Puma

WHY DOES MY LIZARD HAVE TO CARRY AROUND A SHIELD WHEN HE'S SUPER SLICK?!?!?! WHY DOES MY LZARD HAVE TO HOLD TWO PISTOLS WHEN HE COULD SHOOT DUAL PISTOLS FROM HIS FISTS?!?! WHY DOES MY ROBOT HAVE TO COVER HIMSELF IN STONE WHEN HE'S WALKING ARMOR?! I'm sorry but this is how your entire comment chain in this thread reads.

Isn't a key part of this game's lore that Incarnates do, in fact, share their power with other individuals? This would make total sense. As you are becoming an incarnate, a well of your own power so to speak, you are able to help others achieve it by sharing your power with them.

I think there's a pretty "easy" fix for that, though. Give all story arc missions that TF lock out timer, so you can only get the full reward for completing it once every 24 hours, but everyone gets the full reward on the team when it's completed. That way you can avoid the fear of a team "farming" the final mission over and over to get big rewards, but still let everyone on a team get the full rewards without having to synch it. For certain missions you could prevent that (like unlock arcs, etc) but honestly...do you need to on a 20 year old game? If everyone wants to jump on to the final mission of an unlock arc and get the unlock, who really cares. Im 100% sure they've done the arc 10 times before on previous characters anyway. If it gets people teaming outside of TFs, then go for it.

+1. This is why I'm playing on Cake New Dawn mostly now. It's a bit free for all with how much you can do, but nothing requiring you to make your toons OP or insta-level 50 if you don't want to, and it's better than always being bothered feeling like you're constantly being nerfed and/or punished because of someone else's vision. Having options to hop around depending on your mood is a good thing.

OK. That makes sense. Do you see what WindDemon is showing about the chain lightning getting weaker with each jump, btw? Im going to assume the going between 210 and 206 deals with resistance differences (one type probably had a small energy damage resistance). Its first hit is 350, second is 275, and the rest go back and forth between the 206 and 210.

Blasters get crits? Are you thinking of Scrappers? Blasters get a +dmg from each successive attack. They don't get crits.

Ok so the debuffs are even worse than I thought unless I'm spamming Storm Blast attacks. So I don't get how it's not an inferior power UNLESS you are following it up with Storm Blast attacks. It basically looks like it just trades its damage in exchange for just being the weaker secondary effects of the Ice and Dark AoEs. So to me, anyway, that makes it feel like, yes, you are sacrificing damage if you go to any other attack, at least compared to any other sets whose AoEs (which ALSO offer better versions of those debuffs) do that potential damage and debuffing entirely on their own. I dunno. That's my experience. I'm glad you like the set, but I can't get it past the early 30s without hating it, and even on test when I went to full tricked out 50s found it lacking against AVs and other tough opponents compared to other sets. I refused to pair it with Storm because I knew storm could cover up a lot of the issues because storm is so incredibly and dealing out its own damage AND debuffing enemies on its own.

Correct me if I'm wrong (it's entirely possible I am): With no procs, Storm Cell only does just one thing: activates the windspeed psuedopet, which does the following: PvE Only 100% chance -70% maximum RunningSpeed (all affected targets) for 8s PvP or PvE 100% chance -28% JumpHeight Strength (all affected targets) for 8s -14% RechargeTime (all affected targets) for 8s -28% RunningSpeed, FlyingSpeed, JumpingSpeed (all affected targets) for 8s -9.8% ToHit (all affected targets) for 8s So you get a set of debuffs similar to Ice Storm (only weaker) or Rain of Fire, but with a small -tohit thrown in in place of the damage (less -tohit than any of the dark blast attacks, for example). To get it to do any damage you must follow it up with storm blast attacks. To get it to drop the Tempest Psuedopet for 2 seconds you need to use storm blast attacks, which will then add another 4.9 percent -tohit, for a total of 14.7% tohit if you're spamming Storm Cell attacks. Is that correct? If I drop Ice Storm I get PvE Only 100% chance -350% maximum RunningSpeed (all affected targets) -30% FlyingSpeed (all affected targets) for 0.5s -40% JumpHeight Strength (all affected targets) for 0.5s -10% RechargeTime (all affected targets) for 0.5s -40% RunningSpeed, JumpingSpeed (all affected targets) for 0.5s but also get quite a bit of damage over time no matter what I do next.

No. Read the the thread please. Someone made a bad comparison that they should demand healing aura do damage otherwise it's costing them to use it. I explained why that comparison makes no sense.

I posted detailed comparisons in this and other threads. It's not based on "feels." In THIS thread we've discussed end costs, damage totals, duration, etc. We had one Dev in Beta who responded very well and was open to the concerns. We've had two chime in on this and another thread defensively and dismissively, which, frankly, tells me how much they appear to be interested in what is being said.

Healing Aura's damage isn't linked to using other powers from that set. It heals just as it should regardless of what you follow it up with. That is the difference. for your comparison above, where you say "missing a chance for a proc because you used [another ability] doesn't mean you missed a proc, it means you received whatever benefit that other power had, to be accurate, Healing Aura would be balanced around Heals Over Time, but that healing over time would only happen if you continue using other healing powers. The minute you attack, it would stop. Which would mean that, yes, it means you've missed healing from a power you already cast.

Fireball doesn't "chain" and thus doesn't have the weird chance to basically do little to nothing like Chain Lightning. And cloudburst takes an entire second longer to do far less damage, according to your numbers above. Meanwhile Fire also gets Rain of Fire, which does pretty solid damage. And sure, Storm Cell does more debuff...but if that's its purpose, even then High Winds is only triggered when you're following it up with more Storm Blast attacks. You're literally proving his point. But this conversation clearly isn't going anywhere.

Don't forget that other AoEs also have mitigation. Ice Storm does quite a bit of slow and distracts foes. Several cone attacks do knocback/knockdown, Psy Tornado does knock up, Sonic's cone does sleep, whirlpool does slow, etc. And none of those do any less if you follow them up with your secondary powers instead of your primary.

To be fair, Blizzard (which you used as a comparison) is the same in this regard. While it's capped at 16 targets, as targets die, it keeps dishing out full damage as long as more are running into the field of affect.

Yeah! It's the "this cottage was built last week!" rule. 😕 One argument made for changing Intensify during beta was that Storm Cell's accuracy was tied to the player's, not at the time of casting, but all the way through. So once you lost the to-hit boost from Intensify, so did the lightning strikes in storm cell. At that time it had a base accuracy of 1.x so it meant end game stuff was going to get missed a LOT by Storm Cell. I believe that was upped to 1.4 or so for lightning, and the winds were made autohit? I can't recall right now and can't log in to find out.

First, thanks. Second,. again, you're assuming that the caster is doing nothing but spamming Storm Blast powers this entire time, which has been a huge part of my problem with the set, as explained here. I can think of no other set in the game that has made me feel like I can't use any of my other attacks or I'm missing out. Am I correct that you're also basing these numbers on it being three slotted for damage? I think we should be using non-enhanced numbers when we compare powers, personally. As I said above though, Cat 5 is the least of my concerns with the set. I think Storm Cell is the real issue. Just for clarity's sake, none of the above affects and numbers of Cat 5 require Storm Cell to be active, do they?

Can you show me how to quantify that? Since I'm going by what the character creator says, I don't know how you factor in "chance to do x" damage. Especially give the fact that a big part of my point is it's the "chance to cause lightning and high winds" that -locks you into focusing on your storm blast set- to the exclusion of your other sets. I mean, we can't just go with it's chance to proc over 30 seconds, because for that we have to assume you're ONLY using Storm Blast and never stopping to heal or buff others, or drop debuffs, or using secondary or patron or APP powers, etc. And then, of course, you also have the total damage likely lessened by the fact that during its 30 seconds dealing its damage your team is killing a bunch of the mob, too, but since they're dying, that's a lesser issue except for points of comparison. I know you're a numbers guy so you may have a way in mind that makes sense, though.

https://cityofheroes.fandom.com/wiki/Pseudopet Storm Cell is a pseudo-pet. It's a non-targetable, invisible pet that creates an effect. Tornado from Storm, is ALSO a Psuedo-pet, by the way, even though, like Storm Cell, it moves from one target to the next. And just because you don't use a power like Carrion Creeper doesn't mean it doesn't exist, and like other psuedo-pets, is a point of comparison. And while your last paragraph makes it sound the best it possibly can, you ignore (as you have this whole discussion from multiple people) the downfalls to it, as well as the other powers you mention being balanced around being used in Storm Cell and have some real weaknesses without it. And actually, it's GREAT that you bring up that's Creepers aren't a blast set. Neither are Tornado, Lightning Cloud, etc. That makes it even weirder that the blast set of storm has it's key power be a power that's default is NOT doing damage, but doing mild to low end debuffs. I looked and I can't find another blast power that does no damage on its own and only debuffs, much less one of the typically three aoes blast sets get. And before you jump, I'm not saying you need to "homogenize" the set, I'm saying that this design choice seems odd, and weakens the set overall when it doesn't have to. It costs more cast time than most AoEs other sets get, yet on its own, it doesn't do any damage and doesn't really do much debuffing without applying other blasts. Even then it doesn't suddenly become a top performer. It's a Psuedo pet that requires you to focus heavily on your other Storm Blast powers just to come up to par with other AoEs in blast sets. And it's worse because those other powers aren't very good without it, so it's not like you can just skip it in your build like you can other pseudo pets or AoEs. I get it, you like the set. Cool. But the OPs issue with cast time is a real one, as are the other issues brought up here are, I think legitimate.

Ok, 1st, "moving to you or the target" is shifting the goalposts, and since nothing anyone here has suggested would alter that, I'm not sure what your point is. And yes, Storm Cell is a pseudo pet just like the others mentioned. And as pointed out, Voltaic Sentinel does follow. And if you really need an EXACT 1-2 comparison, creeper vines does immediate damage, amps up more damage as it goes, AND follows, and in no ways requires you to keep attacking with plants to make it work its best. But again, this is sde tracking and shifting the goal posts to something no one is arguing. And you misunderstood what I meant about Storm Cell and your point showing that it relied on Storm Summoning to supplement it. While you're right, you might get lucky and your first attack triggers a lighting strike, the next attack WONT trigger any more damage from it unless you're sticking with a Storm Blast attack. But with Ice Storm, etc. I can switch to a secondary attack and it's still doing its damage. That causes a "tax" on using your secondary powers where doing so means Storm Cell will NOT do its optimal damage. And if it DOESN'T trigger lightning on that first attack...well...that's even worse, no? And also, if nothing anyone is proposing would "homogenize" the set or make it function just like the others, what are you arguing against? So far all that's been suggested is lowering the costs of these two unique powers and and improving their upfront or total damage possibilities to deal with their uniqueness. Is it just the fact that you disagree with the OP and I about how fun the set is currently? Ok. Fine. But nothing we're suggesting would take away that fun for you, would it? And yet we're saying it WOULD increase the fun and utility of the set for some people. Do you disagree with that? If not, then why argue about making the set better for those of us with problems with it if it wouldn't alter what -you- love about it much and wouldn't really move it from the center of the pack in the end, anyway?

Ah sorrry. I rearranged the order and forgot to change the damage section for Water. It's fixed now. Thanks!

You are wrong on a few points here: Ice has TWO long duration debuff/Psuedo pets just like Storm Cell: Ice Storm and Blizzard, neither of which suffer from the requirement that you can only use Ice Blast powers if you want them to do damage, and Blizzard has BETTER debuffs than Cat 5. Water ALSO has a psuedopet that does damage and debuffs without locking you into only water powers for it to do its damage. Electric has a psuedopet that debuffs and does damage regardless of what other attacks you're using. And the rest of those sets' attacks aren't balanced around or designed to work differently if they are used without also using any of those psuedopets. With Storm Blast, they are and do. Meanwhile in my actual post, I make it clear it ISN'T actually a race and it isn't about "winning." Seriously, Rudra, it feels like you're reading to respond instead of listening to the points being made. Whether you realize it or not, you just admitted the problem here. You admitted that you'd need to rely on Storm Blast for the real damage, which any OTHER secondary can also do. The issue is, the design of Storm Blast FORCES you to choose between having your Storm Blast powers be relatively weak by all comparisons because you also want to use an active secondary, or have them be on PAR with others but only because you have to constantly focus on them at the exclusion of secondaries outside of storm. Except, as pointed above, you're STILL left with a set that, in 90% of the situations, isn't adding much except looking pretty. I'm glad you find it fun, but these issues make others like myself and the OP find it much less fun. Now, the question is, if they cut the cast time on Storm Cell and Cat 5, and made the few changes suggested here, would you NOT find it fun? Would the set performing slightly better but still being a mid-tier set ruin the fun for you? Why or why not?

I don't think anyone is asking for it to be built exactly the same. Flavor is great. Even the CONCEPT of Storm Blast is cool, and as I've said several times, the animations are absolutely beautiful. But that cool concept was executed in a way that caused what I HOPE are unintentional problems that seriously harm the set. 1. As the OP pointed out, the proper functioning of the entire set being built around a power that requires location based targeting, takes 2 seconds to drop, costs 15 end, AND does almost nothing on its own. As the OP suggested, the cast/activation time should be MUCH lower. I would also make it target based instead of location based. That way it's much easier to set up each fight. Target your enemy, launch Storm Cell, and within 1 second you're good to go to start making it actually work and helping the team. 2. The direct linkage between the damage procs of Storm Cell (and Cat 5) and the individual attacks from Storm Blast is a problem. It really DOES place a "tax" on using any of your other powersets that -no other powerset in this game- causes. This could easily be fixed by having your Storm Blast attacks give the storm cell a 5 second intensification boost that can trigger the effects randomly. So instead of me having to SPAM Storm Blast attacks to hope each attack can maybe proc, I can use storm blast attacks in a normal rotation while ensuring my Storm Cell and tier 9 Cat 5 aren't weakener because I chose to take a couple seconds to lay a tar patch or chose to use Sound Booster and Earsplitter on a boss or drop my epic Bonfire. This doesn't in any way change the flavor of Storm Blast, but it would make it more functional with more secondaries AND feel "smoother" to many players. 3. Cat 5 - admittedly, this is the least of the three concerns for me. I'm a huge fan of Blizzard so I'm used to Nukes that aren't "nukes", but even then, why does this take LONGER to animate than Blizzard? The fact is, the design of Cat 5 seems to purposefully make it weak as a tier 9, and ESPECIALLY weak when you're teaming with others in this game. Here is a comparison of several nukes side by side. Power Activation Damage End Cost Duration for DMG Blizzard 2.03 417.08 27.72 20s (w -rech/run speed) Cat 5 2.5 316.98 27.72 30s (w -rech/run speed) Thunderous Blast 2.93 300 27.72 Instant (+Lingering -recovery) Geyser 3 539.96 27.73 Instant Atomic Blast 2.93 250.25 27.73 Instant (+Lingering Hold) So at first glance it looks sort of middle of the pack, but in play? Well, the closest power to it is Blizzard which does more damage, casts faster, and deals all of that damage over a shorter duration. It actually has similar (slightly better?) debuffs. More traditional tier 9s like Thunderous Blast, Atomic Blast, and Psychic Wail do anywhere from 10-60 points less damage overall, and take .5 seconds longer to activate, but the damage dealt is instant and they include lingering affects like holds, stuns, etc. for mobs still alive. And since many many enemies die before the 30 seconds is over, the truth is, they probably do MORE damage than the "total damage" suggests compared to Cat 5. Geyser is a weird outlier, with much more damage that is instant but no real lingering secondary effects. So if you play this out, you and I are on a team. You have ANY of those powers above besides Cat 5 and Blizzard. I'm on Storm Blast. We get to a mob, and I drop down Storm Cell (2 seconds set up) and then Cat 5 (2.5 more seconds). My damage STARTS at second 4.5. But at Second 3 you've already nuked the mob and taken out a bunch, and likely left a lot of the stragglers stunned or held or debuffed. Then In Seconds 4-5 you launch an AoE knocking out the few stragglers left. So we're down to maybe 2 bosses and a couple luits left at seconds 5+. My Cat 5 is just starting its damage, but not even close to "ramped up" yet, which it does over 30 seconds. I fire off Cloud Burst at a Luit, and it procs Hurricane AND Storm Cell to fire lightning, taking out the luit and striking the boss! But there's that pesky 5 second lock out, so before they can trigger again, you knock out the boss with another AoE and a couple attacks. If you used Blizzard instead, it might be closer, but you'd STILL have a 2-3 second head start of your nuke raining down damage while you're firing off other attacks before mine even get going, AND your nuke does MORE damage over shorter time than mine. Do you see what I'm getting at? With Cat 5, they need to do a couple of possible things if they really want to bring it up to par. 1- keep it with the "amp up" flavor, but then do the opposite of most tier 9s and front load the safety mitigation. Instead of Damage then mezz-debuff, start with a massive mezz/debuff. The Cat 5 starts with a loud thundercrack that terrorizes all foes for 4 seconds. This gives you a chance when solo to get the storm going before being overwhelmed by an alpha, and on a team helps set it up for others to safely start the fight. 2- Cut its cast time down to 1 second. The 3 second cast time on tier 9 nukes, I've always felt, makes sense because you're taking 3 seconds of vulnerability to fire off a devastating instant amount of damage. Since hurricane doesn't have that instant damage, the 30 second amp up can serve that same function. Set it in 1 second and then start using your other powers while it amps up, like a slower Blizzard. This way you could stun mobs before some other person runs in with their instant nukes, and then fire off your non-storm cell boosted attacks and at least you felt like you played a part, plus your Cat 5 and, if you dropped it, Storm Cell, are amping up to help with the stragglers after. Finally, I would remove the 5 second lock out. It makes no sense. The way this set is designed, it COULD shine in long fights with AVs on TFs, because as you fight you are kicking up the storm to hurt them deeply, but with a lock out that is seriously nerfed as well, so it doesn't really do much more than, say, having Voltaic Sentinel out.

You literally cut my quote off, explaining why, with this set, it ISN"T a good thing. It's middle/low in the single target category but its AoEs are ultra weak. So -every one- of those other sets gets ahead because they ALSO have AoEs that do their damage up front, regardless of you choosing not to use your weaker tier 1-2 powers. Think of it this way. You and seven friends are going to race together. Not really for anything more than just fun. I give each of you a pair of roller skates, a bicycle, a dirt bike, and a car. The kicker is, you can only use each for 1 minute at a time in this race. You have to cycle through them as you race. Your skate and bicycle are just about exactly like your friends': all pretty standard. But I have set it so your dirt bike's engine doesn't start unless you push it with your roller skates several dozen feet to kick start it. No one else's does that, but hey, it gives yours flavor! Then I made it so your car only goes zero to 60 in 45 seconds, when you friends all go from 0-60 in 10 seconds...but I did give your car a chance to turbo boost for an additional 10 MPH, but only as long as you strap your bike on the back each time you start it. When you complain that you have no chance to not only win the race, but even keep up with your friends, so it doesn't feel fun, my response is "If you don't like your dirty bike, I mean, you still have the exact same skates and bicycle as everyone else." THAT is Storm Blast. We're still trying to strap the bike on and off every fight while our friends are two miles down the road.

The thing is, normally, while ONE nuke might wipe out all the minions, since -every ranged character- has a nuke, they all get a chance to contribute through out the mobs pretty equally. Unless, of course, your nuke requires you to set up for 5-10 seconds before doing much. At that point the other three characters with nukes have cycled through theirs, killing everyone. *shrug*

Reposting since this post disappeared for some reason and you responded to it very well. Right. That's exactly my point. With traditional Storm Summoning, you aren't making any of Storm Summoning's powers LESS effective by freely moving between it and your other powerset. Its powers all function the same no matter what they're followed up by. If I drop Ice Storm from Ice blast, the same is true. If I drop Rain of Fire, or hit Irradiate, the same is true. Storm Blast's two "key" powers, though, don't work that way. For them to work optimally, you DO need to follow them up by using ONLY powers from Storm Blast. Likewise, if you DON'T want to use those powers because of the cast time and being locked in to your primary, the rest of your Storm Blast powers aren't working optimally, and your other AoE becomes a knockback which will just annoy the team, so you probably wont use it either. It's a catch 22. And while you're right, a fast rolling team WILL be just fine without your Storm Blast powers...I mean...I'm not sure that doesn't mean you SHOULDN'T be able to contribute damage effectively, but with this set's design, that's really hard unless you pair it with a few specific secondaries like Storm Summoning. And honestly, even then, you're not getting anything more from that pairing than you would pairing Storm Summoning with another powerset. And we're not talking min-maxer teams only. Most normal, non-max teams move through mobs generally in 30 seconds to 1 minute per mob. With Storm Blast, that's barely time to feel like you're getting started, even if you don't take a second to use any of your secondary powers. The set's current design forces you to constantly cast powers that then still don't do much until you trigger them constantly with your other attacks only from that set. It leaves you with this weird lackluster feeling like you're always sort of...nerfed but can't quite figure out why.