A Chilly Guide to Everything Ice

Agreed. As I said, it is (and has been) debated to death. In my experience (& ONLY my experience) sticking with the basic 2 buffs, Icy field, spam AG (with trinkets and/or Supply Drop) rotation is most effective and consistent. The muscle memory just makes it most efficient. In my opinion (again, ONLY my opinion) the outlier variables switching to IE takes me out of rhythm and I don't notice much difference in damage.
Testing on sparring targets? Absolutely you can see it right away but in a raid with all that goes on I think just sticking with the normal, boring 1-2-3-4 setup works best. I've out dps'd others with IE consistently going that route. I've also been out dps'd too but less frequently.
If possible, having an Armory set up for 1-2-3-4 and one for IE would give one the best of both worlds, then they could pick and choose when and where to use them. I did this for awhile until I noticed the 1-2-3-4 was superior. Again though, this is simply my opinion and what works best for me. It's obviously not going to be the best fit for everyone.
One time that I DO like IE is in the new Harley Duo against Catwoman. The strong "Burst" of damage fits nicely there. You can pretty much handle the whole room without much trouble but you'll probably use both SC in doing so.

Should I use max DMG hand mod or leave it out and stack ice armor ?

Max Damage = 60% all the time. Use it.

I've never tried a Battle Tank as Ice. I think it COULD work in theory but we lose so much of our damage capabilities in Tank stance that I don't know if there is any benefit. Plus, Ice tanking is so heavily reliant on our shields that in order to be effective, we'd have to replace a lot of our Dps tray powers with shielding powers for survivability purposes that the damage spots would probably be insignificant.
Less shielding means more work for Healers which means more work for Trolls which makes the group dynamic break down to the Tank being the focus of the instance rather than the group as a single, cohesive unit.
If you find a good balance for an Ice Battle Tank, PLEASE share it here. I love my Atomic tank, it's WAY more active and involved than Ice but if you find a good one for Ice, I'd run it in a heartbeat!! I think it'd be very cool.
Also, to answer your other question, once in Tank stance we don't get any benefits from AM. If I'm correct we have zero return on power from any rotation. We depend fully on Trolls, sodas, the blue enemy bubbles from KO's and Supply Drops.
Apologies if I'm incorrect on any of this, everything I've mentioned is strictly based off of my personal experiences and testing. There have been times, few and far between, that I've been incorrect. Lol.

well I was leaning towards something like this:

ice bash, wintry temp, cold snap for DPS LO part

and then for the rest of the LO it'd be

inescapable pull, reflect, and possibly bitter winds or a break out or another shielding power. Will try it out some time this week got a 146 ice sitting idle so been meaning to test this for a while now.

If you're using the typical Ice Tank loadout :

Inescapable Storm, Cold Snap, Reflection, Bitter Winds, Shatter Restraints, Winter Ward, you have the option to either take out Shatter or Winter Ward depending on your liking to put in Freeze Wave which can you help you Tank and also apply more damage to your loadout to attempt your action in "Battle Tanking"

So if anyone would like to take this over its absolutely fine by me. I have no intentions of getting around to updates that it's been sorely lacking since well before my hiatus.

I just ask that credit is given to past contributors properly, of which there are more than myself.

I have a question regarding defense and mitigation.

This thread was made after CR differential was implemented into the game and changed the amount of damage mitigation we get from defense. Instead of 71 defense corresponding to 1% mitigation, it took 487 defense for 1% mitigation at 126 CR.

What I found interesting back when I read that thread for the first time is that an Ice tank who hits a power, and thus receives a 90% defense buff, would have enough defense to reach the 75% mitigation cap without blocking. It then follows that there should be absolutely no difference in how hard you get hit from when you're not blocking to when you are (given that the hit can't be block countered).

What I'm wondering is how much defense is currently needed to gain 1% mitigation at 175 CR? And does the 90% defense buff still put us at the mitigation cap with or without blocking? If so, would it be correct to say that blocking is of absolutely no use to an ice tank outside of countering an enemy's melee attacks?

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I also have a second question regarding the Fortified Blocking neck mod. A friend recently pointed out that the description in the tooltip says, "Blocking may prevent up to 80% of incoming damage" and told me that your mitigation cap doesn't automatically get bumped up to 80% when you block, but rather, you have a chance of mitigating 80% damage when hit. Is this true? And if so, does anyone know how exactly the mod works and what is the chance of it procing?

Already figured out by shiny here. The formula is Def = Max CR * 3.5 + 46. So at CR175, 658.5 Dominance equals 1% mitigation. My toon's defense with the 90% defense buff from Atomic is 56625. Using the formula, every time I use a power in tank stance, my mitigation amount is 85.99%. There is a cap of 75% mitagation so theoretically my mitigation is exactly 75% without blocking. So yes with blocking and without blocking as Ice and Atomic you reach the 75% cap. BUT, there's a catch.

Let's start with the hometurf mod. Fortified Blocking increases this cap to 80%. Ice has no way of increasing the cap to 80% without blocking. The best they can do is pop a shield to make up for that. So blocking (with the mod) still has some use in the fact that it has a 80% mitigation cap and blocking with the intention of countering produces blue immunity which also shields you very briefly and disables your enemy for a couple seconds. Best to say is to use your discretion and figure it out in the situation that asks for it. Most of the time you don't have to block and you can just focus on counters.

But Atomic on the other hand, can do what Ice can't do. That is to reach over 80% mitigation without blocking. With the Aura up, not only do they get the 90% defense buff, but they also get 20% absorption when not blocking. That is comparable to Earth's innate 25% absorption. But Atomic gets that and the defense buff. So blocking and not blocking they actually mitigate a similar amount. Blocking counters though still gives the chance of immunity with for some shield mitigation and disabling the enemy for a couple seconds. That's why Atomic, if used properly, can be an excellent countering tank but that's off topic.

I'm pretty sure the word may is used incorrectly in the tool tip. The may would probably refer to a one shot or certain mechanics that exceed the 80% mitigation. As far as I know, it has always buffed the mitigation to 80% when blocking. It would have to be tested in order to see if it's mitigating exactly 80% every time. Does your "friend" have the numbers or the log in order to share so it can be analyzed?

Good evening, I'm looking for a good weapon to use with Earth DPS and Earth Tank:

For DPS, I have a doubt between One Handed Flip Slash, Two Handed WM Arrow Storm, HB Scissor Kick, HB Solar Flame non-WM and Bow Arrow Storm non-WM.

For Tank, between Staff, One Handed and Martial Arts.

Wrong thread. This is the Ice thread.

I just switched to Ice from Earth. I noticed that with Ice when you hit a breakout such as Shattered Restraints you get 6 seconds of 100% absorption just like when you use Bitter Winds. My question what is the optimal rotation to best mitigate damage with Ice if you still get absorption from a break out? Do you just rotate powers every 6 seconds or is there a benefit to only doing certain powers in a rotation?

Thanks

It depends on how much damage is coming in. You can potentially rotate shields to make sure you always have absorption up, but if there is going to be a spike in damage, like many skull attacks from bosses, you will likely want to stack shields.

As Ice you can have up to 3 shields stacked, a typical Dom + Resto = absorption tank shield, like Bitter Winds or Shatter Restraints, Reflect, which is 10000 + Dom = absorption shield, and a Resto = absorption healer type shield, like HL shield from the Iconic tree.

???!!!

So I am contemplating an Ice character, for numerous reasons, aestethics being the primary one.

It seems like an easy to get into power, is it really that strong of a dps power as all the youtubes claim it to be?

Ice is a pretty simple (clipping 3 powers and then spam arctic gust) power. It's easy t o play as DPS and does great damage. Yes ice is a top dps power.
As a tank it's really simple and a nice beginner tank power.

Thank you Tilz, you're always fast and informative <3

I just switched to ice from rage today. Basically, I had an alt sitting idle and my league needed another tank so I have been building them up the last couple of weeks. I am up to overall CR 179, CR 178 for both tank and dps. (I am sick and tired of rage crashing and since I just need to tank for the league, I figured ice would be a good option.)

For tank I used the standard tank loadout at the start of this guide: Inescapable Storm, Reflection, Bitter Winds, Freeze Wave, Shatter Restraints, Winter Ward. As I understand, I should always have a shield (Reflection, BW, WW) up? Is this correct? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

With respect to DPS, what would be the recommended loadout? I just need to dps when I am doing solos and duos. I am not looking to dominate the scoreboard or anything. Again, any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

The Standard DPS loadout: Wintry tempest, Cold snap, ice bash, reflection, arctic gust; Ice elemental.

Wintry tempest clipped with cold snap ice bash and reflection.

Then just spam arctic gust until it's off of cooldown.

With Ice Elemental, just enter it and return to normal; and then do the rotation as you normally would.


Not sure if this loadout will be viable post Stats-matter, as lots of stuff is being changed but i hope this helps.

Is it my "perception" only or the TROLLER powers are doing way more damage than ICE?