Storm Summoning vs. Cold Domination

[TungstenShark]

Which do you like more and why?

 

Obviously Storm Summoning has several different Knockbacks and how you use those is key to its effectiveness. Storm seems to be more offensive-minded, while Cold seems more controlling. Are powers like Arctic Fog and Steamy Mist basically identical, or are their inherent numbers different? What about Sleet and Freezing Rain?

 

Back when I played, Cold was not an option for Defenders. I always loved Freezing Rain as a debuff, but if Sleet is an identical power, I might go with a different power set this time.

[Trickshooter]

Can't look it up in-game right now, and Pet powers can't be viewed on City of Data through Wayback machine, so I'm going off an old spreadsheet I had made to answer your questions.

 

Steamy Mist and Arctic Fog are almost identical, except that Steamy Mist resists and protects against Confusion, while Arctic Fog resists Slows.

 

Sleet and Freezing Rain are similar in effects, however a Defender version of the Sleet pet was never made, so Freezing Rain does everything Sleet does, but better.

 

I prefer Storm because I like to play alone a lot and it's just more useful for me in that sense, but Cold is also a great set. It's all about what you want your focus to be when you play, though. If you want to focus on your foes and maybe that just happens to make your team a little safer, then Storm. If you want to more directly protect your teammates while also making life harder for your enemies, then Cold.

[Johnderful]

I brought a Cold/Ice and a Storm/Ice both to 50, fully IO'd, def caps, incarnate slots, permahasten, etc. In the long run, they both end up being completely different playstyles. If your plan is just to hit 50, then a lot of teaming will be centered around freezing rain/sleet for both since neither really come into their own until you start getting your invention sets. Cold is a lot more versatile with its buffs, and also has probably the best single target debuff in the game (Benumb) so its great against AVs. Heat Loss will give your team unlimited endurance, which was amazing back in the day because it was one of the only sources of End Rcv that could out recover the -recovery effects of Tier 9 blast powers. but with the new leadership power and no more -End Rcv on blast powers it makes heat loss almost irrelevant (still provides a hefty -res debuff though).  My Cold/Ice was my preferred hero whenever it came to teams, tfs, AVs etc, and also my main.

 

Storm on the other hand was just downright CHAOS! It was the most fun character I ever soloed with. With Hover and good positioning, your foes will always suffer heavy -acc debuffs and never get near you with hurricane (you also feel like a sheep herding dog). The best part though was having 3 Tornadoes and 3 lightning storms out at all times. Lightning storm is one of the coolest graphics/audio effects in the game, so if you want chaos, flashy, and pure fun then  storm summoning is for you!

 

Ice has always been my favorite ranged power set, but they were particularly good on defenders because 2 of the powers (Ice storm and Blizzard) scaled to blaster damage. They were actually considered summoned "pets" with their own damage scaling, affected by your own damage buffs during the instance they were summoned. And with Cold/Ice I could have Aim/sleet/blizzard/ice storm/heatloss up every ~30 seconds or so and take out +3 mobs with ease. This coupled with amazing single target holds and synergystic themes made ice such an easy pick as my secondaries for both.

[davian88]

Johnderful,

Would you be willing to post your Cold/Ice and Storm/Ice builds? They sound interesting but I haven't to find anything similar to them. I am new to this game and seeing how and why powers get slotted for certain thresholds is still foreign to me.

[Trickshooter]

Ice has always been my favorite ranged power set, but they were particularly good on defenders because 2 of the powers (Ice storm and Blizzard) scaled to blaster damage. They were actually considered summoned "pets" with their own damage scaling, affected by your own damage buffs during the instance they were summoned. And with Cold/Ice I could have Aim/sleet/blizzard/ice storm/heatloss up every ~30 seconds or so and take out +3 mobs with ease. This coupled with amazing single target holds and synergystic themes made ice such an easy pick as my secondaries for both.

 

Just wanted to say that this is no longer the case; Issue 24 added AT-scaled psuedopets for every blast power that used them.

[RussHood]

My cold/sonic defender is by far my fav ive ever played. So many buffs/debuffs, makes teammates hit for over a thousand (when the AV is at -80% resist to all damage). The only issue ive run into is that soloing is kind of slow or painful

[Johnderful]

I lost my builds from mids a long time ago but I will definitely try to recreate/update them to I25 them when I have the time. I had a feeling they did something like that to pseudo pets, I24 seemed like it did a good job overall of balance across the boards. It felt a bit unfair that I had amazing support capabilities while also dealing blaster level damage

[Erydanus]

I've had both and really we're talking oranges and grapefruits here. Storm is about aggressive protection of your team with all the crazy phenomena, while cold is more of a traditional buff them with shields then go debuff the foes type play. You should have one of each!