I was quiet about this before, but at this point I just can't keep mum about it.

It's ridiculous. It's by far the most powerful secondary effect in the entire game.

First of all, the slow. Oh, gawd, the slow. It's the best snare you could possibly get, bar none. Just grab Frost Breath + the Insta-Chill advantage, and you're set. It's the best thing a melee character could possibly get to step up their game. Seriously, why? Why is the snare SO INCREDIBLY POWERFUL when it procs on pretty much every attack in the Ice set? That, ALONE, makes it better than Clinging Flames and Negative Ions could ever dream of being. Oh, but it also lasts TWENTY SECONDS! Mighty Leap? Not even half that.

But that's not all! We need to look at the power that makes chill from "best snare ever" to "best damage dealer ever": Shatter.

Honestly, I'll admit it. I abused the hell out of this in OB. I took down entire phalanxes - you know, the groups of level 40 Destroids with 3 annihilator bots and a crapton of trooper bots - with just Frost Breath with the insta-chill and Shatter with the "50% chance to not consume Chill" advantage. It does MASSIVE DAMAGE. Caps because anything less is not appropriate. It is the single most powerful attack in the game, bar possibly mini mines. With all the ice cages and all enemies chilled the damage gets into the thousands. I laughed with glee as I watched a dozen trooper bots all fall simultaneously to my absurdly broken might (lol might, btw). I dominated in PvP, giving no quarter to anyone who dared cross my path. I was unstoppable.

So, you know, the numbers need a looking at. At the very least, even if Shatter remains as it is now, Chill's slow effect needs a massive toning down. Like, a power of magnitude down. Seriously. Wtf? Best crowd control AND best damage in the game? Le sigh.

Chill may seem OP, and it may be. It might even need some tweeking down. But it is a Damage Set, people seem to forget Frost is Damage Heavy. Frost Does it damage from secondary effects. Traps and such. Try playing a Fire Build. I burn things down faster on my Fire than on my Ice and I do not need to rely on Pesky Secondaries. I just do it off the bat. But none the less Ice was meant to be a Damage tree, it just does its damage this way.

The Devs stated in their letter about powers that the three Elementals are damage heavy. But in their own way. Fire can upload a lot of Damage from the start and get a heavy DoT that almost seem like an attack on its own. Forgot what Electric had going for it, never cared for Electric, and Ice was about using roots and "Traos" that explode to do devestating damage.

If you look carefully the baseline attacks of Ice are weak in damage, but Ice is suppose to be a high damage set. It gets its damage from these secondary effects and not from a mega nuke. That is Fire's way of doing thing. Both are meant to be powerful in damage, they just give it to you different. You do have a high CC and Low damage framework, it is not Ice.

If you do not believe me, roll a Fire build or hope one lands near you while you play your Ice toon, and you will see what I mean about Fire's upfront damage. In short, Ice was meant to be a different kind of damage tree.

As for the Snare, you realise snares are cute in this game. Being the best of the cute... is still cute. Everything and their pet bear has a range attack. Half the time all the worst attacks a mob can throw at you is a Range attack. I never died to a melee hit, I faceplated from quite a few range. So rooting something is.... not always gonna help you as much as it does.

Yeah well Pyre got nerfed on the public test server which will bring down a lot of fire's up-front damage. Frost > fire at this point.

Chill is one of those powers that ISN"T op in pvp but it rediculously powerful in pve.


They will have to do something because Ice marginalizes so much of PVE right now.

Fire was never any good in PvP anyway, Pyre only really hits hard in the lower tiers.

As for chill, i'm someone who's been defending Chill right through all the complaints. The problem was that i didn't take frost breath until level 38 as i had planned it as a PvP skill. Now i can see why people were complaining so much, the first match i went into once i added the 100% advantage i spent the entire time just abusing the other side. I kept them all slowed for the entire match and often killing quite a lot of them with just that and shatter whenever they got close to each other. It seemed like a bit of fun at first just to spend the match annoying and severely hampering the other side but now when i look back on it it must have ruined that whole match for them, there was almost nothing they could do lol.

In another match against mostly ranged i got messed up severely when they saw what i was doing to their melee, so i found out the hard way it's just not effective against teams with quite a few ranged flyers :p

Like I said. In PVP. Good luck. easily countered.


In PVE? You destroy content like it wasn't there. Absolutely overpowered.

Obviously I could not test it, but even with the Damage Nerf. I could probably down most weaker Henchmen in one shot, and with TR, get a second pyre off the bat to finish them off. All in a span of seconds (the Second Pyre needs not be fully charged). I find Pyre's End cost annoying though. If you were relying only on Pyre to win, then you were not using all your arsenal. Perhaps why they are cutting the damage. Now getting Advantages on some of the powers and dropping Flashfire becomes part of tactics. Not just spam the same attack.

Sure Ice will be stronger now and that is why I would not be suprised if Chill gets tweeks later., but the point I was making to the OP. Ice is meant to do damage. Also, Chill is deadly because you take a second power, Shatter. You are comboing up your powers. Guess what, even with a Pyre nerf, Fire with its attacks comboed up will also do deadly damage. If you read my first post, I did not mention pyre even once, why because I do not only use that to do my damage, I hate to be a one trick pony.

I think Ice really shines against ground based enemies. A few tips that I've seen:
1. Most travel powers that get your feet off the ground still work at full speed.

2. Don't cluster, grouped enemies are extremely vulnerable to both shatter and wall of ice with frozen footsteps. Pets and sigils just aren't your friends against Ice, they are just more mines waiting to be shattered after a quick application of frost breath.

3. Attack from behind if at all possible, most of Ice's high damage attacks are a 90 degree cone effect in front of the user, if you keep moving you can improve your chances. Munitions seems to be one of the best counters for Ice.


As far as the ease of applying chill with a fully advantaged frost breath, I'm pretty sure Ice, Fire, and Electric all have a power + advantage with that same effect.

I won't argue the effect of the slow, it probably is over the top in pvp. I will argue that removing chill or giving any part of it other than the slow diminishing returns will have an effect on the damage of the framework.

Ice isn't stunningly easy to work with in pvp and is more position dependant than most frameworks, but in the hands of someone that knows what they are doing it's impressive to watch.

Yup Pyre got nerfed hard (and soon nerf more once test server patch goes live), the Dot event from fire doesnt deal that much damages too. Also in PvP, one can just block and negate most damage (shouldnt block only "block" incoming damages? Nice going there devs)
Fire is a gimped set after the nerf, still have an OK aoe but mini-mines are so much better.
No charge spammer, fire strike sucks and fireball is not spamable compare to other sets 2nd atk.
Fire is also a energy hog set, conflagation is nothing compare to other set's tier 3 nukes
Fiery form use PRE while all other use END...wtf is dev thinking???
Also the superstat is kinda fixed, you dont get END, you cant even charge pyre to full

Pre is a boon to fire. but this is off topic here. as this is about ice.