Difference between revisions of "User:GuyPerfect/Frigidella"

Latest revision as of 02:46, 1 October 2010

Woman on the Moon

There's nothing particularly noteworthy about the universe, at least once you know about it. It's just a huge expanse littered with ice and rocks and clouds of gas. It's a beauty of a spectacle, sure, but it's still just ice and rocks and clouds of gas. There's little sense in learning about it if you don't intend to do anything with it, and there's even less sense in attempting to traverse it. As objective as science tries to be, it's still inflicted by simple human nature and so much time and effort has gone into exploring something far too massive for any person to possibly put to any good use... for the most part, that is.

It's actually been forty years since a secret space research and development team began sending missions to various locations in the solar system. While the rest of the world is still wondering how to reach Mars, this particular group has already been to Pluto and back (albeit during its sub-Neptunian orbit, so they kinda cheated). What's their purpose? There's a lot of resource out there just waiting to be harvested, and people need to be able to get there and interact with the extraterrestrial environments in order to make use of it effectively. Space suits can only get you so far, and they're terribly limited, so the research group turned their attention to modifying the human body itself to suit the needs of their missions.

Such was the mission of a girl conveniently named Europa Valentine. She was only four years old when she volunteered for the mission, but she has no regrets looking back. The scientists modified her body to be able to interact with the icy surface and liquid oceanic environment on Europa, one of Jupiter's moons. Her mission was to scout the satellite and return with information about terraformation potential and determine what kinds of biological engineering would be sustainable within the moon's liquid... crust, if you will. After all, an environment filled with liquid water so far from the sun presents extraordinary opportunity for any number of operations.

As for miss Valentine, she's still human, more or less. Her core temperature has been inverted, however: her body needs to remain near the freezing point of water, and anything above that would medically qualify as a fever. Her skin is still warm, though, which prevents her from freezing everything she touches in a bizarre, King Midas sort of way. She felt right at home during her mission on Europa, and now that the work there is done, she's returned to Earth to live life with an altered body. A safeguard introduced to Europa's body by the science team is the ability to rapidly expel heat from within, which has a curious effect on the relatively moist air of Earth's atmosphere: Europa can quickly draw water out of the air and instantly produce ice formations of all sorts.

Always being a fan of old-fashioned super hero comic books, Europa donned a custom costume and now roams the streets as the heroine Frigidella. Fighting crime in Paragon City is occasionally troublesome, as one can rarely take five steps without running into another hero, so Europa visits the Rogue Isles from time to time and fights crime there (even though most of what she's putting a stop to isn't considered criminal under the local government). Her motive is one that betrays her past, however: she's not on a mission of any kind; she's simply curious of what she can do with her powers and is picking on the bad guys just to find out.

Character Details

Statistics: Name:   Frigidella Server: Pinnacle Alignment: Vigilante Archetype: Dominator Security Level: 50 Primary: Ice Control Secondary: Icy Assault Epic: Ice Mastery

Powers: (Hover mouse)

Frosty Fantasies

Playing with my first Tanker, the Grim Glacier, was unusually entertaining and I didn't expect that I would like the archetype so much. He had Ice Melee for attacks, and something just clicked with me hitting people with blocks of frozen water for some reason. Arctic Mastery made it all the more enjoyable (before switching to Soul Mastery, which was yet more enjoyable), for it provided some extra moves to round out the character offensively. Once he was 50 and stashed in the character closet, I swore that one day I'd be back to play with ice in a more dedicated way. That time has come!

I settled on the Dominator, which has area control for primary and damage for secondary. I wouldn't get the stacking holds and heavy damage available to Blaster, or the severe enemy debuffs available to Defender and Corruptor, or the sheer damage mitigation available to Tanker, but I would get a good mix of everything. In particular, with Arctic Air, Chilling Embrace and Jack Frost, enemies will have hard-floored movement and recharge debuffs just for standing near me, not to mention all of my other powers that inflict speed debuffs. I figured that on top of normal slotting, I'd also cram in as many of those -recharge IOs as I could to make something that wins not by overpowering the enemy, but un-powering them.

The result was something epic. Going Rogue came along just in time to make effective use of Ice Mastery, and I've been enjoying every minute of it. With my ranged and melee attacks, area debuffs, controls, defenses and pet summon, I've really got all the basic power types covered... And I use them very well!

Freeze, Villain!

Never having leveled up with a Control set before, I didn't really know what to expect from Ice Control. I found the immobilizes to be rather lackluster, as it didn't prevent most enemies from attacking me; especially when I ran up to hit them with Ice Sword. On top of that, the immobilizes grant knockback protection, which completely negates the usefulness of Ice Slick. I did like Flash Freeze, though, as it was a reliable way to lock down all the minions and I could use other powers to deal with the lieutenants and bosses. Ah, but there was that problem again: Ice Slick's knockback wakes up sleeping targets. It's like the whole powerset is designed to counteract itself.

What else was in there? A couple debuffs and a pet. Well, sure. Why not? If it wants to be a mixture of control and debuff, then by golly, I'm gonna let it be one. The set has limited benefits from Domination, but when I want those holds to work, work very well they do. I'm aware that my experience with this Control set is not indicative of Control sets as a whole, but it was an unusual ride leveling up.

Ice to the Face!

Icy Assault, on the other hand, was just as routinely satisfying as could be. It's a bunch of attacks, Power Boost and a melee debuff. I really can't say much about it. It's like picking the best powers from Ice Blast and Ice Melee and throwing in Ice Sword Circle on top.

Ice Mastery was really nice, though. Going Rogue happened to come out just as my character was level 40, so I didn't have to take any mule powers from Leviathan Mastery. Between Hibernate, a self heal, a defense toggle and the wicked debuffs from Sleet, the set was a perfect complement to everything else the character was up to that point. Everything just kept getting better, and those last 10 levels were more satisfying than any other level 50 I've done so far.