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My only level 50 Ice Controller is an Ice/Storm. I have a low level Ice/Rad and an Ice/Kin. Ice is unique in that you can choose to have a melee-oriented build with Arctic Air, or a ranged build with Shiver, or both.

(And by the way, the "complaint" that the AoE Immob, Frostbite, conflicts with Ice Slick is lame . . . just don't use the AoE Immob on Ice Slick! Or cast the AoE Immob, wait 12 seconds, and then use Ice Slick after the -knockback has run out. Still, I agree that Frostbite is not as necessary on an Ice Controller as the AoE Immob on other controller sets.)

I built my Ice/Storm to be melee, with some ability to solo. With both Arctic Air and Snow Storm, I was able to skip Shiver and still send everything to the slow cap. Frostbite lets you use -Knockback to help Tornado be more effective as a damage power. The damage in Storm helps make up for the lack of damage in Ice, making it possible (but not fast) to solo. While the pair has a nice theme synergy, there are some problems with the powersets together. With Arctic Air, you want foes in close. Gale, Hurricane, Tornado and Lightning Storm knock them away. On the other hand, Ice and Storm together are visually fun. I really love this character, and he is great on the ITF with all of his Slows.

Ice/Rad has a special synergy. Rad's Choking Cloud is only effective with another power that helps it be more effective. Fire/Rad and Ice/Rad both work. Choking Cloud + Arctic Air combine to provide a huge amount of AoE control on two high-endurance toggles. Plus, Radiation Infection can combine with Ice Slick or Frostbite to substantially reduce attacks from foes. Glacier and EM pulse are both PB AoE Holds that can stack or alternate for more effective use. You had better rely upon a team to do damage, though.

Ice/Kin: Ice can be a melee set, providing damage mitigation and control to help the melee fighters. Kinetics provides a huge buff to those melee fighters. Positionally, Ice and Kinetics go together very well. Unfortunately, you have very little damage yourself to buff, but on a team, that's not a problem.

Ice/Cold: I don't have one, but a lot of Cold is similar to Storm without the knockback. Theme-wise and team-wise, this is great support character replacing the damage in Storm with Defensive shields for the team and some nice foe debuffs.

My Illusion/Radiation Controller is always welcome on every TF. Ill/Rad doesn't conflict with other controllers, and the Rad part stacked with other Rad 'Trollers and Defenders makes everyone better. Phantom Army helps the tank and can fill in for him, if needed. Whenever I list the characters I could bring to a TF, the Ill/Rad is chosen far more than any other. I have one build with Perma-PA, and the other build has Teleport and Recall Friend for stealthing missions.

Earth Controllers are wonderful if he/she is the only controller on the team.

Warshades are great on TFs, too. The ability to do whatever is needed is very useful. Fill-in Tank, Blaster, scrapper, a little bit of control, with Stealth, teleport and Recall Friend. And the ability to run in, nuke, and almost immediately refull my blue bar.

When I leveled up my Dark/Elec, I first tried to go for Endurance Drain. I found it frustrating. Most of Dark Miasma is more effective at range, including the most effective power, Fearsome Stare, a cone. Short Circuit requires you to be in PB AoE range, and it takes at least 2 shots to drain endurance. So I found myself running in and out of melee. End Drain is one of the weaker effects in the game, as it doesn't do all that much unless the endurance of foes is completely drained. (However, I have to admit that I had to solo a lot -- without a tank to grab aggro, I was getting hit a fair amount.)

Eventually, I discovered that the most effective End Drain came from Power Boost followed by Thunderous Blast . . . but that drained all of my endurance, too. I eventually gave up of focusing on Endurance Drain . . . but still use the Power Boost+Thunderous Blast combo at times.

I later made a Kinetics/Electric built around Endurance Drain. (He has a great concept . . . with an Egyptian theme, he drains his foes and stores the energy in himself for attacks. Name is "Sultan Battery" -- say it out loud) The Efficiency Adapter set in Short Circuit is great. Even better, Power Boost + Short Circuit will drain the group, as will Power Boost + Thunderous Blast. The Kin/Elec has the advantage of being able to recover his Endurance with Transference after using the nuke. A little bit of EndMod in Ball Lighting and Voltaic Sentinel helps keep them drained for a little bit.

The nice thing about using Power Boost instead of Power Sink is that Power Boost buffs a lot of things other than Endurance Drain -- longer holds and Fear! One of the best aspects of my Dark/Elec is the two holds allows me to quickly hold a Boss, and Fearsome Stare controls everybody else. That, and two pets with the cute names of Fluffy and Sparky.

I don't think Stealth adds all that much Defense (but I don't have the numbers at the moment). What about putting a Stealth IO in Super Speed, and using that spot for either Bonfire (which I like but is situational) or maybe Maneuvers to stack with your teammate. One Maneuvers is kind of meh, but two or more and they become more worthwhile. Of course, Maneuvers is another toggle, and you may have endurance issues.

Personally, I'd rather have two Fire/Rads than a Fire/Rad, Fire/Kin combo. Why? Stacking AM, Stacking Choking Cloud. I have duo'ed Fire/Rads many times, and they are great.

I don't have access to Mids at the moment, but I would slot a few powers differently.

Crush: This is a power mainly used for damage over time. I slot it as a damage power, and use it to make sure I get Containment before Propel. My usual single target attack chain is Grav.Dist.-Crush-Propel. If GD misses, I still get containment from Crush. If GD hits, I get double damage from Crush.

Freezing Rain is NOT a damage power. The damage it does is actually small fractions of hit points, that the game rounds to "-1" for what you see, but it does very little damage. It is most important as a Debuff/Control power. I believe you will get more damage from slotting procs in it than slotting damage.

I use Deceive all the time, pretty much several times on every group -- with a few exceptions, but even with a single foe, Deceiving him before using Blind means that if you miss, you don't draw aggro. Deceiving several means you kill the group faster.

EM Pulse I save for special occasions. I use Flash a lot because it does not have the -Recovery, and I keep EM Pulse as my "panic button" power. I'll use EM Pulse when the baddies are really spread out, or if I have a big group of Robots, or if there are a lot of bosses and I want to stack it with Flash. However, I really don't use EM Pulse all that much.

On the other hand, Deceive has saved me and my team time after time. Malta Sappers? Deceive takes 'em out before the fight begins. That applies to almost any tough or unpleasent foe. Even a good way to get rid of Snipers without allerting foes around them. For Nemesis, it may take two applications, however.

No question, Volcanic Gasses is a "must have" power for any Earth controller. My Earth/Rad guide discusses some of the mechanics of the power. Basically, it spawns three geysers as pets that pulse holds on the foes. This allows it to stack mag and hold bosses. I suggest that you always use Quicksand underneath it to make sure that foes stay in the area, or use your Stone Cages, or both.

Earth Controllers have three AoE control options: Stalagmites+Stone Cages, Earthquake, and Volcanic Gasses. (There is a 4th in Salt Crystals, but a PB AoE Sleep is not nearly as effective.) You can stagger them to always have one available for every group. Or you can stack them for tough groups. The nice thing about Earthquake and Volcanic Gasses is that they are not "one-shot" controls -- the will continue to control additional foes who enter the area. However both will sometimes take a second or two to take effect, meaning that you may take some damage unless your tank or your Animate Stone take aggro first.

And Lewis? That's the effect of the Pet Recharge Nerf. Volcanic Gasses used to fire off its Geysers more often before pets (and quasi-pets) were stopped from receiving benefit of Recharge.

Illusion/Radiation Controllers. Phantom Army can't be directly buffed, so the only way to make them more effective is debuffs. Rad has a Resistance Debuff that lets PA do more damage. Rad has a Defense Debuff that lets PA hit more often. Also, you need a buff to Recharge to get Phantom Army up more often, and Accelerate Metabolism has a Recharge buff. Radiation is the only Controller secondary with all three: Recharge, Defense Debuff and Resistance Debuff. Just about everyone knows that an Ill/Rad is famous for being the AV killer, and a Perma-PA Ill/Rad is one of the best builds in the game, while being very good solo, on small teams and on large teams.

Fire/Rad Controllers: Choking Cloud is not very impressive on most characters. However, the combo of Fire Control with Choking Cloud makes both better. Choking Cloud has an odd way of working, such that it takes a while for the hold to hit, and then it has a chance of dropping. To make it effective, you need something else to distract the foes but keep them in the area. First, Fire/Rad can use the Flashfire-Fire Cages combo to get an initial AoE control on a group. Then the Fire/Rad controller can run in to give Choking Cloud time to get a hold on foes. While foes are held in Choking Cloud, Hot Feet is chipping away on their health. If the foe breaks out of the hold, Hot Feet has both a Slow and an Afraid aspects, so foes who break from the hold tend to slowly try to run away rather than attack the Fire/Rad controller. This often gives enough time for another hold pulse to hit. The combination of hold, damage, slow and afraid, plus the endurance boost and Recharge from AM means that a Fire/Rad has a special synergy.

Ice/Rad also has some synergy with Choking Cloud and Arctic Air, but the lack of damage means that an Ice/Rad has to rely more upon teammates for damage. Of course, Fire/Kin has a lot of synergy, since both are melee, damage oriented builds.

Illusion/Trick Arrow controllers: Trick Arrow fills in several of the control holes in the Illusion set, while Illusion provides the distraction to allow all the Trick Arrow debuffs to be fired off. Plus, the debuffs help Phantom Army be more effective. This is a very effective Ranged set, with the only melee power being Flash, which is skippable.

Earth/Trick Arrow Controller: No build is better at ranged AoE control. Many of the controls stack to handle bosses.

Lillika's build is quite good for a lower cost build . . . except that those Luck of the Gambler Recharge are far from lower cost, but there's not much you can do about that. One suggestion I have would be to move that Defense Debuff slot from Radiation Infection. You could put it in GI, and change the Kismet set to Red Fortune for another 5% Recharge. Or you could put it in Spectral Wounds for a little more Acc/Dam.

Ultimately, you should have a goal of replacing the set in Deceive with the Coercive Persuasion purple set. That will give you an extra 10% Recharge and some other nice bonuses, and the confuse purple set is one of the least expensive -- the entire set will cost not much more than a single LotG Recharge.

If you look in my Ill/Rad guide, near the bottom of the thread, you'll see my Perma-PA Ill/Rad build. I have 206.25% Recharge, and I'm easily perma. However, you'll notice that the only purples I have in the build are cheap.

As for Ling Rad, one suggestion would be Acc/Slow and EndRdx/Rech/Slow from Tempered Readiness. That makes it a fraction of a second away from being perma, and gives you 1.5% Recovery. The Accuracy isn't quite as high as I would like, but you really, really need the Recovery.

I'd move that slot from Psi Tornado to Indomidible Will for more Recharge. It will shorten the recharge of that power from 131 seconds to 113. That's a big difference.

Your build also seems to have a spare level 9 slot. You could put a Hold in Char, or the Chance for Build Up from Decimation in Char.

{to Ignitros}The OP here needs some help with an early build. I'm not sure it is all that helpful to post end-game type builds when he is still learning the basics of IOs and sets.

{To Neofusion}Take a look at my Illusion/Radiation guide, especially the Radiation side. It has a lot of discussion about slotting enhancements, along with possible options and strategies for using Rad. A few people have asked me to do a Fire/Rad guide too, but it just takes so long because I am so long-winded.

I suggest you take a look at my Illusion/Radiation Guide, linked in my sig. It has suggested SO/Common IO slotting as well as high level/expensive slotting. The guide has lots and lots of information to help you, including lots of strategy tips. I tried to condense the wisdom of a lot of people into it.

I agree with the previous two. Illusion/Radiation is a great build for single tough targets, but doesn't have much to make it a good farmer. Want to make Inf on your Ill/Rad? run lots of Task Forces.

The First thing I thought when I saw this post was, "give it up." Ice/FF is one of the lowest damage combos possible in the game. But if you really want to solo . . .

Drop something, like Resuscitate, to add Chilblain slotted for damage. This will add some DoT and adds up. (I have an Ice/Storm at 50, who has Chilblain so I can solo.) Add Air Superiority with some damage slots. My Ice/Storm has both Chilblain and Air Sup, plus Jack plus Lightning Storm and Tornado . . . and I can solo with him OK. You won't have tornado or Lightning Storm.

And I believe that Damage slotted into Block of Ice will actually do more overall damage than those procs in that power. The only exceptions are (a) the damage procs in purple sets, and (b) if you already have capped your damage slotting.

No matter what you do, playing solo on an Ice/FF will be slow.