DangerKitty

I didn't decide this quickly, nor easily. And I bent over backwards to study the mechanics, and look for ways to make it work well. And I don't dislike underdog or off-meta sets at all. Almost every set has ways to shine. And I like to find it. And I have like 10,000 hours in official/homecoming combined, know mids like the back of my hand, in many versions. Actually I have several versions of it installed because there's a few features which are nicer on some of the older iterations (for certain uses). And I love my character, conceptually and visually. But I'm parking my Storm Blast corruptor character and respec'ing the IO's & money out of it. Level 40, 250 million influence in IO's, all played in-game, no farming, trying hard to find it's hidden strengths ...they just aren't there. Use only as a handicap for more difficult gaming. And if you do use it, don't take Blackwand & Nemesis Staff off your bar after running DFB, you'll find those continue to be useful for way, way too long. Though I do want to express appreciation for those who worked on it. It is visually very pretty, and I can't overstate just how nice it was to try a powerset which I've never played before. edit: I realize I'm talking about a corruptor, in 'Blaster'. but it's the Blast-set which has fundamentally serious problems. and there are multiple AT's which have access to it.

Agreed. And you're not being hyperbolic. Storm Blast is just THAT bad. I have a Storm/Storm corruptor. Entirely played in missions/TF's, no farming. I wanted to learn the set and explore it. At first I thought maybe the storm-blast set just gets it's strength in late game. Then I thought, "maybe it just needs more slots" Then I thought, "maybe some expensive IO's can breath life into it" None of these things turned out to be the case. Doing a level 40 mission with about 250 million inf in IO's already in it... It was the ancillary arc, so I had it set to +0/x1, to unlock the pool quickly. I had been leaning very heavily on the /Storm secondary, and that was somewhat disguising just how bad Storm Blast was performing. So I decided to just stick with my primary for damage, to carefully observe how Storm Blast itself is performing. This was a low-difficulty Arc, just to quickly unlock the ancillary pool. Great time to do some testing on white-label Lt's. Storm Blast does not perform. - I was constantly endurance-crashing (and not from sapping attacks). Even though I have 3 slots in Stamina, and multiple endurance proc IO's. - The setup to try to output damage is very long. Not only are the animations long, but after a 2 second attack animation, there's a further 2+ seconds it takes to actually do the damage. I'm used to DoT damage, i often use it. Gloom for exampole is an excellent single target attack. Probably the best ST ranged attack in the game at level 1. - Your attacks don't start to do any significant damage unless you keep an invisible counter up, and even when you do, you're rewarded with relatively weak, slow, damage, and a completely empty endurance bar. - The Storm Cell doesn't stay where you put it, but at the same time, it follows you on such a weird path and delay that it cannot be reliably taken to a new combat area, or be positioned in any intelligible way. I believe it is using the "sometimes follows your character, sorta, flip a coin" coding from Carrion Creepers. But at least Carrion Creepers covers a huge AoE. Storm Cell covers a quite small area (same as Freezing Rain, which is small enough to need *precise* placement to be useful). - Chain lightning is "almost ok". But it takes it's dear sweet time animating it's arcing damage. In group play, 1/2 of your chain lightning attacks never materialize into any AoE effect. Which just kills the power. - Category 5 will only noticeably annoy mobs if you have used Intensify before it. And even then, it doesn't actually kill anything. It's damage output is about on par with an un-boosted Fireball. And similar in coverage (yes it covers a larger area, but it doesn't hit everything in that area). - No matter what slotting you do, and even if you have both of the +End acolades as well, You will have a huge struggle to use Storm Blast without Ageless. On some level, I knew that pinning my hopes for the set working ok on an Incarnate power to fix it, was not sound. But I was really trying to love the set. It's NEW, I haven't played a new set in years. I bent over backwards to give it every benefit of the doubt. But "your primary will have "manageable" endurance if you take a specific Incarnate power in level 50+... is not balanced. Eventually on a lark, I hit an enemy with Black wand. This was FAR more effective than Hailstones (even though hailstones was well slotted). So then I started single-pulling mobs to test. Black Wand beat Cloudburst too! Even Nemesis Staff beat Cloudburst. Those can't be slotted. No procs, no tricks. They're *noticeably* better than Cloudburst (Storm Blast's rough 'Blaze' equivalent), even though I had Cloudburst 5-slotted. At that point, I rearranged my bars, and just finished the last ancillary pool mission with Blackwand, Nemesis Staff, and Storm-secondary powers only. This worked considerably better than trying to utilize the Storm Blast power set (which had most of my slots & IO's in it). I had some really gorgeous costumes for this character. And conceptually it's great. Also the animations are very pretty. But Storm Blast has to be the weakest blast set I have ever used (and I've used them all). The numbers in Mid's are not even remotely similar to what I see in-game. Storm Blast is made of pure nerf. Normally, I'm very against any "drastic measures" when it comes to balancing. "tweak with a screwdriver, not a hammer", etc. And I'm not "buff-focused" either. I can think of multiple sets which would make the overall game more interesting if nerfed slightly. But Storm Blast is in a horrible state, and needs to be buffed (with a 10lb sledge hammer). For starters, Make Storm Cell cover 25 ft radius, maybe 30 ft (all of your ranged abilities rely on it). AND either A) stay where you put it, or B) follow you in a sensible manner. Then give Storm Cell 1/2 the cast time, and 1/2 the endurance cost. In it's current state, it is never where you actually need it to be, and it's 2 seconds + 15.6 endurance to have it be there. Not that the benefit is particularly good. Then go through the rest of the set, and give everything -25% endurance cost and +25% damage. And then Buff Category Five to 2 or 3 fold it's current effectiveness. Do ALL of that, and it would still not make it a top tier blast set. Fire Blast for example, would still beat it by a fair margin. But Storm Blast would become "ok-ish", only if buffed that heavily. If I thought every character had to be a min-maxing work of art, I wouldn't have like 50 characters. I'd have 3 or 4 which follow the meta. I even love to take underdog powersets, and see if I can find their hidden value with the right build. But there's a kind of minimal effectiveness needed to make a set "satisfying" to play. Maybe that's DPS, maybe it's debuffs, or buffs, heals, lots of ways for a set to shine. Something which makes you feel like you're doing "something". For my Storm/Storm corruptor, the only powers which give those feels are from the Storm secondary set. She'd literally be dramatically more effective just not taking any powers from her primary. I'm going to bed. Tomorrow I'm going to respec to pull the IO's and money out of this character. And park it, in the hopes that someday it becomes viable.