Ice / Psi / Psi dom build - Some seemed interested in this combo

[EnjoyTheJourney]

Below is a draft build for an Ice / Psi / Psi dom build. It's meant to provide a balance between defenses, control, and damage. Procs were mostly focused on boosting single target damage. Hopefully somebody finds it helpful. 

Will probably test drive this build on the beta server, having put it together. Should be interesting to see how well it does. 

Ice Psi Psi Dom.pdf

Dominator (Ice Control - Psi Assault - Psi Mastery).mbd

Edited October 8, 2023 by EnjoyTheJourney

[Thrax]

Here is mine, more defense and more recharge.  Less procs though.  

 

Thrax the Mind Taker.mxd

[Frosticus]

just an inf saving piece of info:

the HO's in mind link and ice slick don't boost the recharge and slow respectively.

 

If a power can't take a SO for the aspect you are trying to improve, then HO's will ignore it.

Set IO's use different rules and will improve multiple aspects as long as it isn't flagged to ignore boosts and enhancements.

 

You could probably still improve the -speed of ice slick via your alpha though if desired.  ie. Intuition Radial or Spiritual Radial.

[EnjoyTheJourney]

Mids does reduce recharge values for mind link and also increase slow debuffs on mobs for ice slick when the appropriate Desynchs are put into them. 

I take it that Mids gives bad data about that, then?  

[EnjoyTheJourney]

1 hour ago, Thrax said:

Here is mine, more defense and more recharge.  Less procs though.  

 

Thrax the Mind Taker.mxd 5.02 kB · 2 downloads

One of the cooler things about this game is how a pretty wide variety of reasonable builds can be put together even when powersets chosen overlap by quite a bit. And, those defense totals do look quite good. Plus, you have smash / lethal resistances at 75% without any other help. 

I love damage, though, and that's my excuse for running lighter on defenses. There will be times when more defense would be quite helpful, though, of course. 

Your dom's endurance burn seems so high I don't know how you run the build. Is ageless required to run the build, or am I missing something about how it functions?

FWIW experience taught me that having a good amount of movement / recharge debuff resistance was quite helpful, especially against higher level mobs and especially for doms for whom recharge is so valuable. After a fair amount of experimentation 50% resistance to such debuffs seemed like the "golden mean" for many builds because it made my characters much more resilient against incoming debuffs and relatively little was being given up to attain that total. You may not be having a similar experience with those debuffs, though, and so perhaps there's just no reason for you to bother with that. 

[Thraxen]

End is fine. Dom fills it up. I do run ageless as well but use it as soon as it’s up. Don’t really ever notice debuffs when you’re not getting hit as much. 

[Thraxen]

Also, loot at end with one target with drain psyche. It does look bad on paper but it works really well. With ageless drain psyche is perma and overlaps a bit. Usually have at least three stacked. The passive aoe confusing nature of the build makes it more like a blapper really. I rarely ever glacier cause why hold what is confused  

[EnjoyTheJourney]

1 hour ago, Thraxen said:

Also, loot at end with one target with drain psyche. It does look bad on paper but it works really well. With ageless drain psyche is perma and overlaps a bit. Usually have at least three stacked. The passive aoe confusing nature of the build makes it more like a blapper really. I rarely ever glacier cause why hold what is confused  

Doh! Drain psyche is of course the answer. 

I ran a fire / psi / ice dom quite a bit back before a one year layoff from the game. I'd forgotten how little end burn matters once drain psyche is slotted up and you have good recharge. Agreed also that ice control tends to run most naturally as a kind of blapper, especially with drain psyche and psychic shockwave also benefitting from being in melee. 

Edited October 9, 2023 by EnjoyTheJourney

[EnjoyTheJourney]

After being reminded of how little endurance usage matters for a psi assault dom, the build got revised. Intuition radial alpha replaced vigor radial alpha. A bit of accuracy got added to some powers to make up for the loss of accuracy from vigor radial alpha. Damage went up after these changes. For reference, files containing the revised build are attached. 

 

Dominator (Ice Control - Psi Assault - Psi Mastery).mbd Ice Psi Psi Dom,V2.pdf

Edited October 10, 2023 by EnjoyTheJourney

[Frosticus]

/psi only needs to worry if they plan to face 1 tough target, or assume they never miss with drain psyche in that scenario.

 

My earth/psi ended up needing cardiac, but in practice an ice dom is probably avoiding solo AVs/gms, so it likely doesn't matter. Or they just load up on temps/ insp.

[EnjoyTheJourney]

On 10/8/2023 at 3:40 PM, Frosticus said:

just an inf saving piece of info:

the HO's in mind link and ice slick don't boost the recharge and slow respectively.

 

If a power can't take a SO for the aspect you are trying to improve, then HO's will ignore it.

Set IO's use different rules and will improve multiple aspects as long as it isn't flagged to ignore boosts and enhancements.

 

You could probably still improve the -speed of ice slick via your alpha though if desired.  ie. Intuition Radial or Spiritual Radial.

After testing that out on the beta server it's clear that you were right; if a power can't take a SO for an aspect you are trying to improve, then HO's will ignore it. 

How this was tested ...

 

Level 50 dominator on the beta server, Link Minds with 3 slots, 1 LoTG def / global recharge, + two other slots

With two +defense / +recharge level 53 Desynchs in Link Minds the in-game recharge time was close to two minutes. The only way recharge could take that long with those HOs in the power is if the "+recharge" portion of those Desynchs were being ignored. 

As another check, the HOs were removed and in their place two attuned +defense/+recharge set IOs were put into Link Minds (1 LoTG def/rech, 1 red fortune def/rech). Recharge time for Link Minds dropped to a little over 90 seconds, which is the recharge time expected when the "+recharge" portion of the set IOs is working. 

Thank you for sharing that information. That will help my dom builds, going forward, and also help some others as well.

PS: I edited the last version of the build in a post a little further up to replace the HO's that had bonuses which were ultimately not working as intended with a generic recharge IO (ice slick) and 2 defense / recharge set IOs. 

Edited October 10, 2023 by EnjoyTheJourney

[Snokle]

18 hours ago, Frosticus said:

/psi only needs to worry if they plan to face 1 tough target, or assume they never miss with drain psyche in that scenario.

 

My earth/psi ended up needing cardiac, but in practice an ice dom is probably avoiding solo AVs/gms, so it likely doesn't matter. Or they just load up on temps/ insp.

 

I run and Ice/Psi dom and have done solo AVs, many of times maybe not GMs, but I find those boring slogs. It is all about using powers to take advantage of the situation you are in. With Mind Link and Psi sheild, you should have solid S/L resistance and defense, it is making sure you know who you are fighting at the time. The -slow while resisted a bit from AVs can help, and the Psi damage can be helpful at times.

 

For the OP,  Ice/Psi/Psi is a great combo, it really shines on mobs with the confuse aura and the knockdown it brings. tough at times with robots, or other high-psi resistant enemies, but incarnates can help fill some of the holes with in the interface slot. I do not have access to mids on me so I cannot aid much on what you have built, but as others said IOs in Mind Link is the best way to move for that, melee is your best friend for builds and abuse drain psyche as much as possible.

[Frosticus]

On 10/10/2023 at 8:17 AM, Dr_Snokle said:

 

I run and Ice/Psi dom and have done solo AVs, many of times maybe not GMs, but I find those boring slogs. It is all about using powers to take advantage of the situation you are in. With Mind Link and Psi sheild, you should have solid S/L resistance and defense, it is making sure you know who you are fighting at the time. The -slow while resisted a bit from AVs can help, and the Psi damage can be helpful at times.

So you would recommend building an ice/psi dom for prolonged endurance usage vs a single target?

[Snokle]

19 hours ago, Frosticus said:

So you would recommend building an ice/psi dom for prolonged endurance usage vs a single target?

Yeah, it is fine I have done long fights against AVs and planned out powers I turn on and off to manage endurance consumption.

 

Is there others that are easier yes, but as I said in my post it takes planning and a bit of what you want to run and handle as you have to expect you might miss a drain. If it means turning off AA for a little bit then you go with that, and run other toggles for consistency.

 

Also if you are worried about missing Psyche, the destiny Endless incarnate to cover end issues. Frankly Incarnate powers fills the two big holes you have, AA end consumption, and the Psi high res targets.

 

You may not be a titan or easy mode for AV hunting but it is doable.

 

Just to add, I feel HP management is more crucial first then end management for long AV/GM hunts. As your pet has no taunt effects you are gonna hold aggro a lot, with the HP pool as it is, an AV can knock you down pretty quickly. So running */*/Psi is very nice for that as the +Def and +Res layering makes taking a hit not as punishing.

 

I have run other epics like /shield, /ice, /dark and always fell back to /psi as I like the mix of defensive parts. 

Edited October 12, 2023 by Dr_Snokle

[Frosticus]

Ya for sure. I fully agree with you on psi epic. I run it on my earth/psi/psi for me and to help stoney. Like you say he taunts, but he needs help against non-psi AVs.

 

I still think ice/psi is a bit of a square peg into a round hole in terms of being a single target killer, but I respect what you are saying and I've done plenty of builds that color outside of the lines only to have them turn out better than I'd hoped.