The Uninspiring State of Ice DPS

So, post-revamp, Ice PftT dps is very underwhelming. I've tinkered with a ton of loadouts, many of my own design and several borrowed and/ or adapted from other Ice players who are sharing their strategies.

The choices are to apply dots and play melee for the most part or to use Ice's middling burst options or some combo thereof. In much content, especially in alerts, Ice's low-end dots take too long to get going to really be effective and its burst potential is lukewarm at best.

Ice SEEMS to have some fun choices but they're not so wonderful in actuality-- Snow Devil doesn't hit very hard and doesn't stay out very long; the brief moment when you can have more than one Snow Devil out is very meh. Why not make Snow Devil combo-able in order to generate more? Frost Blast hits like a ton of bricks WHEN it crits and when you're not interrupted. However the wind up is much too long. So it has three strikes against it-- long cast, potential to be interrupted, unreliable crits. One or more of these needs to change to make it viable.

Ice Boulder clipped with Reflect seems like a neat idea too. Until you actually play with it in combat. Again, it's too slow to keep up and scatters adds way too much.

Post-Revamp Ice still has many useless moves in its tree. Resonating Gale has been neutered and made into a mediocre semi-pull. This was a power that could have used some retooling and made into a proper DPS power. Frost Slam is another meh moment in the Ice tree. It's all just so underwhelming.

My main is an Ice toon and I DPS'd long before AMs and was able to build unique, hard hitting loadouts that were fun to design. I agree that Ice was overpowered in the AM era so I'm not asking for a return to that. I'd really just like some more options that aren't so boring and so middle of the road. My Earth toy toon at 200/91 hits much, much harder than my 206/335 Ice toon. I don't want anyone to be nerfed but I would love some balance and some more fun options, two concepts that were promised as part of the revamp yet have not materialized for Ice dps players.

Agreed. Its one of the worst, imbalanced powers right now. They need to balance our Powers, Roles, and actually make Our stats matter. Many of us are up in arms over the issues with these imbalances in the game. Its a damn shame to see how imbalanced our powers are, and what they have done with clamping to stats. Characters with 150 skill points are doing just as much as characters with 300+. Its not about skill either, its a total and complete imbalance, and it isnt right. Right now, Nature, Rage, and Earth are doing three times the amount of damage as the other powers. Dps Roles are recieving clamps in content, while support roles are getting Might for free, a dps stat, when they choose to get the power stat for their role. Its insane, and its why we have so many "Battle Support" roles flooding the game. They do damage in the role, and get none of the clamping a dps role does right now. The STATS NOT MATTERING AT ALL REVAMP is an epic fail. This isnt balance. Its straight garbage.

Well said

I am really let down with what has happened to ice.

Ice was fun pre t5 and revamp... the original ice revamp ice was pretty perfect

Solos duos and alerts you wanted to melee..

Best load out for me was

Wintry tempest/bitterwinds/reflect/ice bash/and that ice burst move where where you slam the ground around you hitting all the adds surrounding you can't think of the name of it ... it was fast paced and if you used a one handed with the flurry combo it was lethal... it was clip city with dots and burst

Then raids you went
Wintry tempest ice bash reflect the 60% move I can't remember the name of that you could hit frost snipe immediately after and snipe would do really well damage to the bosses you'd mix that with bow attacks the air or the long range hold .. and again it was lethal ...

Then t5 happened and ice started being less impressive cause of combo powers doing way more damage then they should have

If the above load outs were still viable ice would be a great power still not sure how those load outs work now but I'm guessing not too good

Ive done ok with ice at times. Other times not so great. Ive seen some players do really well w/it and others not so well. But i do know many skilled players who are frustrated with it because of what seems like inconsistency. Me and 5 others spent a lot of time the 1st week of the revamp on pftt for ice. None of us are really happy w/it atm id say more like accepting of what it is now.

Before the revamp it at least had a smoothness/flow to it. Yes the AM was super easy mode. So i definitely dont want that back. Overall tho it feels clunky. I get why the clipping was removed from some abilities tho. FB hits hard, when ya actually hit w/it. Imo it needs some tweaks. I feel the animations of some abilities are simply too long.

Lets hope this thread stays on track and a real discussion is had. Instead of "im awesome with ice the rest of ya need more sp" or something along those lines. Keep that garbage out of here please.

Also on the topic of ice...

I wish they'd bring back the original ice armor

Have it be permanent like nature forms

I'm not sure if it does anything anymore in dps stance but in tank stance it would be nice to have that original armor it looked really cool.. compared to the crap it has now if people still likemwhat they have now that can always stay as well you could have both choices

requesting a original ice armor to be a style for toons , I have seen 5 threads saying the amour looks cool

Played with my ice toon once or twice since revamp, and it seem kinda awkward.

I remember pre-revamp(am/wm) ice was imo the best dps class. A power that Didn't split and multiple clips

I'm not a fan of ice dps in its current state. However, I'd fall asleep at the controller when ice dps was stupid easy with AM. Thankfully all my toons are support role first then dps.

Before brick and crystal were a thing this was ice armor

i see that being a style for toons . less work for the devs because the styles already in game . in fact they should make all npc styles able in wear in the game , like jack's jacket

It would be awesome as a style but I'd really like to see ice users get it back it was taken out cause it lagged when you transformed and it had a time limit where as they could have just made it like nature transformations

What it became looks really blah

So here is a loadout ive been using. Well rotation. And ill admit its probably nowhere near optimal. Pftt spec. Tempest>Bitter>snap>gust. Drop the boulder on mobs. Replaced the boulder for FB on bosses. Also done the boulder drop clipped with reflection. Switched FB for mobs and gust for bosses.

Another pftt one a league mate was using was impaling ice>snap or tempest. Boulder drop and FB on mobs.Gust on bosses. Blizzard as sc. Another pftt one ive tried was devil>tempest>snap>impaling ice>spam gust with blizzard as sc. Ive used robo sidekick in some loadouts too.

Ive also tried that rotation that was recently posted in the ice guide where ya throw the boulder. Ive done some hybrid too using flip slash or hb. Temp clipped with bash>wpn>boulder>wpn>snowball>wpn>impaling ice. Used dw>bow WM with this too.

None of this^ seems that great and honestly none of it is optimal like i said. Just throwing some stuff out that ive tried. Ive used some pftt with avalanche too but the cooldown is too long imo. The burst definitely is lacking imo. Gust, boulder, snowball, and FB are the only real options. And either the animations are too long or they dont hit hard enough.

Like i said above ive seen some ice players do well w/it. Maybe im missing something or havent figured it out yet. My ice toon has always been a tank 1st. So when the AM became easy mode good dmg is really the only time i dpsd w/it. Before Gu47 my main tank toon, this toon, was rage. So i dont have the experience with the dps side before AM.

Some of these rotations parsed well but didnt do so well in content. But i see a lot of inconsistency. Still a lot more loadouts/rotations out there i need to try tho. Gonna continue working at it.

This sounds very familiar.

That's how I feel about munitions dps. If you look at the powers, power cost, and cool downs. It seems like they were flipping quarters when assigning stat values. The odd cool downs make most powers unusable because with munitions, powers should flow a certain way. How it is now, strange and clunky. Only one loadout flows how it should, that I've found.

My buddy has been in a battle with his ice toon since the beginning. Being told by some, that think they know what their doing, and PMing him and saying another. Oops, lol. Anyway, he has tried everything possible and I believe ended up with a single target and multiple target loadouts. Both, I believe, had to blend in iconic powers.

Sorry, but if any power has to supplement iconics or movements powers, it's broken. Those iconic power costs for the damage they do just need to go or bring up the powers that need it.

what if instead ice amour becoming its on style ,. how about a skin type ? from this to this able to wear other clothes on the ice amour this way

To be honest I was glad when they got rid of this. Hated the look and it left your toon as a sitting duck for a brief sec when you changed back to regular form, didn't bode well with tanking. I don't mind the porcupine spikes but they could potentially bring this form back maybe as a 25% SC? One step below Ice elemental?

Totally feel you about ice armor. But can we please keep this focused on topic? Thanks in advance

That would be cool.