Ice Ice, Rabies.

h0monculus · February 2013

PowerHouse (Link to this build)

Name:

Archetype: Freeform

Super Stats:
Level 6: Strength (Primary)
Level 10: Constitution (Secondary)
Level 15: Intelligence (Secondary)

Talents:
Level 1: Quick Trigger
Level 6: Professional Athlete
Level 9: Impressive Physique
Level 12: Finesse
Level 15: Academics
Level 18: Shrug It Off
Level 21: Diplomatic

Powers:
Level 1: Throw Fire
Level 1: Ice Blast (Rank 2, Hard Frost)
Level 6: Ice Form (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 8: Conviction (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 11: Concentration
Level 14: Ice Burst (Freeze, Dirtbag)
Level 17: Miniaturization Drive (Rank 2, Reciprocating Gizmo)
Level 20: Fire Snake
Level 23: Molecular Self-Assembly
Level 26: Defile (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 29: Void Shift (Emerging Nightmares, Nailed to the Ground)
Level 32: Masterful Dodge
Level 35: Bountiful Chi Resurgence (Resurgent Reiki)
Level 38: Ice Sheath (Supercooled)

Travel Powers:
Level 6: Athletics (Rank 2, Versatility)
Level 35: Power Flight

Specializations:
Strength: Swole (3/3)
Strength: Aggression (2/2)
Strength: Brutality (2/2)
Strength: Overpower (3/3)
Vindicator: Aggressive Stance (2/2)
Vindicator: Merciless (3/3)
Vindicator: Focused Strikes (2/3)
Vindicator: Modified Gear (2/2)
Vindicator: Offensive Expertise (1/2)
Guardian: Fortified Gear (3/3)
Guardian: Ruthless (2/2)
Guardian: Tenacious (1/2)
Guardian: Find the Mark (1/3)
Guardian: The Best Defense (3/3)
Mastery: Vindicator Mastery (1/1)
this is a toxic ice build i'm toying with in my head do you see any glaring flaws? thanks

braxzana · February 2013

Well, I don't see a Block Replacer in the list...

Not sure why STR is primary superstat; with all those ranged attacks, I would think EGO, DEX or INT maybe (or CON for more hit points since you've got an offensive slotted passive and no real defenses).

With no melee attacks, not sure why you would want a lunge with nailed to the ground - let the foes stay flying, since you can shoot them just fine from there.

Resurgent Reiki is only useful if you have high Dodge scores; granted, you can get pretty darned high with JUST gear, but if you don't have awesome dodge gear, I am not sure I'd get BCR. Also, for an offensive slotted passive, I'm not sure the piddly healing of BCR (especially if you have low Dodge scores) will be enough to keep you alive.

Molecular Self Assembly is hard to argue with as an energy unlock and you DO have Conviction, BCR (which is of questionable utility) and the lunge (again, not sure why, though) to trigger it.

Not too familiar with Fire Snake - is it there for concept, or does it do something that would benefit ice/toxic ranged damage?

h0monculus · February 2013

STR. is for the hp synergy with con through the spec and the lunge is to proc Msa as well this is a sorta pvp-lite build forgot to mention. Also unless i'm mistaken, fire snake reduces elemental resistance. when i was last freeform i didn't use a block replace either and it didn't affect my game play much. thanks for the feedback! also the fear is a nice debuff

kelbornx · February 2013

You don't need STR. At all. Sure Swole is nice, as is Aggression and Brutality, but those two you can get elsewhere *cough* DEX / EGO *cough*, and you have SS CON... which will give you more health than you'll ever get from Swole. Overpower only gives you Melee crit chance, so that's a waste since Void Shift is the only melee power.

You also don't need Defile. It is very costly, and has little synergy with the rest of the build. It only debuffs Toxic resist. Ice Blast R2 + Hard Frost tap spam (whopping 922 base DPS*) is second only Laser Sword (1018 base DPS at R3, more with Particle Acceleration adv.) in terms of raw single target DPS... so you don't need Defile at all for extra damage. If you're keen on taking a Toxic power for theme reasons, take Toxic Nanites. They add the most DPS of any on-hit power, and don't interrupt your Ice Blast spam as much as getting the energy for, then charging Defile.

Ice Burst kind of sucks. Sure it's nice burst damage, but that cooldown kills it. As your only AoE, this gimps you severly. Avalanche (or Fire Breath, if you want something more energy effcient) is much better for an AoE.

I have an Ice DPS build in my sig that works very well. Vapor Form and Ice Shield at the end are both optional, giving you 2 free power choices. EGO PSS for Ranged cost discount in the spec and scaling Concentration, REC to scale Overdrive and give us enough equilibrium to get off a full maintain of Avalanche, and CON to be less squishy. Talents are to maximize DEX and INT as much as possible, for obvious reasons. While the Serrated Shards adv on Avalanche may look good, it's really not. You end up with less damage on critical hits than with R3, and then even less damage on non-crits (since Ranks increase the damage by 20%).

@braxzana:

Block Enhancers:

The base block gives +200% Damage Resistance. Most Block Enhancers gives +250% at R1. Unless you want a secondary effect (such as increased damage on next hit via Retaliation or Guard) or an advantage (such as Force Sheath, The Elusive Monk)... you don't necessarily need a Block Enhancer in every build. Sure it's great to have, but you don't have to have it. You're obviously going to want one if you're building tanky though.

Fire Snake:

This is an excellent skill for his build as it reduces the target's resistance to elemental damage by 4.2/5/6% per stack, stacking 5 times. Fire, Ice, Toxic is Elemental Damage, so this is a great addition to any build that uses those damage types. I even take it on my Infernal Tank it's so good.

BCR/RR:

With any amount of Dodge/Avoidance gear this skill become a very good reactive heal. The RR adv can proc up to once every 0.5 seconds, which means a lot of healing when you're taking aggro. You can very easily get to 40% Dodge, 60% Avoidance through gear alone. Unless for some odd reason you're taking something else in your Primary Defense slot, BCR/RR is useful on any toon; provided you're taking damage. It does lose effectiveness if you're not actually being hit (mobs die, or peel off to another player), but that's why Conviction is often paired with it. Not to mention, BCR is less than half the energy cost of Conviction.

*Base DPS: found by calculating with the numbers from the wiki page, which are values for lvl 40 with no damage bonuses (Form, SS bonus, Offense, Slotted Passive, etc). A good way to get a rough estimate of how a build should perform under ideal circumstances.

h0monculus · February 2013

PowerHouse (Link to this build)

Name:

Archetype: Freeform

Super Stats:
Level 6: Ego (Primary)
Level 10: Constitution (Secondary)
Level 15: Intelligence (Secondary)

Talents:
Level 1: Quick Trigger
Level 6: Professional Athlete
Level 9: Impressive Physique
Level 12: Finesse
Level 15: Academics
Level 18: Shrug It Off
Level 21: Diplomatic

Powers:
Level 1: Throw Fire
Level 1: Ice Blast (Rank 2, Hard Frost)
Level 6: Ice Form (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 8: Conviction (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 11: Concentration
Level 14: Hurricane (Perfect Storm)
Level 17: Miniaturization Drive (Rank 2, Reciprocating Gizmo)
Level 20: Fire Snake
Level 23: Molecular Self-Assembly
Level 26: Force Geyser (Hard Landing, Nailed to the Ground)
Level 29: Void Shift (Emerging Nightmares, Nailed to the Ground)
Level 32: Masterful Dodge
Level 35: Bountiful Chi Resurgence (Resurgent Reiki)
Level 38: Ice Sheath (Supercooled)

Travel Powers:
Level 6: Athletics (Rank 2, Versatility)
Level 35: Power Flight

Specializations:
Ego: Force of Will (1/2)
Ego: Insight (3/3)
Ego: Aggression (1/2)
Ego: Follow Through (3/3)
Ego: Exploit Opening (2/2)
Vindicator: Aggressive Stance (2/2)
Vindicator: Merciless (3/3)
Vindicator: Focused Strikes (2/3)
Vindicator: Modified Gear (2/2)
Vindicator: Offensive Expertise (1/2)
Guardian: Fortified Gear (3/3)
Guardian: Ruthless (2/2)
Guardian: Tenacious (1/2)
Guardian: Find the Mark (1/3)
Guardian: The Best Defense (3/3)
this is with some of the things changed

kelbornx · February 2013

Since Hurricane and Force Geyser deal Crushing damage, you're going to want to take Stormbringer instead of Ice Form to maximize their damage. Stormbringer is actually pretty awesome for Gravitar because of the bonus Crushing resist that it gives.

DEX might be a better Primary SS than EGO. I took EGO in my build because I wasn't taking INT; Concentration scales with the higher of your INT or EGO.

h0monculus · February 2013

what Aoe would you suggest besides avalanche and Hurricane? i really want to keep ice form as the passive on this buikd as well as i don't relaly do gravitar runs anyways, also i see what you are saying about the stats, What about Maining Int and having Dex and Con as secondaries?

kelbornx · February 2013

Personally, I don't like Primary INT on most DPS characters. DEX (or EGO) has better Specializations, namely for the Crit Severity. Primary INT is good on some gimmicky builds that need Revitalize to knock out cooldowns, but this really isn't one of those builds.

Frost Breath is the next best thing to Avalanche and Hurricane. Using Ice Form, Frost Breath will be better than Hurricane. If you were using Stormbringer, Hurricane would pull ahead slightly.

cyrone · February 2013

kelbornx wrote: »

Since Hurricane and Force Geyser deal Crushing damage, you're going to want to take Stormbringer instead of Ice Form to maximize their damage. Stormbringer is actually pretty awesome for Gravitar because of the bonus Crushing resist that it gives.

DEX might be a better Primary SS than EGO. I took EGO in my build because I wasn't taking INT; Concentration scales with the higher of your INT or EGO.

You don't necessarily need a passive that boosts damage for the damage types of your build for it to be effective. I've got a radiation themed build that runs Pestilence as the passive and uses primarily Particle damage with some Fire/Elec thrown in the mix. This character literally melts through bosses (possibly due to the diminishing returns on damage bonus I would get if I slotted Elec Form instead of Pest.)

A friend took the build I mentioned above and slotted Elec Form on it. Same SS's, same specs. Similar gear. My Power Gauntlet, with Pestilence, ultimately put out a higher damage than the Power Gauntlet from my friend.

kallethen · February 2013

This thread wins for the title alone. Made me giggle lots.

Cyrone: That's an interesting thought about passives. Something I'll consider on my next build, I think.

cyrone · February 2013

cyrone wrote: »

You don't necessarily need a passive that boosts damage for the damage types of your build for it to be effective. I've got a radiation themed build that runs Pestilence as the passive and uses primarily Particle damage with some Fire/Elec thrown in the mix. This character literally melts through bosses (possibly due to the diminishing returns on damage bonus I would get if I slotted Elec Form instead of Pest.)

A friend took the build I mentioned above and slotted Elec Form on it. Same SS's, same specs. Similar gear. My Power Gauntlet, with Pestilence, ultimately put out a higher damage than the Power Gauntlet from my friend.

I think what I was trying to get at with the yellow highlighted part is...the damage difference between Elec Form and Pest is made up from the added damage from Pest itself.

That's what I get for posting while half asleep.

xamikaze01 · February 2013

Same over hier, I play a Qularr gunslinger, or DoTslinger, using mostly pistol attacks and Pestilence as passive. And I can dish out more damage that way compared to if I had to use Kinetic manipulation instead.

Ice Ice, Rabies.

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