How do I avoid alpha damage with Ice control?

[jjolin01]

Almost all of ice control is of the "get up in there" type. It really lacks ranged control, and I find myself getting destroyed while jumping big packs of mobs. How should I deal with this? Rune of protection?

[Uun]

I typically open with Cold Snap or Ice Slick.

[EnjoyTheJourney]

If you put a stealth IO into sprint (celerity: stealth, for example) you can often drop right into the center of a mob and either get arctic air to activate and/or fire off glacier to open up a battle. You can also drop ice slick while in the middle of a mob. 

 

A stealth IO is probably the simplest way of opening up battles on an ice dom because a brief delay before mobs notice you is all you typically need to minimize the incoming alpha. Pair that up a celerity: stealth IO with a celerity: endurance IO to make endurance a bit more manageable, if you'd like. 

 

Another option is either combat teleport or to try out ice control / savage assault. The teleport in savage assault is really good and very frequently available, in practice. 

Edited February 17 by EnjoyTheJourney

[Carnifax]

Cold Snap was pretty much (re)designed to be Ices opener. 

 

What's your secondary? For example Trick Arrow can Flash Arrow them so they can't see you barrelling in / casting Ice Slick and once they do chances are the barrage is going to miss you thanks to the debuff, whereas a Dark will Darkest Night em.  

[Onlyasandwich]

All of the above options are very good!

 

Remember also that you can place Ice Slick out of line of site. You can set up a really safe engage when you have a line of site blocker this way.

 

Don't "sleep" on Flash Freeze either! Ho ho ho.

 

Really though it's a great setup when solo. Not amazing on teams, but solo it lets you sneak in there and give Arctic Air a chance to get rolling. I haven't found it needed myself, and just plop Ice Slick or Cold Snap, but it works well if you need an extra layer of safety on the engage.

Edited February 17 by Onlyasandwich

[Uun]

7 minutes ago, Carnifax said:

What's your secondary? For example Trick Arrow can Flash Arrow them so they can't see you barrelling in / casting Ice Slick and once they do chances are the barrage is going to miss you thanks to the debuff, whereas a Dark will Darkest Night em.  

This is for a dominator, not a controller.

[Carnifax]

1 hour ago, Uun said:

This is for a dominator, not a controller.

Ooops, sorry!

[Psiphon]

After recharge I build for ranged defence, usually I can get 30+ which helps to take the sting out of any alpha. 

[Frosticus]

Honestly, the easiest way is to use flashfreeze cause sleep is autohit against normal mobs and it is a nice big aoe. 

Not a terrible attack either if you proc it out (damage is not autohit).

 

If you are fighting easy stuff then iceslick is usually sufficient.

 

Cold snap is ok, but the fear cone is much smaller than the slow cone and it is much harder to aim a cone while leaping into the middle of a spawn than it is the aoe of flash/iceslick.

 

You are probably gonna eat some damage no matter what you do if you are in first cause AA only pulses every 2 sec and someone is going to break the sleep/fear in that time.

 

 

 

 

[roleki]

I open with Ice Slick from way back there, then as I run towards the mob I fire off Cold Snap.  By then I'm in the mob and Arctic Air is messing with them.

 

Also, if I can only fit one of Glacier or Flash Freeze into a build, I will always go with Flash Freeze - it's a huge AoE for an autohit, it's easy to make 'perma', and if you put the Placate proc in it, it just adds more guano to the AI behavior.

[Snokle]

I usually put in Ice slick for my alpha then dive in to start abusing AA procs. Flash Freeze is nice if that is needed, but Ice Slick/Flash Freeze -> AA is all that is needed.