Building Assassin's Focus with Ice Melee

[carroto]

Just curious how others approach this.  Ice Melee seems to be pretty popular.  I've taken it to 50 twice and one thing that always made it feel a bit "off" is how it seems to struggle to build Assassin's Focus.  I can fill in with Frost against single targets, but it's a bit slow.  I skipped Frozen Fists naturally.  More than other sets I want to fill in with an epic attack, but then I don't get many critical quick AS's.  With some other sets I can do a nice quick 3-attack setup and then a crit AS fairly reliably.  Ice Melee feels very different to those.

 

How do you handle this?  Just fire off AS when it's up whether you have 3 stacks of AF or not?  Use Frost a lot?  Take Frozen Fists?

[Kaika]

You generally should fire off AS whenever its up even without the assassins focus just due to the high DPA. With Ice melee if I recall, most use moonbeam or Zapp as a single target fill, as the damage gain is worth the loss of a single Assassins focus.

[StrikerFox]

I never really played IM before but looking at it on Mids',  I see your dilemma. What attack chain are you currently using? Is Freezing Touch the best attack to use after AS? I'm not sure how crits affect DoT damage... Like do all ticks crit or just the initial damage? Or does a snipe after AS produce higher dps?

 

If FT is the better power following AS, I'm guessing the one of the best ST attack chains would be AS-FT-IS-snipe-IS-repeat. If a snipe is better following AS, one of the best chains would probably be: AS-snipe-FT-Fr-IS-repeat.

 

[kelika2]

10 hours ago, carroto said:

Just curious how others approach this.

I dont.  Ice Patch is a huge detriment to ice stalkers because its smack dab in the middle that screws with low level play and not great at higher levels.  3 single target attacks to build assassins focus feels so god awful.

Changing Ice Patch to Ice Shank that uses Jab/Punch animation would be great.  even energy transfers quick animation

Or Ice Smash that uses the Air Superiority animation with frozen fists ice

Or Flick Shard that uses Focus'sses animation

or even greater ice sword.

 

But no, in low level play like posi its just 2 attacks to build focus.  and adding freezing touch at 22(17) isnt much of an upgrade.

 

And now I want to make an ice/fire stalker

[Frosticus]

I dont worry about focus on my ice stalker. But I don't worry about it on any of them. 

 

Most sets suck you in to a trap of cycling low tier attacks that don't even generate 100% focus, while your AS sits unused.

Ie icesword = 80% chance of focus

 

If fast AS is up, I use it. It will be up ~4 seconds later and maybe I'll have more focus built by then.

 

[kelika2]

@Riot Siren , @nihilii, and @randomdev, an ice patch can form after Frozen Aura if that makes you feel better.

actually screw that im going over to the suggestions and rants forum for this.

[nihilii]

Obviously your later suggestion being a straight and sizeable buff is hard to disagree with!

 

But I doubt devs would want to give us 2x stronger Ice Patch for free + throw in another good ST attack on top.

[carroto]

8 hours ago, kelika2 said:

And now I want to make an ice/fire stalker

 

That's one of my two and it was glorious when I played it before.  I haven't tried it since the Burn nerf though so it might not be all that it was.