Ice vs Halidon (in General)

i have a quick question about familiars, especially about ice and halidon familiars. i've decided to start a 1 minion team with a familiar, learning only ablative shield to the familiar. up until now i had an ice familiar and it went pretty good. for me, the ice familiar was the best option, since it had pretty good damage and it even hits multiple targets. but now i i've started thinking about halidon familiar, since i see many high level teams using it. but honestly i have no idea how halidon familiar works and how should i get the best out of it. i've read from the help section that it's an archer type familiar which trains archery. but before i decide to further research the use of it, i'd like to know if it's better than ice familiar. so if any experienced players, who used both ice and halidon familiars, could give me an advice in choosing a familiar that would be best for a 1 minion team. thanks in advance

Whichever you decide to do I would train some junction and junction items that would benefit the familiar choice and I would also train some DM.

^^

Halidon is great for starting, it does really well at lower levels. If you get your character to a really high level, then I would recommend changing to a IF. For the start, however, I would definitely recommend a Halidon.

Hally would probably be better. Ice dies fast from GA and AMF.

ok, thanks for the quick answers.

As one of the longer IF users, I can actually give you some advice here.

IF's certainly do die quickly to GA, but AMF is a different story. Since your DD is ridiculously high, AMF is typically not terribly high, and junctioned NSC's help even more- my IF almost always has less than a 0.15 AMF cast against him.

Basically, if you have good stuff to junction, I'd suggest the IF. If not, the Hal is probably the better choice. But junctioning NSC's, a HoC, and DB's onto an IF is pretty awesome.

thanks Goodfish, i was thinking about sticking with IF, but now i've decided to stick with it. you've put up some pretty neat reasons to keep going with an IF.

My recommendation is that Hal is ideal for a growth plan. It can kill SFBM and is a great ranged damage dealer, early in the game. It would be best not to rely on IF early on because you will be dealing with people at higher MPR than you.

Actually after Hal I would recommend using an EF. EF is better mid growth because it takes much less backlash, and can take out big minions very easily. It works better against AMF and the damage against AC boost is great.

The only point in which I would recommend an IF over an EF, is when you start getting near top game, and passing most people in MPR. IF needs a ridiculous amount of HP to be effective, and even if you can use it, it needs to be incredibly large to win fights any faster than an EF.

ill be sticking with an IF for now and see where that leads me.
i will however get myself an EF and try it on for a couple of days.

I wouldn't recommend getting EF now, but that is just me.