Fire/Ice or Ice/Fire?

[BlingBaby]

I'm trying to build a Frostfire-esque build on a dom. I realize I can't do everything he does because he's a dirty cheating NPC. However, which of these combos is stronger in people's opinions for general content? What about harder endgame content? Solo?

 

I've already made and leveled a Fire/ice. Don't mind making another. Thoughts? Thanks!

 

Edit: My playstyle is usually melee-centric, but I don't mind good ranged damage and control, either. I sometimes chase the virtual softcap at 32.5 defense, but I've also had success with extreme recharge and cycling Force of Will and Barrier. Again, though, I'm not against learning something new.

Edited Friday at 12:57 AM by BlingBaby
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[Warshades]

I've always found ice control to be underwhelming, especially at end game. Perhaps that will change with the new patch and someone that has tested the various control sets will have better insight into those changes. As of the current live build, I would vote for fire/ice for both general, hard, and solo content. 

[BlingBaby]

2 minutes ago, Warshades said:

I've always found ice control to be underwhelming, especially at end game. Perhaps that will change with the new patch and someone that has tested the various control sets will have better insight into those changes. As of the current live build, I would vote for fire/ice for both general, hard, and solo content. 

I'm really liking fire/ice, but I hate the fire pets. I guess pets are my least favorite thing in general, though. Thanks!

[EnjoyTheJourney]

I'd pick fire / ice over ice / fire. I'm not sure either of them are great fits for each other, though. 

You could also pick fire / fire / ice or ice / ice / fire, in case you like those builds better. 

Ice / ice / fire is a good combination, in case you prefer Jack over the imps. Fireball and melt armor are nice additions to the toolkit provided by ice / ice, as well. 

 

Ice control doesn't have to be underwhelming. It matches really well with savage assault, for example. But, ice control doesn't match well with fiery assault; fire breath is a cone and its fiery' assault's best AOE, but arctic air rewards being in the center of fights. 

[Snokle]

So, Ice Control is not an underwhelming set just misunderstood, it really excels in melee focus sets, like savage melee, psy, earth, ice. Something else these have in common is that they have other soft controls like knockdown, slow, disorient effects which amplify the controls of Ice. With Fire Epic, Psi Epic being some of the best to match with Ice Control.

 

I am not sure if Fire/ works well with ice too well as @EnjoyTheJourney mentions, I have no experience with ice Assault with Dom. But Fire control has some big control powers, but the big focus is extra damage it has with fire.

 

I mean, the combos can work if you want to but not the most optimal for them.

[EnjoyTheJourney]

53 minutes ago, Snokle said:

So, Ice Control is not an underwhelming set just misunderstood, it really excels in melee focus sets, like savage melee, psy, earth, ice. Something else these have in common is that they have other soft controls like knockdown, slow, disorient effects which amplify the controls of Ice. With Fire Epic, Psi Epic being some of the best to match with Ice Control.

 

...

 

The above is a key insight into what kinds of assault sets work well for ice control. 

What's easy to miss about ice control is how impactful the slows that it inflicts on mobs can be. Anything that interrupts mob AI, recharge, or movement requires a longer recovery period before normal actions are available again when mobs have strong slow debuffs on them from ice control. So, as per Snokle's observation knocks, disorients, and (more) movement / recharge debuffs in the assault set are even more valuable when paired with ice control. 

Edited Friday at 07:08 PM by EnjoyTheJourney

[BlingBaby]

So, for me, the combo that makes most sense is fire/ice. The two auras are a little end intensive, yes, but I feel like that combo has a little more synergy than ice/fire. 

 

I'm not necessarily trying to min max synergy, but I find having no synergy to be boring. Still interested in whatever people have to say, though. 

 

Thanks again!

[EnjoyTheJourney]

I was curious about how to make a fire / ice dom work and I ended up putting together the following build. 

Unleash potential holds the build together. It makes endurance manageable in the earlier levels and so taking it at level 20 seems like a functional choice. Unleash potential also provides improved peak survivability when your dom is facing a lot of incoming damage. You may still want cardiac or vigor alpha to manage endurance, even with help from unleash potential, unless you decide on ageless for your destiny incarnate pick. 

To see how peak survivability can spike when using unleash potential, toggle on power up and unleash potential at the same time in Mids; doing this mimics the effect of casting power up and then shortly afterward casting unleash potential, which boosts the defense and recovery totals for the period that it remains active. Melee and ranged defense then spike upward to a little over 50% for the minute that unleash potential is active, before it goes on cooldown for a little less than 2 minutes.

To further boost survivability, you can use melee hybrid core to boost resists for a fair amount of the time that unleash potential is down. You can also time the use of T4 core barrier to spike defense totals when both melee hybrid core and unleash potential are on cooldown. It also helps to get the Eye of the Magus (Demonic for villains) clickie accolade for whenever incoming damage can spike to dangerous totals and all of the forementioned tools for boosting survivability are not functioning at peak levels. 
 

The single target attack chain will need weaken resolve or fireball or power up as a gap filler from time to time, as the recharge times on ice slash and bitter ice blast will otherwise sometimes create gaps in the chain. Using power up is usually a no-brainer to boost damage. But, for this build sometimes you'll want to save power up for when it can boost unleash potential. As a general rule, it's probably good to use fireball as a gap filler when multiple targets are about and weaken resolve when focusing down stronger single foes. 

 

Hopefully this ultimately ends up helping. Good luck with your Frostfire character. 

 

Dominator (Fire Control - Icy Assault - Fire Mastery),v2.mbd

Edited Saturday at 09:05 AM by EnjoyTheJourney

[BlingBaby]

This is really good and close to what I've already been using. I think I'll tweak mine to be more like yours.

 

Originally, I was going to go with Rune and a defense epic shield (and maybe cross punch because I'm a sucker for a right hook) but power up and Unleash work better because recharge is king on a Dom. Okay, also, Sorcery gives me another way to burn people through Enflame, and I love watching baddies melt. At that point, I also probably have more powers than I would need/use and less survivability and recharge.

 

Anyway, I'll have to try this out. Thanks again!

Edited Sunday at 05:32 AM by BlingBaby
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[Snokle]

While enflame is really nice, I find you need a more tanky pet for it to really work. Although ROP is really good on Dom's for emergency situations, the defense shields are usually mediocre, unless you have a controll or secondary the supports it.

 

The res armors have some of the best values, so you really get the best bang for your buck.

 

Also I think I was running ROP on my Plant/Earth Dom for a while it it is a solid piece when you need some extra toughness. So if you hit perma-dom you can still look into that once you get alpha slotting done.

 

But with two hungry end auras you will probably have to bend more to that for now.

 

Hope to hear more as you level.

[BlingBaby]

I was working on a build, then pyrotechnics was released. I'm going to shelve this iteration of the concept and shift her to pyro/ice and see how it works. Level 28 now and it's fun so far. 

 

Thanks again for the build advice. ❤️