Draggynn

I believe they were renamed Vanguard pieces, but someone can correct me if I'm wrong.

Additional testing suggests that the AoE damage componenet is autohit as well.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/39757765@N05/4094614518/
Although it looks as if as a pseudopet you can't get tornado's detailed information to display if the chat window.

Alright, some questions to consider: do you really only care about hitting the 40% defense like you claim, or are you really shooting for the soft cap? And which toggles do you intend on running, because steamy mist + maneuvers + combat jumping =~14%. Although a solid build you sacrifice some utility in favor of some set bonuses that aren't especially strong.

Depending on which toggles you intend on running you may be better served by slotting end reduction IOs than slotting for bonuses. For example, the 2.5% bonus is only ~.04 end/sec whereas 1 end reduction IO in maneuvers is .12 end/sec and a second one .05 end/sec. That might also free you up to put an achilles heel proc in FR.

If you're willing to give up ranged defense Tenebrous Tentacles is probably one that I would switch to slotting for damage. If price isn't an issue, I'd probably go with a purple set for the recovery and recharge.

The Reactive Armor in steamy mist is another place where it seems you are just struggling for the range bonus and not a very good one (.625%) and could be slotted with another LotG.

Depending on how much you use tornado, 6 slotting with blood mandates will give you 3.75% ranged defense and 4.69% aoe defense but at the cost of the loss of all recharge in it.

If you decide you don't need the range bonus in LS, I would put a hold proc in there.

As already discussed maneuvers is a good place to invest more slots if you're planning on running it regularly. Both endurance reduction, and defense.

Depending on your play style, you may still find you have endurance trouble, so I would recommend considering dropping electric fence (again, depends on how much you use tornado) or thunderclap (since you don't have dark pit to stack with it) in favor of powersink.

I'm sure someone (Garent) will probably be along shortly with a build. I refuse to post actually builds, but am happy to provide critiques...but I'm often not on a computer with Mids installed, so one of the briefer export options would be helpful rather than just the code.

Just to explain the Paragon Wiki page a little better, in a toggle or a passive, every 10 seconds you will get a 5% resistance bonus up to 25%. Thus it will take 40 seconds to reach your full status resistance after zoning or any other action which resets your bonuses. However, assuming you don't zone, the bonuses last indefinitely, so at any point you can turn off the toggle power and keep however much of the bonus has "charged" at that point.

I think the aegis is now the hardest IO to understand since they fixed force feedback. I hope this helps.

Ice/Storm does have nice synergy, and is especially popular because the rains use the blaster modifiers instead of the defender values. Also /ice is fairly new for defenders so that may also be contributing to the popularity you're seeing. It may also be similar to my grandfather noticing that whenever my grandmother was pregnant, the news was full of stories about pregnant women! There aren't actually any more storm/ice defenders, you're just more likely to notice them now.

Some preliminary thoughts on your build to get you started. Although it will helpful to know more about your intended goals and play preferences (teaming, solo, pvp, I <3 KB):

I am not a fan of gale, and would therefore only slot it for accuracy, but if you enjoy using it a lot, then the recharge matters.

I wouldn't bother with slows in your attacks since storm has freezing rain and snow storm to provide slows if you need them (everything will be at the slow and recharge cap) so your attacks can focus more heavily on damage.

Knockback distance in hurricane is wasted, because you would actually rather things stay in melee range to be affected by the debuff than be knocked away.

Freezing rain does squat for damage so damage IOs are a waste. Defense debuff is better used in FR (30%) than tornado (15%).

For one of my MoSTF runs we used PA to tank LR until we had all of the towers down at which point an actual tank took over. To avoid problems when PA needed to be recast, several seconds before PA went down the entire team would flee far from LR's aggro range. Then the illusion troller would sneak back in, cast PA, and we would all return to beating up the tower, and when PA was about to drop, all flee again. Not the noblest tactic, perhaps, but it worked.

Yes, as with all damage, the proc will deal more because your enemy is debuffed.

However, procs are unaffected by damage buffs. So if you eat a red inspiration and then use a proc attack the damage will be the same. Likewise, the damage of the proc will be unaffected by a damage debuff (this makes them an especially popular way to deal with the -damage crash from rage).

You're close to right. The problem is distinguishing between mez duration reduction and mez resistance. The Aegis provides 25% resistance, and each impervious skin provides 7.5% resistance (The text claims 7.5 duration reduction, but this is wrong it's resistance, while the aegis claims 20% duration reduction and this is correct, since it's really 25% resistance). Thus your total mez resistance is actually (7.5*5 +25) = 62.5% which results in a mez duration of 1/(1+.625) = 61.5% or a mez duration reduction of 38.5%.

The actual calculation is straightforward, except that real numbers reports mez duration reductions. If you look at the real numbers, it will report your imperious skin bonuses as providing a 1 - 1/(1+.075*5) = 27% reduction and your Aegis as providing a 1 - 1/(1+.25) = 20% reduction but your total mez duration reduction is really only 38.5% not the 47% that they would suggest. The mez duration number reported in true numbers is accurate, but the percentage reduction numbers aren't.

Hopefully that helped. Let me know if you have further questions.

This is Aracanaville's guide to defense and is the go to source for all questions about how defense, to-hit, and accuracy work:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=115184

The short answer though is that only one type of defense can apply to a given attack, and the game will choose which ever value is higher. So if you are attacked by an attack that is both fire and melee the game will choose to apply your fire defense, and the melee defense will have no impact. If you are hit by the attack, you are correct, you would take 90 damage.

Although the Aegis unique provides 25% mez resistance or a 1/(1 + .25) = 80% so a 20% reduction in duration. Which for me, at least, is worthwhile. Also the Impervious skin IO is 1/(1+.075) which is 7% reduction, which might we worthwhile depending on your build. Unfortunately mez resistance is susceptible to diminishing returns (due to the inverse nature of the relationship, something that the true numbers doesn't accurately report). So the two together are only 1/(1+.325) => 24.5% reduction. But the set bonus numbers are hardly worth mentioning.

Dr. English is correct about the endurance. Especially if you're not using set bonuses to get additional recovery running assault and tactics as well as steamy mist and charged armor will run you down with the high endurance powers like LS and tornado. Fortunately, recovery bonuses are some of the easiest to get in the game since they often only require 2 pieces of a set, so this can be dealt with as can slotting heavily for end reduction.

Also, depending on how much higher in level the mobs you fight are, freezing rain can mitigate the need for accuracy with it's defense debuff largely elliminating the need for tactics (assuming it recharges fast enough). Also, I know many people hate the glowing yellow hands from hasten (although hopefully not for much longer) but I think storm is one of the sets that can get the most use out of hasten since we have a number of powerful abilities with longer recharges(Freezing Rain, Tornado, Lightning Storm). Hasten will take amost 10 seconds off of Freezing Rain's recharge the way you currently have it slotted!

Depending on how much you use Snow Storm, and how you use Freezing Rain and Snow Storm together, the slows in Freezing Rain may be pointless. Snow Storm on its own will put most enemies at the slow cap, so if you tend to use snow storm and freezing rain on the same group you can drop some of the slows from Freezing Rain. If you tend to target different groups with them, or just use Freezing Rain and skip snow storm, the slows are a good investment.

I hope those thoughts are helpful.