rid of those.  The best thing about it while leveling my brute was Chilling Embrace.  The slow aura worked so well that I rerolled as a scrapper to test it.  It does indeed function as a ghetto taunt aura.  They will run after enough damage, but it doesn't really matter, because you can still hit them.  It wouldn't help much against Council wolves later on, and that would be an issue, but everything else is hosed, doing -dam and attacking less as they try to flee.

 

I guess if you're going ice/ice, the ice patch would help with wolves.

[JayboH]

I mean chilling embrace and icicles may not have taunt but they do their job