Obitus

Wow, great job, Max. Love it when a plan comes together. o7

Great thread. Somewhat ironically, one of the best candidates I've found lately for exploiting single-target proc damage is an /Atomic Blaster, because Atomic gives you a relatively fast-animating ranged hold on a 16s default recharge timer, which can take DEF debuff and Accurate DEF debuff sets - and you can also take Char from an Epic pool too. One hold can be enhanced by ~450 points of average damage through procs alone, and the other can be given +323 avg damage through procs, along with a -20% resistance debuff. Add in the base damage on the powers, and we're talking a little over 900 average ranged damage added to your attack chain, in return for ~3s of animation time, every 5-6 seconds, and it doesn't require any Primary powers. Even on a Blaster, that's obscene. The PPM system basically gives everyone with access to Epic Char/Dominate their own version of Blaze. The heated debate over the state of fast snipes looks almost quaint in light of this information. The PPM system seems a little less generally exploitable than I originally thought, though. It's deceptively well designed. For one thing, there is a sort of diminished return once you've used up all of the available purple procs. Then there's the obvious point that cramming your attacks with procs also limits your ability to take advantage of set bonuses. And you may need buttloads of global recharge to achieve a smooth attack chain while also taking full advantage of procs, which further limits your (notably defensive) IO-set options. So power sets that have high amounts of native mitigation or +recharge are the obvious winners - Time Corruptors/Defenders/Controllers being the poster child, because Time gives you loads of both. But you still need a good attack set - one that has both decent/fast-casting attacks and proc slotting options - to pair with your buff/debuff; I found the following line in Hjarki's excellent breakdown especially poignant:

Ha, well first, I was engaging in a bit of hyperbole, there. Second, I think Illusion actually has the potential to contain scatter better than the average Storm Corruptor/Defender, because although it lacks an Immobilize, Ill does have invincible taunting pets. But I don't have direct experience mixing Illusion and Storm, so I'll defer if someone corrects that notion. Anyway, it seems to me that Illusion's biggest weaknesses, RE chaos, are that its pets have a mind of their own, and they have KB. Presumably you can at least mitigate the latter via Sudden Acceleration, though that is a bit of a slotting tax. One of the reasons Ill/Storm interests me is that it feels novel, given various changes to the game's code since the last time I played. Back in the live-server days, I would have said that Ill/Storm or Mind/Storm are non-starters: Lightning Storm and Tornado were basically unusable on a consistent basis, back then, unless you had spammable immobilize - and so choosing one of the two Controller primaries without immobilize seemed to defeat the purpose of picking a Controller in the first place. Clearly, Storm works best in combination with immobilize, particularly in fights against hard targets, which tend to run a lot. That hasn't changed, in principle; what I'm describing is a difference of degree, not kind. Still, Illusion is the powergamer's choice for soloing ridiculous challenges, and Storm has lots of useful tools. If you want to be a GM/AV-killing monster, Ill/Cold is better - but Ill/Storm should do fairly well too. Definitely still prefer my Ice/Storm Corruptor though, from a thematic/aesthetic standpoint. Dropping three rains along with your Tornados and Storm clouds just never gets old.

Ha, great catch. Yeah, I was wondering where I lost 5 points of recharge; now I remember that I'd switched out one of the Red Fortune sets at the last moment. Digging what you've done with the build; I may just roll one of these myself. Short of Hamidon, I'm having a hard time thinking of anything that this toon can't solo. Great convo o7

Very tanky. Well done. It really is an excellent build. I spent some time messing with it, and though I think I've come up with a version I'd prefer to play, I can't honestly say that yours can be improved. In case you're curious, here's my version: Highlights: Much more recovery, and a bit more end reduction in various places. It should be end-sustainable with Musculature Radial instead of Cardiac, as long as you run Ageless Core Destiny (given Ageless Core's worst-case 1.67 EPS boost). My notes on this are below, in another spoiler. Full damage slotting in Psionic Tornado Much more Hover speed (36.1 MPH vs 25.4), and greatly increased travel speed, as we ditched Thunder Clap for Afterburner Musculature Radial Alpha, for a healthy boost in Lightning Storm and Tornado damage (among other powers, but these are most notable given that they don't respond to non-enhancement damage buffs) Slightly more Defense to supplemental positions (Ranged is still soft-capped, when you account for suppression on Group Invisibility) Lowlights: The big downside is that I Iost ~11% in global recharge. I don't think you'd lose perma-PA, given all of the FF procs you've got going on, plus the average contribution of Ageless, but it's still a clear downgrade. I lost about 5% in S/L and Negative/Toxic/Psi resistance, and more than that in certain other categories. Slightly fewer hitpoints That's all I can think of, probably missing something. Again, yours is a great great build; I'm grateful you posted it, as it really got the noggin joggin. Oh, here are my rambling notes on end consumption:

It's not a bug. Amusingly enough, the Repel power from Kinetics doesn't actually repel, in a game mechanical sense; it's just a KB power. Hurricane does both knockback and repel. The KB-to-KD proc in Hurricane is still useful, in the sense that it makes the power a little less chaotic, but you'll never get rid of the chaos completely. This is because mobs that are standing/not controlled get repelled slower than mobs that are knocked down or immobilized - and since Hurricane's KB/KD effect is random, the only way to make the repel 100% predictable is to use an AoE immobilize on the targets. In most situations, I think Hurricane would be more useful without the repel, but the repel does give you some unique, and IMO fun, options.

I'll echo much of what Hjarki said. On the live servers, one of my "main" characters was an Ice/Storm Controller. I loved that toon to death, but even on its best day the damage output was never particularly impressive. Sure, the Storm powers would take down Pylons and the like - and back then, having spammable immobilize was the only way to get consistent benefit out of Tornado/LS, so the Controller certainly had an advantage. And I love the way Storm powers look, so I was happy to take a little bit of a killing speed penalty to enjoy the majestic view. But in the average fight? The majority of my practical killing speed on the Corruptor comes from his Primary set. Now that you can get consistent utility out of Tornado/LS by slotting a Sudden Acceleration proc - and now that we have crashless nukes - I'd say that the comparison generally isn't close: a Defender or Corruptor will kill most things faster than a /Storm Controller - leaving aside a couple of outliers. Is there a trade off? Absolutely, it's possible that my failing to wring out every last drip of Storm-power performance hurts my DPS against Pylons/AVs, but not by much, certainly not by near enough to offset the gain in practical kill speed in more common situations. Yes, Tornado and LS have hellaciously high DPA, perhaps the highest in the game. On paper, Lightning Storm gives you somewhere around 1100 damage in return for 2.244s of cast time, which works out to a DPA of ~490. For contrast, the Blaster version of Blaze, widely considered one of the most overpowered attacks, only does ~280 DPA, with standard damage slotting. But of course the crucial difference is that Blaze can be cast every ~3 seconds; LS has a minimum cycle time of ~20 seconds, and it takes 60 seconds to deliver its full damage. And it costs a buttload of endurance up front, which is only justified from a cost-efficiency standpoint if it delivers about half of its full payload (30 seconds). So although I'm a huge fan of the power's aesthetics, LS is not among the most practically useful powers in the game - situationally awesome for sure, but not necessarily spam-worthy. Tornado, on the other hand, should be cast on CD whenever possible, provided that you've slotted a KB-to-KD IO; it has even higher DPA by default; it has a much larger AoE; it's mobile, and it's virtually guaranteed to proc Force Feedback. But no amount of Storm-power spamming will replace a Corruptor's ability, in the average situation, to toss out ~200 DPS over the short term using active attack powers, or more importantly, the ability to toss out massive, bursty AoEs. Now, you're rolling with Illusion, and Illusion has its own unique perks. As far as I know, Illusion will never break any damage records, but the combination of perma-PA and Deceive gives you the ability to solo things that most other builds in the game could never even attempt. There's a reason that Ill/* is on the short list of prime powergamer options. Given that Illusion's specialty is soloing ridiculous challenges, you might even say that an Ill/Storm should prioritize AV-fight effectiveness over general killing speed. I certainly wouldn't argue that a Corruptor/Defender is better than an Ill Controller, but they all have their plusses and minuses. It's also worth keeping in mind that Illusion heavily incentivizes a +recharge-first build strategy, because recharge takes care of both your offense and your defense, the latter via perma-PA. Other Storm builds have to balance the desire for max Tornado/LS spam against the need for extra durability. (For giggles, I just spent a few minutes trying to throw together a ranged soft-cap Ill/Storm that also has passive perma-PA, i.e. perma-PA without FF procs factored in. Couldn't do it. There really isn't any point, anyway.) All of that said, there's no reason you couldn't proc out Blind. Seems to be an excellent candidate. A build like this looks pretty appealing:

Appreciate the info, guys. Thanks o7

My pleasure, I've really enjoyed talking with you guys in this thread. I realize you're just making a rough estimate here, but I'll nitpick for the audience: Scourge is worth 30% net at best, and probably closer to 10-15% in average gameplay (with all of the low HP minions). Yeah I definitely agree that the Malice of the Corruptor set should be kept whole. That's one area where Corruptors have a small advantage over Defenders; their best ATO set comes with a damage proc. (I also think that the +End proc on the other Corruptor set is more useful to Storm builds than the absorb proc on the Defender analogue - though you could also argue that Defenders have an End advantage, given the effect of Vigilance in team scenarios.) Here, I'm not sure what you mean. Mid's might overestimate proc damage in edge cases (like extremely short recharge powers?), but on the whole I've seen consistent underestimates whenever I've looked. Take Freeze Ray on the Defender build in my last post: it has two typical damage procs, and one purple. It also has 26.5% recharge enhancement. So if I'm doing my math right, the chance to proc on that copy of Freeze Ray should be 3.5 * ((10 / 1.265) + 1) / 60 = 51.9% for normal damage procs, and 4.5 * ((10 / 1.265) + 1) / 60 = 66.8% for purples. Thus the average proc damage for using that copy of Freeze Ray should be (2 * 0.519 * 71.75) + (0.668 * 107.1) = 146 damage. Then you take into account the power's base damage, which per Mid's is 72.29, multiplied by 1 + 1.1756 enhancement + 0.593 damage buffs = 200.14. So our total on average should be about 346 damage. Yet Mid's reports only 276.8, which is a pretty big underestimate, in this case underselling the proc damage by almost half. I suspect that Mid's is counting global recharge in its version of the PPM formula, or something along those lines. Let's see, practical recharge on that build's copy of Freeze Ray is 3.6 seconds (the max allowable for our attack chain to be seamless), which would give us a proc chance of 3.5 * (3.6 + 1) / 60 = 26.83% with normal procs, or an average damage of 19.25. Yep, that matches the MId's value to a T. Now maybe I have a different version of Mid's? There are a number of minor differences I noted in this latest version I downloaded - for example, it doesn't alter damage values when you toggle on Offensive Stance on a Bio Armor toon. Either way, I certainly agree that the error in Mid's is unfortunate. Makes for a lot of extra work estimating attack chains.

Anyway, I think we've done an excellent job, all of us, in these last few pages fleshing out all of the options available, and refining one another's builds. It's been a real pleasure.

I agree. There are lots of fascinating balance implications. I haven't noticed that LS procs less often than it should, FWIW, but that does sound like something worth testing. Excellent! I love the way we've refined our build strategies in this thread. To complement your excellent build, I threw together a similarly tanky Storm/Ice Defender that takes Conserve Power to remain Clarion-friendly. It should be more-or-less end sustainable without Ageless, in other words. Highlights include: soft-capped Ranged/AoE DEF 72.8% S/L resistance, 32.5% F/C resistance, 66.4% Energy resistance three damage procs in Freeze Ray, 2 in BiB 81.25% global recharge before Hasten or FF procs, which is sufficient recharge to run BiB -> Bolt -> Freeze Ray -> Bolt seamlessly 38 MPH in Hover +29.3% global damage, before Vigilance/Intuition The downsides are that the build doesn't have Frost Breath, and I ended up dropping Snow Storm. You could make a case for taking Snow Storm instead of Assault, and it's easy as swapping it in if that's your preference. There were also a couple of instances where I had to boost set IOs, so it's not wholly exemplar friendly (e.g. Thunderstrikes in Freeze Ray and LS). | Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1521;725;1450;HEX;| |78DA6593CB4F135114C6EF4CA760DF2DC8A33CA40511287498A1B836E1A141A8219| |2B8334D6DA7A5495F296D84A50B171A35EAC6958FB873E34279C8CAC447FC1FD41D| |1B3728EADAD433F39D42934E66F2BB73EEFDBE7BEEB9F7C63717DCAF2FDDBA2024E| |F7C3EB9B19158303246316D54ECF164369712E6D34EDF60239E98AB6532EA5AB554| |2924D66A8542A9982B6683C7BD5793C5AC9156975246628EFCAA81A5E2BA51318A5| |5B5D1F0AC964A79F5622EBB5E25A5D3FA5B2B1B46DA858EBCD9E3B3DA2B46923C37| |D673E5E062399752E74B954AAD4C5327E2B5449CDC8DCA562F2517A1EF8E2CF8A9C| |BE226FD742A22BC094E6F81EF4FC6D8C51B9B10BA22E4B7CC6D50D961EE826D7BE0| |5DD24AD00AE9903554191BC76C757AC43045ECD6B0BA649F24E80ED1C6BC2FA3946| |686ED31C57238759E390B3A6880037A9BA34BB262CEAF32F80DF47E075D34D6C57E| |2E1EE3E6316E1E63A3311EF6F3CC206BAF46813187F0CFC2DF1F93ACFC3E92C4C7D| |5F13D45CE675E329F3197E01B2E403BB208CF7B140E601E7BC089BE0E17D30D9EF6| |30BD60B70FFC606E0E57B1F315FC03947717E7DDC575E87622CF3E0F38FDCF3C978| |AF844921ECEBB671B75ECDD61EE827D7BE0C03BE63EF890B441D6068F30F7D86FE6| |1F70E22FF336183980F633FDF6B3B63F8ABE118DA9826775E634F3876CE5ACD0FA0| |6797D83BCBE315E5FB4B1BE65D4F6114986308F32F41CFB107AC1E4FD0959FB43FB| |C2B955493ACCFEC33D9235675483AF1EC37CFA0CF885FC47E16F1BD5A03FA733679| |8FBB2A53D700B318EB1D2389FEB09A6E81662927D26794D537C2EA37C2E753E970F| |082AEFB91A86BE836AA22167A1716C4039BEB1F49A372CD212D15A227A4B24D6129| |96D89ACB444AE981164545F559AEEBFD5EBF01FDFFEFAA1937A39776904B9FF3A89| |C952187B3975D9BC7BC46BA8CFCF669DE57AD4AC7A8CAA479EF0C90BC139E934EB8| |F996F34B5AF37B5579BDA0A5D0F9DDBFF01F065FBD4| |-------------------------------------------------------------------| I also had a version of the Defender (with 45% AoE/Ranged DEF) mocked up a week or so ago that skipped the Fighting Pool, but as I said upthread I didn't like the result. The Corruptor verion? Well I posted that one upthread, and I'm pretty happy with it, but it doesn't really have any proc damage to speak of (just the ATO proc in BiB). Lemme see what I can do with it now. Ok, on the Corruptor I managed to keep the three procs in Freeze Ray, and it has the ATO proc in BiB, and it has soft-capped Ranged/AoE DEF. The power choices are identical to the Defender's, meaning that I had to use Bolt instead of Blast, because the recharge in Freeze Ray doesn't work for the alternative attack chain of BiB->Freeze Ray->Blast. (And BiB would have a small gap anyway - a larger gap than the manageable one on my current build.) The main downside, relative to the Defender, is that I ended up dropping slots from Tough to make room elsewhere. In the end, the Corruptor, without running Tough, loses about 32 points of S/L RES, and about 17 points of Energy RES relative to the Defender. The Corruptor also loses the Kismet unique. On the upside, the build is still extremely tanky and should put out some pretty hilarious damage. | Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1509;695;1390;HEX;| |78DA65944B4F135114C7EF4CA742A72DE5FDA650DE14EC03302E4D403435344149D| |4B8691A184A134A9BD24658BAF00BB871E76B250AA8892FBE8ABA63A1515EEA07A8| |87F9FF431B3BE9E477E6BCEFB9F736BE79D5B377FDC115A5F966D7921B1B89D96C3| |E5FCC15B279673C994A2F39943C35F2769E1B12B792EB296B39145BB212331253F0| |974D33C59595D0A24899C4623193C9AEA7D753CA5CC866D7428B39CB5A76DBE2B5B| |5746AB5E0857C268A97CFFE9AB792CB567E63359DEB98CBA59742E5CCF162222EB5| |ACFC56BB74139437AC2B3E25A77A6928153594BE4DBE028DD7E0851D7217FCAE9DC| |7EAEABE246A3254FD26D8BA05FE101FB8959476E4B0E3FA65140E5B59D21CE382A8| |4B19A45B6C4EE6747ED16DFF8B5FC96FE0948E699EF55CF314719EE7E413B02E06D| |FBA8C66B37E0EB57FCAA70BB59D2E13B64E37D8ED01C35E305A47FAC06949E9665D| |F77BCC60F00338FC91FC447E0647F6419734EC455DC3DB827CC166CDEE7582EB9CF| |86F9DBFC4ECE32C7C23C8E31F050363E025716D604F0D3B5863E32EB90736BF21DF| |82ADEF40D52A5B845847137B6A670F7EF610666FBAF4DFC25E5AB8D7EDDCEB4EEEB| |5437CDAB8D76D93A86188AE03EBD63B58A3DBC4BAFD5EB0417CBAE8D3459F007D02| |F49994123DCCDDB38D9E2E0B7AD97FEF20E6D137440E93FBBA1D7F2C69FA39A7FE5| |3C40FFC26FF907FC1C187E401729C48EC10628D219EB7911724CF5B90BEE167CA66| |41963FCA7336DA26428FA1C62258CBD8343905062779CEA2E08147A971D4D3C6792| |F26C8437109710EA100748D32BF086AA90875DDC6F9DD949F3C2A58A5895469A255| |9AA92ACD74952656D694E6ABAC0B46C53F80AD71D5CBFDA7FF912956F6AE0DA0F79| |3B24ED7023847E66DCCC6BC2194BB705C1967673DAD8CEA43A6DA47D8FDDAC7D8D1| |3BE6D94C51F966857CB742BE57211B729CA394FF010B54F430| |-------------------------------------------------------------------|

Mid's pretty heavily under-estimates proc damage, probably because there were some late revisions to the PPM system. You can find a good over-arching summary here, though some of the info in that post is wrong/outdated (e.g. Force Feedback doesn't have a lockout timer). For a more detailed and accurate analysis, Bopper has done yeoman's work testing procs in this thread. The gist is that single-target attacks go by ((enhanced recharge + activation time) / 60) * PPM, with the chance to proc per activation capped at 90%. That bit about enhanced recharge is important, because apparently Synapse decided late in the game's life that global recharge shouldn't hurt proc rate. (This is probably why Mid's understates proc effectiveness.) Only enhancement values count, including Spiritual Alpha. For standard procs, PPM is 3.5. For purple/ATO procs, PPM is 4.5. If we take an unenhanced Freeze Ray as an example, we're looking at roughly ((10 + 1) / 60) * PPM, which works out to a ~64.1% chance to activate regular procs, and an 82.4% chance to proc purples. So let's say you toss the purple hold proc and a Ghost Widow's proc in your unenhanced Freeze Ray. In return for two slots, you've just gained roughly (0.641 * 71.75) + (0.824 * 107.1) = 134.2 extra damage, on average. This, on an attack that only does ~83 damage at base. In other words, those two proc slots are worth about 70% more than standard ED-compliant damage slotting (+95%). You raise a very good point about Scourge, though. Proc damage will not be improved or modified by either damage buffs or Scourge. The value of procs also diminishes quite a bit as the base recharge timers of your attacks goes down, which means that there's a kind of self-moderating effect: the attacks which want for damage most will tend to get the least out of procs. There are outliers, though; for example, Hjarki's treatment of Char, or Nihilii's treatment of Dominate on his Sentinel - in both cases, the power has lowish/average damage by default, but because it has a long recharge time of 16s, you can turn it into an absolute monster with proc slotting. (Nihilii actually slots 4 damage procs and the Decimation chance for Build Up proc in Dominate. This results in (3 * (0.9 * 71.75)) + (0.9 * 107.1) = 290.1 average proc damage per activation. Pretty sick.) I'm not quite as bullish on proc damage as Hjarki for the Ice/Storm Corruptor. I do think that if you can fit a couple of procs (particularly Unbreakable Constraint) into Freeze Ray, then that's to the good. Tossing the ATO set/proc into BiB is a bit of a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too gesture too. Probably wouldn't bother proccing out Ice Bolt, both because it has a short recharge timer and because ideally you won't cast Bolt very often, prioritizing bigger attacks to fit in between your Storm powers. You have an extremely strong and very tight build as it is, though; I probably wouldn't change it at this point if I were in your shoes, either. There's always time to change things later if you don't like the way it plays. This thread is all about exploring the options, at least IMO.

Any word on the radius? Can't find a number for that anywhere, not even in game (presumably because the power summons a pseudo-pet to cast the hold, instead of casting it directly).

The new forum is pretty swanky. My only complaint so far is that the double-spacing in the editor/preview turns into single-spacing when you hit post.

Yeah, plus crafting is a hassle I don't need when I'm kitting out a build. I'm frugal on my marketeering toon so that I don't have to be elsewhere.

Wow, great job. Those are some great numbers. Will look at the build in more detail soon. Yeah, that's maybe the central dilemma of Storm builds. S'why I went with Conserve Power, which has its own trade offs. Endless mezzes just piss me off, even when they pose no risk of actually killing me. Just a nitpick: With Arcanatime, those DPS figures drop to 724 / 4.884 = 148.2 DPS, and 1289 / 6.468 =199.3 DPS, respectively. That doesn't change your main point, of course; in fact these numbers reinforce the point even more, because they enlarge the disparity (a 34% advantage vs a 25% advantage for the water build - Edit: ha, nevermind, the advantage rises because I didn't see you factor in Scourge. My fault.) If I understand the Water Blast mechanics correctly, though, you can only get one quickened Water Jet per 8s. This may not matter too terribly much in practice, as a Storm build will have lots of other things to do besides spamming a single-target attack chain - but it would bring down the on-paper DPS number a tiny bit.* And of course damage buffs like Aim will favor the non-proc build. (* - Mid's has the window at 15s instead of 8s. I had to double check in game.) Yeah, you'd need a total of ~336% recharge in BiB. Freeze Ray would only need ~270% in total recharge, or +170%, which should be more or less achieved on Myshkin's build without any slotting in the power itself. Bolt would obviously take care of itself too. I think the easiest approach is just to six-slot the Corruptor ATO set in BiB, for the set bonus, and because it has high recharge, along with a purple-tier proc. Then you can slot 2-3 procs in Freeze Ray.

As before, I disagree with the categorical tone of this statement. S/L/E DEF isn't unambiguously better than Ranged. In my experience, the opposite is closer to the truth, though to some extent this debate is subjective. As I said earlier, I'm more focused on consistency than peak performance - and it's undoubtedly true that the S/L DEF approach will perform better in many cases, just not by enough to compensate for how completely it can fail elsewhere, IMO. Again, this probably won't matter for you specifically, because you have high non-S/L/E DEF too, and because you said you won't be using this build to solo, but the statistical argument, vis-a-vis which damage types appear most often across the whole game, is a little misleading in this context. It's a largely hypothetical metric, because it smooths over the lumps, so to speak, in the distribution. It also likely places a disproportionate emphasis on melee attacks that this sort of build avoids as a matter of course. (The linked info is great, btw, due credit to Myshkin.) Although it may be true that S/L/E DEF technically covers you against the widest selection of attacks in the game, it doesn't necessarily give you the widest coverage in a given situation. Ranged DEF does, in my experience, as long as you have tools to stay out of melee range consistently (Hover, Hurricane). On non-ranged toons, absolutely I'd go for S/L(/E) DEF first, 9 times out of 10. Anything that spends appreciable time in melee range will find that S/L DEF is the most efficient approach, by a country mile. Only problem with taking Ageless for DDR is that the DDR version doesn't give you recovery. It does give you a full bar of End on activation, which means that if you can get end-sustainable for 2 minutes, you're good, but that's hard to do. At the moment, with Conserve Power, I only have to be end-sustainable for ~70 seconds, and even at that I can still run myself dry if I don't pay enough attention. Since you don't plan to solo, this may not matter to you, as high-end teams often have recovery buffs flying around - but Storm is a notoriously end-hungry build. After playing multiple Storm builds for years, near as I can tell the best (only) options for addressing that are: Conserve Power (restricts your Epic pool choice), Ageless Core Destiny (prevents you from taking Clarion for mez protection), Some combination of Cardiac and general end management (locks you out of one of the very few damage buffs that apply to your pseudo-pets, i.e. Musculature or Intuition Alpha). There's no clear-cut best option. All of them have trade offs.

This deserves some emphasis, IMO. Nihilii was always one of our best players/builders. If it weren't a Sentinel he'd be doing equally ridiculous stuff on something else. FWIW, I've been messing around with a Fire/Bio Sentinel lately, and thus far I've only been able to match Nihilii's Fire/Rad Pylon numbers, not exceed them - which suggests either that his slotting is better, or that his execution is better, probably both. Hovering at ~55 MPH is hilarious, btw. They do, and they don't. In principle, their damage scalar is pretty high; the problem is that that's largely hypothetical given that their specific powers are so often lackluster. The former suggests that the devs had intended for Sentinel damage to be quite respectable. The latter suggests that they were afraid of making Sentinel damage quite respectable, in the general case. On the surface, Sentinels are just Blast Set + Scrapper defenses. But when you delve into the numbers, it seems that their version of the Blast sets is often unaccountably weaker in some significant way. (Except in the case of Sonic, where the Sentinel version is markedly stronger leaving aside the debuff, which is weak on Sentinels.) This is especially important because, as Sunsette implied earlier, blast sets weren't all that awesome on average to begin with, at least in the realm of single-target DPS. (And Sentinels have a huge disadvantage in the realm of AoE, relative to other Blast-set ATs, given their Scrapper-tier target caps.) Fire's a bit of an outlier in both senses; it was always one of the strongest Blast sets, and it takes a pretty small penalty in the Sentinel port - losing out on its analogue to the fast snipe (both in theory and in practice, as Blazing Blast is bugged ATM), but otherwise losing nothing relative to the Blaster version. Actually, the Sentinel T2 is slightly better than the Blaster version too, because it has a slightly longer recharge timer, which raises its damage scale (though of course the Corruptor/Dominator/Defender version of the T2 Fire Blast is better still, with its shorter animation time). Anyway, this is a long way of saying that I don't really get some of the design decisions behind Sentinel blast sets. Of course it would be unreasonable to expect a class that never officially made it out of Beta to have a highly streamlined design, so take the complaint with a grain of salt.

The main advantage Ice has over Fire, in terms of single-target damage, is that Ice attacks can take more procs. This is a deceptively important little fact in the post-PPM world, especially for an AT with relatively low innate damage, like a Corruptor (0.75 damage scale). But Fulcrum Shift doesn't buff proc damage, and as others have pointed out, Fire has better AoE output, even if we stipulate that Blizzard is better than Inferno. Ice simply has no analogue for Fireball - a 16-target AoE with a generous radius that can be up every ~4 seconds. Both sets work great. Ice has more control, and a little more single-target damage at the high end, all else being equal- though again this difference in ST damage will be less significant at the damage cap. Ice has a much better nuke too, IMO - even leaving aside the damage comparison, Blizzard comes with a huge -35% ToHit Debuff to all targets, along with the slow effects. Blizzard thus doubles as an extremely powerful defensive power for the whole team. On the other hand, if you're going to get in melee range anyway for Fulcrum Shift, then Blizzard's range advantage probably isn't all that important. That said, there's a reason that Fire/Kin is the stereotype. If you want damage with a side of damage, and damage for dessert, then that's the combo to go for.

Very nice build. I appreciate the link. I was talking about Psi RES, though. I realize you can get an easy ~30% out of that one Impervium Armor IO (slotting it 5 times), which is great, but from there it's harder to find your way. As for compromising, eh. The build I posted has ~74% global recharge before Hasten or Incarnate powers. I'm not saying that I'd necessarily want to play a build that has soft-capped Psi DEF (on live I made do with 32%), but I remain surprised at how little real sacrifice it requires. And I'm sure that someone who's more practiced at using some of the new IO options for tanks could improve my effort. (I've been focused on squishier ATs since I came back a few weeks ago.) In the end, what matters is that we've proven that Invuln can be hellaciously tanky, and that there's a wealth of options to get there. It depends on playstyle and priorities. Personally I've always placed perhaps an undue emphasis on A) consistent performance over peak, and B) self-sufficiency, to the extent that it's possible. Jumping into a crowd of +4 carnies without having to use Inspirations is just fun, too. Still, my approach isn't the only valid one. You're absolutely correct that Luck Inspirations have an enormous effect on practical capability; given their existence, it will always be more efficient to build for RES, all else being equal (though of course all else often isn't equal). Likewise, DEF buffs tend to be much more plentiful in high-end teams than RES buffs.

Aha, excellent. Thanks for the heads up. I, too, like a little Gale once in awhile. It's not something I use often, but the KB is not only fun; occasionally it's also useful to be able to throw half of a spread-out spawn back towards its mates. Some people suggest using a KB-to-KD IO in Gale to make it more consistently useable, but to me that would defeat the (slim) purpose I've found for it - yet another excellent example of the flexibility and build variety in this game. Yeah I go back and forth too. It seems Snow Storm really needs slots to be useful as more than an occasional anti-flier tool. And of course, there's a fair number of fliers who are immune or resistant to Snow Storm's -fly (Winged Talons of Vengeance, CoT spirits, to name a couple of recently encountered examples). On the upside, Snow Storm has grounded every AV/EB I've tried it on so far, notably Siege and Nightstar. Very true; I'd more or less given up on soloing AVs on this build for that reason. I could take a single-target immobilize from an Epic pool, but then I'd need to take Ageless instead of Clarion, so I'd lose mez protection. On the other hand, this build has more-or-less all the bases covered otherwise, so bringing along a dozen break frees everywhere I go wouldn't be too burdensome. Food for thought, thanks. Yeah, also worth noting that the Tornado occasionally takes its sweet time getting to the targets, so casting it on top of them is a good habit to cultivate. Heh, great minds. I wrote this out for myself a couple of weeks ago. Yeah, Gaussians and especially BotZ turn into absolute beasts if you go for Ranged/AoE.

Grats, and thanks for testing. This matches my experience too; the rains aren't worth slotting with damage/debuff procs. Unlike Rains, LS attacks at a fairly sedate pace, which means that procs are fairly effective in it. I'll just quote myself from earlier in the thread: "if my numbers are right, the purple proc adds ~40% damage to Lightning Storm. (4s recharge on the lightning strike, ~1s activation, so a 5s cycle time, divide by 60s and multiply by the 4.5 PPM to get a 37.5% proc chance, multiplied by 107.1 to give you ~40.1 extra damage per Lightning strike, on average. The damage on the lightning strike without the proc is around 100 on my Corruptor; it'll be a little higher on a solo Defender.)" The real challenge with procs in LS is the same as the challenge with the power itself - that is, getting full value out of the cast. If so, you'd be a true tank.

Switchfade posted an interesting build, but I think it's generally more efficient to go for Psi DEF on an Invuln character than it is to chase +RES as he did. I posted an INV build from way back in the live days, long before ATOs and +RES bonuses on IO sets, that soft-caps to Psi, and soft-caps to S/L/N/E with one foe in melee range (Fire/Cold don't matter as much; they're at ~39%) - and it doesn't sacrifice hugely in terms of things like global recharge, and doesn't use any post-alpha Incarnates. (Cardiac is used for endurance management, and a little extra RES enhancement, though the latter doesn't really matter.) https://forums.homecomingservers.com/index.php/topic,2077.msg59648.html#msg59648 As I say, it's based on an old paradigm, so I'm sure it could be improved, but it should be pretty pleasant to play as it is. In any case, we've at least shown that there are multiple ways to skin the tankability cat. Invuln is certainly among the best in that category; it takes to IO bonuses extremely well.

I really like your build, Hjarki. The way that you slotted Char is actually quite timely, because lately I've been experimenting with a Sentinel build that uses Dominate in a similar fashion (inspired by Nihilii's Sentinel). Speaking of which, have you considered trying the Psi pool instead of Fire? The main advantage there is that Dominate has half of Char's recharge - 16s instead of 32s, which is still long enough to max out most procs, but also short enough to make Dom a staple of one's attack chain. The downside, of course, is that you'd lose Rise of the Phoenix, which is a very useful and fun power. On the upside, you'd gain World of Confusion, which is a terrible power on its own, but it allows you to slot the purple Confuse set, which is one of the best sets in the game for Ranged DEF builds. Just a thought. Your build is about as good as it gets; anything I could suggest would be a trade off, not necessarily an improvement. On the whole I think this thread has been a master class on Storm building. Very true. To be clear, the only time I six-slotted Freezing Rain with the ATO set was the build in the previous post, which was more-or-less a thought experiment, to see if I could soft-cap AoE and Ranged DEF. I was genuinely surprised at how little I had to sacrifice to achieve that goal, but I'm still not sure I'm going to play that build myself. It does require the Fighting Pool, which means I'd lose out on things like Snow Storm, which I've come to regard as very useful. As you point out, practical survivability with just Ranged DEF is pretty damn high, with all of our soft control and whatnot. Still, capping AoE too would basically turn you into an SR Defender. Yeah, unfortunately version 2.22 of the Hero builder doesn't accept imports. 2.23+ does, though. The updated version is in this thread. At the moment, I'm mulling two builds. One is the aforementioned AoE/Ranged DEF build, and the other is a slightly modified version of my current build that drops Frost Breath and picks up some procs in Freeze Ray. So I guess you could say that I'm a little less proc-focused than you are, but definitely leaning more towards procs than I was before I found this thread. You deserve a lot of the credit for that. I used to think that Storm needs an AoE immobilize, but I've changed my mind of late. Yes, scatter can be annoying, but even with scatter, my Storm build doesn't solo large groups any slower than, say, the average Scrapper without a taunt aura. It doesn't help that the Epic AoE immobilize powers available to Defenders/Corruptors aren't all that appealing - slow to animate (with high redraw, in the case of Web Envelope), and with a relatively small area of effect. School of Sharks is the better of the two, but that requires cone positioning and I'm too lazy. Slotted Snow Storm does a pretty good job of curtailing scatter. Even when I don't use Snow Storm, usually the mobs who escape will find their way back, whereupon Lightning Storm/Tornado kick their asses. It sucks to solo things that are KB and/or slow-immune, or flying critters that Snow Storm can't ground; those are more common than I'd like - but on the whole I think I've been judging Storm's AoE killing speed at too high a standard. The build will never be optimal for farming; I've made peace with that. And of course, teams will often have anti-scatter tools like taunt auras, immobilizes, or even more slows to stack with yours. Actually, I just threw together comparing the spawn clearing speed of the single-target-focused Storm build (the one without Frost Breath) vs the aforementioned Fire/Bio Sentinel. I made a bunch of execution errors in the video, but I think it's a decent illustration of the kind of scatter that the average "soloist" build can face. This game's AI just places a high priority on running away. Superficially, the Sentinel kills the spawns a little faster, but that's misleading because the Sentinel had fewer bosses in his spawns, and one of the spawns he faced was lower level. If you keep that in mind, the killing speed of both builds in the video is comparable. On the whole, the Storm build is stronger, IMO, at least for my play style, which prizes consistency over peaks. Although the Sentinel is much more durable in the average situation, it will struggle more in content with heavy enemy buff/debuff, whereas the Corruptor's more proactive mode of defense tends to have fewer hard counters. (This is why I tend to think that Doms ultimately make the "best" soloers - best in my case referring to consistent strength against all factions.) And of course the Storm build brings more to most teams. That particular Storm build recorded 450 DPS against a Pylon. The Sentinel can do about 350, less if you take away his melee attack (which isn't always practical to use). On the other hand, the Corruptor's single-target DPS advantage is largely theoretical against anything that can run out of LS's range, and the Sentinel's a little more relaxing to play, generally. And Sentinels do get access to some of the best AoE immobilizes in the game, via Epic pools, so if I wanted to I could spec that toon to elminate scatter almost entirely. That's the beauty of this game; you can make an argument for the strength of pretty much any build. The question largely boils down to playstyle preference. 1. Ha, yeah, Pacing of the Turtle is something I put in Snow Storm just the other day; great minds think alike. 2. Explosive Strike in Hurricane's an excellent idea. Only reason I've avoided that in the past is that Explosive Strike doesn't have any End reduction, but I don't use it very often either, so that's probably manageable. 3. I like the Tornado slotting idea. I've been using the Expedient Reinforcement 4-pc, plus the FF and Sudden Acceleration procs. How often would you say Achilles Heel procs for you in Tornado? 4. Yeah, as above, I'm a big fan of Rise of the Phoenix. 5. My only problem with Tactics is End; given that we Stormers have buttloads of -DEF debuffs and auto-hit powers, it's hard for me to justify investing a lot into ToHit, though of course you're right that it benefits the team. Once again I apologize for the extreme length of my post.

Yeah it works consistently in these powers because it's a buff proc that accrues to the player when you cast the power. Basically, the game treats them as if they were single-target attacks with extremely long recharge timers - and under the PPM system, recharge timers in the 15-20+ second range almost always cap your proc chance at 90%, though of course it depends on the specific proc; FF's PPM is 2, so any single-target power with an enhanced recharge + cast time over 30 seconds will have a 90% chance to proc it. Pseudo-pets are arguably ideal for buff procs like FF, because they don't even need a target. The new PPM system really does change the build game, as most of us knew it on the live servers. You can read more about PPM here, though the info at that link isn't 100% correct (the FF proc doesn't have a lockout timer, for example). Bopper has been doing yeoman's work trying to pin down the details of the system here. Sunsette has a good discussion on the build implications of the PPM system here.