Fellow Ice Blasters, how good is Shiver?

[Vanden]

Shiver is on my list of powers to take on my Ice/Ice Blaster, however if I grab it at 28 I won't be able to fit in Afterburner until 47 or 49. Is it worth grabbing when it opens up, or would it be better to leave as an 11th-hour power pick?

[atletikus]

I used to consider it the crowning power of Ice Manipulation back in the day, and it probably still a solid power pick even with Frigid Protection now covering much the same function. Shiver will stay very useful both solo and on chaotic teams (so much so, it might make you wish you had chosen Fire as primary since it's pretty much all the mitigation you normally need), and will stay with your build when when you come to the sad realization than you don't really need Ice Patch on top of it - especially if you build for defenses with IO-enhancement sets later on. Slow/-Recharge is a very powerful effect for a squishy, and if you can leverage knockback on top of that...oh slow-mo shenanigans lol.

 

[Dan Petro]

No damage, no hard CC.

 

Pretty much a trash tier power that would be best replaced by just doing damage to a target.

[atletikus]

No damage, no hard CC.

 

Pretty much a trash tier power that would be best replaced by just doing damage to a target.

Let me guess...you either play exclusively on roflstomp teams or have forgotten how it was to play at lower levels w/o soft capped defenses. Shiver is great mitigation available whenever you want. It pretty much makes you and a squishy team without reliable hard control immune to melee. It  increases recharge time of enemies by 3 times or more. Not even close to being trash. With your mindset; Ice is a wasted power set as the damage it does offer is (significantly) weaker than any other that isn't Devices or Tactical Arrow BECAUSE of great mitigating powers like Shiver.

[Dan Petro]

No damage, no hard CC.

 

Pretty much a trash tier power that would be best replaced by just doing damage to a target.

Let me guess...you either play exclusively on roflstomp teams or have forgotten how it was to play at lower levels w/o soft capped defenses. Shiver is great mitigation available whenever you want. It pretty much makes you and a squishy team without reliable hard control immune to melee. It  increases recharge time of enemies by 3 times or more. Not even close to being trash. With your mindset; Ice is a wasted power set as the damage it does offer is (significantly) weaker than any other that isn't Devices or Tactical Arrow BECAUSE of great mitigating powers like Shiver.

 

lol.  You are mighty defensive there over a pretty terrible power.

 

It is trash on steam roll teams.  It is trash at low levels.  It is trash with or without defense in your build.

 

This is what a build looks like w/o defense.  Just go 3 shot a boss before you spend 2.5 seconds animating a power with zero damage and no real lockdown.

 

Without defense, the less damage you expose yourself to the better.  Shiver still lets the mobs run through their suite of powers, it just slightly slows the time before you can use them a second time.  Enough damage lets you do the same thing, with the benefit of having a dead mob.

[Waypoint]

Not to mention, if your team has no hard control powers... what do you have? Are you running an all melee team, in which case you have high defense? Are you running an all blaster team that can just steamroll everything with damage? Are you running only support toons which can just debuff the enemies to hit or defense/resistance?

 

Shiver isn't a good power. The -slow and -recharge isn't worth it. Especially when you can take actual damage mitigation powers such as Ice Slick or Frozen Aura.

 

Edit: you also get Shiver at 28. You should have plenty of moves to utilize to wipe things out without any hard controls.

[Frostweaver]

It is decent if you are paired with a Primary that has little to no mitigation, when you are soloing elite bosses (Try the praetorian arc) It can be invaluable.

 

However, if you are playing a set that HAS mitigation, especially Ice, you will get no more from it than you would just hitting it with a couple of light attacks. Minus the damage.

 

Very situational. My Water/ice blaster has no use for it. my AR/ice blaster could not solo bosses without it. UTTERLY skippable on ice/ice though.

[Monkeyking]

Shiver is only going to pay off in an extended fight. It could have some utility while trying to solo EBs, but pretty much everything else is going to get the Freeze Ray combo. I suspect that any situation where slowing the enemy would be useful, your main blasts will be sufficient, and where it won't work, Shiver isn't going to help. Might be good for other blasters, but not Ice/Ice.

[oedipus_tex]

The one good thing about Shiver is the size of the cone. It's a 135 degree arc with a 60ft range that can be extended up to around 90ft. This used to be better back when there was no target cap, it meant you could slow huge packs of mobs. The main limitation being you need to find an enemy to center it on (sadly, it doesn't work like the newer Nature Affinity cone that simply casts at whatever is front of you, which would be a huge improvement).

 

Now it is simply "okay." I usually skip this power on Ice Controllers. I probably wouldn't skip it on a Blaster just because Blasters don't typically get many other mitigation powers.

 

It's not really helped by the IO sets for Slows not being very good. But it can occasionally be a path to netting some extra Ranged defense.

[Tahliah]

I think it depends on what you are doing with your ice/ice blaster.  Is it your main and/or badger?  If so, I would definitely recommend Shiver. It's a great slow/-recharge when part of your slow/debuff chain, and as others have noted, it's great for soloing and for extended team combat (AVs, GMs, incarnate content, etc.).

 

If you're not planning on min-maxing, though, it is a bit of a throwaway power (poorly slotted and without other slows/-recharge/-tohit powers, that is).  Drop a blizzard, snow storm, frozen aura, frost breath, and shiver, and your target will be a fish in a barrel . . . just slow-moing, unable to recharge (or hit if they manage it).  Pick them off with your damage cannons.  Fun for the whole family.   

[Vanden]

I've seen a couple people recommend Frozen Aura and I can't imagine why. It looks utterly skippable to me, just a minion sleep. No slow, no damage, not even a good Defiance buff. I guess the Call of the Sandman proc might be interesting in it, but that doesn't seem like enough to make it worthwhile.

[Tater Todd]

I've seen a couple people recommend Frozen Aura and I can't imagine why. It looks utterly skippable to me, just a minion sleep. No slow, no damage, not even a good Defiance buff. I guess the Call of the Sandman proc might be interesting in it, but that doesn't seem like enough to make it worthwhile.

 

I just assumed they used it as a heal but as an former Ice Controller I have no lover for Shiver.  If anything I was just mad at Ice Control in general lol.

[atletikus]

I've seen a couple people recommend Frozen Aura and I can't imagine why. It looks utterly skippable to me, just a minion sleep. No slow, no damage, not even a good Defiance buff. I guess the Call of the Sandman proc might be interesting in it, but that doesn't seem like enough to make it worthwhile.

 

I just assumed they used it as a heal but as an former Ice Controller I have no lover for Shiver.  If anything I was just mad at Ice Control in general lol.

Shiver on a Controller is totally different and underwhelming in a world of hard mez and AoE immobilizations. For Blasters until the addition of secondaries with AoE hard mez; Shiver was the best mitigation available by a long shot. It can easily take the sting out of getting mezzed as having landed it on an enemy group will severely reduce both incoming damage and chain-mez while caught (semi) helpless. Great for levelling up solo both defensively and offensively (stacked with the slow of Rain powers) and on small and/or chaotic teams.

[Waypoint]

I've seen a couple people recommend Frozen Aura and I can't imagine why. It looks utterly skippable to me, just a minion sleep. No slow, no damage, not even a good Defiance buff. I guess the Call of the Sandman proc might be interesting in it, but that doesn't seem like enough to make it worthwhile.

 

It's better damage mitigation than shiver if you're in a mob and only using single target powers. 

[atletikus]

I've seen a couple people recommend Frozen Aura and I can't imagine why. It looks utterly skippable to me, just a minion sleep. No slow, no damage, not even a good Defiance buff. I guess the Call of the Sandman proc might be interesting in it, but that doesn't seem like enough to make it worthwhile.

 

It's better damage mitigation than shiver if you're in a mob and only using single target powers and are clustered very tightly and are minions only .

Yah! Great mitigation on those dastardly scary rikti monkeys, cause underlings and minions is the extent of what a puny mag 2 will cover. Aaaand if they are clustered so tightly they almost stand on top of each other for the small radius to cover them. That covers like .00000002% of actual gameplay. If you buy late game are so weak, you need to carefully weed out those underlings, well... 

 

[Dan Petro]

I'd imagine Frozen Aura will get the same buff as the scrapper/brute version eventually where it will do scale 1.4 - 1.5 damage and be a pretty decent AoE power for it.

 

 

[MunkiLord]

 

I love your name. Spelling is a little off, but I love it!

[Waypoint]

Burn has a radius of 8. Burn hits a good chunk of the enemies surrounding you.

Frozen Aura has a radius of 10. You can figure out the rest.

 

Mag 2 or not, it is still a good damage mitigation tool to have compared to Shiver which might only hit one enemy if you aren't paying attention to mob placement.

[Vanden]

Burn has a radius of 8. Burn hits a good chunk of the enemies surrounding you.

Frozen Aura has a radius of 10. You can figure out the rest.

 

Mag 2 or not, it is still a good damage mitigation tool to have compared to Shiver which might only hit one enemy if you aren't paying attention to mob placement.

Shiver helps keep them at range, though. Frozen Aura I need to be in melee for.

[Waypoint]

Burn has a radius of 8. Burn hits a good chunk of the enemies surrounding you.

Frozen Aura has a radius of 10. You can figure out the rest.

 

Mag 2 or not, it is still a good damage mitigation tool to have compared to Shiver which might only hit one enemy if you aren't paying attention to mob placement.

Shiver helps keep them at range, though. Frozen Aura I need to be in melee for.

 

If you take Frozen Fists, Ice Sword, Chilling Embrace, Ice Patch, Freezing Touch, or any T9 in the Primary Power, you will already be in melee.

[Vanden]

Burn has a radius of 8. Burn hits a good chunk of the enemies surrounding you.

Frozen Aura has a radius of 10. You can figure out the rest.

 

Mag 2 or not, it is still a good damage mitigation tool to have compared to Shiver which might only hit one enemy if you aren't paying attention to mob placement.

Shiver helps keep them at range, though. Frozen Aura I need to be in melee for.

 

If you take Frozen Fists, Ice Sword, Chilling Embrace, Ice Patch, Freezing Touch, or any T9 in the Primary Power, you will already be in melee.

 

Not with Ice Blast. Its nuke is ranged, Ice's melee attacks are weaker than most of its blasts, Ice Patch is equally good at keeping enemies out of melee range, and Blasters don't get Chilling Embrace, they get Frigid Protection which has a 30ft range. That just leaves Freezing Touch, which is nice, but with 2 holds in the primary it's not worth going into melee just for it.

[atletikus]

Burn has a radius of 8. Burn hits a good chunk of the enemies surrounding you.

Frozen Aura has a radius of 10. You can figure out the rest.

 

Mag 2 or not, it is still a good damage mitigation tool to have compared to Shiver which might only hit one enemy if you aren't paying attention to mob placement.

Hahaha. Yeah, figured out you're a deluded troll alright.

[Android Nim]

No damage, no hard CC.

 

Pretty much a trash tier power that would be best replaced by just doing damage to a target.

Let me guess...you either play exclusively on roflstomp teams or have forgotten how it was to play at lower levels w/o soft capped defenses. Shiver is great mitigation available whenever you want. It pretty much makes you and a squishy team without reliable hard control immune to melee. It  increases recharge time of enemies by 3 times or more. Not even close to being trash. With your mindset; Ice is a wasted power set as the damage it does offer is (significantly) weaker than any other that isn't Devices or Tactical Arrow BECAUSE of great mitigating powers like Shiver.

 

lol.  You are mighty defensive there over a pretty terrible power.

 

It is trash on steam roll teams.  It is trash at low levels.  It is trash with or without defense in your build.

 

This is what a build looks like w/o defense.  Just go 3 shot a boss before you spend 2.5 seconds animating a power with zero damage and no real lockdown.

 

Without defense, the less damage you expose yourself to the better.  Shiver still lets the mobs run through their suite of powers, it just slightly slows the time before you can use them a second time.  Enough damage lets you do the same thing, with the benefit of having a dead mob.

 

checked your video...any chance you can share a link to those binds you're running so you get the countdown on the power button?  that is tight.

[senseichen]

Those are new in the latest Homecoming builds. Under options, window, beta options. You can toggle between off, top, middle and bottom of the button.

[Android Nim]

Thanks for the reply...super nice quality of life improvement.  Any ETA on when that goes live?