A(nother) Storm/Ice.

[Sovera]

13 minutes ago, StriderIV said:

I have a Water/Cold Corruptor, but a Storm/Water Defender seems intriguing. How have you liked leveling it?

 

Haven't. Just finished cooking the build and have been transferring the IOS from the Storm/Ice. I'll do a report on its thread later.

[Onlyasandwich]

From reading your playstyle responses, I'm not certain you are using optimal tactics to leverage your powers, @Sovera.

 

Can you tell me how you usually approach a fresh spawn?

 

Lightning storm does more than 1/10th of an even con minion's hp, though it certainly isn't one shotting them. The purple damage proc also makes a big difference. If you position it above the crowd after dropping freezing rain, it does a great job helping keep mobs knocked down in place and will consistently hit multiple targets. It also chews bosses up and almost completely neutralizes their damage. 

 

As for your question regarding when you would have multiple tornados, the answer is basically always. Spam it on cool down. It follows you mob to mob churning out damage. The tics are small but super fast. It is another distraction that keeps mobs off your back as well. It does only proc ffback upon summon, but you should be summoning it a lot.

 

Typically your whole kill zone will always be contained within freezing rain, and you should be able to blow them up nicely while it persists. 

 

All of these tools work much better if you can keep the mobs packed tight. I know you don't like hurricane, but this is the reason why hurricane is so important to solo storm defenders.

 

You might find that you prefer the set on a controller, where you have an aoe immob to make this more controllable. /Dark blast is also a classic companion on defenders for its immob.

 

 

[Sovera]

4 hours ago, Onlyasandwich said:

From reading your playstyle responses, I'm not certain you are using optimal tactics to leverage your powers, @Sovera.

 

Can you tell me how you usually approach a fresh spawn?

 

Lightning storm does more than 1/10th of an even con minion's hp, though it certainly isn't one shotting them. The purple damage proc also makes a big difference. If you position it above the crowd after dropping freezing rain, it does a great job helping keep mobs knocked down in place and will consistently hit multiple targets. It also chews bosses up and almost completely neutralizes their damage. 

 

As for your question regarding when you would have multiple tornados, the answer is basically always. Spam it on cool down. It follows you mob to mob churning out damage. The tics are small but super fast. It is another distraction that keeps mobs off your back as well. It does only proc ffback upon summon, but you should be summoning it a lot.

 

Typically your whole kill zone will always be contained within freezing rain, and you should be able to blow them up nicely while it persists. 

 

All of these tools work much better if you can keep the mobs packed tight. I know you don't like hurricane, but this is the reason why hurricane is so important to solo storm defenders.

 

You might find that you prefer the set on a controller, where you have an aoe immob to make this more controllable. /Dark blast is also a classic companion on defenders for its immob.

 

When I tested the FF proc in LS yesterday I used it on grey mobs. 1/10th might have been generous. One minute after it had not killed any of them.

 

Perhaps it was because it had no damage proc. (purple or otherwise), but it is also possible you've not used LS in an isolated experiment? Not lost with all the other Storm powers ticking but alone. I mean, I have no idea if you have or not, but if not then try it. Pick a pack of mobs over PI, drop LS, don't throw other damaging powers, then check if it kills something. Perhaps my lack of a damage proc is coloring things.

 

In that scenario without distracting numbers I could finally see LS's AoE in action. It is as tiny as reported but it did hit several mobs at once as they congregated under the LS to reach me who was sitting in it. But it failed to kill anyone even after the substantial one minute duration has expired. Frankly LS would be fine with the cooldown of Tornado and roughly the same endurance cost. A nuke level of cooldown is way too much for what it does.

 

If you could please give me an impartial report of your test?

 

 

As for how I approach a fresh spawn: let the agro magnet jump in first (not always, as long as there are others with me I can open since mobs start flopping and even at 38 my defense is becoming okay), drop freezing Rain (INITIATE DOING THE HELICOPTER!), Ice Storm (damage), Tornado (erroneous belief it would start pumping FF procs, but at least it does for the initial cast). Start STing the harder targets. If the team is split or team AoEs are on cooldown and I see mobs are still alive after the three Storm powers are down I would drop a LS to help things and only then start the STing.

 

 

In my (limited) experience so far as long as the agro magnet jumped in first mobs are not running away from the rains, their alpha is scattered, and the volley of AoEs from the team quickly mow things down to the bosses which I already am whittling down expecting this. This is on a +1 leveling team so obviously the mobs do not survive long, though in my experience +4 teams at cap (+3) chew them just as fast since it is when fully bloomed IO builds show up.

 

Depending on how fast this goes I may have something like 5 seconds on my Storm cooldowns by the time we reach the next spawn which has me idling a bit and counting the seconds. I reckon with Water spamming FF procs in Water Burst these five seconds will probably go. I'll be leveling the water version later today and see how it goes.

[EnjoyTheJourney]

FWIW, a few thoughts on teaming as a stormie.

 

It's helpful to cast nado essentially whenever it's up as long as your endurance bar won't crash. It has a short cast time and it has better DPA than any other power in your arsenal except LS. Essentially, waiting to cast it until a battle is started is losing a casting opportunity for a blast set power. Nado also functions as a guardian, so pre-casting before battles is a good step to take to deflect hard charging melee types from going straight at your stormie. Try casting nado on the way to the battles and see how that goes (not for speedruns, of course, but for other situations). 

 

Regarding LS, it was clear that you were expecting great things from it and were disappointed. Being disappointed by a power not living up to expectations is understandable. But, ironically, it's when you're soloing that LS has maximum value as a DPS adder. Consider how hard players work at increasing their DPS by relatively small amounts. Then consider that a stormie can take a little over 4 seconds of casting time for LS out of every minute to increase their DPS by low triple digits against any hard target. The endurance cost is justified by the huge DPA it offers, as well as its helpful cc effects. 

 

So, when to use LS in teams? It's not going to add a lot of DPS while in teams, in general. But, you can use it for area denial, like bonfire or caltrops. You're the ranged blaster's BFF when you can drop LS over them because it will cc and help them defeat anything that gets up close with them. On that note, having a single nado out and one LS out basically means you're unlikely to be swarmed in melee. It's a stormie's hidden armor. Sometimes one or a few mobs will make it to your stormie and get in a hit or two. But, unless they resist knockback they'll get quickly and repeatedly knocked on their butts. Many of them will end up disoriented by nado grinding away at them.  And, even if you only get one LS up early in an AV fight its still better DPA (and probably better DPE, in many cases) than anything else in your arsenal. 

 

Finally, it was a bit jarring to hear of a stormie consistently not leading the team. Admittedly in Linea's harder 801 missions that's understandable.* But, in most other situations it's helpful to have FR debuffing mobs before the team arrives. And, throwing in an AOE volley after FR, then dropping a LS to help with cleanup is a helpful way to whittle down mobs so the rest of the team can handle the stragglers as you head to the next spawn and decimate that one before the team arrives. And so on.  With solid AOE for your water stormie (btw, you can more quickly decimate spawns with steam spray than whirlpool, give it a try at some point) you will be well set up to be successful with this playstyle.  

 

When you play storm, you are the storm. 

 

* For Linea's missions it's probably justified to temporarily remove and replace the knockback to knockdown IOs in LS and nado, in case you like those missions. Any cc is absolutely golden in those missions and (based on admittedly limited experience) they often resist knockdown values that have been clipped to less than one. 

[Onlyasandwich]

5 hours ago, Sovera said:

If you could please give me an impartial report of your test?

I will try to unplug my expectations and give it a go later!

[Onlyasandwich]

@Sovera

 

So I did hop on and run through a few basic scenarios. I went even con just for direct comparison, though certainly the usefulness of some of these powers scales with harder content.

 

This was just a simple +0/8 simple outdoor S/L map. I ran +4/8 as well just to refresh myself on any special troubles there, and the experience was basically the same - it just took a bit longer to blast things down.

 

I tried running without hurricane as you are, and it was a big old mess. I can definitely see where you would feel like you are just sort of throwing peas in a dumpster soloing large crowds without something to keep them hemmed in. The fear effect from LS, Tornado, and even FR to a degree cause a lot of scatter and general messiness even when the knockback is handled. In this situation, you will definitely get more mileage out of your optimal DPA single target attacks. Even here though, Lightning storm still provides good value against bosses. Between my good resistance/defense, and the "chaos mitigation" I was still fine, but it was an annoying and suboptimal experience.

 

I turned hurricane back on and life was good. I open with FR, hover top for a LS, toss tornado, and blast with aoes. When minions are down switch to my ST chain. Refresh tornado as it comes up - on my build it is recharging approximately every ~15 seconds depending on FFback procs. Tornado procs FFback almost every time regardless of target #s, as it is simply based on the summon itself. As I blast with aoes, I circle the mob with hurricane on. This keeps them more or less clumped nicely, and LS was consistently hitting 3-4 targets this way. 

 

As for damage from the storm powers:

 

Lightning storm took anywhere from 2-4 hits to kill an even con minion, depending on procs. Very rarely would it actually take 4, given proc rates. If I got really unlucky and no procs ever went off, it would be more like 6-7 hits, so I can see where you may be getting some of those numbers. It's important to note that LS keeps on blasting with a pretty fast refire rate as well for quite some time! You don't have to be camping on a spawn all day to see good return on that cast.

 

If tornado had its way with a minion all by itself, it took ~8 seconds to kill start to finish. This gets a lot more value in multi-target situations of course, and it can be a little harder to leverage the aoe on tornado, as it likes to switch targets a bit haphazardly.

Obviously taking 8 seconds to kill a minion isn't awesome in a vacuum, but consider a few factors:

• It has fast activation and persists for a good while, allowing you to continue getting value from that short animation cast across several mobs. 
• You are still blasting while it ticks down.
• It is autohit.
• It does real work in keeping stuff off your back and adding further consistency to Freezing rain's knockdown.
• It is providing constant FFback procs with recast, fueling your other long cooldowns.

 

The true beauty of storm in my experience comes from an accumulation of damage from multiple angles. Each individual component is not exactly a nuke, but they are each very efficient for what they put out, and the whole picture adds up very quickly. The trade-off is that is about as end-hungry as they come. Personally I actually like a bit of challenge from this perspective, as it forces me to consider power usage a little more tactically, and I actually appreciate the scenarios that allow me to really "unleash." Conserve power is a nice "unleash on demand" button.

 

On most teams, this is a little different of course.

• My typical opener on a team is still Freezing Rain, and I still spam tornado.
• LS typically only gets use if we are moving a little slower than average, or hitting a tougher target. Often, it can be useful to position LS as a sort of "goalie" behind the spawn to ensure things stay in your FR, or as @EnjoyTheJourney mentioned, a sort of protective beacon for a ranged class that is feeling harassed.
• On most teams these days, my own actual aoes may not even get that much use, as the minions melt so quickly once Freezing Rain is down. Single target cleanup becomes the name of the game here. 
• I rarely use hurricane on teams. It is mostly a solo tool. It does find use on lower level teams, or when everything goes to garbage. If we aggro a giant room full of loosely spawned Resistance for example, I can throw on hurricane and do fast loops, kissing everything in sight. As I encircle the giant mob everything gets debuffed to nothing, and they slowly congregate toward the center for easy disposal as my team catches up with clearing them out.

 

All this being said, I will insert a brief note of sacrilege here on the Defender forums - Storm is friendlier and easier to synergize on a controller for sure. I enjoy Defender storm for its unique playstyle and the power of its debuffs, but any sort of /Storm controller will probably be a faster high level soloer overall and easier to manage on teams.

 

My personal favorite is Fire/Storm, which basically just waltzes in with hotfeet on, a thousand tornadoes in tow. Mobs melt before they know what hit them, and you have a beautiful KD patch in Bonfire to supplement FR. The aoe immob makes leveraging Tornado an absolute "breeze" - ho ho ho!

 

I see that you are pulling your next build with /water instead. From an optimization perspective, I think this is a good call! Water is just an all-around wonderful blast set, with room for procs, and plenty of built-in utility.

[Sovera]

2 hours ago, Onlyasandwich said:

@Sovera

 

So I did hop on and run through a few basic scenarios. I went even con just for direct comparison, though certainly the usefulness of some of these powers scales with harder content.

 

Thanks for the -very- detailed breakdown, internet Sammich person. As a non Defender, non Stormie this was great to read. You do approach it from the solo angle which is not one I'm not intending to follow (squishies in a team are fine and all, but for solo let me go at it with one of my Fire Armor tanks), but for teaming we seem to have a somewhat parallel thinking. The lack of a purple (?) damage proc in LS definitely colored my views on the results, though ultimately I still think it belongs to an older time where things took longer.

 

So far the Watery experience has been that AoE is a bit better as expected, but the ST is pretty damn mushy. I need to frankenslot Dehydrate and get some procs in because sub-Yin the STing was pretty much like tickling enemies (4-5 hits to kill a +1 minion). I do notice that teams are melting more with Water helping things along. Moar KDs never go amiss either. I just got Water Jet and I need to finish slotting it so I can give my impression on it.

[Onlyasandwich]

1 hour ago, Sovera said:

ST is pretty damn mushy

 

This is my experience as well.

 

Water Jet is sort of your "big punch" like Blaze or Bitter ice Blast, but it doesn't fit the role quite as well in a few ways. Even procced out, it all feels a bit "mushy" as you say.

 

For this reason, I advise really investing your best frankenslotting (acc/damHO, Purple Damage IO) and highest quality damage procs in Water Jet, and spending your tidal power on spewing it back to back. 

 

Dehydrate can be turned into a good puncher as well, as it has the -defense proc capabilities. I prefer to maximize this element rather than relying on it for healing, but can understand why someone might frankenslot for a bit of healing as well.

 

As far as aoe goes, water is set of course. I do want to give a special mention to Steam Spray, which I underestimated a bit at first, but won me over as my favorite aoe in the set. It has a very generous cone, great base damage, and excellent proccing potential (-def, acc -def, ranged aoe sets, and also ideal base recharge). It also adds more diversity to your damage types (pure fire damage on water blast - waat).

Edited May 7, 2021 by Onlyasandwich

[DreadShinobi]

Vigor Core Paragon is a really nice choice for a proc heavy Water Blasting build. You get an additional 45% healing from dehydrate without needing to slot for it, as well as some extra healing on o2 boost if you like that (I do). Vigor also has a massive effect on your endurance consumption, both for a stormie and for a proc build. You get the endurance reduction and accuracy boost in every attack that lets you go all out with your proc slotting.

 

Every damage proc for a defender is massively beneficial. Dehydrate for example gets the exact same damage improvement from a single +5 Apocalypse IO (+66.25% dmg buff) that you might use to frankenslot your dehydrate as it does from a adding a non-purple damage proc. Of course it can fit in both as well. Dehydrate can take 5 damage procs, not including apocalypse, which I prefer putting in Lightning Storm, which leaves you with one slot for attribute enhancement. With Vigor you still get +33% acc, 33% endredux, 45% heal, and 66.25% from an Apocalypse: damage. 

 

Defenders also have a very low damage cap, so not ramming up your enhanced damage can give you higher top end performance. With 66.25% enhanced, 18.75% from assault, you get 215% remaining to be buffed. Always important to consider how much room you have to receive damage buffs imo. Of that 215%, you will get another 105% during tidal forces/gaussians uptime which still leaves you room for 4 small red insps. 

Edited May 8, 2021 by DreadShinobi

[VV]

I generally slot Lightning Storm with 5 Apocalypse and an extra damage proc. I find it does really solid damage and serious mitigation. Tornado gets 4 Expedient Reinforcement, a KB>KD IO, and some other damage proc. Again, does some really solid damage and massive mitigation. Using Tornado as your Tank is super fun.

 

While LS and Nado are two of my favorite powers in the game, I would not take Storm on an alt designed to be in the super speed runs. Cold or Sonic are your best bets for that.

Edited May 8, 2021 by VV