Storm Summoning/

Hjarki · July 22, 2019

The way that you slotted Char is actually quite timely, because lately I've been experimenting with a Sentinel build that uses Dominate in a similar fashion (inspired by Nihilii's Sentinel). Speaking of which, have you considered trying the Psi pool instead of Fire? The main advantage there is that Dominate has half of Char's recharge - 16s instead of 32s, which is still long enough to max out most procs, but also short enough to make Dom a staple of one's attack chain. The downside, of course, is that you'd lose Rise of the Phoenix, which is a very useful and fun power. On the upside, you'd gain World of Confusion, which is a terrible power on its own, but it allows you to slot the purple Confuse set, which is one of the best sets in the game for Ranged DEF builds.

Pine's stats on Flame Mastery are incorrect. It's 16 sec recharge and has higher base dpa than any of my actual attacks (barring the special mechanics on Water Jet). On my Ice/Time Corruptor, I actually use it as my third main attack - although this has more to do with the value of stacking Holds than damage (you lose some of the damage advantage since you can only Unbreakable Constraint one of the Holds). However, there's some loss of immediacy since that means I have two DoT (which probably diminishes Scourge by a minor amount since the damage from one attack hasn't finished by the time the next lands).

I do love Coercive Persuasion, but I'm not sure I want to take (and 6-slot) a power I'm never going to use just to take advantage of it.

On the current iteration, I also ditched Snow Storm/Rise of the Phoenix for Gale/Assault. Gale with Explosive Strike (more than) replaces the Ranged Def I lose from RotP and Assault nudges the damage up a bit. Since Corruptors have to take Gale, this is probably a good technique for them as well (the Gale part, not the Assault part). I don't use Gale all that much, but it's fun to throw around 16+ KB every now and then - and it's not like I used Rise of the Phoenix much either.

Very true. To be clear, the only time I six-slotted Freezing Rain with the ATO set was the build in the previous post, which was more-or-less a thought experiment, to see if I could soft-cap AoE and Ranged DEF. I was genuinely surprised at how little I had to sacrifice to achieve that goal, but I'm still not sure I'm going to play that build myself. It does require the Fighting Pool, which means I'd lose out on things like Snow Storm, which I've come to regard as very useful.

I go back and forth on Snow Storm. The only time I ever used it was to knock fliers from the air. However, I can use Water Burst and Geyser to do that as well (albeit less efficiently) and it's a rare enough occurrence that I'm willing to suffer through the gap - if my ability to own the air fails, I can always fall back on Hurricane.

I used to think that Storm needs an AoE immobilize, but I've changed my mind of late. Yes, scatter can be annoying, but even with scatter, my Storm build doesn't solo large groups any slower than, say, the average Scrapper without a taunt aura. It doesn't help that the Epic AoE immobilize powers available to Defenders/Corruptors aren't all that appealing - slow to animate (with high redraw, in the case of Web Envelope), and with a relatively small area of effect. School of Sharks is the better of the two, but that requires cone positioning and I'm too lazy.

I'm less concerned about scatter than AV/GM. If I'm going to fight an AV/GM, I almost inevitably need someone else to either taunt it into place or Immobilize it. Otherwise, it just runs away from the Tornado - and out of Freezing Rain/Lightning Storm range. This has a devastating impact on the amount of damage I can deal.

3. I like the Tornado slotting idea. I've been using the Expedient Reinforcement 4-pc, plus the FF and Sudden Acceleration procs. How often would you say Achilles Heel procs for you in Tornado?

I haven't actually tracked it. However, I know I want to turn Knockback into Knockdown and I want a Force Feedback proc. The only other things I need to slot for Tornado are damage and maybe a smidge of recharge or endurance reduction. Once I've done that, might as well fill it out with procs. It doesn't seem like they proc all that often (Tornado is technically an AE power, so its proc chance is likely reduced by area factor), but more than 0% is probably sufficient.

5. My only problem with Tactics is End; given that we Stormers have buttloads of -DEF debuffs and auto-hit powers, it's hard for me to justify investing a lot into ToHit, though of course you're right that it benefits the team.

To some extent, Tactics saves on the need for investing in Accuracy. Since I don't use purple sets, I don't have a whole lot of stray +accuracy from them. In terms of endurance, Ageless solves that problem.

Also, as a Defender, I get more advantage (for both myself and the team) from the Leadership buffs.

I've hit 38 and picked up Lightning Storm and Tornado now, so I have everything out of Storm I need to start testing and experimenting with slotting. I took a handful of my V-Merits and cashed out some Converters so I could buy every conceivable proc I could excluding the ones that require me to be 50 (also skipped the Winter proc since its a 20 mill investment).

I tried out the Immobilize proc and didn't find it useful. I suspect it's only a MAG 2 Immobilize and the proc chance is too low to matter.

Lightning Storm: Given the variety of procs that can be dropped into this, tried a few to see what impacts it would have. Entropic only triggered on drop. Kind of expected this, but still wanted to try it out. FF +Rech went off also every time I dropped LS, but I'm not really convinced that the 5/s of +100% every 30/s is worth it compared to the success of damage procs in the power. Dropped a damage proc in and the initial hit was always a proc, but I did notice some follow ups that didn't, but it appeared pretty regularly.

Bear in mind that the "every 30 sec" will drop to "every 15 sec" by the time you're fully tricked out at 50. But even at 30 sec, you're still getting the equivalent of +16% global recharge (+100% with ~16% uptime).

I should also point out that if you look at the build I posted earlier, one takeaway is how incredibly cheap it is compared to most level 50 builds. The two full ATO sets are probably 75% of the cost of the entire build.

Tornado: Less options here, but I primarily wanted to know the regularity Achilles would pop up. I'd say it was somewhere between 2/3 to 1/2 the time.

The procs appear to work fairly well on activation, but poorly on the continuous damage - meaning that casting Tornado directly on your target becomes a priority.

As things stand at the moment, I know I'm at least in a position to shift around a few slots now that I know that putting anything proc-based in Ice Storm is pointless, and I'm scratching Blizzard off that expectation list as well which opens up another potential change up. Not dumping the powers, but I'm either moving their sets around, or just reducing them and seeing what other bonuses I can pull together. Curious if I could find a spot to putt another 7-13% Ranged defense and have that softcapped on top of S/L/E still.

I tend to think of boosting Ranged Defense in terms of return-on-slots. Consider:

BotZ in Fly: 1.25% for one slot (0.625% per slot)

BotZ in Hover: 1.25% for two slots (because the free slot is used by LotG)

Explosive Strike in Gale/Hurricane: 1.88% for two slots (0.94% per slot)

Full Lockdown or Thunderstrike: 3.75% for five slots (0.75% per slot)

Coercive Persuasion or ATO: 5% for five slots (1% per slot)

Gaussian's: 2.5% for five slots (0.5% per slot)

+Defense enhancement in CJ/Hover (on a Defender): 0.5% per slot

If you're trying to go with Obitus' route of both AoE and Ranged, you'd need to add the cumulative. For example, Gaussian's is significantly better if you're concerned with AoE slotting.

Obitus · July 22, 2019

Storm Chronicles: Entry 2

I've hit 38 and picked up Lightning Storm and Tornado now, so I have everything out of Storm I need to start testing and experimenting with slotting. I took a handful of my V-Merits and cashed out some Converters so I could buy every conceivable proc I could excluding the ones that require me to be 50 (also skipped the Winter proc since its a 20 mill investment).

Trying to remember all of them off the top of my head: FF +Rech, Entropic +Heal, Explosive +Dam, Posi +Dam, Both -Res procs, and some lowball bids for Impeded Swiftness and Clouded Senses (so didn't have them there, but also didn't want to drop the 4mill a piece on those in the event that what I do have doesn't pan out).

Grabbed a pile of T2 Purples and greens, a power analyzer, and started knocking on Pylons.

Ice Storm with Posi and -Res: Positron's proc never went off in the combat logs, not even once over about 10ish drops (wasn't accurately counting, just watching the log). Annhiliation went off twice, but only as a blip. They lasted a whole of literally one second, and had I not been watching the Pylon's window next to the logs, I probably would've missed it. This seemed strange to me considering those debuffs are supposed to last 10/s.

Grats, and thanks for testing. This matches my experience too; the rains aren't worth slotting with damage/debuff procs.

Lightning Storm: Given the variety of procs that can be dropped into this, tried a few to see what impacts it would have. Entropic only triggered on drop. Kind of expected this, but still wanted to try it out. FF +Rech went off also every time I dropped LS, but I'm not really convinced that the 5/s of +100% every 30/s is worth it compared to the success of damage procs in the power. Dropped a damage proc in and the initial hit was always a proc, but I did notice some follow ups that didn't, but it appeared pretty regularly.

Unlike Rains, LS attacks at a fairly sedate pace, which means that procs are fairly effective in it. I'll just quote myself from earlier in the thread:

"if my numbers are right, the purple proc adds ~40% damage to Lightning Storm. (4s recharge on the lightning strike, ~1s activation, so a 5s cycle time, divide by 60s and multiply by the 4.5 PPM to get a 37.5% proc chance, multiplied by 107.1 to give you ~40.1 extra damage per Lightning strike, on average. The damage on the lightning strike without the proc is around 100 on my Corruptor; it'll be a little higher on a solo Defender.)"

The real challenge with procs in LS is the same as the challenge with the power itself - that is, getting full value out of the cast.

Curious if I could find a spot to putt another 7-13% Ranged defense and have that softcapped on top of S/L/E still.

If so, you'd be a true tank.

Obitus · July 22, 2019

Pine's stats on Flame Mastery are incorrect.

Aha, excellent. Thanks for the heads up.

On the current iteration, I also ditched Snow Storm/Rise of the Phoenix for Gale/Assault. Gale with Explosive Strike (more than) replaces the Ranged Def I lose from RotP and Assault nudges the damage up a bit. Since Corruptors have to take Gale, this is probably a good technique for them as well (the Gale part, not the Assault part). I don't use Gale all that much, but it's fun to throw around 16+ KB every now and then - and it's not like I used Rise of the Phoenix much either.

I, too, like a little Gale once in awhile. It's not something I use often, but the KB is not only fun; occasionally it's also useful to be able to throw half of a spread-out spawn back towards its mates. Some people suggest using a KB-to-KD IO in Gale to make it more consistently useable, but to me that would defeat the (slim) purpose I've found for it - yet another excellent example of the flexibility and build variety in this game.

I go back and forth on Snow Storm. The only time I ever used it was to knock fliers from the air. However, I can use Water Burst and Geyser to do that as well (albeit less efficiently) and it's a rare enough occurrence that I'm willing to suffer through the gap - if my ability to own the air fails, I can always fall back on Hurricane.

Yeah I go back and forth too. It seems Snow Storm really needs slots to be useful as more than an occasional anti-flier tool. And of course, there's a fair number of fliers who are immune or resistant to Snow Storm's -fly (Winged Talons of Vengeance, CoT spirits, to name a couple of recently encountered examples). On the upside, Snow Storm has grounded every AV/EB I've tried it on so far, notably Siege and Nightstar.

I'm less concerned about scatter than AV/GM. If I'm going to fight an AV/GM, I almost inevitably need someone else to either taunt it into place or Immobilize it. Otherwise, it just runs away from the Tornado - and out of Freezing Rain/Lightning Storm range. This has a devastating impact on the amount of damage I can deal.

Very true; I'd more or less given up on soloing AVs on this build for that reason. I could take a single-target immobilize from an Epic pool, but then I'd need to take Ageless instead of Clarion, so I'd lose mez protection. On the other hand, this build has more-or-less all the bases covered otherwise, so bringing along a dozen break frees everywhere I go wouldn't be too burdensome. Food for thought, thanks.

The procs appear to work fairly well on activation, but poorly on the continuous damage - meaning that casting Tornado directly on your target becomes a priority.

Yeah, also worth noting that the Tornado occasionally takes its sweet time getting to the targets, so casting it on top of them is a good habit to cultivate.

I tend to think of boosting Ranged Defense in terms of return-on-slots. Consider:
BotZ in Fly: 1.25% for one slot (0.625% per slot)

BotZ in Hover: 1.25% for two slots (because the free slot is used by LotG)

Explosive Strike in Gale/Hurricane: 1.88% for two slots (0.94% per slot)

Full Lockdown or Thunderstrike: 3.75% for five slots (0.75% per slot)

Coercive Persuasion or ATO: 5% for five slots (1% per slot)

Gaussian's: 2.5% for five slots (0.5% per slot)

+Defense enhancement in CJ/Hover (on a Defender): 0.5% per slot

Heh, great minds. I wrote this out for myself a couple of weeks ago.

Yeah, Gaussians and especially BotZ turn into absolute beasts if you go for Ranged/AoE.

Sir Myshkin · July 22, 2019

Bear in mind that the "every 30 sec" will drop to "every 15 sec" by the time you're fully tricked out at 50. But even at 30 sec, you're still getting the equivalent of +16% global recharge (+100% with ~16% uptime).

26/s at near Perma-Hasten, but the plan is taking Ageless for the DDR, which shores up the minor gap I'm carrying. At that point, additional recharge (for me) isn't really adding much value so putting a slot just for the FF +Rech would only happen if I really don't find a better option for them, which is unlikely.

I should also point out that if you look at the build I posted earlier, one takeaway is how incredibly cheap it is compared to most level 50 builds. The two full ATO sets are probably 75% of the cost of the entire build.

The cost is kind of a non-issue for me. I already have the funds to build the toon in-full. My earlier mentions of "selling off converters" and not wanting to "invest" in the Winter Proc were mostly just me being 1.) Lazy (not wanting to transfer funds), and 2.) Frugal (no sense in buying an enhancement I'm figuring probably wont end up working).

I tend to think of boosting Ranged Defense in terms of return-on-slots. Consider: (snipped)

If you're trying to go with Obitus' route of both AoE and Ranged, you'd need to add the cumulative. For example, Gaussian's is significantly better if you're concerned with AoE slotting.

My build is actually posted a bit earlier up, on the previous page now I think, along with my conversation with Obitus about some of the choices, but I'll touch on them again here for brevity:

My build has already hit 45% S/L and E defense. These three types carry the majority of the damage done in the game (Lethal primarily, smashing less, energy less-so). Having these capped covers me for a far wider margin of the game. My consideration at attempting to toss in some specific Ranged bonuses was just a thought of humor at the fact of whether it could be done without altering much. I don't feel it needs to happen, it's mostly just a "could I" curiosity. Incidentally the answer ended up being "no" after I messed with things. I still retain the ability to softcap to everything with a T1 Purple Inspiration though, so there's that.

Amusingly enough I realized after moving two slots that I never did have Hover turned on, so there's another free-floating 3% I never accounted for.

Obitus · July 22, 2019

My build has already hit 45% S/L and E defense. These three types carry the majority of the damage done in the game (Lethal primarily, smashing less, energy less-so). Having these capped covers me for a far wider margin of the game.

As before, I disagree with the categorical tone of this statement. S/L/E DEF isn't unambiguously better than Ranged. In my experience, the opposite is closer to the truth, though to some extent this debate is subjective. As I said earlier, I'm more focused on consistency than peak performance - and it's undoubtedly true that the S/L DEF approach will perform better in many cases, just not by enough to compensate for how completely it can fail elsewhere, IMO.

Again, this probably won't matter for you specifically, because you have high non-S/L/E DEF too, and because you said you won't be using this build to solo, but the statistical argument, vis-a-vis which damage types appear most often across the whole game, is a little misleading in this context. It's a largely hypothetical metric, because it smooths over the lumps, so to speak, in the distribution. It also likely places a disproportionate emphasis on melee attacks that this sort of build avoids as a matter of course. (The linked info is great, btw, due credit to Myshkin.)

Although it may be true that S/L/E DEF technically covers you against the widest selection of attacks in the game, it doesn't necessarily give you the widest coverage in a given situation. Ranged DEF does, in my experience, as long as you have tools to stay out of melee range consistently (Hover, Hurricane).

On non-ranged toons, absolutely I'd go for S/L(/E) DEF first, 9 times out of 10. Anything that spends appreciable time in melee range will find that S/L DEF is the most efficient approach, by a country mile.

26/s at near Perma-Hasten, but the plan is taking Ageless for the DDR, which shores up the minor gap I'm carrying. At that point, additional recharge (for me) isn't really adding much value so putting a slot just for the FF +Rech would only happen if I really don't find a better option for them, which is unlikely.

Only problem with taking Ageless for DDR is that the DDR version doesn't give you recovery. It does give you a full bar of End on activation, which means that if you can get end-sustainable for 2 minutes, you're good, but that's hard to do. At the moment, with Conserve Power, I only have to be end-sustainable for ~70 seconds, and even at that I can still run myself dry if I don't pay enough attention.

Since you don't plan to solo, this may not matter to you, as high-end teams often have recovery buffs flying around - but Storm is a notoriously end-hungry build. After playing multiple Storm builds for years, near as I can tell the best (only) options for addressing that are:

Conserve Power (restricts your Epic pool choice),
Ageless Core Destiny (prevents you from taking Clarion for mez protection),
Some combination of Cardiac and general end management (locks you out of one of the very few damage buffs that apply to your pseudo-pets, i.e. Musculature or Intuition Alpha).

There's no clear-cut best option. All of them have trade offs.

Hjarki · July 22, 2019

26/s at near Perma-Hasten, but the plan is taking Ageless for the DDR, which shores up the minor gap I'm carrying. At that point, additional recharge (for me) isn't really adding much value so putting a slot just for the FF +Rech would only happen if I really don't find a better option for them, which is unlikely.

Storm Summoning is one of the few sets where even incremental improvements in recharge pay off. Freezing Rain, Tornado and Lightning Storm are all 'stackable' long recharge powers that you can cast-on-recharge for more impact.

My build has already hit 45% S/L and E defense. These three types carry the majority of the damage done in the game (Lethal primarily, smashing less, energy less-so).

My view is that the damage isn't very important compared to the status effects. While status resistance is nice, status protection is what you really need - and Storm Summoning Defenders don't really have much access to status protection. With the exception of melee-range disorients (which you don't much care about, not being in melee range), most status effects are delivered via non-S/L/E sources.

Sir Myshkin · July 23, 2019

Chronicle Update #3

Spent way too much time toying around with a Dual/Cold Corr build. Was something to take my attention off of Ice/Storm knowing I'd be able to look back at it with a shifted mindset and maybe look at it a bit differently. My Dual/Cold's approach is shifted more towards Resistance, more powers in that secondary don't really get any kind of sets to work with, and a lot of the attacks in the primary are AoE so it kind of sucks trying to cram things in.

Anyway, packed some levels out on the streets doing a few different mob types (CoT, Carnies, Arachnos) and I realized I don't have any +Perception anywhere. Bit niche, but I kind of hate not having access to it. I also noticed that despite having it, I'm not really using Snow Storm at all. I expected to rarely use Hurricane, but the speed at which the Rains help drop mobs, Snow Storm just kind of felt like a waste of time. The only time I did use it was on an AV in a Bank Mission, and then still only because the "Tank" planted and I wanted to slow it down long enough to keep it within the rain patches. The AV itself ended up only lasting >30/s anyway under duress of two FR patches, two LR, and two Tornados (there were two of us running Storm :D).

Also thinking about revisiting some slots towards Hurricane. I messed around with KB>KD in Whirlwind on a Kinetics trialing turning the toggle into a lighter soft-control and it might be worth the graphics mess when in conjunction with the <30% To Hit debuff. Right now I have almost nothing slotted aside from accuracy and a ton of procs... Scratch that, I just flipped the build upside down and did something stupid with it.

So I removed Snow Storm, moved a slot from Steamy, Frost Breath, Blizzard, and two from Ice Storm. Given that I never accounted for Hover before, and moving those few slots around, I managed to squeeze in a tad more recharge and... Drum roll!

46% S/L, 53.9% E, 40.5% Ng, and 44.9% Ranged Defense.

Lost some resists in the process, and 5% AoE (and thus some F/C) in the exchange, but between T2 purples and/or Hurricane, there's plenty of ways to get those few holes covered in emergencies. I also shaved down end cost across several powers because of the swaps I made, and even added Tactics into the mix now without adding more stress on to the build.

I also did the math on endurance usage. If I were to consistently reapply FR, Tornado, and LS, the build goes dry under a ST chain within 30/s. As much as I want the DDR, I have to weigh that against how much time I want to spend either chugging blues, or chugging break frees. Go Core Ageless, or get Clarion. The MSR I joined tonight, I got stunned for a full 30/s through three different applications of Increase Density and a Clear Mind. Super frustrating and I so desperately wanted to just wipe out the problem with a single Clarion. Maybe I'll take both, situationally.

Either way, big changes in the build from tonights play experience.

Sir Myshkin · July 23, 2019

16 hours ago, Sir Myshkin said:

Chronicle Update #3

46% S/L, 53.9% E, 40.5% Ng, and 44.9% Ranged Defense.

Hmm, new boards, can't go back and edit what was imported form before it looks like, but I forgot to actually post the build:

Villain Plan by Mids' Villain Designer 1.962
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

| Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build |
	|-------------------------------------------------------------------|
|MxDz;1531;733;1466;HEX;|
|78DA65944B4F135114C7EF3CCAD0774B29E50D2D8F9642A72D2DBAD3041483D2844|
|8E2B669E8509A94B62925D1A55FC10D3B138D0F50405D18DDBAF623E8C695890F40|
|FD00F574FE4706D326CDEFDE73EE79FDE7CEE4EE5E731DDFB87F5548DEA54A61672|
|7BF546B3476EBCD5AC3962B94CA1B8A10A27BB5502D6E162A158D3683E707F2B70B|
|D59251D457368CFC22C536472DD7E2EEE6A6BE4EABEDFCFAEEF676AD5AAE96FC2BD|
|52DA361549BFABF857BAD56ABE8CBE5D25693FC5E73B76A148A466367AB5C7798FB|
|F5BA61149D3858699F1CBA5E2F6FE856A95C81EAE7A8BCD1B8D74F0DC6E99F9405F|
|F5A3611538548AB429E644641F5B1001F815D0FC1AFD2792C4D0B5B9AF2C1DC52A4|
|29C477CD80C969E665D9640FA9A4488857C2ED78BB90C966E39C36CE99A1E31AF7A|
|8BD514C5BF76BE621E838621E83AE57E037CA6F470DC51E944C9B27441CD1C4E0A9|
|62D68C5E21B7A6882CD571A28EEC7C8F5E5D6F41CF3B30408DB8B917F713CCE17B0|
|60E3F0727F7C1F853307D007EA7B25E9ECDFB51366B2F10FC9CCFBF8F1A3D07CC17|
|60EF4BE621D87704FEA07C01CE1708432B85FA0B625E5B30090DFA52E0689A390F8|
|63360220BAA141BE2D890035AF53B992E70D80D8E7AC0B4B74D4D44287600B1D2C0|
|2C9EE520D349BE21F4290D7D8616894FB2196727DF08E2E4912072856FA19FA44F3|
|2E3DBD7650CF1EAD825E8363E8F3CE31966160C2F8027141A615D235F906FE20F7C|
|1367CCDFFCBC7E313F1003AA38A5D829AE3795866F3A85BAD309DEEB603409FA698|
|E18E6506341F43DD3CBE4396602D02CDE8339EBD4D62CEB3DCB7ACFB1DE73ACF71C|
|EB9DF84F6F55B4C7D7F9D9EBACB3E81322C5B614DFF561F5C23BDAA29F887758521|
|D96748725D361C97658562C4B6BB5C3BBA69E7F1984645AEC3E7AFFF9FC4F0779F9|
|5B204DE02E9F5A36590A2BA666BE3BD02E7A9318D5C4C9C5B818E2CE2C9B243DE07|
|7710FF7AD5DB8B51CA23517DE0B58EBFD88B556DB6790A4F517B0D3F0FD|
|-------------------------------------------------------------------|

Hjarki · July 24, 2019

1 hour ago, Sir Myshkin said:

Hmm, new boards, can't go back and edit what was imported form before it looks like, but I forgot to actually post the build:

Just to make a point about the value of procs, consider the difference between the single target rotation for my build and yours:

Ice Bolt (1s): 108

Freeze Ray (1s): 215 + 48 = 263

Bitter Ice Blast (1.07s): 245

IBx2 + FR + BiB = 178 dps

w/30% Scourge = 228 dps

Aqua Bolt (1s): 83 + 63 = 146

Water Jet (1.43s/1s): 219 + 148 = 367

Char (1.07s): 103 + 160 = 263

ABx2 + Char + WJx2 = 286 dps

The key takeaway here should be that we’re not comparing equals. We’re comparing one of the highest ST blast sets against one of the lowest and Corruptor against Defender. If you asked 100 CoH players who had higher ST dps - Water Blast Defender or Ice Blast Corruptor - 99 of them would be absolutely certain the right answer was “Ice Blast Corruptor”. Except that’s not the case because of how our attacks are slotted.

Let’s instead take a look at what would happen if you triple proc’d your primary attacks, assuming a 10% damage penalty for doing so:

Ice Bolt (1s): 97 + 63 = 160

Freeze Ray (1s): 194 + 180 = 374

Bitter Ice Blast (1.07s): 221 + 263 = 484

IBx2 + FR + BiB = 289 dps

w/30% Scourge = 319 dps

Now, don’t take these numbers as gospel - I’d have to redo your entire build to get a more accurate appraisal (which I'm not going to do). In all likelihood, you would need some internal recharge on Freezing Ray/Bitter Ice Blast. It may be that Ice Blast is better than Ice Bolt for this purpose as well. But they should be in the right ballpark.

| Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build |
|-------------------------------------------------------------------|
|MxDz;1495;707;1414;HEX;|
|78DA6594C94F13511CC7DF4CA7601768A152F6A5142CB4A57400AF9A20625430485|
|D8E4D030336A14B58221C4C248683468DCBC1932626C6E8C583EB5FE13FA05E3C29|
|318289F1E0A9FE3ADF2F05D349673EEFFDDE6F7FEF757A7DC2FBEAD4E671A5D59F5|
|8CAACACA427AC052B3F6F2D3BA7338BD939557E6AE5EDDC93A7C7D7161612A9D5C2|
|722E9D5ACBE50AF96C7EB1BDB23A9BC92F5AF389CB99D5B2AA785C55EE994261299|
|12A5AD6BCCF1E4E5919515DB9922D7AF7E64571F2DF2478B2989D4B88DBF4E45226|
|67A5A7C593B5BCD122A90CCA7B4B978F564EAEE4549764601A4ABF489E078D59320|
|5D65C00AF85151FB17DAAB0F6183CF484AC7148CD8672C71DF6DCFD51B779536758|
|55D2B5AB320918CABB4E6E8061E997033A9AE30BECEA3F83B7054EE46D389B904FB|
|D1FF4FF462CFF0E68EE8277746C81D8386A93862D1B1E21C7C858396F97BA2EB5B9|
|589BEB03EC1B5F93EFC1C36FC8B760F01D7857E278589B87350559630B6B7349227|
|5C85FAF63FEE627D466B2468FE8F858BF8F6B2D5C5341A51AB0A61A68DF2BFA01F8|
|548118FADF20B226C81C4DD46B639FDACE22DF8E493020BACD8CD7FC0C713A5E80F|
|704ADEC47EB31C8BAC649D6D4C5BDEDF90A7F3D5B98DF905EB6D3B63D4E9D613094|
|24793E42CF35FBBC844DC837C5B6937576BE84ECBEA09BFEBA79EEC23C6F619EBF3|
|EE6D447BF7DCCC51355AA97B6BD93901D192213E4693092439F2219E4B425B9F4D3|
|B67F14E7256282834749C61D641D51C6F54ADC01EEC3C008728A3653E72FE6F13F6|
|09DE8C6787E62DBBAAD13FF41EE8041D9AB04F73AC17D6D145992BD4A86D0870EA3|
|7247E5278F8A5649925512B34A325A2519AB924C1995FF12B93CA8FBDCBEAC34635|
|4EEBCD26C0B97BF72C34B3FDDB24A6B2D8CEC77F7659A76460611430D85D0A59D83|
|FAB6B75FFB125D7B84F8430FC887E0B76025EBD2F703E3ED0363432E81C99CFF01A|
|529E6C9|
|-------------------------------------------------------------------|

Obitus · July 24, 2019

22 hours ago, Sir Myshkin said:

46% S/L, 53.9% E, 40.5% Ng, and 44.9% Ranged Defense.

Wow, great job. Those are some great numbers. Will look at the build in more detail soon.

Quote

I also did the math on endurance usage. If I were to consistently reapply FR, Tornado, and LS, the build goes dry under a ST chain within 30/s. As much as I want the DDR, I have to weigh that against how much time I want to spend either chugging blues, or chugging break frees. Go Core Ageless, or get Clarion. The MSR I joined tonight, I got stunned for a full 30/s through three different applications of Increase Density and a Clear Mind. Super frustrating and I so desperately wanted to just wipe out the problem with a single Clarion. Maybe I'll take both, situationally.

Yeah, that's maybe the central dilemma of Storm builds. S'why I went with Conserve Power, which has its own trade offs. Endless mezzes just piss me off, even when they pose no risk of actually killing me.

4 hours ago, Hjarki said:

Just to make a point about the value of procs, consider the difference between the single target rotation for my build and yours:

Ice Bolt (1s): 108

Freeze Ray (1s): 215 + 48 = 263

Bitter Ice Blast (1.07s): 245

IBx2 + FR + BiB = 178 dps

w/30% Scourge = 228 dps

Aqua Bolt (1s): 83 + 63 = 146

Water Jet (1.43s/1s): 219 + 148 = 367

Char (1.07s): 103 + 160 = 263

ABx2 + Char + WJx2 = 286 dps

Just a nitpick:

With Arcanatime, those DPS figures drop to 724 / 4.884 = 148.2 DPS, and 1289 / 6.468 =199.3 DPS, respectively. That doesn't change your main point, of course; in fact these numbers reinforce the point even more, because they enlarge the disparity (a 34% advantage vs a 25% advantage for the water build - Edit: ha, nevermind, the advantage rises because I didn't see you factor in Scourge. My fault.)

If I understand the Water Blast mechanics correctly, though, you can only get one quickened Water Jet per 8s. This may not matter too terribly much in practice, as a Storm build will have lots of other things to do besides spamming a single-target attack chain - but it would bring down the on-paper DPS number a tiny bit.* And of course damage buffs like Aim will favor the non-proc build.

(* - Mid's has the window at 15s instead of 8s. I had to double check in game.)

Quote

Now, don’t take these numbers as gospel - I’d have to redo your entire build to get a more accurate appraisal (which I'm not going to do). In all likelihood, you would need some internal recharge on Freezing Ray/Bitter Ice Blast. It may be that Ice Blast is better than Ice Bolt for this purpose as well. But they should be in the right ballpark.

Yeah, you'd need a total of ~336% recharge in BiB. Freeze Ray would only need ~270% in total recharge, or +170%, which should be more or less achieved on Myshkin's build without any slotting in the power itself. Bolt would obviously take care of itself too.

I think the easiest approach is just to six-slot the Corruptor ATO set in BiB, for the set bonus, and because it has high recharge, along with a purple-tier proc. Then you can slot 2-3 procs in Freeze Ray.

Edited July 24, 2019 by Obitus

Sir Myshkin · July 24, 2019

8 hours ago, Hjarki said:

Ice Bolt (1s): 108

Freeze Ray (1s): 215 + 48 = 263

Bitter Ice Blast (1.07s): 245

IBx2 + FR + BiB = 178 dps

w/30% Scourge = 228 dps

Aqua Bolt (1s): 83 + 63 = 146

Water Jet (1.43s/1s): 219 + 148 = 367

Char (1.07s): 103 + 160 = 263

ABx2 + Char + WJx2 = 286 dps

Where are you pulling these values from? The hard proc damages aren't shown in the game in a convenient place (that I could quickly find), and what's listed in Mid's ("Mid's/Pine's/Homecoming Reborn") doesn't match up with these values either. I gathered you were taking enhanced value against proc damages and adding them together? Even still, the proc values didn't really line up. Mid's already does a fairly decent job on giving an approximation of damage based on the recharge of the power and the chance on the proc. It also includes the original base damage of the procs, and the calculations breaks that value down into the average. Given that I wasn't seeing math line up, I didn't really dive into it any further. I also, in this process, noticed that there are a few powers that don't correctly reflect the in-game values either (Freezing Ray is 11 ticks of damage, not 10, and Blizzard is apparently 76 ticks of 4.83, not 75, and Empty Clips is also wrong and... anyway, they were marginal differences that are ultimately irrelevant at the moment).

Basically, I wasn't following where your damage came from, but if I used Mid's as a baseline, here's an example: Ice Bolt as I slotted it - 108, Ice Bolt with the only two procs available - 123. Technically Apocalypse could go into Bolt, but I'm not taking it out of Lightning Storm because it's more valuable there (imo), but I did drop it in just to see the value (138) and that is still much lower than your 160.

Given that, there's not much I can really say about the rest of those numbers...

Also, turn off Vigilance and there's a much wider divide between what a Corr is going to do 100% of the time versus a Defender, just saying.

Leading into Chronicle Update #4 with Procs:

I did some practical testing with procs tonight (planned outside of what was posted as responses in this thread), so I have some consideration for what I'd be looking at, but there's a few caveats to the process. Of my testing, the powers did not have any recharge in them, I wanted the hard value of what's possible. BiB with a Clouded Senses hit fairly consistently (like 2/3, sometimes 2/4 which is in line with a 58% chance ratio), but the actual damage value I got back wasn't very inspiring. As a 49 punching 53-54's, I was (on average) seeing around 19-23 actual damage which was only a small margin of the actual damage I was doing, unenhanced (about 18-20%) and I believe the variance was related to whether the target was under -Res from FR. In fact, this was about the same value range I saw for all the procs I used that fit into the "58% chance" class. Another proc I tested was Entropic's +Heal. That proc I saw go off an average of maybe every third, sometimes fourth activation if I was lucky, but it felt more like I was going ten in a row, and then getting two or three back to back, then five without, and then two, and then eight without, and then another one.

I used a lot of proc practice for Freeze Ray since the power breaks down into ticks. I wanted to see if it would just be one initial chance, or if it might show up repeatedly (didn't expect it to, but wanted to see if there was anything broken there worth taking advantage of, there's not). If I loaded it up with three, my odds for seeing every swing proc something were pretty high, not 100%, but high, and I'd see two go off about 50% of those odds. Something that I confirmed with this, though, is 1.) It felt like this double-proc'd a lot more when a target qualified for Scourge, and I validated this wasn't a Scourge trigger because 2.) I tested for whether the Procs would Scourge by running a ridiculous amount of swings on low-HP targets to get Scourge, and validate that it a.) proc'd, and b.) whether it doubled on the proc when the ability scourged (which it never did).

So honestly, what this tells me is that yes, the Procs can do some decent stuff when the value is there, but when it comes to Scourge effects, I'm going to want that trade off of higher enhanced damage because that's what's going to be my money ticket on tougher targets. Whether the value that Mid's is reflecting is an average estimate, or what-have-you, the values I got from all of the different procs (Impeded, both Hold Procs, Entropic, Positron's) weren't necessarily stellar (imo). If three went off for a 60 point hit, that's decent, but I very rarely encountered a triple hit, and even less-so a double hit, and there were plenty of swings with no proc at all. The only real way there could be a difinitive "yes/no" which is more worth-while would be to sit in front of a Pylon and run DPS tests (and it'd have to be a lot, at least ten or more both ways). For all that procs can give, I'm not sold they'd come out on top far enough to validate how much they mess with build options, sets, and just generally-wonky slotting, if they were to come out ahead at all (there's an upside down there from beginning to end performance).

Tl;DR - For me, at current for this Ice/Storm, there's no way of changing the build without massive sacrifice. Having done the testing in-game to validate the decision, overloading the build with procs in the primary ST attacks isn't going to change the performance in a substantial enough way to warrant what would be lost in order to do it. We're talking what would likely result in what would only translate as a 5-15 point potential DPS difference, if not breaking even by the time the offset of Scourge were to come into play.

Edited July 24, 2019 by Sir Myshkin
edit: added paragraph spacing back in that removed after initial submission for ease of reading.

Obitus · July 24, 2019

43 minutes ago, Sir Myshkin said:

Where are you pulling these values from? The hard proc damages aren't shown in the game in a convenient place (that I could quickly find), and what's listed in Mid's ("Mid's/Pine's/Homecoming Reborn") doesn't match up with these values either.

Mid's pretty heavily under-estimates proc damage, probably because there were some late revisions to the PPM system. You can find a good over-arching summary here, though some of the info in that post is wrong/outdated (e.g. Force Feedback doesn't have a lockout timer).

For a more detailed and accurate analysis, Bopper has done yeoman's work testing procs in this thread.

The gist is that single-target attacks go by ((enhanced recharge + activation time) / 60) * PPM, with the chance to proc per activation capped at 90%. That bit about enhanced recharge is important, because apparently Synapse decided late in the game's life that global recharge shouldn't hurt proc rate. (This is probably why Mid's understates proc effectiveness.) Only enhancement values count, including Spiritual Alpha.

For standard procs, PPM is 3.5. For purple/ATO procs, PPM is 4.5. If we take an unenhanced Freeze Ray as an example, we're looking at roughly ((10 + 1) / 60) * PPM, which works out to a ~64.1% chance to activate regular procs, and an 82.4% chance to proc purples. So let's say you toss the purple hold proc and a Ghost Widow's proc in your unenhanced Freeze Ray. In return for two slots, you've just gained roughly (0.641 * 71.75) + (0.824 * 107.1) = 134.2 extra damage, on average.

This, on an attack that only does ~83 damage at base. In other words, those two proc slots are worth about 70% more than standard ED-compliant damage slotting (+95%).

You raise a very good point about Scourge, though. Proc damage will not be improved or modified by either damage buffs or Scourge.

The value of procs also diminishes quite a bit as the base recharge timers of your attacks goes down, which means that there's a kind of self-moderating effect: the attacks which want for damage most will tend to get the least out of procs. There are outliers, though; for example, Hjarki's treatment of Char, or Nihilii's treatment of Dominate on his Sentinel - in both cases, the power has lowish/average damage by default, but because it has a long recharge time of 16s, you can turn it into an absolute monster with proc slotting.

(Nihilii actually slots 4 damage procs and the Decimation chance for Build Up proc in Dominate. This results in (3 * (0.9 * 71.75)) + (0.9 * 107.1) = 290.1 average proc damage per activation. Pretty sick.)

I'm not quite as bullish on proc damage as Hjarki for the Ice/Storm Corruptor. I do think that if you can fit a couple of procs (particularly Unbreakable Constraint) into Freeze Ray, then that's to the good. Tossing the ATO set/proc into BiB is a bit of a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too gesture too. Probably wouldn't bother proccing out Ice Bolt, both because it has a short recharge timer and because ideally you won't cast Bolt very often, prioritizing bigger attacks to fit in between your Storm powers.

You have an extremely strong and very tight build as it is, though; I probably wouldn't change it at this point if I were in your shoes, either. There's always time to change things later if you don't like the way it plays. This thread is all about exploring the options, at least IMO.

Edited July 24, 2019 by Obitus

Hjarki · July 24, 2019

6 hours ago, Obitus said:

I'm not quite as bullish on proc damage as Hjarki for the Ice/Storm Corruptor. I do think that if you can fit a couple of procs (particularly Unbreakable Constraint) into Freeze Ray, then that's to the good. Tossing the ATO set/proc into BiB is a bit of a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too gesture too. Probably wouldn't bother proccing out Ice Bolt, both because it has a short recharge timer and because ideally you won't cast Bolt very often, prioritizing bigger attacks to fit in between your Storm powers.

I think the PPM changes do shift the balance from high damage AT to lower damage AT - especially when portions of that damage arise due to special increases to basic damage. It's also a questionable strategy if you're running heavy +damage (such as Kinetics).

I've also been revisiting the value of procs for Lightning Storm/Tornado. From what I can tell, Tornado's proc rate is based on it being a PBAoE (8 yard?) and you get very low return on those slots (although obviously more than simply leaving them empty or using them to mule a set). Lightning Storm's proc rate is better, but it just performs at the 'standard rate' presuming you have no recharge in the power. That's very different from actual attack powers, which perform at 2 - 3 times the listed rate due to global recharge. I'm not 100% that recharge slotted into Lightning Storm reduces the proc rate on Lightning Storm, but it seems like it might be the case - which further diminishes the value of procs there.

On an unrelated note, I tossed together the tank-ish build you were talking about before with:

Soft-capped Ranged Defense
Soft-capped AoE Defense
Capped S/L Resist
70% Fire Resist

The major costs involved with this approach:

Removing the Tornado/Lightning Storm damage procs. As noted, I don't believe they were contributing all that much.
Placing Defender's Bastion in Aqua Bolt. This significantly reduces the damage it deals and the proc is much less useful (since you're unlikely to ever activate Aqua Bolt at the rate its recharge permits).
Losing the self-rez and Assault. Phoenix was mostly a mule, but it did permit excluding wakies from inspiration drops. Assault was just a bit of extra damage.

I did slot an extra proc into Char to compensate somewhat, although it reduces the Hold duration.

I tried doing the same thing with a Storm/Ice Corruptor but I couldn't get more than low 40s for both AE/Ranged except intermittently with Power Boost (and the resists weren't nearly as high) without making serious dps compromises.

In terms of the 'rotations' I described above, the underlying premise is that Defenders/Corruptors (especially Storm Summoning) don't actually run full 'rotations'. Rather, they run snippets of a rotation interleaved with actions from their secondary. As a result, building a rotation like a Blaster or Scrapper (who generally don't have many - if any - active non-attack powers in their secondaries) doesn't make much sense. A Blaster can't run a FR -> IB -> BiB -> IB rotation without ridiculous levels of recharge. They can't run a WJ -> AB -> Char -> AB -> WJ -> WJ rotation at all (there's no way to go back to the start of that rotation from the end at any level of recharge). However, Defenders/Corruptors can - and thus the dps I was calculating was based on the interrupted sequence of dps (ignoring the time taken up by whatever interrupted it).

I probably should have made this a bit clearer - it's one of those concepts that's often overlooked. For example, an Ice/Kinetics Corruptor normally has a 'rotation' of Freezing Ray, Bitter Ice Blast, repeat. It should be obvious that there's no way a Blaster could possibly pull off such a 'rotation'. But a Kinetics Corruptor can because the rotation is actually more like Freezing Ray -> Siphon Speed -> Transfusion -> Bitter Ice Blast -> Fulcrum Shift -> Siphon Power -> etc.

| Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build |
|-------------------------------------------------------------------|
|MxDz;1553;721;1442;HEX;|
|78DA6594CB4F135114C6EF4CA7625B2894D2024279B43C4B9976786C2551AC51A94|
|1EA63D94C60284DFA2050222C4C248685468D8F054B8D3146362E9487FE2BEAC695|
|BA504C8C0B57F5CC7CC74E934E28BF33DF3DF73CEEE96D6A73B6F1CDF9ED192179C|
|FE6F5F5F5CCACB16C14978C35674ACFE61685F934D027F45FCF9CD9585E56D3E5D2|
|5A2193DE28144AC55C31DB555D5DD08B596349BDA1974D578A5816EEF95229AFA65|
|70D63C96399C97C2EBB526E826D9A14A1D97A9B33740AB2BE925B0D9E5BCD2DAA14|
|3693CCEB052393A248C6DA560795A2D2E79E4CFF24B3B88A535C274353847C8D790|
|554169869F0C455F05644F0437B8F1C583B044FBE65BE03DDFBCC03F0AECC694545|
|966ED28B5F118D9BCC2D3042E7E5601FC767D9DAD7F2096CFD08DE2738B97E67007|
|5B5B6806DBF91ABED180CC69913E003192331E3374C2B96D631C19C026F538F2EEE|
|D1F501DAA903E621D87DC4DC077BDE830F29BE87E37BB8A71EEEB1877B7651014DA|
|85F3471FD1ED29A795F33F7D9C77DF7F13948E4E3838FF055E8116152FC1CC93F26|
|2C2F1F6901688E0047EF4BA2FBFE4B4C3E2D07F9B6C3576E378D10ADFD854FE40FF|
|888927722ABA3F3342A89CC30BFC0676007EF77E8E4BAF8E4BA62D006E2CC043814|
|C39EA157C837A441DFA6BD21EE2EB407ED31A19773F73E477FC3CF982F989CDB131|
|522CCB9C32AB4D17126E71CD591335A40FFD10B58DFA1DC83BC777012938C6A602C|
|C1E469C6B8EE71CEDB4879477086CAC834E28E279853605C634EF2ADA2731FE3198|
|DF18CE23C13CDCB74837EF255E12BA92F91537B0D8AA010093EB304C7E956AA3794|
|FECC6F49B44E49D4295A9D3259A74CD529734AF59784AE0C6ABA6C6B9579A57AE38|
|564ED70B554EF77E5879B5679B714C1348F6D4D922E9231AC086F3FA6F7B3D6DF8A|
|F6CB56646917F9BD4FF857E329F83558ADBAF2ADC6FE5E632BEDE4CA3577B6D976B|
|24677056C7BD76FDB7B61DBFE07EEACF4B5|
|-------------------------------------------------------------------|

Edited July 24, 2019 by Hjarki

Obitus · July 25, 2019

7 hours ago, Hjarki said:

I think the PPM changes do shift the balance from high damage AT to lower damage AT - especially when portions of that damage arise due to special increases to basic damage. It's also a questionable strategy if you're running heavy +damage (such as Kinetics).

I agree. There are lots of fascinating balance implications.

Quote

I've also been revisiting the value of procs for Lightning Storm/Tornado. From what I can tell, Tornado's proc rate is based on it being a PBAoE (8 yard?) and you get very low return on those slots (although obviously more than simply leaving them empty or using them to mule a set). Lightning Storm's proc rate is better, but it just performs at the 'standard rate' presuming you have no recharge in the power. That's very different from actual attack powers, which perform at 2 - 3 times the listed rate due to global recharge. I'm not 100% that recharge slotted into Lightning Storm reduces the proc rate on Lightning Storm, but it seems like it might be the case - which further diminishes the value of procs there.

I haven't noticed that LS procs less often than it should, FWIW, but that does sound like something worth testing.

Quote

On an unrelated note, I tossed together the tank-ish build you were talking about before with:

Soft-capped Ranged Defense

Soft-capped AoE Defense

Capped S/L Resist

70% Fire Resist

The major costs involved with this approach:

Removing the Tornado/Lightning Storm damage procs. As noted, I don't believe they were contributing all that much.

Placing Defender's Bastion in Aqua Bolt. This significantly reduces the damage it deals and the proc is much less useful (since you're unlikely to ever activate Aqua Bolt at the rate its recharge permits).

Losing the self-rez and Assault. Phoenix was mostly a mule, but it did permit excluding wakies from inspiration drops. Assault was just a bit of extra damage.

Excellent! I love the way we've refined our build strategies in this thread.

To complement your excellent build, I threw together a similarly tanky Storm/Ice Defender that takes Conserve Power to remain Clarion-friendly. It should be more-or-less end sustainable without Ageless, in other words. Highlights include:

soft-capped Ranged/AoE DEF
72.8% S/L resistance, 32.5% F/C resistance, 66.4% Energy resistance
three damage procs in Freeze Ray, 2 in BiB
81.25% global recharge before Hasten or FF procs, which is sufficient recharge to run BiB -> Bolt -> Freeze Ray -> Bolt seamlessly
38 MPH in Hover
+29.3% global damage, before Vigilance/Intuition

The downsides are that the build doesn't have Frost Breath, and I ended up dropping Snow Storm. You could make a case for taking Snow Storm instead of Assault, and it's easy as swapping it in if that's your preference. There were also a couple of instances where I had to boost set IOs, so it's not wholly exemplar friendly (e.g. Thunderstrikes in Freeze Ray and LS).

| Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build |
|-------------------------------------------------------------------|
|MxDz;1521;725;1450;HEX;|
|78DA6593CB4F135114C6EF4CA760DF2DC8A33CA40511287498A1B836E1A141A8219|
|2B8334D6DA7A5495F296D84A50B171A35EAC6958FB873E34279C8CAC447FC1FD41D|
|1B3728EADAD433F39D42934E66F2BB73EEFDBE7BEEB9F7C63717DCAF2FDDBA2024E|
|F7C3EB9B19158303246316D54ECF164369712E6D34EDF60239E98AB6532EA5AB554|
|2924D66A8542A9982B6683C7BD5793C5AC9156975246628EFCAA81A5E2BA51318A5|
|5B5D1F0AC964A79F5622EBB5E25A5D3FA5B2B1B46DA858EBCD9E3B3DA2B46923C37|
|D673E5E062399752E74B954AAD4C5327E2B5449CDC8DCA562F2517A1EF8E2CF8A9C|
|BE226FD742A22BC094E6F81EF4FC6D8C51B9B10BA22E4B7CC6D50D961EE826D7BE0|
|5DD24AD00AE9903554191BC76C757AC43045ECD6B0BA649F24E80ED1C6BC2FA3946|
|686ED31C57238759E390B3A6880037A9BA34BB262CEAF32F80DF47E075D34D6C57E|
|2E1EE3E6316E1E63A3311EF6F3CC206BAF46813187F0CFC2DF1F93ACFC3E92C4C7D|
|5F13D45CE675E329F3197E01B2E403BB208CF7B140E601E7BC089BE0E17D30D9EF6|
|30BD60B70FFC606E0E57B1F315FC03947717E7DDC575E87622CF3E0F38FDCF3C978|
|AF844921ECEBB671B75ECDD61EE827D7BE0C03BE63EF890B441D6068F30F7D86FE6|
|1F70E22FF336183980F633FDF6B3B63F8ABE118DA9826775E634F3876CE5ACD0FA0|
|6797D83BCBE315E5FB4B1BE65D4F6114986308F32F41CFB107AC1E4FD0959FB43FB|
|C2B955493ACCFEC33D9235675483AF1EC37CFA0CF885FC47E16F1BD5A03FA733679|
|8FBB2A53D700B318EB1D2389FEB09A6E81662927D26794D537C2EA37C2E753E970F|
|082AEFB91A86BE836AA22167A1716C4039BEB1F49A372CD212D15A227A4B24D6129|
|96D89ACB444AE981164545F559AEEBFD5EBF01FDFFEFAA1937A39776904B9FF3A89|
|C952187B3975D9BC7BC46BA8CFCF669DE57AD4AC7A8CAA479EF0C90BC139E934EB8|
|F996F34B5AF37B5579BDA0A5D0F9DDBFF01F065FBD4|
|-------------------------------------------------------------------|

I also had a version of the Defender (with 45% AoE/Ranged DEF) mocked up a week or so ago that skipped the Fighting Pool, but as I said upthread I didn't like the result. The Corruptor verion? Well I posted that one upthread, and I'm pretty happy with it, but it doesn't really have any proc damage to speak of (just the ATO proc in BiB). Lemme see what I can do with it now.

Ok, on the Corruptor I managed to keep the three procs in Freeze Ray, and it has the ATO proc in BiB, and it has soft-capped Ranged/AoE DEF. The power choices are identical to the Defender's, meaning that I had to use Bolt instead of Blast, because the recharge in Freeze Ray doesn't work for the alternative attack chain of BiB->Freeze Ray->Blast. (And BiB would have a small gap anyway - a larger gap than the manageable one on my current build.)

The main downside, relative to the Defender, is that I ended up dropping slots from Tough to make room elsewhere. In the end, the Corruptor, without running Tough, loses about 32 points of S/L RES, and about 17 points of Energy RES relative to the Defender. The Corruptor also loses the Kismet unique.

On the upside, the build is still extremely tanky and should put out some pretty hilarious damage.

| Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build |
|-------------------------------------------------------------------|
|MxDz;1509;695;1390;HEX;|
|78DA65944B4F135114C7EF4CA742A72DE5FDA650DE14EC03302E4D403435344149D|
|4B8691A184A134A9BD24658BAF00BB871E76B250AA8892FBE8ABA63A1515EEA07A8|
|87F9FF431B3BE9E477E6BCEFB9F736BE79D5B377FDC115A5F966D7921B1B89D96C3|
|E5FCC15B279673C994A2F39943C35F2769E1B12B792EB296B39145BB212331253F0|
|974D33C59595D0A24899C4623193C9AEA7D753CA5CC866D7428B39CB5A76DBE2B5B|
|5746AB5E0857C268A97CFFE9AB792CB567E63359DEB98CBA59742E5CCF162222EB5|
|ACFC56BB74139437AC2B3E25A77A6928153594BE4DBE028DD7E0851D7217FCAE9DC|
|7EAEABE246A3254FD26D8BA05FE101FB8959476E4B0E3FA65140E5B59D21CE382A8|
|4B19A45B6C4EE6747ED16DFF8B5FC96FE0948E699EF55CF314719EE7E413B02E06D|
|FBA8C66B37E0EB57FCAA70BB59D2E13B64E37D8ED01C35E305A47FAC06949E9665D|
|F77BCC60F00338FC91FC447E0647F6419734EC455DC3DB827CC166CDEE7582EB9CF|
|86F9DBFC4ECE32C7C23C8E31F050363E025716D604F0D3B5863E32EB90736BF21DF|
|82ADEF40D52A5B845847137B6A670F7EF610666FBAF4DFC25E5AB8D7EDDCEB4EEEB|
|5437CDAB8D76D93A86188AE03EBD63B58A3DBC4BAFD5EB0417CBAE8D3459F007D02|
|F49994123DCCDDB38D9E2E0B7AD97FEF20E6D137440E93FBBA1D7F2C69FA39A7FE5|
|3C40FFC26FF907FC1C187E401729C48EC10628D219EB7911724CF5B90BEE167CA66|
|41963FCA7336DA26428FA1C62258CBD8343905062779CEA2E08147A971D4D3C6792|
|F26C8437109710EA100748D32BF086AA90875DDC6F9DD949F3C2A58A5895469A255|
|9AA92ACD74952656D694E6ABAC0B46C53F80AD71D5CBFDA7FF912956F6AE0DA0F79|
|3B24ED7023847E66DCCC6BC2194BB705C1967673DAD8CEA43A6DA47D8FDDAC7D8D1|
|3BE6D94C51F966857CB742BE57211B729CA394FF010B54F430|
|-------------------------------------------------------------------|

Edited July 25, 2019 by Obitus

Obitus · July 25, 2019

Anyway, I think we've done an excellent job, all of us, in these last few pages fleshing out all of the options available, and refining one another's builds. It's been a real pleasure.

Sir Myshkin · July 25, 2019

I did some "napkin math" at work today after reading the link to the proc studies for PPM changes--useful stuff! Thanks for the link on that Obitus. I wanted some more definitive numbers to really see what a hypothetical value would really translate as based on the way the formula actually works (scaling). Under the assumption that I slotted 1 Purple, and 2 Standard damage procs in Bolt, BiB, and FR. Arcanatimes for the chain is 4.884/s.

With Procs:

Bolt: 138.21 | 240.51
BiB: 296.24 | 520.64
FR 265.68 | 470.18
DPS: 143.35 | 252.11

Now this is purely a hypothetical DPS not accounting for things like all the -Res, other things going on, what-have-you that we've all come to terms with "get in the way" of a standard ST chain, but for relevant context, we'll assume it's the case here. Running Bolt > BiB > Bolt > FR, accounting for 50% time with standard value damage, and 50% time with Scourge value damage (which is not 100% accurate, but the simplest approach): 197 DPS

As I have slotted (only ATO proc in FR):

Bolt: 108 | 216
BiB: 244.9 | 489.8
FR: 244.76 | 459.56
DPS: 122.37 | 238.60

This chain came in at 180 DPS, a 17 point difference at optimal opportunities. Scourge only manages to close that gap by 4 DPS. So as Hjarki said, procs are definitely favoring the AT's with a lower base damage to work with. As a technicality, I did have that proc in FR, if I took that out it drops my base effective DPS to 116.

When looking at this I have at least one purple proc I could've placed in each power within a single build: Apocalypse, Unbreakable, and the ATO Proc which allowed me to divide fairly. An obvious thing as has been mentioned, BiB does get a bit more bang out of the procs placed in it, but to bring that more in focus, there's only a .58/s difference in the recharge between FR and BiB, and very little difference in their animation times, but that translates as a pretty decent difference in the estimated value of the proc (35 damage average versus 30), but when it comes to what's actually available there, I (personally) don't see breaking up the ATO set and loosing the 10% global recharge bonus as a worthy loss for 5pts of damage, however FR does get that Hold Proc option, and can sport Apocalypse too, which is double the value of a standard proc in that power. FR is probably the best mule for Procs comparatively. The longer animation time of Ice Blast would also result in it favoring procs. If I assume a 2/s recharge on Blast, with its 1.67 animation, it gets the same proc values (relatively) as FR (~15 standard and ~29 purple).

So, not a HUGE difference, but even with Scourge, the procs are capable of providing a reasonable advantage that what they potentially provide (on an average curve) is going to be greater long-term that off-setting with standard damage slotting. The only downside is that, typically, the powers they end up in are going to be under compensated a bit in one or two of their primary needs (acc/end/dam/rech, albeit typically probably acc/end, with acc being compensated through Kismet or Tactics).

Turned out to be an interesting thought experiment.

As a side note, Mid's apparently over-estimates proc damage by a small margin. The further into this whole analysis I've gotten, the more things I've actually found wrong in Mid's/Pine's!

Obitus · July 25, 2019

1 hour ago, Sir Myshkin said:

I did some "napkin math" at work today after reading the link to the proc studies for PPM changes--useful stuff! Thanks for the link on that Obitus. I wanted some more definitive numbers to really see what a hypothetical value would really translate as based on the way the formula actually works (scaling).

My pleasure, I've really enjoyed talking with you guys in this thread.

Quote

Now this is purely a hypothetical DPS not accounting for things like all the -Res, other things going on, what-have-you that we've all come to terms with "get in the way" of a standard ST chain, but for relevant context, we'll assume it's the case here. Running Bolt > BiB > Bolt > FR, accounting for 50% time with standard value damage, and 50% time with Scourge value damage (which is not 100% accurate, but the simplest approach): 197 DPS

I realize you're just making a rough estimate here, but I'll nitpick for the audience: Scourge is worth 30% net at best, and probably closer to 10-15% in average gameplay (with all of the low HP minions).

Quote

When looking at this I have at least one purple proc I could've placed in each power within a single build: Apocalypse, Unbreakable, and the ATO Proc which allowed me to divide fairly. An obvious thing as has been mentioned, BiB does get a bit more bang out of the procs placed in it, but to bring that more in focus, there's only a .58/s difference in the recharge between FR and BiB, and very little difference in their animation times, but that translates as a pretty decent difference in the estimated value of the proc (35 damage average versus 30), but when it comes to what's actually available there, I (personally) don't see breaking up the ATO set and loosing the 10% global recharge bonus as a worthy loss for 5pts of damage, however FR does get that Hold Proc option, and can sport Apocalypse too, which is double the value of a standard proc in that power.

Yeah I definitely agree that the Malice of the Corruptor set should be kept whole. That's one area where Corruptors have a small advantage over Defenders; their best ATO set comes with a damage proc. (I also think that the +End proc on the other Corruptor set is more useful to Storm builds than the absorb proc on the Defender analogue - though you could also argue that Defenders have an End advantage, given the effect of Vigilance in team scenarios.)

Quote

As a side note, Mid's apparently over-estimates proc damage by a small margin. The further into this whole analysis I've gotten, the more things I've actually found wrong in Mid's/Pine's!

Here, I'm not sure what you mean. Mid's might overestimate proc damage in edge cases (like extremely short recharge powers?), but on the whole I've seen consistent underestimates whenever I've looked. Take Freeze Ray on the Defender build in my last post: it has two typical damage procs, and one purple. It also has 26.5% recharge enhancement.

So if I'm doing my math right, the chance to proc on that copy of Freeze Ray should be 3.5 * ((10 / 1.265) + 1) / 60 = 51.9% for normal damage procs, and 4.5 * ((10 / 1.265) + 1) / 60 = 66.8% for purples. Thus the average proc damage for using that copy of Freeze Ray should be (2 * 0.519 * 71.75) + (0.668 * 107.1) = 146 damage.

Then you take into account the power's base damage, which per Mid's is 72.29, multiplied by 1 + 1.1756 enhancement + 0.593 damage buffs = 200.14. So our total on average should be about 346 damage. Yet Mid's reports only 276.8, which is a pretty big underestimate, in this case underselling the proc damage by almost half.

I suspect that Mid's is counting global recharge in its version of the PPM formula, or something along those lines. Let's see, practical recharge on that build's copy of Freeze Ray is 3.6 seconds (the max allowable for our attack chain to be seamless), which would give us a proc chance of 3.5 * (3.6 + 1) / 60 = 26.83% with normal procs, or an average damage of 19.25. Yep, that matches the MId's value to a T.

Now maybe I have a different version of Mid's? There are a number of minor differences I noted in this latest version I downloaded - for example, it doesn't alter damage values when you toggle on Offensive Stance on a Bio Armor toon. Either way, I certainly agree that the error in Mid's is unfortunate. Makes for a lot of extra work estimating attack chains.

Edited July 25, 2019 by Obitus
had the corruptor sets reversed, lol

Sir Myshkin · July 25, 2019

1 hour ago, Obitus said:

So if I'm doing my math right, the chance to proc on that copy of Freeze Ray should be 3.5 * ((10 / 1.265) + 1) / 60 = 51.9% for normal damage procs, and 4.5 * ((10 / 1.265) + 1) / 60 = 66.8% for purples. Thus the average proc damage for using that copy of Freeze Ray should be (2 * 0.519 * 71.75) + (0.668 * 107.1) = 146 damage.

Well, first, I missed later on when he says that there's a note about it not including global recharge, and just exclusively the values of the power itself for enhancement (plus Alpha if applied). That changed what values I was putting in quite a bit (basically undersold what the procs were capable of). The correct formula would be PPM(BaseRech/(1+RechEnhanced/100)+Cast)/60. I was basically missing the step where it just accounted for the base recharge, which is my fault on that one. Sucks when I had the right math, wrong formula. Makes a larger divide (not like crazy, but still larger) between Proc DPS and normal DPS.

3 hours ago, Obitus said:

I suspect that Mid's is counting global recharge in its version of the PPM formula, or something along those lines. Let's see, practical recharge on that build's copy of Freeze Ray is 3.6 seconds (the max allowable for our attack chain to be seamless), which would give us a proc chance of 3.5 * (3.6 + 1) / 60 = 26.83% with normal procs, or an average damage of 19.25. Yep, that matches the MId's value to a T.

As for Mid's... If I take Apocalypse and put it in Mid's, it's exactly the same value. If I put it in Blast, it's a different value (2pts low) and in BiB (8pts low). But just plugging the proc in you can see what Mid's is calculating for that specific Proc's estimated damage, but it doesn't fall in line with the formula that was pulled (quite literally) from the source code. And I tested this on a blank build with no powers selected other than each of the three, with only Apocalypse dropped into the individual power each time. So no global anythingimpacting the value.

So I dropped some other procs into the powers to see what returned, and how different and... they were all correct. Every single proc I dropped into it came back correct except for the "Purple" procs any any of the abilities but Freeze Ray, for Ice. I didn't expand into other sets cause of the time that'd consume re-validating over and over a formula.

Tl;DR of tonight's lesson for me was that Mid's could be accurate, likely not on Purples, but easy to verify. What I did come to terms with is that the value return (after seeing this mistake bumping those numbers a bit further), if I cycle Freeze Ray every 4/s, ballpark, I'll have fired it off at least 4 to 5 times within 25/s (the next Lightning Storm up-time). If I drop Apocalypse and Unconstrained into it, that's comparable to +30 each swing (or 120 damage), and Mid's gives LS an estimation (with proc) of nearly 198 (+100 damage)

Bopper · July 25, 2019

I just discovered this thread and I now see why it kept popping up at the top of the defender boards. Looks like a lot of you are doing the same thing I'm doing. Great work guys.

Edited July 25, 2019 by Bopper

Maxzero · July 25, 2019

1 hour ago, Bopper said:

I just discovered this thread and I now see why it kept popping up at the top of the defender boards. Looks like a lot of you are doing the same thing I'm doing. Great work guys.

Its great for seeing a different perspective. I tend to play a lot Controllers much more then any other archetype. Like Defenders Controllers have poor damage scaling and Containment is of almost no use to /Storm. So my philosophy has been to fill my rotation with attacks that improve my 'big hitters' in Freezing Rain, Tornado and Lightning Storm. Their DPA leaves my regular attacks in the dust so I focus on as much recharge as possible. Lots of FF +recharge procs to maximise stacking of the powers. My personal attacks are just support.

I am wondering is the animation times of Ice so good that it would outweigh the benefits of a greater number of Tornados, FR and LS from FF +recharge procs in other damage sets?

I had the same idea on my Ill/Storm to weave a solid rotation in between my Storm powers for maximum DPS. Yet in practise against Rikti pylons my actual kill times plummeted.

Now maybe Defenders work completely differently but at least for Controllers Storm does enough damage on its own and sacrificing Storm DPS to up my direct damage DPS was a big mistake.

Hjarki · July 25, 2019

4 hours ago, Maxzero said:

Its great for seeing a different perspective. I tend to play a lot Controllers much more then any other archetype. Like Defenders Controllers have poor damage scaling and Containment is of almost no use to /Storm. So my philosophy has been to fill my rotation with attacks that improve my 'big hitters' in Freezing Rain, Tornado and Lightning Storm. Their DPA leaves my regular attacks in the dust so I focus on as much recharge as possible. Lots of FF +recharge procs to maximise stacking of the powers. My personal attacks are just support.

I am wondering is the animation times of Ice so good that it would outweigh the benefits of a greater number of Tornados, FR and LS from FF +recharge procs in other damage sets?

I had the same idea on my Ill/Storm to weave a solid rotation in between my Storm powers for maximum DPS. Yet in practise against Rikti pylons my actual kill times plummeted.

Now maybe Defenders work completely differently but at least for Controllers Storm does enough damage on its own and sacrificing Storm DPS to up my direct damage DPS was a big mistake.

FF procs are part of the reason I use Water instead of Ice. That being said, there's a practical limit on the number of FF procs you can slot because they start to overwrite one another when you're using them on different powers in quick succession.
The game is not solely about fighting Rikti Pylons. Lightning Storm is of somewhat limited use due to its stationary nature. Much of the time you're moving from spawn to spawn too quickly to make use of it.
Storm doesn't consume all of your activation time, so you need something to fill in the gaps.
Defenders/Corruptors do most of their damage via AE. Geyser/Blizzard do massive amounts of damage to a large number of targets, so slotting to maximize that damage makes sense.
We're not sacrificing Storm damage. Freezing Rain isn't a meaningful source of damage, so we tend to just slot that for set bonuses/recharge. Tornado and Lightning Storm are slotted for damage in the builds above.
We're trying optimize for 'all of the above' in some sense. The current build I'm tinkering with has soft-capped Range/AoE, capped S/L/F resists and those triple-proc'd damage attacks - as well as high damage/recharge FR/Tornado/Lightning Storm.

Coyote · July 25, 2019

This thread and the updates to the PPM calculations thread made me consider something:
Cold Domination: Infrigidate, with 3 damage procs and Achilles Heel = average 18% -Res and 190 damage with a 1.188 second activation time. For a Defender, that's not bad... for a Controller, that's great.

Hjarki · July 25, 2019

26 minutes ago, Coyote said:

This thread and the updates to the PPM calculations thread made me consider something:
Cold Domination: Infrigidate, with 3 damage procs and Achilles Heel = average 18% -Res and 190 damage with a 1.188 second activation time. For a Defender, that's not bad... for a Controller, that's great.

Acid Arrow (Trick Arrow) can also be used as a damage mechanism in this fashion.

That being said, I'd issue a word of caution: you may run into recharge problems.

Exploiting the procs requires leaving the recharge on your powers relatively high and making up the difference with global recharge. However, getting that much global recharge is tricky.

The normal method is to pile on purple sets. However, this will preclude heavily proc'ing your attacks because you need to 5-slot your attack powers with purples. Storm Summoning Defenders/Corruptors have two significant advantages here:

One of the Defender/Corruptor ATOs can be 'split' because it gets a 10% recharge bonus with a 3-set bonus. This allows Corruptors/Defenders to get purple-level enhancement bonuses while also grabbing two 10% recharge bonuses on two of their powers while only spending 3 slots per power. Other ATs don't have this.
Storm Summoning permits the slotting of Force Feedback procs in about half of its powers. Just slotting Force Feedback into Tornado averages out to ~25% recharge bonus at 50 (very roughly) for a single slot. Note that this also means that Storm Summoning scales super-linearly with recharge bonuses.

Storm Summoning is also extremely mule-friendly. With the exception of Snow Storm, every power in the set is able to usefully slot sets with decent bonuses. I think this thread has a lot of useful information, but keep in mind that Myshkin, Obitus and I are talking to one another from the standpoint of extensively building and playing these builds so we're probably leaving out a lot of issues that seem obvious to us but may not be initially apparent just glancing at the power sets involved.

Evalene · July 26, 2019

My Storm/Dark build, would love any suggestions/critiques. I mostly play her solo nowadays pretty aggressively, setting rain and tentacles and then going in for the soul drain/blackstar/void erupt bomb. The lightning storms and tornadoes just help clean up after the fact and zap bosses/AVs. Haven't been too worried about my defenses given the -to hit with all the dark debuff and cc from being trampolined in a frosty cuddly tentacle patch of fun. She's a joy to play and trying to eke out as much damage as I can.

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.962
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Dark Harvester: Level 50 Magic Defender
Primary Power Set: Storm Summoning
Secondary Power Set: Dark Blast
Power Pool: Flight
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Leadership
Ancillary Pool: Dark Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: O2 Boost -- NmnCnv-Heal(A)
Level 1: Dark Blast -- Acc-I(A)
Level 2: Gloom -- SprDfnBst-Acc/Dmg(A), SprDfnBst-Dmg/Rchg(3), SprDfnBst-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(5), SprDfnBst-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(5), SprDfnBst-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(15), SprDfnBst-Rchg/Heal%(17)
Level 4: Moonbeam -- SprVglAss-Acc/Dmg(A), SprVglAss-Dmg/Rchg(25), SprVglAss-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(31), SprVglAss-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(31), SprVglAss-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(34), SprVglAss-Rchg/+Absorb(37)
Level 6: Steamy Mist -- LucoftheG-Rchg+(A), LucoftheG-Def(7), Rct-ResDam%(7), LucoftheG-Def/EndRdx(9), LucoftheG-Def/Rchg(21), LucoftheG-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(21)
Level 8: Freezing Rain -- AchHee-DefDeb(A), AchHee-DefDeb/Rchg(9), AchHee-ResDeb%(11), PcnoftheT-Acc/Slow(11), PcnoftheT-Rng/Slow(13), PcnoftheT-EndRdx/Rchg/Slow(13)
Level 10: Hover -- LucoftheG-Rchg+(A), LucoftheG-Def/EndRdx(37), LucoftheG-Def(37), LucoftheG-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(40), ShlWal-ResDam/Re TP(42)
Level 12: Hurricane -- HO:Enzym(A)
Level 14: Fly -- BlsoftheZ-Travel/EndRdx(A), BlsoftheZ-ResKB(19)
Level 16: Tenebrous Tentacles -- DarWtcDsp-ToHitDeb(A), DarWtcDsp-ToHitDeb/Rchg(46), DarWtcDsp-ToHitdeb/Rchg/EndRdx(48), DarWtcDsp-ToHitDeb/EndRdx(48), DarWtcDsp-Slow%(50)
Level 18: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(19)
Level 20: Night Fall -- SprFrzBls-Rchg/ImmobProc(A), SprFrzBls-Dmg/EndRdx/Acc/Rchg(23), SprFrzBls-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(23), SprFrzBls-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(25), SprFrzBls-Dmg/EndRdx(48), SprFrzBls-Acc/Dmg(50)
Level 22: Maneuvers -- LucoftheG-Rchg+(A), RedFrt-Def(42), RedFrt-Def/EndRdx(42), RedFrt-Def/Rchg(43), RedFrt-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(43), RedFrt-EndRdx(43)
Level 24: Tactics -- GssSynFr--ToHit(A)
Level 26: Tornado -- ExpRnf-Acc/Dmg(A), ExpRnf-Dmg/EndRdx(27), ExpRnf-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(27), ExpRnf-EndRdx/Dmg/Rchg(29), SlbAll-Build%(29), FrcFdb-Rechg%(31)
Level 28: Assault -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 30: Afterburner -- LucoftheG-Rchg+(A)
Level 32: Lightning Storm -- Thn-Acc/Dmg(A), Thn-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(33), Thn-Dmg/EndRdx(33), ExpStr-Dam%(33), GldJvl-Dam%(34), FrcFdb-Rechg%(34)
Level 35: Life Drain -- ThfofEss-Heal(A), ThfofEss-Acc/Heal(36), ThfofEss-Heal/Rchg(36), ThfofEss-+End%(36), ThfofEss-Acc/EndRdx/Heal(50)
Level 38: Blackstar -- Arm-Dmg(A), Arm-Dmg/Rchg(39), Arm-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(39), Arm-Dmg/EndRdx(39), Arm-Dam%(40), FuroftheG-ResDeb%(40)
Level 41: Dark Consumption -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 44: Dark Embrace -- GldArm-3defTpProc(A), StdPrt-ResDam/Def+(45), Ags-Psi/Status(45), Ags-ResDam/EndRdx(45), Ags-ResDam/Rchg(46), Ags-ResDam(46)
Level 47: Soul Drain -- GssSynFr--Build%(A)
Level 49: Soul Transfer -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Prestige Power Dash -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Prestige Power Slide -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Prestige Power Quick -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Prestige Power Rush -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Prestige Power Surge -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Vigilance
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 4: Ninja Run
Level 2: Swift -- Flight-I(A)
Level 2: Health -- Mrc-Rcvry+(A), NmnCnv-Regen/Rcvry+(3)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 2: Stamina -- PrfShf-EndMod(A), PrfShf-EndMod/Rchg(15), PrfShf-End%(17)
Level 50: Intuition Radial Paragon
Level 50: Ageless Core Epiphany
Level 50: Void Radial Final Judgement
Level 50: Assault Radial Embodiment
------------

Storm Dark Dark.mxd

Obitus · July 26, 2019

On 7/25/2019 at 6:02 AM, Maxzero said:

Its great for seeing a different perspective. I tend to play a lot Controllers much more then any other archetype. Like Defenders Controllers have poor damage scaling and Containment is of almost no use to /Storm. So my philosophy has been to fill my rotation with attacks that improve my 'big hitters' in Freezing Rain, Tornado and Lightning Storm. Their DPA leaves my regular attacks in the dust so I focus on as much recharge as possible. Lots of FF +recharge procs to maximise stacking of the powers. My personal attacks are just support.

I am wondering is the animation times of Ice so good that it would outweigh the benefits of a greater number of Tornados, FR and LS from FF +recharge procs in other damage sets?

I had the same idea on my Ill/Storm to weave a solid rotation in between my Storm powers for maximum DPS. Yet in practise against Rikti pylons my actual kill times plummeted.

Now maybe Defenders work completely differently but at least for Controllers Storm does enough damage on its own and sacrificing Storm DPS to up my direct damage DPS was a big mistake.

I'll echo much of what Hjarki said.

On the live servers, one of my "main" characters was an Ice/Storm Controller. I loved that toon to death, but even on its best day the damage output was never particularly impressive. Sure, the Storm powers would take down Pylons and the like - and back then, having spammable immobilize was the only way to get consistent benefit out of Tornado/LS, so the Controller certainly had an advantage. And I love the way Storm powers look, so I was happy to take a little bit of a killing speed penalty to enjoy the majestic view.

But in the average fight? The majority of my practical killing speed on the Corruptor comes from his Primary set. Now that you can get consistent utility out of Tornado/LS by slotting a Sudden Acceleration proc - and now that we have crashless nukes - I'd say that the comparison generally isn't close: a Defender or Corruptor will kill most things faster than a /Storm Controller - leaving aside a couple of outliers.

Is there a trade off? Absolutely, it's possible that my failing to wring out every last drip of Storm-power performance hurts my DPS against Pylons/AVs, but not by much, certainly not by near enough to offset the gain in practical kill speed in more common situations.

Yes, Tornado and LS have hellaciously high DPA, perhaps the highest in the game. On paper, Lightning Storm gives you somewhere around 1100 damage in return for 2.244s of cast time, which works out to a DPA of ~490. For contrast, the Blaster version of Blaze, widely considered one of the most overpowered attacks, only does ~280 DPA, with standard damage slotting. But of course the crucial difference is that Blaze can be cast every ~3 seconds; LS has a minimum cycle time of ~20 seconds, and it takes 60 seconds to deliver its full damage. And it costs a buttload of endurance up front, which is only justified from a cost-efficiency standpoint if it delivers about half of its full payload (30 seconds). So although I'm a huge fan of the power's aesthetics, LS is not among the most practically useful powers in the game - situationally awesome for sure, but not necessarily spam-worthy.

Tornado, on the other hand, should be cast on CD whenever possible, provided that you've slotted a KB-to-KD IO; it has even higher DPA by default; it has a much larger AoE; it's mobile, and it's virtually guaranteed to proc Force Feedback. But no amount of Storm-power spamming will replace a Corruptor's ability, in the average situation, to toss out ~200 DPS over the short term using active attack powers, or more importantly, the ability to toss out massive, bursty AoEs.

Now, you're rolling with Illusion, and Illusion has its own unique perks. As far as I know, Illusion will never break any damage records, but the combination of perma-PA and Deceive gives you the ability to solo things that most other builds in the game could never even attempt. There's a reason that Ill/* is on the short list of prime powergamer options. Given that Illusion's specialty is soloing ridiculous challenges, you might even say that an Ill/Storm should prioritize AV-fight effectiveness over general killing speed.

I certainly wouldn't argue that a Corruptor/Defender is better than an Ill Controller, but they all have their plusses and minuses.

It's also worth keeping in mind that Illusion heavily incentivizes a +recharge-first build strategy, because recharge takes care of both your offense and your defense, the latter via perma-PA. Other Storm builds have to balance the desire for max Tornado/LS spam against the need for extra durability. (For giggles, I just spent a few minutes trying to throw together a ranged soft-cap Ill/Storm that also has passive perma-PA, i.e. perma-PA without FF procs factored in. Couldn't do it. There really isn't any point, anyway.)

All of that said, there's no reason you couldn't proc out Blind. Seems to be an excellent candidate. A build like this looks pretty appealing:

Spoiler


| Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build |
		|-------------------------------------------------------------------|
		|MxDz;1496;671;1342;HEX;|
		|78DA6594D94F135114C6EFB453B10B5044764A5B0AB2544A2BA88F26B289818484C|
		|427B1943294266D87B425D1471FFC03F4059768C428B824EE8AFAEFF88CE2F25E0F|
		|F37DD8493AC9E477E7BBE73BF7DC337367FEFAA4EFF5CCCD0B4AF34FE452A55272C|
		|22C948B662E67145DF3A94C36AD0EAF3AB923D599A3A0D86C2EB759CA9A85232168|
		|8BB9B8B9B6165B2C9BC57C7271339F370BD9424679164CB12D6E18C6AAD71A4EE7B|
		|299F5B20FB2594C1BC51B8DD6C39C915A358AA5F5EC867F6A239B8ECDA68DE47CAA|
		|54968076A96648EEC79AE25571A9878284AE8E3F22B741CFAC03CC6B167D534E8BC|
		|B55AF529D88DD164D633EED2A7C8E25F21AA827C163CB640AEC9516392D73457346|
		|0FF3B9954E7A65CEC5B55C15B9945B943A443BEA5A50D94804D109322DB29B19DD8|
		|C49843177BB5F292F32EADE6EECE87480EC014782640854AD4AD5B38A7AE65B1534|
		|324FE30774C1FF11ECF904863F837D7BE033F134B14B4D07D8FD895FE46FF0E41F9|
		|21D688DC2FB44BCCD5CAF791231AD5360FB343903765E029F8AA78575B7B06E43D0|
		|06CDD9F60571035FC1E16FE41EB823B11DACB76307BDE8DC05BB9F932FC09E97E42|
		|B7045BC5D5CBB8BBD6F927717A016603DBB8220D7087ED72D2DC4DE84D89B107B13|
		|666FC27FC18C787BE9EDA527424F849E083D7DB748AEB12EDE7E7AFB4730772A4EC|
		|6C851F62741D2FB46B638C87731B82518D0D5D05DF21E791F1C7E00BE134F141E2D|
		|7A86DF5B9B1411D0D57B798C315F6C0C6B8D9E23C7C9B360E23CF8563C71F632BEC|
		|F77A1DB4EA6755A0255A5325C331BAF511235CA588D325EA3CCD5280BFAFFFF81D2|
		|706EFD72CA59C9BE476635CEF2CCFEAC6A0E2D8CFDF82E6B56EF1AAEE05BF961F75|
		|9590FECAE3B0E2B53C3163AE40F21F382E7B0E75879C9364ED9C62BB6F13F6915F7|
		|CD|
		|-------------------------------------------------------------------|

Edited July 26, 2019 by Obitus

Pylon Test Run Submission	Proc Monsters (Controller Edition)	Proc Monsters (Defender Edition)
Pylon Test Run Results	Proc Monsters (Tanker Edition)	"Mad King Special"
"Ceterum autem censeo	Iram esse delendam"	Mad King Special - Force Edition (NEW!)

Pylon Test Run Submission	Proc Monsters (Controller Edition)	Proc Monsters (Defender Edition)
Pylon Test Run Results	Proc Monsters (Tanker Edition)	"Mad King Special"
"Ceterum autem censeo	Iram esse delendam"	Mad King Special - Force Edition (NEW!)

Pylon Test Run Submission	Proc Monsters (Controller Edition)	Proc Monsters (Defender Edition)
Pylon Test Run Results	Proc Monsters (Tanker Edition)	"Mad King Special"
"Ceterum autem censeo	Iram esse delendam"	Mad King Special - Force Edition (NEW!)

Pylon Test Run Submission	Proc Monsters (Controller Edition)	Proc Monsters (Defender Edition)
Pylon Test Run Results	Proc Monsters (Tanker Edition)	"Mad King Special"
"Ceterum autem censeo	Iram esse delendam"	Mad King Special - Force Edition (NEW!)

Pylon Test Run Submission	Proc Monsters (Controller Edition)	Proc Monsters (Defender Edition)
Pylon Test Run Results	Proc Monsters (Tanker Edition)	"Mad King Special"
"Ceterum autem censeo	Iram esse delendam"	Mad King Special - Force Edition (NEW!)

Sign In

Storm Summoning/

Recommended Posts

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

Create an account

Sign in