Crysis

You’d have to get rid of IO’s, Enhancement Diversification (allowing you to 6-slot stuff), roll back a ton of nerfs, roll back the Global Defense Nerf, etc etc. Honestly, as much fun as it was running around with Perma-MOG running on my Regen scrappers and tanking Hamidon, while trying to avoid the packs 9-10 fiery chimps chasing every Fire/Kin controller around while tankers rounded up entire zones at a time…..I can’t say I truly miss that. It was horrifically, and in some cases, comically broken from a balance perspective back then.

Hurricane -was- a foundational power for Storm Summoning. It still is for Defenders, maybe Controllers also. But as a Corruptor or MM, you want to build for offense. So most players these days drop Hurricane, double down on +Recharge powers (even Burnout) and procs, and just go full offense. Double LS, Double Tornado every single spawn, and triple to quad with Burnout flipped on. You'll suck END like nobody's business but so many ways to offset that these days between procs and Amplifiers until you get Destiny>Ageless. It's just silly to build out any other way unless you just enjoy taking "the scenic routes" to cleaning up spawns. I've played both ways and there's just little need for Hurricane in the current game on a Corruptor. Why push them around when you can just destroy them outright?

I once took a Fire/NRG blaster all the way to 50 (pre-Incarnate days) in a 48 hour marathon ONLY street sweeping. Back then (I3 or so) Blasters were pretty fragile. It was a forum dare I think where someone kept saying Blasters needed huge help to survive. Of course, the secret for street sweeping always was/has been you can choose your own targets, those that are weak to your attacks while not throwing out status attacks of their own. Was fun though. My eyes hurt after that marathon though.

The real key to playing /Storm on a MM that I think most players don’t quite grasp is that you are NOT a defender and you shouldn’t try to use Storm’s defensive powers to “protect the team” or your henchmen. That’s fine for a Defender, and even to some extent for a Controller, but on a MM you really want to maximize your firepower/DPS. This is why the Devs in their original design of the AT nerfed our damage output so harshly and gave our henchmen level shifts. They KNEW how devastatingly OP a MM could be with pets on auto-pilot attacks. So what you do with /Storm is build for +Recharge. Lots of it. From set bonuses and all those FF +Rech procs. It’s not uncommon for me to go from spawn to spawn at a sustained 200-225% +Recharge. That means Tornado/LS is up almost all the time, and casting it gives me more +Rech to get it out there yet again. So double Tornado and double LS is very possible. On my Thugs/Storm I have Burnout as well which takes the stupid-long recharge of GangWar and lets me get those buggers out about every third spawn. Of course, this comes at a price…Endurance. I tend to load up on all the temp powers for +END (Survival Amplifier, Base temp powers, Recovery Serums…the works) until I can get Ageless Incarnate, or Cardiac if you prefer. Yes, +RECH does nothing for your henchmen, and I think this is what throws a lot of MM’s who think “Well why do I care about +RECH if my pets don’t benefit?” They don’t…but LS and Tornado -are- pets in a fashion, and the more you have of them out the more damage you and your pets are doing together. With the new changes that give you even more benefit by taking your personal attacks….also more DPS to throw out there. And since you won’t be taking Hurricane, Snowstorm, etc….your slots are free for personal attacks as well. So get all the +RECH you possibly can. Trust me…you’ll understand quickly why the Devs haven’t tweaked up our damage or given us even-leveled henchmen. The MM AT has the potential to be game breaking, and the closest you’ll get to seeing that is a high Recharge /Storm MM.

Personally, I wish the Devs long ago would have made certain powers -automatically- become "Effect Self" only. Group Fly, Group Invis, Arctic Fog +Stealth, Steamy Mist+Stealth, etc. And force a popup in the UX that says "Player X is offering you Stealth/Fly/Invis/FreeStuff do you Accept?" But I realize that's a lot of programming for something maybe not that many really care about. But for the ones that DO, they REALLY CARE about it.

Demon/Storm and Thug/Storm still top of the heap. Demon/Cold is a close second. Since /Storm is all about more DPS, you want to pair it with top level DPS henchmen. I love my Mercs/Cold and Mercs/Storm and Bots/Storm and Necro/Storm and...and...and....but always come back to either Demons/Storm or Thugs/Storm for raw DPS output. Play what you like though....pretty much any MM combo does well with /Storm since it is, after all, mostly just more DPS. Skip/respec out of hurricane and focus on Freezing Rain, Steamy Mist, Tornado and Lightning Storm. Throw in lots of FF+Rech procs and get your recharge way up over 200% easily. Take every +END temp power you can because you'll be thirsty. And go to town. Play -OFFENSIVELY- which is why you can ignore Hurricane and Snowstorm. Why herd them up when you can just take them out in half the time? Have fun!

Sents are literally the perfect beginners hero AT. Highly survivable, mez defense, decent but not great damage. Tank mages, but scaled down dps. Fun to play, but you tend to outgrow them quickly.

The best way to enjoy this game is to leave it for awhile. We no longer have (as much) to worry about since the “liberation” of the code. But I get burnt out on the game ever so often due to the repetitive nature of playstyle/missions. So I take a break, go play a new FPS or MMO game (really having fun with Battlebit Remastered right now) and/or catch up on some binge-worthy series and then I’ll see/hear/read something that inspires a new alt and I’m back again chasing the “Conga-Rats” dopamine ding-fest of leveling up a new superhero. This has worked for me since 2004. It’s an easy, pick-up-and-play game that offers various degrees of challenge (albeit all of them pretty easy) depending on your chosen AT/powers/slotting and difficulty setting/enemies presented. Just walk away for awhile and come back when you want. Nothing to force you to play so often now.

I’d not delete an alt that highly leveled. For starters, updates happen to sets all the time and while Merc’s recently got updated, it’s always possible the MM class as a whole is up for future updates, secondaries like Sonic included. So you might find yourself wanting to try that alt again after any future updates. What I do instead is what is commonly called a “meltdown” of the alt. You basically sell off all you can (or transfer to base storage), email anything account-bound where possible (combining merits into hero merits to make this easier where possible, etc) and then do multiple respecs on the character, dropping all their IO’s into your storage slots. That saves you from having to burn a stack of unslotters. It doesn’t really matter how you respec…just throw slots/powers wherever you can to burn through the respec process quickly, dragging any IO’s that don’t fit in your tray into appropriate powers that remain. That high of a level you’ll likely need to do a couple of respecs to free up everything. Then between respecs, dump the free’d up IO’s into storage/email/wherever and rinse repeat.

Better analogy than my petless MM one. It's exactly like runing a /Traps Corruptor, but with your primary acting like that secondary. I actually think Storm/Traps might be a great AV/GM hunting machine. Solo, setup time available and long duration battles.

Oh it can be -capable- in the way that almost any AT can be effective in this game. At 50, no Incarnates, I can solo +4/x8 without much danger and pretty much can take down any spawns. Against Carnies, against Malta, against Arachnos, all the “classic” PvE mobs that can cause challenges due to status effects. But that’s -mainly- due to a) my Storm secondary throwing out a lot of damage and otherwise helping to pull aggro and b) I have allllllll the time in the world solo to get everything setup and working as the mechanics intended, for the full duration of the fights. So capable, yes, I’ll agree with that. Now on a fast-moving team, far, far less effective. The spawn is typically gone before my targeted AoE “multipliers” of Cat5 and Storm Cell are even capable of getting thrown down. Same somewhat goes for my /Storm Lighting Storm big hitter. Honestly, it makes me feel like I’m playing a MM on many iTrials or HM TF’s. I just throw out what I can and often run petless as I can’t resummon and empower them fast enough to keep up. So there’s effective, which it is, and overall efficacy of the Storm Blast attacks slot for slot, shot for shot, and play by play. I’ll throw almost any other Corruptor builds I have onto a fast moving team and they will outperform the Storm/Storm/Dark. Like @DangerKitty, I parked mine at 50. There’s little value in further investments of Incarnates as by that point I’m just leaning on Incarnates to make it perform as well as many of my Corruptors do even without any iPowers.

Fire is pretty universally regarded as the best overall DPS. As a Corr, you have to figure in how it synergizes with your inherent (Scourge) and from that look at DOT versus Rains vs psuedopet damage output and all sorts of slotting mechanics. I just go by "common tongue" on the boards and stick with Fire as my vote. I love it paired with Kinetics because you can self-augment your native unslotted damage and then go a bit nuts with IO sets or procs. I also think it works really well with any secondary that has lots of -RES in it. Cold, Storm, Rad and a few others come to mind. -RES is also a damage multiplier. So I'd say if you go Fire, you have many options to make a high damage Corruptor. But Ice, Water, Seismic, BR etc ain't bad either btw.... *EDIT* @Voltak has a really solid Fire/Kin/Soul build posted on the forums, along with a thread to support it. I can vouch for it, it's incredibly powerful. I might prefer going with Dark instead because being able to hit Fulcrum Shift followed by Soul Drain is amazing in large spawns, and Soul Drain does some damage as well. Even if you just alternate them, it's still a really potent combination of powers. The other way to go is @Darkir's approach of Fire/Kin "tanking" builds. Several different builds posted in this lengthy (and classic!) thread.

Full set of Artillery IO's. Gives you ~+4% Ranged, Energy/NE +DEF and +9% Accuracy bonus. The fact that it does damage slotted that way is also a bonus. I've actually done a build on test that does away with Storm Cell but keeps Cloudburst. Solo'd, the loss of damage is noticeable but not bad. Teamed, which is a bit harder to test on Test, it's totally skippable as is Cat 5. Stuff dies too fast when teamed to really make much use of either of those two powers.

S/L or Ranged 45% Def, often can achieve both. Permahasten +Damage Don't have a single blaster without all three of those in place.

I think it’s pretty well acknowledged now that Storm Blast was built -specifically- to underperform other legacy blast sets to avoid continued power creep. So no matter how you build it it will likely remain smack middle-class for damage, or possibly even lower than that depending on your secondary buffs/debuffs relative to +DPS output. But with Storm/Storm I comfortably solo’d almost everything at +2/x8 by mid 30’s, +3/x8 by mid 40’s and +4/x8 for 45+ game. As I’ve stated I chose to not pursue the Incarnate path with this AT as I don’t think the investment in time is worth the effort relative to other projects I’m working on. It’s definitely not a bad set, but 50 is about as good as it gets. I didn’t have any END issues post Dark Consumption, and Carnies nor Arachnos cause many issues as long as you keep your LS and Tornado up (or double up with high enough +RCHG). You definitely have the high Recharge going for you with all those FF procs. I was averaging about +250% recharge ever spawn. But that just means you’ll be using your blasts more as they are always up. It really is a gorgeous set to play. To some extent, given the mechanics of Cat 5 and Storm Cell, I almost think it’s best to play solo rather than on teams as you’ll actually be able to make use of all your powers to see the full extent of their impact. You lose a whole bunch of your maximum capabilities on teams where stuff is gone well before your T9 from Storm Blast can do more than look “theatrical” on the battlefield. But that’s why it’s so easy to solo +4/x8….lots of stuff to keep the spawn busy while you whittle them down. PS - on Arachnos, I even have trouble with them in the early 40’s with some of my Brute builds. Their ranged attacks hurt more than their melee. I tend to pull spawns around the corner where I’ve already got a LS up and then drop freezing rain. Then I pop Soul Drain for the mini-fulcrum, Dark Consumption as an attack/+END and mop up the rest. Takes a little more effort but they pose far less threat than taking ranged shots in the open.

Might be just me, but whenever I click on these new forum exports, it opens Mids and I either get an unexpected exception error or it just opens...nothing. Re: Conserve Power, yes it will go a long ways to helping you with all the /storm summoning endurance issues. Especially if you build for high recharge, which most Stormies would do. But that's also why I typically go with Dark instead for Dark Consumption (+END, and doubles as an attack) and Soul Drain (+DMG). I've even had -limited- success with just taking Victory Rush from the Leadership pool. It's not great, but does work in a pinch. Nonetheless, most of this gets covered by the time you take Destiny Ageless anyways, should you follow that path.

You spent 420 -BILLION- on costumes?

I still can't get Forum build export working inside of MIDS, but here's my most current build if you can load it. Please bear in mind I use Defense and Survival Amplifiers pre-Incarnates. You'll have to toggle those on in Mids to see in-game impact (which is significant for +DEF numbers). Although I'm not choosing to take this one through the Incarnate slog (don't find the set to be worth it IMHO), I'd take the Incarnate powers in the build to round it out and/or shore up the obvious deficiencies with all stormies, mainly more Endurance. Texas_Tornado_Ellie_LevelingBuild.mbd

I still don't understand what this "sound" is everyone talks about in this game? Am I the only one who plays with sound turned off?

When I try to share build I get an Unhandled Exception error.

I've taken Storm Blast to 50 on a Storm/Storm Corruptor. I debated doing on a defender but felt the Scourge damage + perma Soul Drain for +DMG negated any debuff advantages I'd get playing a Defender. As many others have pointed out, Storm Blast appears -designed- to be a middle-tier blast set. Your damage is back-loaded and in the 40+ game that means you could effectively just respec out of your T9 Cat5 "reverse nuke." It's just not going to be very usable as most stuff dies well before you can get any utility out of the endurance you'll spend to cast it. And while we are at it, Storm Cell is pretty "meh" as well, so you could conceivably skip both Storm Cell and Cat 5 and then...why are you playing Storm Blast? There's nothing "wrong" with the set. It's the Sentinel of blast sets. It's intentionally designed to be middle of the road. Now thematically and artistically....the set is gorgeous. Real FX Flex appeal. Just don't expect your "Go" to equal the "Show" with the set. TLDR; I'd go with Elec.

Am aware. But if I logged in every day for past 15 days and I've had 15 updates....I can't find any record of 15 updates in 15 days. So, what else could be happening?

I admit to playing COH on some unconventional hardware. Namely a SteamDeck and a GDP Win4 handheld Windows device. It's my "minimalist" computing hobby. For about the past 2 months, on both the SteamDeck and the Win4 device, the Homecoming launcher -constantly- wants to update. There are no new updates. But it seems to think there are so I have to wait for it to update to the same version I played last time. I wouldn't mind it so much if I was just burning hotel WiFi but more often I'm burning my 5G/LTE data plan since I'm tethered to my phone's hotspot function. Is there a way to make an update "stick" somehow and I'm just missing the setting?

Look I’m all for fixing this mess, but I think handing all of a T4 Incarnate’s Judgement power stats to Chain is a bit overkill. That said, this is a meme/theme set only. Nothing wrong with that really, but players should be forewarned that the set is a first release and maybe only release. You get what you get. Don’t overinvest in the set as it’s not going to give you much in the way of returns.

Even if you had multiple players stacking multiple different -Res powers I’m not sure you can get to 5-digit single attack damage. And you’d need an AV or pylon to target most likely to even see it.