Avalanche_EU

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Psionic tornado is a bit pants too (for damage) - it's nice to have an AoE attack and the knockup feature can give you a breather for a second or two as the minions and lieuts fall down

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You say that the knockdown of the tornado gives you a breather for a second or two but slam psychic scream's damage! The scream has a 62.5% recharge debuff and the tornado 37.5% for 10 seconds. Both together that's a pretty hefty breather from incoming damage imo

Even without the debuff portion, any AoE attack is going to have much better total damage per endurance vs several mobs than a single target attack. You only have to hit three mobs with psychic scream to be doing more total damage than your snipe, for even less endurance.

I found that even with soloing storm/elec and storm/dark you won't need three endredux in snow storm and mist. Two is great and even one is manageable. The end drain is something like 0.13 for hurricane and 0.26 for mist and snow. (Can't remember exactly off the top of my head) You're much better off sticking an end redux in your big drainers like tornado and lightning storm. With archery you just won't need any in your blasts but I went for one endredux in tentacles and nightfall on my storm/dark.

I have O2 boost on my storm/elec and I regret getting gale late on him. On my storm/dark I don't have it yet but may pick it up much later on at some point. It's more useful to provide sleep/disorient resist for squishies on the front line like Kins, or to protect melee types from evil end drains like the Carnival. 3 slotted with heal SO's you will hit a squishie for maybe 1/3 of their health so it's ok in a crisis but certainly nothing to keep a tanker alive and time spent spamming O2 boost is time wasted not being active with storm powers to help the whole team. It is very fast recharge though for buffing several people in a row with status resists before a fight.

Tornado I've changed a few times and wish it had more slots. For storm/elec I went for 3dam, 2rech, 1end, like my lightning storm because the poor aoe damage of elec needs a boost and tornado is big aoe damage on cornered mobs. On my storm/dark I will probably go for 3disorient, 2rech, 1end and use it for crowd control. The disorient can be quite devastating as it whips around the room throwing stuff about and lasts a good long while.

Hopefully with the invention system I'll be able to get a 3dam/dis, 3rech/end combo or something like that.

Oh just a quick anecdote about tornado (awesome power) from two days ago. It was a nemesis mission in the Crey base thingy. A wayward scrapper went into the room with the four exploding buff machines and suddenly went into the red from snipers etc. The rest of the team went the other way into another room on the other side of the corridor. I O2 boosted the scrapper but he was standing his ground and the room was full of scattered mobs shooting him so I chucked a tornado at one side, dropped snow storm and freezing rain on the other side, stuck up a lightning storm and left him to it because the tanker in the other room was into the orange. Quickly ran off to save him *eyeroll* with a hefty shove from hurricane and an O2 boost and we finished those mobs. Went back to the first room to find the scrapper still fighting and the room was full.. I mean.. FULL of Nemesis staggering around disoriented, snow stormed and being shot at by a lightning storm. I always thought that tornado followed you religiously but it was clearly having too much fun to care as it hadn't left the room. It was one of those "omg... storm rocks" moments and I'm definately going 3 disorient duration on my storm/dark tornado!

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Hmm ok, so far i have been tempted by /energy and /archery.

Since i know nothing about storm summoning (seen very few ppl play it, esp. at high levels) what powers would you say are must have/must avoid?

Anyway here is my storm defender build from my own guestimates of what might work. Feel free to rip it apart. Will i need to slot more end reduction than this since it seems like an end heavy set. (used archery this build, but made a very similar /energy build too)

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Exported from Ver: 1.7.6.0 of the CoH_CoV Character Builder
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Name:
Level: 41
Archetype: Defender
Primary: Storm Summoning
Secondary: Archery
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01) --> Gale==> Acc(1)
01) --> Snap Shot==> Acc(1)Dmg(3)
02) --> Snow Storm==> EndRdx(2)EndRdx(3)Slow(5)EndRdx(7)Slow(15)
04) --> Fistful of Arrows==> Acc(4)Dmg(5)Dmg(7)Dmg(17)
06) --> Swift==> Run(6)
08) --> Freezing Rain==> DefDeBuf(8)Rechg(9)Slow(9)Rechg(15)Rechg(17)
10) --> Flaming Arrow==> Acc(10)Dmg(11)Dmg(11)Dmg(13)
12) --> Air Superiority==> Acc(12)Dmg(13)
14) --> Fly==> Fly(14)
16) --> Health==> Heal(16)
18) --> Thunder Clap==> Acc(18)Acc(19)DisDur(19)DisDur(34)DisDur(37)
20) --> Stamina==> EndMod(20)EndMod(21)EndMod(21)
22) --> Hurricane==> EndRdx(22)EndRdx(23)EndRdx(23)TH_DeBuf(27)TH_DeBuf(37)
24) --> Steamy Mist==> EndRdx(24)EndRdx(25)EndRdx(25)DmgRes(31)DmgRes(37)
26) --> Tornado==> Rechg(26)EndRdx(27)
28) --> Ranged Shot==> Acc(28)Dmg(29)Dmg(29)Dmg(40)
30) --> Aim==> Rechg(30)Rechg(31)Rechg(31)
32) --> Lightning Storm==> Acc(32)Dmg(33)Dmg(33)Rechg(33)Rechg(34)EndRdx(34)
35) --> Explosive Arrow==> Acc(35)Dmg(36)Dmg(36)Dmg(36)
38) --> Rain of Arrows==> Acc(38)Dmg(39)Dmg(39)Rechg(39)Dmg(40)EndRdx(40)
---------------------------------------------
01) --> Sprint==> Empty(1)
01) --> Brawl==> Empty(1)
01) --> Vigilance==> Empty(1)
02) --> Rest==> Empty(2)
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Any opinions on an epic to go with?

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I would aim to get snow storm, freezing rain and hurricane at the lvls they become available as they are the three must haves that you need to function. Most people take everything but thunderclap. Some people have an aversion to gale for some reason but I would take it and get two accuracy SO's minimum as it has a horrible penalty. You mainly use it at the start of a fight to relocate the entire spawn en masse into the nearest wall/corner so the last thing you want is to miss 50% of them and end up with scatter. On really hard mobs I'll drop freezing rain immediately before gale because I can't have it miss any of them. Once in a corner, the team is safe as houses.

Snow storm would benefit from swapping an end with a third slow. You have no immob with archery and since freezing rain scatters, you want mobs at the movement cap to minimise scatter. +3 and +4s are going to need all the slows you can get.

Fistful could do with a range SO at the end of it. One range SO is 50% increase on a cone. That's a huge difference in coverage and fistful is a short, wide cone.

Freezing Rain is great, maybe swap the Def debuff for an EndRedux.

Fly always gets 3 flight SO's on all my toons. I can't cope with its slow speed without them but again if you're short on slots that's up to you.

Thunderclap most people don't bother with. It's minions only and point blank and doesn't go well with hurricane. I would drop it completely.

Hurricane is best with 3 TH_DeBuff (It's 37.5% base. The best accuracy debuff in the game. Definately slot for it) It's half the endurance cost of snow storm/steamy mist so one end redux is enough.

Steamy Mist could do with 3 resist debuff and 2 endurance.

Tornado is a power I wish I could 12 slot. It deserves a whole thread devoted to how to slot it so I'm not even going to go there.

Lightning Storm is usually 3 dam, 2 rech, 1 end for most people. Its base accuracy is so high you will only see it miss 5% of the time.

Hope that helps! Oh and a word of warning. Whatever you do, don't suddenly respec into leadership powers on a stormie at two o'clock in the morning.

The flying through the air, disoriented and immoblised ones! I so hate them.

I remember ploughing through a mission on my stupidly overpowered plants dominator at high speed, cackling to myself as I went until I met a slinky Arachnos boss-ette that needed about fifty holds stacked to actually hold her. Anyway she had me flying through the air, disoriented and immobilised in the blink of an eye and I woke up in hospital.

In the same evening I took my storm/elec into the dimension mission with the clockwork king and psychic clockwork... solo. I also forgot to switch on steamy mist so as I approached the clockwork (hoho clockwork at lvl 40. what nubs!!) I found myself flying through the air, disoriented and immobilised and woke up in hospital.

Feeling sorry for myself for being completely schooled by only five clockwork in the blink of an eye I ditched the portal missions and went to the Firebase Zulu! Wooah check out these freaky mobs I thought as I picked up a rescue mission and came face to face with spindly alien beings and floating eyes. Anyway within a minute I was flying through the air, disoriented and immobilised and woke up in hospital.

So whatever that combo is I would get it. Is that TK blast, subdue and will domination? I have no idea but it kicked my jacksie good and proper three times in one evening and I'll never forget it.

It all boils down to how good your tanker is and what set they take. If he/she is the only person getting attacked and is a solid tank then go for a buff/debuff set to boost the team killing speed.

A kin with fulcrum if you're heavy on the scrappers/blappers or a stormie/dark/rad if you have timid squishies that are all ranged based.

If your team is utterly chaotic and disorganised then forcefield can go a long way to covering up team inadequacy I've found. Just turn them all into ice tankers and let them get on with it.

Just don't pick Trick Arrow. It's more team glue to augment an already functional team, than a sole protector of the needy.

Definately the stormie. Elec isn't that great and doesn't have much AoE. I'm enjoying my storm/dark more right now but it is a bit cookie cutter. Archery is a good secondary for defenders imo because of the nuke-lite later on and complements storm by being endurance light as well. The weapon redraw won't be much of an issue because you can have hurricane running, drop snow storm and freezing rain and then just go to town with your blasts.

So archery or dark secondary imo.

Oh definately. I like TA but it seriously falls short. They could fix it so easily by just upping some values and durations.

For damage mitigation you have 20% recharge debuff on the glue, 31% damage debuff on poison gas, 6.25% accuracy on flash and the oil slick knockdown... That's... it. They seriously need to boost glue to the kind of defence that snow storm and lingering rad give, make poison gas a static cloud pet that pulses sleep and last longer than 20 seconds. Flash arrow needs to be replaced with an equivalent that has an accuracy check and does an accuracy debuff around 20-30%

For aggressive debuffs they need to make acid arrow the same radius as disruption arrow. There are no two ways about it. It's an 8 feet radius aoe.

The bottom line on the entire set though is.... you can make a burn patch pet, identical in damage to the fire tanker summoned burn patch pet, only it's a 25 foot radius instead of 8 feet. It's truly sick and probably the reason they won't touch the debuffs. I can solo large spawns of mobs on my TA/A because the burn patch just wipes the little fellas out so fast it's silly. It's even better in I8 because the graphics for oil slick are really nice now and when it sets on fire it has outrageous graphics to match its damage.

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I've found Kinetics/Elec very slow to solo. Pretty safe, the heal is so powerful. But it takes ages to defeat things, especially pre-32.

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And post-32. To get decent damage out of fulcrum you need lots of mobs and you just don't have the damage mitigation to stand in melee range of 10 mobs and live. You can faceplant in one combat round and even transfusion isn't enough. Just a single disorient attack from a minion can wipe you. Dial down the number of mobs to something more manageable and you're looking at the mighty fulcrum shift struggling to boost your damage to the same levels as freezing rain, tar patch or enervating field. I found kin miserable to solo, especially with the non stop buffing of yourself every few seconds. What a pain in the backside.

EDIT: Sorry that sounded overly negative so I should just stress that it was all about solo. Couple Kin with just one other person with damage mitigation and it's outrageously good.

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After reading all your posts...if I decide to roll another Def, then will probably have to be a storm/dark one...

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Huraaaaah!! You will love it!

Anyway, some numbers to wet your whistle. Just snow storm and freezing rain are absolutely crippling but add hurricane and the mobs are well and truly gimped. Throw in tentacle and nightfall spam and you've got another 20% accuracy debuff and immobilisation. I'm loving my storm/dark to bits.

Snow Storm
62.5% speed debuff
62.5% recharge debuff

Hurricane
37.5% accuracy debuff
60% range debuff

Freezing Rain
35% resist debuff
30% defence debuff
70% speed debuff
50% recharge debuff
and.. knockdown

Radiation Infection
31.25% accuracy debuff
31.25% defence debuff

Enervating Field
25% damage debuff
30% resist debuff

Lingering Rad
75% speed debuff
75% recharge debuff
100% regen debuff

Darkest Night
17.5% accuracy debuff
37.5% damage debuff

Tar Patch
90% speed debuff
30% resist debuff

Fearsome Stare
18.75% accuracy debuff
and... terror

As much as I love trick arrow I'm not even going to post the embarrasingly bad debuff values. They really are quite bad indeed and considerably less than what you see above. Freezing Rain alone makes the whole TA set look comical imo.

STORM!!!!!!!!!!!

Drama, unique powers, flexibility.

Of all the defender sets it's the one that makes me think... "wow I can't believe I did that" and the one that makes people ooh and aah and gasp in astonishment.

There is nothing like playing all your cards at once in a crisis and utterly dominating the situation. Nothing makes me feel like a defender more than the whole gale+hurricane into a corner, dumping all my storm powers and crushing a whole gang of mobs under my stormy thumb!

I'm enjoying it more than ever on my third stormy trip upwards, this time with Storm/Dark.

I do have a penchant for Trick Arrow as well though, enough that I have two in their 30s.

Kin drove me bonkers and gave me RSI. It was super powerful.... for a few seconds.... every few seconds, over and over and over and.... It was the fastest defender I ever levelled and I burned out completely just short of the nuke.

Forcefield is fab if you like blasting and/or Fairy Liquid and I love my little FF/Sonic Sputnik and the zany noises he makes. Force Bubble is truly godly and reminds me of my stormies.

Dark and Rad I can never really warm to the particle effects enough to fully "love" the sets, even though they are both good stuff. I've played them into the 20s but they always get deleted.

The next toon on the cards would be yet another Trick Arrow, this time paired with dark blast!

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My favourite defender for soloing is my Storm/Electric. Particularly fun herding rooms up in order to pull them around corners slap bang into my cloud. Teams don't like me doing that for some reason


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Storm is definately the most fun. You can get away with such ridiculous stuff later on. I'm not sure about elec though, I'm enjoying my 21 storm/dark a lot more than my 40 storm/elec.

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I've found Storm is effective solo and I've not yet hit Tornado/Lightning Storm

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Your primaries contribute to a lot of your total damage. Once you get stuff in a corner and tightly bunched a tornado and a lightning storm make short work of them. (I have 3 damage SO's in both) Half the fun is seeing how much stuff you can herd into a corner at the same time without dying.

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Obviously put as many slots in fearsome stare as they will let you, and dream about how brilliant it would be if you could 12 slot things.

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Inventions for the win!

I highly recommend 3 slow SO's in tar patch if you're used to mobs doing what you want them to do as a controller. DN isn't massive and mobs not behaving themselves and splitting up can really mess you up, the slow helps keep higher lvl mobs locked down somewhat.

But then I have 3 slow SO's in several snow storms, two glue arrows and a tar patch and wouldn't have it any other way so maybe I'm a slow-a-holic and not to be listened to.

I took a Dark/Sonic to 14 but switched to Dark/Archery because I already had a few sonic blast defenders. It's such a great blast set.

I would not worry about endurance draining for PvE unless you are /elec secondary. Even if you fully drain something with transference, it will still happily kill you with the tiny sliver of endurance it regens almost immediately after. Without a -recovery debuff the end drain is all but useless for anything but toggle dropping scary bosses.

The recovery debuff on short circuit lasts 10 seconds on +0s, which gets less and less as mobs get higher to you. Anything +4 an above and you're not even going to stop them regenning with 2 recharge SOs in SC and 2 siphon speed. Even +2s and +3s are touch and go unless your team is moving swiftly through the mission and you can keep two siphon speeds on yourself.

I find short circuit a real pain in the backside because you become a slave to it every few seconds, usually whilst people are whining at you to speedboost them.

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AM has no status protection. That's status resist, doesn't stop you getting mezzed.

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Oh dear, it doesn't? Well sod that for a game of soldiers then. Any room in the non-min/max empath team?

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With 8 people, that's 20%def, and 3 slotted, all of them, 31.2% def. Don't look like near the cap to me


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Apparently it's 4.66% base for defenders, about 7% slotted. x8 =56% but then I've seen about a zillion apparently true values for leadership values thrown about the EU and US boards a hundred times so who knows what the real value is? There are people practically beating each other to death with different copies of the Prima guide (which is quite often incorrect anyway) over on the US boards over the leadership toggles... Ok maybe they aren't quite doing that but it's a fun visual image.

What is wrong with Pocket D for heroes and villains RP?

I hope that the I8 changes bring more PvP to the game because PvP in MMORPGs is great but squishies either spending their whole PvP experience acting like a paranoid android or getting insta killed by stalkers isn't much fun.

The consoles in Pocket D for arena matches, coupled with possible RP there between heroes and villains would be great for both parties. We might also see more impromptu events in Pocket D because it's always empty when I go there. I really enjoyed the few arena and gladiator matches I had on the training room and yet on the live servers I think I've been in an arena once, couldn't decipher the bleeding PvP console gibberish and promptly left.

They also need a Pocket D entrance in Atlas Park/Mercy Island and have an early contact send you there on an unskippable mission so that new players actually know the place exists.

I look at a full empath team and I just see a lot of powers going to waste beacause of stacked leadership and sub-par damage potential.

Keeping CM up on the whole team constantly gives status protection... so does perma, stacked 8xAM. Lots of it.

Boosting damage/defence/accuracy with fortitude.. hmm well defence is pretty much capped, or close to it with 8 maneuvers on any defender superteam anyway and debuffs would cover the rest. 8xManeuvers alone would be enough to eat an alpha and by then the debuffs are in effect. Three stacked forts give 75% base damage increase? Pah. Even a single kin can do that pre-fulcrum and that's not even the same boost that 3 damage SO's give you. Stacked resist debuffs and AM will have you at the damage cap with a lot less fuss.

I just don't see an empath superteam coming close to a rad one and there is a lot of buff recycling for an empath team whereas the rad team can contribute even more by simply gathering for an AM splurge every so often. A sacrifical victim teleported around could also provide fallout carnage although I would imagine that with 8 defenders at the damage cap pretty much any spawn would melt when faced with one or two capped regular AoEs from every defender.

A lot of defender superteams could do more than the empath team and a lot easier. 8x tar patch+DN, 8x freezing rain+SS+Hurricane, 8x EF+RI+AM, 8x TA debuffs etc etc. The most offensive would probably be the 8xTA or 8xStorm team since with 8 defenders there are zero defence issues. They just lack status protection. Kinetics is probably the most redundant one because almost all defender teams can cap damage and defence.

8xempath? hmm meh. Anyway, I have a brand new lvl 11 rad/rad, NighHaunter has a 7 rad/rad and Ace Cobalt has a 7 rad/elec so if anyone else would care to join us on Defiant then give me a shout on @Alith. You just need RI, EF and AM and a secondary of your choice (preferably one with several AoEs) and if we get enough people regularly we could do a rad defender night a couple of times a week and respec into heavy leadership in the 20s.

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My favourite Offender conept had to be the Rad/* Offender who let their teammates die so they could cast Vengeance and then go to town with Fallout. As such, you could Radient Aura. Something about being able to heal but choosing not to is just really creepy for a Defender - especially if you don't tell the PUG you just joined why I heard a team of 8 such folks could lay waste to pretty much anything, but that was before (and probably why!) they made Vengeance unstackable. I never got to try that build out myself

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I've always wanted to do a themed offender team. If anyone else wants to try the whole 8 xrad/rad I would SO love to try this. I think rad/rad would be the best thing to have 8 of because EF+AM+Leadership alone, on all 8 people pretty much provides you with all the defence, accuracy, damage, stamina, recharge and status protection you could ever wish for.

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As far as I know Ice Storm has no max target limit either, its a Placable so on an 8 man it could be better.

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I'm pretty sure the rain powers have no AoE limit. You can always test this in Skyway on one of those lag-inducing boluses of supatrolls. (When they reach that 50+ critical mass) My TA's oil slick wiped out the whole lot in a matter of seconds whilst my AoE nukers took an age to chew through them.

Ok, ok I keep forgetting to test this and there have been several changes back and forth about this power.

Basically... does it stack at the moment? I know it used to and then they gimped the recharge a little to prevent it happening easily but I slotted it 2acc 2rech and with hasten I fire it off regularly in longer fights. So is the -recharge stacking still?

I'm sure I could sit there with a stopwatch and a +0 minion and do this myself but if anyone knows off the top of their head I would be grateful. I'll try testing it tomorrow night if nobody knows and post back here.

BTW I'm a -recharge freak and have arctic air and snowstorm as well! -Recharge for the winz!!!!! omgz shiver spam for teh winzz etc. etc.

They are both great sets and both have situations where you can feel slightly god-like.

I'd have to go with storm though as it's unique and fun with flashy effects and lots of drama, whereas Kin has underwhealming effects and often feels like playing a filing cabinet simulator whilst high on speed.

Kin will almost always make you more friends. Storm can easily make you unpopular.

Kin is easier, yet tiring, to play well. Storm is probably the most difficult defender primary to play well.

Tough choice really.

I just wouldn't bother with leadership toggles if you are a solo defender. The huge endurance drain, powers and slots on the leadership toggles are not worth the fairly negligible benefit you get from running just one version of them for one person.

You're much better off spending the powers and slots in a million other ways to augment your dps.

And all this talk of uber Kin solo.. Well I found that Kin is a double edged sword. You're less effective than a lot of defenders vs small numbers of mobs imo, simply because of the way +Dmg and -Res work and extremely offensive vs large spawns because of the way fulcrum works. However, Kin doesn't have the aoe damage mitigation necessary for taking on large spawns where fulcrum benefits the most. A couple of my defenders would relish the challenge of 10 +2 mobs and go to town on them quickly (storm, dark, TA) whereas my kin/elec would faceplant... in seconds, especially if it's more than minions. Kinetics is much better in teams or duos where someone else can do the damage mitigation. Also bear in mind that you don't get fulcrum for 32 levels either.

EDIT: I would second that rad, dark and storm are the three best soloers. My 31 TA/Sonic is also very nice on the rare occasion that oil slick lights but I wouldn't try TA until they finally fix oil slick.

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But bear in mind that it's not AoE, it's a cone attack.

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It's a giant cone, like Gale. You could be blindfolded, spun around and probably still manage to hit the whole spawn with seeds.

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For /Dark Corruptors, Rain of Fire and Rain of Ice (whatever the proper name is) are great powers. They combine just wonderfully with Tar PAtch. Sadly, they are not available to Defenders. This synergy is so great that I consider Dark/ Defenders a little gimp. The closest you get is the last power in Archery - a wonderful power indeed, should be a killer with Tar Patch. But you have to contend with redraw times, which I think will be a pain for a Dark/, and you don't get your overload until level 38.

That said, I seem to be having a romance with Archery atm.

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I have a 24 Dark/Archery solo based character on the go for quiet times and he's really effective. The redraw isn't as bothersome as you might think. You don't need to cycle sets rapidly like you might in other defender sets. DN, TP, FS and you are good to go with your secondary without having to worry about dark powers again.

He just thinks nothing about wiping out large spawns. The damage mitigation is great and the archery damage was great earlier on, respectable now he's in his 20s and has SO's an Aim and I would imagine outrageous once RoA is available regularly.

I've gone from loving my Kin to finding him quite annoying. He's powerful for sure and a fantastic asset to teams but the buffs and siphons have such a short duration it gets mind-numbingly frustrating having to cycle a rapid buff/attack chain over and over and over and "SB plz" and "SHUT THE FRIG UP, I'M FRIGGING BUSY ALRIGHT!!!!" *snaps*

You get my point?

He's great in small doses but for several hours a night my nerves are in tatters. The quick fixes of fulcrum joy and speed boost carnage are like crack cocaine. Short lived and therefore prone to rapid dependance and tolerance. After two weeks of solid kin/elec I switched to my ice/storm and.. actually... had... fun.