Zect

The question has been answered, more or less, so I'm just here to say I snicker every time I think about the PPM system and the rationale for it. It was supposed to be Intuitive; you should be able to look at a proc and tell roughly how often it will fire. Balanced; a proc should give roughly the same number of Procs Per Minute regardless of what power it is slotted in. Did Paragon Studios achieve their goals? I'll let you, dear reader, be the judge of... bwahahahaha! Sorry, can't stop laughing.

Nah, this isn't true. You can build a rad/MA tanker that has perma 90% res to all except cold perma ~45% def to all except psi perma 95% slow res permahasten And doesn't get there by doing stupid things like skipping DT or whatever. The real cost is you will lose a significant number of damage procs. Considering how much dps tanks potentially do, this is actually a significant downside. Frankly, I respect that argument a lot more than all the weird stuff you say about being self-sufficient and so on.

Your build is trash and displays a fundamental misunderstanding of how to play your powersets, the invention system, and the - just kidding. There are inefficiencies, but this is nowhere as bad as some examples I've seen. What you've got right: Recharge focus - you need rech for perma-heatloss, perma-benumb, permahaste and 2x sleet. (A couple seconds less on most of these is acceptable, but not significant gaps.) Agility alpha - not a bad choice for cold. The tradeoff is less return from procbombing your powers. No excessive recovery slotting - coldfenders get a lot of end through heatloss, and should try to exploit this by devoting fewer slots to recovery. What you didn't: Neglecting enhancement value - you slotted power transfer in heatloss which has low rech enhancement (this IO set is designed for attacks that also drain end, like elec melee/blast powers, so a lot of its enhancement value is in +dmg). A set that ed-caps rech like preemptive optimization would allow you to spend fewer slots building for global rech, at only a slight cost in recharge set bonuses. Your FF proc should go in a power with higher availability than hail of bullets, such as rain or empty clips. It really shines in things like footstomp which you spam on cooldown in crowds. Your hail of bullets is available every 30s or so. That means you get 5s of 100% rech every 30s. If you put it in a large aoe that recharges every 10s, that could be 5s of 100% rech every 10s - a significant improvement. The lower proc chance is compensated by using it on large mobs. I'm also going to disagree with a lot of what uun said above, but specifically in the context of hard mode and only because you say you are interested in hardmode. I would agree outside of hardmode. You should consider kismet despite having tactics, because you are playing a blast set without aim and you want to avoid benumb missing. Hardmode AV's have large amounts of def, and they resist debuffs. Respect them. You should bring barrier if you wish to do 4* hardmode. 1) Cold shields are not enough if you are the only def buffer. 2) Barrier also provides res. 3) Many leaders who run pug hardmode will ask for it. Some will not bring you if you don't have it. However, this is not a big issue since you can change your destiny at will. You could easily carry barrier for hardmode, and clarion for babymode. Finally, if you wish to do 4* hard mode, consider building for more defense. It is common that you are the only def buffer on the team, and since you can't shield yourself, that also makes you the most vulnerable member. This will also help your mez situation outside of hardmode - you need mez protection less if you're dodging the mezzes, see. Obviously, a more optimized team comp makes these non-issues, but if you are running pug hardmode, then it pays to have a little insurance. Even if you are leading, there is no guarantee you can find people with the ideal support powersets. This should give you some ideas if you wish to pursue more def while still maintaining comparable heatloss, benumb, and hasten uptime. The remaining slots are yours to spend. I want to point out one hardmode-specific optimization which I am now trialing personally. Note that tough is not slotted. The reason for this is that the current hardmode meta is built around barrier stacking. Ideally, there will be 7 barriers going at once (8 if the leader cares enough to unslot their incan for tough fights, rarely 5-6 if you have people who can't use it on cooldown or who didn't bring one). Since each barrier is 5% def and 5% res to all at the weakest, we can expect an average of 35% res to all at all times including your own barrier. This suggests that resistances significantly in excess of 40% are wasted. Therefore, this build trims back some SL res to regain slot-efficiency, and builds for between 35% to 40% res to all except psi. You still have the option to turn on tough and get 71% or so SL res without external buffs. Creed McGraw (v2) - Defender (Cold Domination - Dual Pistols).mbd

People who build and play tanks as pure aggro magnets and brag about how they are completely indestructible tend to suck at tanking. The reason is that offense and defense work in synergy, not in opposition. Take for example a situation where you're fighting 1 mob and some idiot blaster aggros a 2nd mob, or an ambush spawns. A turtle-tank will be unable to deal with the situation because the number of mobs is now significantly over the aggro cap leading to collapse of the backline. Conversely, a tank with both high damage and defenses will be able to help quickly kill all minions and lts in the incoming spawn reducing enemy numbers to or below the aggro cap, regaining control of the situation; while using efficient build design principles to achieve similar defensive power to the turtle-tank.

MA is a parry set, so that makes it worth building for defense. A good rad/MA can have 90% resist all except cold and perma-45% def to all with 1 stack of ATIO proc and storm's kick. People will tell you rad doesn't have -def resist. Defender's fortitude doesn't give -def resist either, but nobody with a brain ever opined this makes the defense buff worthless! The only problem, if you can call it that, is that this level of survivability is far overkill for anything you encounter. One thing that hasn't been mentioned is that rad has extremely good endurance recovery. It's the armor set with the most eps (elec gets endrdx instead). A well-built rad tank should try to trade this eps for combat power. Go with an endurance-hungry 2ndary like SS, take some powers that are normally less affordable for tanks such as tactics, take more procbombed attacks, skip ageless in favor of barrier, etc.

Emp is really great, and very strong in small group situations like the one you describe. For hardmode in particular, the long lasting tohit from power boosted fort cannot be underestimated and wrecks the defenses of 4* mobs. Unfortunately, like masterminds, 99.9% of people play it wrong. A good emp can fort 6-7 people (all but the emp themselves). Most emps wander around doing cringetastic nonsense like putting heal aura on auto, and can barely keep one person forted!

The minute I saw infinitum I knew it would be bad, and I was proven right once I scrolled down and saw nonsense like 3x hecatomb 3x tod in ET. What you've actually done is to screw up a perfectly serviceable build which has a defined focus with useless trash, and I'm about explain why. On the left is your build. On the right is the Croax build. When we look at the Croax build (right), we can see that it has a goal in sight and sets out to achieve it. Namely, softcap SL def and hardcap SL res. The other damtypes are not capped because this is a calculated tradeoff. Resist stalkers cannot muster enough def/res to get anywhere near to capping everything without taking major hits to their primary role which is dps. Therefore, mitigation is focused on the most common damtypes. Your build fails to improve upon this concept. In fact, what you've done is trade away a bunch of resists and recharge, and un-softcapped yourself from SL to pursue a mediocre amount of FC def. Furthermore, your build has agility alpha which does little for your defenses (I'm going to assume it's from the infinitum EM/EA build). Stalkers should always try to take musculature if they can, as the Croax build does; my own EM/EA softcaps def to all except psi while also having permahaste and musculature core. It's not hard. To be fair, you do say this: If you are serious about this, you need to softcap fire defense. That means taking epic blasts, such as zapp and ball lightning from mu, and slotting winter sets in them. As you can see from the Croax build, a stalker gets 20% def to all roughly for free. Slotting 6x blistering cold/avalanche/winter's bite/frozen blast and at least 4x assassin's mark is another 25% FC def, bringing us to 45%. There's your fire farming stalker. Do I recommend it? Only as a novelty or challenge build. For general use, go with something less specialized. Moral of the story: just because someone has a bunch of builds, or a lot of experience making them, is no guarantee they are any good. A lot of people simply have never had anyone challenge them, or if they had, just dismissed it to protect their ego. Furthermore, even if the builds are good, you should understand the build goals, assumptions and intended use cases of each build before attempting to adopt elements from them. You tried to mash together a general-purpose fiery aura build with a build for a fundamentally different armor set to produce something for your oddball challenge. I'm morbidly curious how your shoulder devil convinced you this would work.

Fighting is a poor choice on most FF fenders. 1) set IO builds easily softcap without weave. 2) SO builds struggle to afford the endurance cost. Dispersion bubble, maneuvers, either CJ or hover, both 3% uniques, and agility core paragon bring you to about 32.5% def to all. 6x gaussians makes that 35%, so we only need 10% more def. The ATIO sets offer 5% ranged and 5% aoe defense bringing us to 40%. The remaining amount is easily made up, for example 6x t-strikes 2x botzs for another 5% ranged def. If you plan on capping aoe def in addition to ranged, a set of winter's bite can be more valuable (especially since aoe def is generally rarer). 6x t-strikes is 3.75% ranged def. 6x winter's bite is 2.5% ranged and 2.5% aoe def, a total of 5%. The tradeoff is that winter's bite does not have the acc but with the added slot-efficiency this can be made up elsewhere and still result in a net gain. For fenders/corrs the power boost in soul mastery is generally better: Lesser recharge resulting in higher uptime. Soul mastery has more valuable powers such as an epic toggle with exotic resists and soul drain (albeit weaker than the one in dark mastery).

I don't want any sort of hardcore, challenge, or progression raiding content in coh. And I say this as someone who is generally in favor of challenge in games, and who has completed some of the hardest pve content in the entire history of the MMO genre. 1) The game engine is not robust enough to handle it. You can kill the last nictus and have Rom rez off it 5 seconds later. The maps are filled with OOB holes. You can bump people out of hiding places so they get vaped by brickernaut self-destructs. This kind of jank is unacceptable in any serious challenge mode. 2) Balance is a hot mess, and will probably always be. Just as a small example, homecoming team still thinks it is OK not to balance powersets based on procs even though they are a major contributor to damage (just as Cryptic devs thought it was okay to balance attacks based only on their rech and not their animation time). This precludes the existence of any serious dps check. 3) There are no rewards that Homecoming team is willing to offer. Reward is an essential part of what makes games fun. No reward, no dice. 4) Challenge inevitably brings homogenization. In order to properly balance content so that it can challenge the players who are strong enough to desire challenge, some degree of homogenization is necessary so that developers have a benchmark for what players can accomplish. This would mean standardized team comps, standardized powerset layouts, etc. Are you willing to put up with that? 5) No offense, but the community is unfit for it. Challenge requires teamwork, mental toughness, tenacity and adaptibility. Most coh players are heavily focused on idle play such as sitting, AFK farming and marketing. They are not capable of overcoming challenge. If you want to have challenging content, it needs to be there at day 1 so that a raiding culture and community can be nurtured. The time for that passed long, long ago in coh. Say no to challenge content in coh. Leave that to the pros and focus on what you do well, which is character customization (whether mechanically or aesthetically). "But what about hard mode?" you ask. Hardmode is okay; there should be more of that. "Hard" mode is not hard and not comparable to challenge content of other MMO's in its difficulty. The extra mechanics/fights are incredibly simple and casual (Vengeful Rom's void bombs would be a story dungeon mechanic in wow or ffxiv, for example, albeit a bit more punishing) and the mode is more accurately described as stat gated. 4* is designed for an entire team of tier 4 incarnates. If you team doesn't have that, don't whine that it was hard.

I would agree with you if endgame were filled with Mary MacCombers running hurricane - now that might justify focused acc (can't kill her quickly enough, can't mez to turn it off, autohit). IME def buffs from cimerorans and hardmode mobs are more likely to be a problem.

FF has mez protection and debuff resistance (one of very few grantable sources of debuff resist in the game), time has heals, +tohit and +rech. FF bubbles are more convenient because they are on a short recharge with a large area. There's a reason people prefer FF and cold as the def buffer in pug hardmodes: it's not practical to expect pugs to stay clustered enough to always get time's pbaoe buffs. That said, you're also playing MC/FF which is a combo with zero synergy. Try FF on a fender or corr. FF is completely overpowered on fenders/corrs who are able to get both power boost and soul drain from the same epic, and more easily stack offensive procs and debuffs from sets such as sonic blast with it.

This is true, and it is one reason why controller damage is often underestimated. Even their epic blasts get containment despite not being control powers, which is why they are so good. But it's also true that they have limited access to good dpa attacks. If you want anything approaching decent damage on a controller, you really have to strategize every step of the way and not all powersets can do it. It's not like a scrapper where I could pick any random powersets, give it to a parakeet to play and it would do 400 dps minimum.

Make that 65.3 (shield tanks can comfily sit at ~75% to all) because of where the ATIO proc is. 6PPM can't save a proc when it lives in Jab with ED-capped rech. Focused acc is 20% acc and some minuscule amount of tohit for 0.78 EPS. A single purple set is 15% acc. Properly slotting rage (for example 3x adjusted targetting for EN res) and using purple sets to build for F/C/Psi/tox resistance would not only provide more tohit and acc, they would also provide the defensive stats this build needs. There's a KD proc in foot stomp turning it into KB. There's neither taunt nor an aoe blast so tactical options are quite limited. etc etc. These things stand out to me, because they are indicative of building for what looks pretty in mids as opposed to what actually works. I would post a blow-by-blow build teardown, but the person who made this might just be beyond my help.

Neither; they're both very badly made. The first build has low resists and low slot-efficiency. It underslots tough hide only to waste slots chasing def elsewhere, by putting positional defense IO sets on a typed defense armor. It takes phys perfection despite also taking agility alpha and ageless destiny (which should preclude the need for more endurance). A note on Phys perfection: it is only 20% regen and 10% recovery. If I took gloom, and put 2 apocs in it, that gives 16% regen. Phys perfection is only worth it in specific circumstances where you really make use of its access to sustain procs or to help avoid taking other endurance powers. Bad tank design uses it as a security blanket. The 2nd build makes no attempt to build for resist bonuses at all, not even the resist uniques are slotted. It looks like a build from 2012, and a shoddily made one at that.

All toons are limited to 69 added slots and 6 slots per power, so this first point sounds confusing to say the least. Secondly, set bonuses should simply be considered another power (and are, in fact, powers of their own in the game engine - a point that strikes me as being particularly philosophically pleasing). It's good build practice to see if you can avoid excessive set-muling because that suggests an opportunity to optimize by seeing if we can get both the set bonus and a useful, enhanced power. (Always try to eat your cake and still have it.) However, avoiding using set mules out of ideological constraints is a mental block that stands in the way of effective build design. The choice is not between enhancement value and a set bonus. It's between enhancing two powers, one of which just happens to be called a set bonus. I'll address this first because this issue is the crux of slotting a nature, any nature: global recharge is your #1 priority. The reason is that Overgrowth, in addition to its formidable tohit and dmg buff, provides a large endurance discount. So there is no need to fiddle about getting minuscule endredux bonuses from sets, when you can get perma-overgrowth instead and install the equivalent of 1.5 cardiac core paragons on your toon. Yes, it really is that powerful. All efforts should be directed towards achieving perma-overgrowth before anything else and exemplar performance can be maintained by delaying end-costly powers until after overgrowth is taken. The 6th piece bonus from panacea is a joke at the best of times, but especially pointless on a nature because of the bloom mechanic. Every stack of bloom gives +4% heal, or more precisely, -4% heal damage resistance, because healing is coded in the game engine as a damage type. Furthermore, +heal% IO set bonuses do not work on wild bastion's absorb. (They are specifically +heal only, not +heal/absorb like enhancements.) Stop slotting mediocre sets and sprout more flowers. Yes, I said mediocre. 7.5% rech for 4 added slots is only so-so in 2023, when corrs can get 10% for 2 added slots from the ATIO. When slotting heals you should consider carefully 1) if you are taking spiritual core paragon and 2) whether the power can do without: heal, recharge or endurance reduction enhancement. If both are true, we can often gain large amounts of slot-efficiency with a 1-2 slot frankenslotting with D-syncs or whichever set you want a 2-slot bonus from. For example, 2x 53 D-sync reconstruction provides about the same rech enhancement and only 14% less heal enhancement than 6x prevmed. Prevmed and Panacea are not first-line choices and should be carefully considered. They can be good if you are making use of multiple of Prevmed's set bonuses (e.g. using the SLFC resists to hardcap res while getting a useful proc and recharge), or fully utilizing a +5 boosted panacea's high enhancement value. This heals yourself too for the same amount. You do know this, right? You have read the power description? Is there any reason nobody else has pointed this out yet? I feel like the child crying "the emperor is naked!" Panacea will heal anyone in the patch. Performance shifter will only +end you, but it will trigger if other players stand in the patch. Is it good? Not really because the procrate is shit. The same can be said for putting panacea in Pain's soothing aura which is another suggestion I commonly see. It's a fun luxury, but don't expect it to make a material difference. It does not need heavy recharge enhancement because it is easily permable at perma-overgrowth levels of rech. (Rech 255, duration 90; (255/90) -1 = 1.8333..., or permanent at +183% rech, enhancements included.) It is more important to maximize the resist value. 4x unbreakable guards is fine if you need the melee def. Nature corrs can hit around ~30-32.5% def to all with moderate slot investment, if you chose to build for defense. Incidentally, if you do want regen as a side bonus, you should put your numina's here instead of in health (since you will be keeping the power permanent anyway, so you always get the bonus when you refresh it), and add a +5 numina's: heal. The combination of the heal enhancement and the 2-slot bonus from numina's means this single added slot gives +65% regen, the most you can get anywhere in your build for 1 slot. Do you now see why I think your proclamation of "Number of slots should not be considered a constraint" is ridiculous? Not only does it fly in the face of facts, it's a mental block that stands in the way of your being able to identify efficient synergies. Live every day as though it were your last, spend every slot as though it were your last. See my long discussion on how to slot heal powers above and apply it.

First of all, Elec is far more powerful, defensively, than kin is. Also: empowering gives tohit, FS does not. So it makes sense that kin should add more damage than elecaff, because it is the more offensively focused set. Secondly, saying that kin is 400% damage makes it sound a lot more powerful than it is. What is true is that the damage cap for non-dps AT's is 400% and that of dps AT's is 500% (and brutes at 700%, due to their fury mechanic). However, 100% of that is the power's base damage. (it's 400%. not +400%.) This means we can still add +300%. Then, your enhancements and set bonuses also count towards this cap. Red ED starts at +95%. about +10% from set bonuses on an IO build is pretty common. So well-slotted attacks are already at 195-205% out of 400%. How about the DPS AT's? They have a higher cap of 500%, but musculature alpha is really common on them. The ED-ignoring part of musculature core paragon is 30%. 100% (base) + 95% (enhancements) + 30% (alpha) + 10% set bonuses = 235%. That's a little under half their cap of 500%. So in practice, a kin is double damage or a little more, assuming they saturate their FS. Saying that a kin is 400% damage sounds like it does quadruple damage, which is not true. Now, to be fair, double damage is still really, really strong. Kin is, and always will be, a meta set for good reason. My point is that other sets are not nearly as far behind it as it seems. My favorite example is nature. Overgrowth on a fender gives +82.5% damage, and fender assault is 18.5% or so. Taking both gives +101% damage. If a kin is a little over 2x damage, a perma-overgrowth nature fender is about 1.4x to 1.5x damage, and it can cast overgrowth before engaging. That's very powerful considering that nature is a formidable healing set that also brings resistance buffs and even -res and -regen. Nature is really a beast; people don't seem to realize how powerful it is. The real issue is that the mobs in this game don't do enough damage, and don't punch through player defenses enough. Outside of the two hardmode TF's, you do not suffer defensively when you bring a kin over an elec, when you really ought to. Therefore, the more offensive set becomes the more desired one by default.

You don't need boxing/tough/weave on a primal epic troller because primal trollers can softcap melee/range/aoe without weave. Troller power boost, unlike fenders/corrs, costs 3 powers. Taking another 3 on top of that means you have spent 6/24, or a quarter of all powers to softcap. You're getting ripped off! Why do you want to take PB and then not use it? PB means Power Boost. It does not mean Power For Another Day. PB on a troller increases farsight's defense bonus by +11.5% defense to all positions. That is not a small amount of defense to make up from set bonuses. Conversely, if you do softcap without PB that means a costly investment that is superfluous when you do have PB. If you exemplar and no longer have PB then use your controls and debuffs. Or, you know, eat a small purple, or use dual builds. Trivial. As mentioned, power boost can be thought of as +11.5% def to all as long as we remember to use it every time we refresh farsight. This means we are capped when we see 33.5% def in mids with power boost OFF. ED-capped Maneuvers, ED-capped Farsight, either hover or CJ with an lotg in it, and the two +3% uniques bring us to 27.4% def to all. This means we only need about +6.1% def to cap. TJ is 15% base and a useful shorthand for the purple patch is that against +4's your powers are a little under half as effective. So, that's -7.5% enemy tohit. We're already done! Furthermore, controllers easily get +5% ranged def from their ATIO. So aoe def is really the only sticking point. The most slot-efficient source of aoe def in the game is frozen blast, the winter taoe set. That's good news because you then say: Good. You should take energy torrent. Even though the description says otherwise, on controllers it does KD instead of KB. It will add valuable aoe damage and soft control, and it is also an excellent procbombing power - far better than crushing field, or distortion field for that matter, at the cost of being available later. (Controller aoe immobs are pretty bad as attacks, even procced-out, due to the low base recharge and large area.) Incidentally, if you can only afford to proc-bomb one power, it should be energy torrent, putting the frozen blast in crushing field instead. Energy torrent with 4 damage procs and a 53 nucleolus does nearly 300 damage on average. The last grav/time/primal thread got extremely badly-designed examples in response. Here is a much better template than the Bionic Flea build you based yours on, and I haven't even touched the alpha or spent all the slots. This is a perma-chronoshift build that's softcapped to range and aoe with PB, and slightly undercapped to melee: I'm not providing a build link. I want you to look at this picture, enter the IO's one by one yourself, look at how the enhancement values are changing, and think about their effect and whether they are worth it. (That's a Conduit in chronoshift, Membranes in farsight, and a +5 D/E in maneuvers, by the way.) Completing the build is left as an exercise for the reader. Try: Adding up to two more procbombing powers. Adding a different power pool; fold space, tactics, CJ, rune of protection, something for concept - the possibilities are endless. Proccing out crushing field, and getting aoe defense from somewhere else. This is slot-intensive, and I do not recommend it, but the option is there. Some ways to add aoe def include 4x shield breaker (6x would add melee def as well), tactics with 6x gaussians (also adds melee def, make sure to cut out some ranged def to regain some slot-efficiency). 5-6x lockdown, 6x ice mistal's in TJ, CJ, etc. Whatever you choose, you should get over your mental block of not using powerboost. On an endgame high-rech build like the one I have demonstrated, power boost has nearly 50% uptime and is available every spawn. You can power boost to get a much stronger heal from chronoshift or temporal healing, you can power boost to increase your control duration far more than getting measely 4% mez bonuses from 2x entomb. Power boost increases the tohit buff from Farsight which is beneficial because 1) we are using procbombed attacks with little/no acc slotting and 2) controllers do not have access to aim. You don't want to encounter enemies with defense buffs, whiff your slowed response (which should be taken at 28 btw) and have nothing else in response. Finally, you do not need the Soulbound Allegiance proc in singularity. It has only 2 attacks, crush and lift, and doesn't have containment. The purpose of singularity is to control and group up mobs, not to do damage. You'll get far better returns ensuring your own powers are competently slotted.

Regen on brutes can be very survivable, if relatively high-effort and late-blooming. You can pretty easily get nearly 50% resist all from Tough and IO set bonuses, then cycle defensive clickies one after another to get to the hardcap or nearly there, e.g. something like Rune of protection > Melee core hybrid > Barrier core epiphany > (repeat), then you have IH, reconstruction and mog to back up all of this. It will be painful in the midgame before you have access to all your tools, though. Scrapper regens don't have a 90% resist cap, but they do have access to shadow meld from soul epic. So regen on a scrapper relies on using shadow meld as an alpha absorber (on a recharge build, it has close to 50% uptime) and killing most of the spawn while it is up. You should only ever have to tank 1-2 bosses, if even that, for any length of time. There; in 2 short paragraphs I've already given you more useful information on the set than @Rigged could ever hope to!

I have seen DD failed in a number of amusing ways back in the days of live. Whatsherface at the end actually gains resists if too many people die, so she can become literally impossible to kill. It's one of the few things I appreciate about itrials - the fact that they all have fail conditions (running out of time, if nothing else) and are not afraid to allow players to fail. Non-zerg-shard players don't listen either, they just ignore you slowly. The idea that if you go to a certain place you get better players is a myth as long as that place is open to pubbies. To get better player quality, you have to be selective of who joins. This means something like a friends list or private channel populated by players you personally vet or a community with requirements for joining (and even then, you may expect that any public metric for measuring player quality will be immediately gamed).

The OP is a returning player concerned about the performance of their powersets relative to the meta due to fearmongering about how serious the TW nerfs were. The correct answer to that is that TW is extremely strong, one of the best. And that, especially for someone whose last experience of the set was pre-nerf TW, it got a lot more straightforward and forgiving to play.The great thing is, you don't need to take my word for it. You can just go to the guide by Ratch that I linked, copy the builds and attack chains wholesale, and see for yourself that it is not so hard to execute. I think the real reason you react so emotively is that you've invested so much time and effort attempting to push the dps frontier, it touches a nerve when someone describes the set as easy. For anyone else reading, do *NOT* be discouraged by people who live inside the trapdoor instance; TW is no harder to play than any other set.

I personally love the idea that storm blast is a set that trades a little bit of damage for powerful debuffs and soft control. There are plenty of sets focused primarily on dps, and especially burst dps, so this seems like a refreshing and fun change to me. Reading your post, it's pretty clear you're inexperienced with both your powersets, and with defenders in general. If you have played storm summoning (not blast) - and before bystanders jump in to correct me, OP is playing a storm summoning/storm blast fender - you know it is famously endurance-hungry. Yet by your own admission your powers are slotted 1x dmg, 1x dam/rech. Of course you're going to run out of blue. Plenty of defenders have no self-heal, including classic sets such as TA and cold, and they solo and survive just fine. It's clear you're a blaster, bringing blaster preconceptions to a different AT. You need to improve your gameplay and build design skills to make effective use of your tools. Personally, I've not witnessed any of the issues you see. Played and built competently, storm blast is exciting, powerful and fun. I wouldn't want to play it on a speed TF because I don't want to be resummoning storm cell at every shadow cyst, but that's about it.

Nobody is actually providing the one resource relevant to the OP. Here you go: The key takeaway is that unlike optimization for most powersets, it is not the order of powers that is used in each momentum window that matters but rather the number, as long as you begin and end each window with the same power. Depending on which power you lead with, you don't even need to have a gapless attack chain to get the correct number of attacks in each window. For these reasons TW is an easy set to play and momentum windows are very forgiving.

Unslotted O2 boost is generally correct. It is only a 17% heal (compare heal other & clones: 25%). It has situational uses to counter stuns and drains, e.g. against super stunners or on people who just ate a wakie, but the healz part is a tool of last resort and only there so you can save a slot by putting the prevmed proc in it. Empowering needs to not stack. Stacking emp circuit would lead to it being stronger on solo fenders than on a team because you can bounce it off your own sentinel and stack it on yourself. At least this one doesn't sing the praises of elec troller draining. Forumites always talk about how effectively the aura drains; I have played it, and witnessed it (sometimes played by those selfsame forumites), and never seen it deplete blue bars significantly faster than I can deplete red ones. I conclude that my standards for both dps and drain rate are too high. Now, Thunderous blast; that's a real draining power.

That's because you are running alpha only (i.e. no barrier spam), and also undermanned, so you are operating in a less buff-heavy environment. For the average pug doing an average pug 4*, I wouldn't advise it.