Draggynn

Given how fluid the community is and that for many people their real lives can prohibit entering one month, I would continue to advocate as I have before for a more open system. Rather than mandating that people participate every month (where we end up with people dropping out and very few artists by the end) I would advocate making every month open to everyone. Players vote on the pieces and points are awarded. 10 points to first, 5 for second, 3 for third, and 1 for submitting (I made this numbers up) Then at the end of the year the artist with the most points wins.

Entering the contest late means that you have lost out on the opportunity to win points in earlier months, but means that talented artists who join our community after the start deadline aren't shut out of the competition, and can still enjoy a month win, even if they would be unable to achieve a contest win. This also means that an artist that cannot complete a submission one month, can still continue to participate later.

Given that this idea has received no support in the past I suspect people like the reality television sense that comes from elimination, and it certainly makes it feel more like a competition. This was just my brainstorm of how to avoid some of the problems that have arisen in the last several years and try to get a contest that lasts the whole year.

Regardless, Kudos to you for being willing to run it DeeDee!!

It does not have a cool down, but it will self suppress. In other words the proc will not fire if it is currently active on you. Rather than refreshing the duration, or stacking, the proc will simply be ignored.

It is rather clear that the OP has no interest in the feedback that has been provided in the thread, and if this build works for them, GREAT! And although this build is significantly better than the first build posted there are still some flaws. Some advice directed to other people looking for build advice:

If you are having endurance troubles then the very first step is to stick a Numina in Health along with the Miracle. That won't solve your problems (since you don't have an endurance recovery power in your epic, you will almost certainly need incarnate abilities to fully manage your endurance) but it will help.

As has already been pointed out, Freezing Rain is far under slotted. This power should have recharge and Procs in it. I can think of very few situation in which the defense debuff from FR would be insufficient, but the additional debuff from shield breaker would be. If you need more defense debuff on a target, then I would recommend taking tornado. (In fact, almost all high performance Earth/Storm builds will take Tornado because Earth has an immobilize that suppresses Knockback allowing Tornado to deal massive amounts of damage. If I was only going to have three slots in Freezing Rain, I would probably go: Recharge, Recharge, Achilles' Heel. For a more detailed explanation of FR option, I direct you to my guide. Numbers are slightly different for controllers, but it will give you an idea.

Also, you are trying to build for both ranged defense, and smashing/Lethal defense and as a result you fail to soft cap either. Now granted, with a controller you generally have enough lockdown that defense is not a major concern, but to the extent that you are going that route, you are generally better off soft capping (That means hitting 45%) of either ranged or smash/lethal, rather than going for mid 30s on both. (If you are only planning on running incarnate content, then this is less relevant as the softcap there is 59%) The difference between 45% defense and 35% defense is the difference between getting hit 15% of the time, and 5% of the time. In other words that final 10% means that you're only getting hit 1/3 as often. The absolute minimum you should do on this front is slotting 4 kinetic combats in Seismic Smash. (4 enfeebled operations aren't bad either, I would probably pull slots from either Thunderclap or Stalagmites and Seismic Smash)

Soundtrack your build will be in better shape than Swansu's when it comes to endurance because you have conserve power. But you will need to make some enhancement modifications. Given this combinations high endurance drain the miracle/numina uniques in health and a performance shifter +endurance in Stamina are almost necessities. If you make those changes you may still have endurance troubles given your high recharge, but I wouldn't say that you would need an incarnate power to make the build viable (although cardiac certainly wouldn't hurt and won't require grinding incarnate content to the same extent that destiny would.) whereas without any endurance gaining power Swansu's build would likely prove painful preincarnate content even with those IOs.

In addition to those changes, other things that jump out at me:

damage proc would be better in roots, probably swap out the damage/range

Look at some plant guides, loading up creepers with procs seems to be the way to go.

There are other optimizations that could be made, especially if you're willing to play around with Hamios to free up slots (Steamy Mist and Temp Invulnerability) but since this doesn't seem to be a no cost spared build, I won't go there.

As your character is currently built, especially with that high of a recharge, you will almost certainly find that you run out of endurance if you try to run at full power for an extended period of time. Of course whether this is a "major" problem or not depends on how good you are at endurance management (modifying attack chains when you need to, perhaps not summoning LS every fight, etc.)

Furthermore, if you want to run at full power all the time, ageless is not your only option. The cardiac alpha slot will help substantially on this front, or if you don't want to be reliant on any incarnate content, pick an epic pool that provides you with an endurance recovery mechanism (fire mastery, ice mastery, primal forces mastery, leviathan mastery, mu mastery, soul mastery) and that may well be sufficient for most purposes.

For Swansu: I can't comment on ageless since I almost always go with Clarion for the mez protection so someone else will need to chime in on that.

The only thing that really jumps out at me in your build is that the Soulbound Allegiance in Tornado is wasted, it works out to be only a 6.25% damage increase: you would better off just slotting a damage IO. (see my guide if you want the numbers).

Alright, I only have a couple of minutes so just some quick thoughts looking at the most recent build you posted:

1) Unless you really, really love Snow Storm, it's over slotted. If you're hoping to be an AV killer, take ALL of those slots and stick them in Tornado, and then you can slot Expedient Reinforcements (same defense + recharge) or blood mandates (more defense). That -recharge really is worthless since Snow Storm and FR will pretty much soft cap everything.

2) Howl: swap in the damage proc to deal more damage

3) Freezing Rain, underslotted for recharge, accuracy and slow are far less important than recharge in this power. Again, FR and SS can handle slow, you really just want FR up as often as possible.

4) You can pull a slot from hurricane if you need it somewhere else

5) You can stick a stealth spot in a sprint power, freeing up a slot if you want. Especially since stealth with super speed and steamy mist is redundant. If you're going to be running SS, you don't need stealth.

6) Tornado could use more slots as already discussed

7) wouldn't hurt survivability to get a little resistance in Dark Embrace.

8) Performance shifters will perform better in Stamina. (end mod, proc, and standard end mod IO)

I would not try to work burnout into the build. I have not tried it, but suspect the endurance penalty would be too great.

If you have enough endurance to not need cardiac, I would consider going spiritual before Musculature (more Freezing Rain, more Lightning Storm, more endurance recovery from dark consumption)

Yes, the suppression has been removed. It did used to work as explained under the historical heading. The suppression was added, I believe in part, to help resolve an issue where the proc was firing EVERY time. They have since fixed this issue, and the suppression has been removed. However, the proc self suppresses (it will not fire if the buff is currently active on you) but no longer has a suppression period after the proc has expired.

I've voiced my displeasure with this forum elsewhere, and it is my intention to do what small part I can in killing this forum by only providing feedback to builds posted in the appropriate AT forum section. Although I can't speak to the motivation of other build feedback givers, it appears that several prominent voices, for whatever reason, have opted not to respond to posts in this forum as well.

This build is a little bit odd as a high recharge build, so I assume that a secondary unmentioned consideration was cost. In general, a high recharge build entails fitting in as many purple sets as possible (10% recharge bonuses that you don't lose when you exemp), where as you dropped down on the normal of purple sets from your defense build. I will assume this is a cost consideration rather than an oversight in this case.

Granted, at this level of recharge, additional recharge doesn't make a huge difference, but upping the recharge can let you go with another option than Spiritual, since almost all Storm Builds are going to be endurance intensive (especially with high levels of recharge, Freezing Rain, Tornado, and Lightning Storm are not cheap).

Freezing Rain: As local said, damage is not useful in Freezing Rain. You will deal substantially more damage slotting procs than you will slotting for damage. If there are no procs in Freezing Rain, then accuracy is irrelevant, as the number of procs increases, accuracy becomes more important so those procs will hit on the first tic before enemies have been debuffed by Freezing Rain. You would be better of exchanging your two acc/dam IOs for a pure accuracy and a damage proc.

Hurricane: I agree with Local in putting 4 slots here. You can easily take slots from one of the numerous powers you have an extra bonusless slot in.

In terms of which set to swap out, the easy answer is turn one of those 6.25% bonuses into a 10% bonus with a purple set. Other places to consider are in Tornado, since the power is auto-hit and therefore doesn't benefit from any of the accuracy bonuses and thus can be slotted more optimally.

If you're looking to spend more money, Hami-O Ribosomes in Mind Over Body would be superior to your current slotting as well

Someone else will have to come along and provide more feedback on the Plant aspects of this build, but here are some pointers on the storm aspect to think about:

Freezing Rain: Damage is the least important aspect of Freezing Rain to slot. Freezing Rain should be slotted first for recharge (so that it is up more often), damage should be the last thing you slot. If you're going to slot FR that heavily with procs, then accuracy can be important to ensure that it can hit, but more recharge in that power is a must. A pure recharge IO in place of your acc/dam/end will take 3 seconds off the recharge time, definitely worth it in my book.

Thunderclap:
I would check to see if this proc actually fires. When I last checked, back in March, this proc would only fire in PvP, so I suspect you won't find it particularly useful there.

Tornado:
This is another power, where if you are intending to use it a lot, you will get more benefit out of additional recharge. Also, at the damage level you are currently at, slotting Tornado for more damage may actually be better than slotting with a proc (you lose the potential for burst damage from the proc, but total damage is greater, and damage will be more consistent. See my guide for the full details on that tradeoff)

Seismic Smash: If you are going for the soft cap in Smashing Lethal, then this really ought to be 4 Kinetic Combats. The addition of some recharge in Seismic Smash will be nice, and I predict you won't much notice the drop in accuracy if you can keep Freezing Rain up.

And personally, I love Hurricane and would find a way to fit it in, but obviously avoid it if it doesn't work with your playstyle.

Hmm, old thread. Just some alternative perspectives on this: