Ice/Rad Questions

[jonwol2]

Looking at building an Ice/Radiation Melee tanker - seems like it has some good synergy such as icicles + irradiated ground + atom smasher. Would love to be an aggro holding machine.

 

Anyone played this build to a high level / have any thoughts on whether these two powersets would pair well?

[Gulbasaur]

I play a rad/rad brute, and Irradiated Ground is nice but not enormously powerful. It's technically spawned as a pet, so I assume it doesn't do any additional taunt effects.

 

What *is* good is that with the contamination effect, all your single-target attacks become splash damage so you end up with a lot of little orange numbers flying about at all times. You also have a fairly solid melee attack that heals you if the target is contaminated when you hit them - it can heal for 500 or so on a short cooldown which is a nice little bonus, but you have to make sure your target is contaminated first or it's wasted.

 

Atom Smasher is an excellent opener. Charge it up with Fusion first and it will contaminate every enemy around you, which means more damage and more healing for you.

 

Most radiation melee attacks lower enemy defence, so you can take on enemies at a slightly higher level earlier as you have a better chance of actually hitting them.

[Gigajoule]

My main on live was a level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker, and my main now is a level 50 Elec/Rad Tanker. So, I have experience with both powersets, just not together.

 

"Would love to be an aggro holding machine."

 

Ice Armor's Chilling Embrace will get you there all by itself. It doesn't need to be combo'd with anything else. CE is an amazing taunt aura because it pulses every half second. It is also auto-hit (i.e., doesn't require a to-hit roll.) You can just run or jump past enemies and CE will reliably hit them and taunt them without you needing to stop and punch them. Damage auras on the other hand pulse once every two seconds, and also require a to-hot roll. Running past enemies is less likely to work since you will likely pass them by between ticks, as it were. You'll be stopping and punching enemies a lot more than you would be with CE to maintain aggro. Damage auras are fine, don't get me wrong, but you will need to lean on Taunt and/or "punchvoke" more than you would with Chilling Embrace.

 

Icicles will not contribute nearly as much in the aggro department. And Irradiated Ground may or may not generate any aggro at all (hard to say). As Gulbasaur said, it is technically a pet, so I am not sure if the damage it causes is properly ascribed to the Tanker for purposes of aggro. I mean, it might be, but this is difficult to test, and in practice, IG doesn't seem to me to generate much aggro at all.

 

Also, the way IG works is, it is auto-summoned when you stop moving for a second or so. It doesn't follow you around when running per se. If you are moving constantly, IG will not be doing as much damage as it would if you were standing still. Whereas with Ice Armor, I kinda liked being able to stay constantly in motion, sort of semi-kiting enemies and also lining up Frost (the cone attack from Ice Melee).

[Gulbasaur]

I think IG is spawned every four seconds - if you have superjump, you'll notice you leave little poofs of radiation in mid-air if you have it running. It definitely favours staying in one place, but rad melee does generally as you need mobs clustered together for Contaminated damage.

 

If you're pulling round a corner or something, worst-case scenario is you have to wait 3 seconds for it to catch up with you.

[Nehetar]

First let me start by saying that I had a level 50 ice/ice tank and a Ice/Stone tank on old live.

 

I was very excited to test rad melee and tried some different variations of it on different ATs.

 

I knew very soon that I would want to pair it with my old favourite, Ice tanking.

 

So. Long story short. This combo is way better than I initially thought. I am in the process of IOing and unlocking incarnates so I cannot speak to the final redults of the build but eventually I will want to make a detailed guide on the pairing.

 

I will however leave a few tidbits here that might help people.

 

I was also unsure if radiated ground (think that's the name) drew aggro or not. Well until I got my Ice T9. This power was on live more of a novelty than anything else. But I found out to my surprise that the rad toggle (because it summons a pet) continues to damage and resummon itself while you are frozen. And aggro, oh boy. No one has ever taken aggro off me while I'm a popsicle when the rad aura is on. I've held psy damaging AV's on me without dying because of that combo.

 

The heal is very reliable if you want to slot it that way. Ice really loves an extra heal and after you get your most damaging single target attack you can heal on command since that automatically applies contaminated. Fusion (build up) can also be used for that. I never slotted healing in mine, but then again I'm IOd for resistance and regen, but I could see a build with it used that way.

 

Contaminated is an excellent secondary "debuff" for this powerset. It is a crazy amount of extra damage for a tank since you like to be surrounded by a ton of mobs.

I use this toon as my farmer. In AE type "Ice Farm" and enjoy the influence and xp.

 

The T9 aoe is actually amazing. Recharges fast enough that with a good set and global recharge (don't use hasten, not needed) it is the only aoe you'll need. I even specced out of my epic aoe (used mu lightning stuff). I currently use Energy (only conserve energy and body mastery) and I don't miss it at all.

 

 

Hope this helps

[flakoff]

How is ice for survivability, is it any good on just io's?

[Hyperstrike]

Ice is great for Defense.  But if you crack the Defense, it can eggshell nastily.

So, while you should build towards soft-cap, always look at Resistance buffage too.

 

Here's an example.  It's kinda ridiculously uber-buff (Incarnate soft-cap to S/L and standard Soft-Cap to everything else.

And, even though it doesn't REALLY need it, it's got multiple Recovery options (Energy Absorption, Conserve Power).

 

https://tinyurl.com/IceRadTank

 

And here's a Common IO build (plus the "must have" special IOs that you want to aim for).

 

https://tinyurl.com/IceRadTank-CommonIO-Plus

 

 

 

 

[cprice]

On 7/4/2019 at 6:38 AM, Hyperstrike said:

Ice is great for Defense.  But if you crack the Defense, it can eggshell nastily.

So, while you should build towards soft-cap, always look at Resistance buffage too.

 

Here's an example.  It's kinda ridiculously uber-buff (Incarnate soft-cap to S/L and standard Soft-Cap to everything else.

And, even though it doesn't REALLY need it, it's got multiple Recovery options (Energy Absorption, Conserve Power).

 

https://tinyurl.com/IceRadTank

 

And here's a Common IO build (plus the "must have" special IOs that you want to aim for).

 

https://tinyurl.com/IceRadTank-CommonIO-Plus

 

 

 

 

Been meaning to ask because I may be missing something here. What's the point of putting the defense WAY past 45% when there is the that streak breaker tossed into the mix. You know, when you you beasting and the game says "you are beasting too much, take a few of these hits pls." I could be missing something here and if I am, well then I have some work to do on my build. 

[Hyperstrike]

25 minutes ago, cprice said:

Been meaning to ask because I may be missing something here. What's the point of putting the defense WAY past 45% when there is the that streak breaker tossed into the mix. You know, when you you beasting and the game says "you are beasting too much, take a few of these hits pls." I could be missing something here and if I am, well then I have some work to do on my build. 

As a hedge against Defense Debuffs.

Yes, you already have DDR.  But that merely reduces (not eliminates) the effects of Defense Debuffs.

Over-capping helps keep your Defense high, even in the face of massed Debuff.

[Sura]

On 6/30/2019 at 9:18 AM, Nehetar said:

 

I was also unsure if radiated ground (think that's the name) drew aggro or not. Well until I got my Ice T9. This power was on live more of a novelty than anything else. But I found out to my surprise that the rad toggle (because it summons a pet) continues to damage and resummon itself while you are frozen. And aggro, oh boy. No one has ever taken aggro off me while I'm a popsicle when the rad aura is on. I've held psy damaging AV's on me without dying because of that combo.

 

Wow, Rad taunts while you're in Hibernate?  That's excellent and broken at the same time.  Hibernate is still a terrible T9 novelty for everyone else; it's too bad none of the other secondaries can't interact with it the way Rad can.