Ice DPS. chill effect vs frostbite

Hello everyone
I just have a question about ice dps I been doing it for awhile now and was wonder what everyone else thinks is better. Chill effect loadout or frostbite or both for dpsing. I've had my share of victories in raids but I really want to get the maximum damage out of my loadout.. which is currently.

Ice bash
Wintery tempist
Reflection
Frost snipe
Impaling ice
Bitter winds


Willing to try different if so.

Im a melee fighter so any help would be appreciated.

Try finding room for resonating gale. I personally don't like impaling ice that much, so that's what I would swap out for it; but everyone is different.

The Ice trees are not kind unfortunately. Gale, Impaling, Tempest and Ward are all at the bottom of their respective trees.

I would also swap out Impaling Ice in favour of Resonating Gale.

Not a fan of Frostbite as it's a little fickle I can't always get it to make an icy field.

That being said Resonating Gale is a great power.

I run this loadout for Melee:
Res Gale, Ice Bash, Reflection, Impaling, Frost Snipe, Freeze Ray.

Res gale is a great AE power because it doesn't split damage, even without setting up the PI it's worthwhile in AE situations, and in single target you have frost snipe and impaling.

Range I run:
Wintry Tempest, Ice Bash, Reflection, Impaling, Frost Snipe, and Frost Blast

overall i'm not a big fan of Tempest but at range it's pretty solid, and the range loadout is mainly in preperation for t5 where things last longer.

Overall you'll notice in t4 and lower content the burst classes are killing things faster than the dots can catch up in damage. So I like the chill effects side as it's burst over DoT. Tempest for example in many situations will only get a couple ticks off before everything in it's area is dead. That's a lot of power for what ends up being not that much damage. If you use chill effects you can hit ice armor and nullify the benefit of 50% modifiers too.

Of course to each their own, I know plenty of good ice dps that use wintry tempest, but that's just my take on it. I rather get that damage out now, especially when trash is dying in 1-2 weapon combo clips. I have been running that range loadout and I'm still getting great numbers, I do use the 60% tactical mod though so I have a 60% mod up constantly. So while I prefer the burst you can really do pretty darn well with either.

One more note, I'd definitely remove BW, it's ok damage over the whole duration, but has drawbacks. Almost every Ice tank uses it for one. It's a second Frostbite applicator, do you really need two? It also takes 14s to do it's damage, in which if you ever leave melee range you lose damage ticks. 12 ticks of 2-4 base damage (20-40dam at 2k might) and an initial damage of 10 dam (100dam @2kmight). So a total damage of 460, compare that to frost snipe which is 25-30base damage and 35-40 w/chill effects. So with chill effects you're looking at 350-400 damage instantly vs 460 damage over 14s. So personally I rather use a frost snipe than BW even if I had BW in my loadout

Again this is all my personal take on it. Every good ice dps I know uses a different loadout. One of the reasons I like the powerset so much.

The problems with Frostbite interactions:

• Frostbite in itself (not Bitter Winds/Wintry Tempest) last only around 6 seconds (most power interactions last 12 seconds)
• Ice fields don't always work (vote for a bug fix here)
• Ice fields don't stack with each other
• It's possible for enemies to get out of the ice field
• Glacier Flash and Arctic Gust will produce (if ever) the ice field on the last tick

As JEEBIE said, frostbite is a little fickle. It's fortunate that the powers are pretty good on their own (maybe with the possible exception of Avalanche). Chill effects are easier to get interactions with, but is limited to only three powers that interact with it.

Thanks jeebie for the input .. I have been thinking since I use snipe a lot how bout adding more chill effect moves to my loadout like cold snap instead of bw or so what is your input on CS I do like RG im going to add that in but I was really asking why doesnt anyone use CS its a faster was to get armor and chill effects with reflection and ice bash...

Drift .... I did realized that the frostbite does take time to get icy field and stuff which makes me try for chill more because like jeebie said. 300-400 instant vs 460 over 14s make a different in overal damage numbers at the end .

I really appreciate everything so far any more info please share thanks.

Im a USPS3 PLAYER. QUICKFURY85 IF ANYONE WANTS TO RUN WITH ME OR SO .....

yea all you might not have tried out all the power interactions yet, no one mentoned snowball, this is an awsome power, ill give you 2 of the ones i use for super fast clips.... frost snipe and snowball... get the interactions right and these two are awsome. me best snowball hit for 1700

I was just talking about snowball in the Ice guide in oracle area. IMO it's too in between. It's basically frost snipe but instead of extra damage on your target that extra damage is done through a splash AE. It's not bad but just Frost snipe will win on 1 and even maybe 2 (or at least be close at 2), and by the time you hit 3-4 hitting resonating gale will yield higher damage but longer animation, but there's lots of options to clip. Not saying it's bad, just a bit too middle ground for me.

It is something I need to look into though, as to what the total additional damage is and how it splits. If it's better in the 2-4 range then it'll probably be pretty good for t5 looking at some of the situations I saw watching odyssey.

As for COld snap, the only reason use for it is the chill effects. It's a terrible power. Too long a reuse for tanks to use as a CC power, and too low of damage for dps. So what does it give you? Well it makes it so you can get ice armor every 12s vs 24s. If you do cold snap/ice bash/reflection, then cold snap/ice bash next time it's up (12s iirc) you are in ice armor. So that makes it so 60/72s you're at 50% mod vs 60/84s. Not a huge gain but it's nice.

And I think drift was trying to say that there are strait up bugs and issues with frostbite, sometimes it just plain doesn't work. Very fickle. Chill effects isn't perfect either but if you keep using ice bash and reflection to clip things it's not really an issue. So it's not just DoT vs Burst, it's Unreliable vs reliable hehe.

The DoTs are actually quite nice if it would just come out more reliably. You'll lose a bit on concentrated damage, but everyone in the field, even those who weren't frostbitten, gets hit by the DoTs. The field itself even causes frostbite, meaning you could use it to chain interactions into another (supposing you're fast enough to do so). It's just the fact that it doesn't come out often than it should.

Cold Snap...well, I just find it ironic that it can potentially reflect more damage than Reflection ever does. The initial tick is similar to Reflection. The difference is that it splits damage while Reflection does not. Cold Snap may see better uses on 1v1 situations, but even then, it's main use is simply just to hasten getting ice armor.

So on a different note whats a good might precision balance for ice ...

Also im going to try out this loadout next time im on.

Tempest
Ice bash
Snipe
Gale
Reflection
Mayb bw or sc dunno
I would like impaling ice but not enough points

Also whats some of your rotations bcuz im fully t4 modded red p&m. Blu m&h. Yellow m&pow

And I get killed by hl n gadgets dps. Is there a strong rotation or clips that are a must for ice dps. Also I use either martial arts or one handed

I feel Ice is right up there with HL/Gadget. I balance but lean prec, mainly just out of the old ice days before we could do decent damage with powers. I really think either is viable because I always think prec is viable because if power in is low it's going to win out for sure and then I think we just have a lot of might damage we can do so I could see people doing that.

Basically might/prec on reds, then if you find yourself soloing a lot or doing a lot of duos/alerts I'd go with prec/health and prec/power. If you're a crazy power spammer and clipper in raids go might. I find myself going staff or other more efficient and high prec damage weapons for melee so I have been going prec. With t5, and doing range only damage, I think might will be a very good option though.

Melee Rotation:
RG, IB, Reflection, Impaling, FS, Freeze ray

RG/IB/Reflection- melee combo - Impaling/jump cancel/ Frost snipe

With 1h use Flurry for AE and flip slash for single target is what I do.

Continue to rotate IB/Reflection in to keep chill effects up and work the ice armor. If power becomes an issue drop the impaling ice jump cancel. I personally jump cancel instantly so I basically see a tick of 150dam from impaling, then a tick of like 400dam from FS, and when under 35% that 200 becomes like 400. So under 35% I'm basically double ticking frost snipe . I run this with staff and tear up the charts.

Ranged for t5 my loadout is:
Frost blast (with mod), Wintry Tempest, IB, Reflection, Impaling, Frost Snipe

Frost blast- WT/IB - Weapon combo - impaling/jump/FS.

Frost Blast before every other WT/IB clip. Impaling/FS in between.

I actually ran this loadout for raids this week, I was right up there. Gotta say it's a nice loadout. Making handblasters look good is awesome.

A lot of people look at ice as a good melee dps but the range powers are just as good. Also melee will go right out the door with the new content. My loadout is like this. Keep in mind I'm might base(2195).

Resonating Gale
Ice bash
Frostblast
Impailing ice
Wintery tempist
Blizzard

I start off with ice bash for the crits. Then wintery tempist for the frost bite(very important). Next is resonating gale for the extra tick followed by frost blast. On a low hit frostblast will do a total damage of around 2000 but high is up around 4-5k. Impailing ice I use on boss fight mostly and average is 2k but most I have done was 6500. Remember base might is 2195. This loadout gets me 800k-1mill in gates on average. This is not an easy loadout and takes a ton of power but very effective in t4 raids. I use a different loadout for the lower raids (melee). Also if you csn get the home turf mods with enduring might and the channeled powers (I think that's what its called) for frostblast then you will get the 60% damage buff.

Thanx for the advice. And yesbi will invest in the home turf. Mods. Any other advice is appreciated

So I ran some tests I used ice bash reflection impaling ice frost blast wintery tempest bitter winds I dif good damage itd just the casting on frostblast was irritating. Need faster loadout lol

Give this a try:
Res Gale, Ice Bash, Reflection, impaling, Frost Snipe, OPEN

Toss Frost Blast in there if you like that 60% mod. I find it /meh for melee but AWESOME for range. maybe bitter winds for a second shield/ae DoT. A supercharge goes well, i run freeze ray usually. Sometimes I have the swoop attack for flight as it's great for getting around.

This is my speed loadout. I even jump cancel impaling for it's first tick if I have extra power. Frost snipe hits harder and faster than any power you had in your loadout =)

K tried it out def love snipe fast n hard hitter but res gale I just dont feel the right damage out of it maybe im just not setting it up right but I dunno lol been using wintery then clip with reflection on mob and boom big damage and frostbite n shiled all at once then do weapon combo hit snipe few times and finish it with impaling but I kno u guys say rws gale is beast cuz no split n all but just dont see it in my opinion what u guys thinkalso use bitter winds for extra dot tick n shield since melee but might try gale again on my range loadout cuz t5

Use Resonating Gale on large groups of adds. The damage isn't that powerful, but it doesn't split, meaning it's as if you've just casted a single target Snowball on each and every one of them.

My stats are 2136 mig n 636 prec. Going to use wintery res gale snipe impalin blizzard either. Blast or reflect see how that wrks. What u guys think lol

Are you guys usps3??