How do you make ice control good?

[Damoklese]

So ive always wanted an ice controller but every time ive made one ive lost interest once I hit that point where the damage falls off and you start to feel like you need either a lot more damage or a lot more hard control.  I inevitably give up and move on to other alts at that point.

 

Id really like an ice controller though.  Does anyone have a pairing with Ice Control that make it feel more solo friendly?  Or just that you generally feel is the "best" route to go when playing Ice Control?

[Onlyasandwich]

Storm is always a good solo enabler, as it brings lots of damage and extra mitigation to the package.

 

TA is strong for similar reasons.

[Yomo Kimyata]

35 minutes ago, Damoklese said:

So ive always wanted an ice controller but every time ive made one ive lost interest once I hit that point where the damage falls off and you start to feel like you need either a lot more damage or a lot more hard control.  I inevitably give up and move on to other alts at that point.

 

Id really like an ice controller though.  Does anyone have a pairing with Ice Control that make it feel more solo friendly?  Or just that you generally feel is the "best" route to go when playing Ice Control?

 

Maybe you should make a stone or fire controller and change the power appearances so they look like ice.

[Psyonico]

Ice control *is* good, it's just that like most control sets, it suffers from low damage.

 

How to speed it up:

Take a secondary with a good -resistance power or two

Take arcane bolt, with containment it can do triple damage when the arcane boost is up.

Alternatively, Go dominator, their secondary set is all about damage.  If you care about theme, ice assault is actually one of the better Dom secondaries.

 

 

[Carnifax]

Solo? Ice / Traps / Earth with Sorcery and Fold Space. Solo to the beat of your own drum. 

 

I've a junkbot I got to 50, mostly solo. Cobbled together from Clockwork and Nemesis parts. Recoloured so he looks like a "Pollution / Traps" controller. Ice patch is more "oily sludge", Arctic Air is a miasma of smog etc. His "traps" are bits of him which fall off mid-combat and explode. 

 

Set Jack on fire with Enflame, maybe plant a Trip Mine & Poison Trap, Fold Space, drop Ice Patch and then just whale on them with the Earth epics, hold + Arcane bolt. 

 

 

[Psyonico]

How's endurance on that, @Carnifax?  Ice tends to be end heavy with just arctic air, so I can't imagine running enflame as well!

[Carnifax]

It's not too bad, solo you have time to set up your little death spots and Trip Mine is actually pretty End efficient if you're TPing everything in. Just ran it through a radio mission in PI and wasn't really ever gasping for End. I do have an extra slot in Health for both Panacea and Miracle uniques. Plus you have the solo Insp drop rate in your favour. 

 

Honestly I wouldn't recommend Enflame hugely anyway. It's not amazing damage for the effort. So for saner people I'd advocate dropping it for something else. But "Dumpster fire Jack" is part of my build now and I've an attachment to it. Sorcery for Arcane Bolt makes a huge amount of sense for Ice. Enflame was me going all-in on concept (part of which was "lots of this build is going to be pool powers").

Edited January 15 by Carnifax

[roleki]

21 hours ago, Onlyasandwich said:

Storm is always a good solo enabler, as it brings lots of damage and extra mitigation to the package.

 

TA is strong for similar reasons.

Ice/TA was always a strong pairing, but now that HC has buffed both sets, it's just ridiculous.  With the fear and the confuse and the slow and the DoT, it just turns enemy AI into jelly.  I love it.

 

Ice/Traps is also a bit of a fun one.

[Onlyasandwich]

Just now, roleki said:

Ice/Traps

Good call out! Traps always slips my mind. I need to brew up a satisfying concept to give it some love.