Ice Blast / ???

[G-Tus]

So I'm thinking of making an Ice Blast Corruptor, but I'm not sure which secondary would best suit my style of play. I have narrowed it down to the following 3 options:

 

- Cold Domination

- Storm Summoning

- Time Manipulation

 

I also read good things about Ice/Dark, but I already have Dark on a Controller. I have no experience with the above 3 powersets, so I would like to give one of those a try. I only play in teams, so soloing is not part of the decision for me.

 

From what I can determine Cold seems to me like a really useful powerset for team play, with the shields, Frostwork, and Heat Loss. Benumb seems also nice for the occasional AV battle. And obviously Sleet is awesome as well. I did read that to get the most out of Cold you need invest quite a lot to get the recharge of Heat Loss down. But all in all I think at the moment to me this seems like the one to go for me.

 

Storm seems more damage focused with Tornado and Lightning Storm, with the added benefit that KB(or KD with Sudden Acceleration) is also providing additional mitigation to the team. Mobs on the floor can't do anything. Hurricane also might be good personal protection?

 

Time seems to have some nice pros as well. Farsight giving some good defense to the team and to self. Chrono Shift looks pretty dope? Temporal Selection seems like a nice buff that helps a few teammates improve their stats.

 

I have a few questions though:

I thought I read somewhere that the 'rain' powers work extra good on Corruptors, because Scourge can kick in at any time instead of just at casting time?

Slowed Response from Time has a target limit of 16. Freezing Rain and Sleet are location based powers, so they also have this target limit? (And what about Ice Storm and Blizzard?) And what about the Accuracy/ToHit of all these powers? I would assume Slowed Response is either hit or miss, but what about the others?

 

[Onlyasandwich]

All of these are super strong choices - you can't really go wrong.

 

If you're going Time, I might recommend a Defender, as you can do amazing things with the better baseline defense values and power boost. Corruptor can achieve similar results, but it takes more stretch and slotting will be less flexible.

 

Cold and Storm are a tossup. Cold will offer more -res debuffing overall, and will probably edge ahead in damage for that reason. You will have a tougher time building your own defenses for solo work, however, as you don't have the -tohit of hurricane to fall back on.

 

Storm makes up for the slightly lower -res debuffing with high damage pets. If you have super high recharge and infinite end, Storm might even pull ahead in damage in an extended encounter. You'll be sucking wind until Ageless or epic end support though, while Cold has strong end support built-in.

 

Rain powers do work nicely with Scourge - this is true. However, Freezing Rain/Sleet is a very negligible source of damage on its own, even with scourge. It is there to debuff and for KD.

 

Location based powers still have a target limit. As mobs die, the ones remaining will be able to be debuffed as long as the patch persists, so this does extend the effect to some degree.

 

Slowed response definitely needs acc slotting, and is also a prime spot for some great procs. It turns into a nice little damage power this way in addition to its baseline debuff.

 

There is no reason to slot Freezing Rain and Sleet for accuracy or damage. Procs are also very poor here. Recharge and maybe end redux is all you need. You might consider muling a fun set that achieves those goals if you have the slots, but I often just leave it at 2 +5 recharge IOs.

 

[Shocktacular]

/Dark on Corruptors is a bit different than /Dark on Controllers.  
Personally, I'd go with /Time.  Farsight gives you some excellent defense, you have a heal with a heal-over-time component, Chrono Shift will help you get your rain powers up again faster, and you have a placeable hold-&-slow field to lay down to keep them in the rain along with a ST hold to get the boss in the mob or to stack with one of the holds from Ice.  I have an Ice/Time Corruptor who's my main hami raider since she can do ranged damage AND crowd control with all the hold powers she has (yes, I took the 2nd one in Ice, yes the animation is long, and yes it helps with mitos quite a bit).

[Doomguide2005]

     My first choice would be Cold, but yeah this is a win, win or win sort of choice.  I've done both Ice/Dark as a Corruptor and Cold/Ice as a Defender to 50 on Live.  I'd started a Storm/Ice defender but never made 50 with them before sundown.  My Cold/Ice was my go to for TF when I wanted to bring a debuffer.   It was a minimal defense, high recharge build (sufficient to perma the +recovery portion of HL).  Most of the mitigation was a combo of Avoid and large amounts of Slow Movement and recharge debuff.  The Ice/Dark just turns things into kittens that can't hit you, yeah just 😜

[Hjarki]

On 5/16/2022 at 5:26 PM, G-Tus said:

I thought I read somewhere that the 'rain' powers work extra good on Corruptors, because Scourge can kick in at any time instead of just at casting time?

Slowed Response from Time has a target limit of 16. Freezing Rain and Sleet are location based powers, so they also have this target limit? (And what about Ice Storm and Blizzard?) And what about the Accuracy/ToHit of all these powers? I would assume Slowed Response is either hit or miss, but what about the others?

What it does is summon a pseudo pet. That pseudo pet will, every 0.2 sec for 15 sec, pick its favorite 16 enemies within 30 yards. If you drop it on 50 enemies, it will keep picking new enemies as the old ones die. Every one of those ticks has a chance to Scourge based on the health total when the tick lands (rather than, as with most other ultimates, when the power was activated). Moreover, the power itself ticks for 3.7258 damage but it Scourges for 4.488 damage.

 

To make this even better, you can drop -resist fields into the Blizzard. So you can run a sequence like Aim (with Gaussian's), Blizzard (which mightily debuffs the enemies' to hit and other features making it difficult for them to strike back), Sleet (which will increase the damage by about 30% due to the -resist).

 

In terms of secondary, I'm not a big fan of Time Manipulation. It tends to solve problems you don't really need solving in the clunkiest way possible (long recharge group clickies) while not delivering the goods on the high impact powers (like -resist) that you really want.

 

Between Storm and Cold, it's a tough call. Storm will have serious end issues without Incarnates but it will generally do more damage. Storm is also really hard to manage without AE knockback suppression powers (like Controller Immobilizes). Cold is a better buffing spec if you're running with people who can benefit from +defense or +max hp. I'd probably give the edge to Cold on a Corruptor.