FrostyG

This is about the best I could swing together that would still have offense levels at where I'd want them to be.

softcap s/l, 41.6% ranged
Perma PA (not ideal slotting, but oh well).
both shields
ice app
Musculature Alpha
*just essentially sub in scorp if that's the way you want to go, then it would be perma spider and just shy of ranged softcap.

The pvp proc means I'd probably play this toon 3% shy of this build more than likely.

When your debuffs are running at 15% (or less) or their usual strength that is what I generally view as "basically nullified"

Especially in the case of hurricane which if we recall the OP's post he cited feelings of "uselessness" against hard targets. That is pretty common when you have a power that completely shuts down pretty much everything you face and then barely has any impact on an AV.

Is it worth it to run hurricane against an AV? that will be a game time decision imo. My fire/storm troller doesn't and instead just opted to build for softcap def when I had it set up as an AV spec. My storm/son didn't run it solo vs most AV's, also opting for a ranged def spec, but with the option of picking up cardiac that may change if I ever revisit the toon as it ends up being a lot of endurance for the relative defense it provides against AV's.

Then again endurance wasn't a major issue for my storm/son (though was still an issue), so I'd prefer to just go musculature or spiritual over cardiac as the gain from those would probably be better than that offered by running hurricane against an AV.

IIRC you simply can't activate roots on targets that are off the ground, so a plant dom often has no way of getting them down there. Many of earths powers only affect ground based targets as well, but stone cages can be used on airborne targets and will then ground them.

Earth/fire is a very strong dominator. It was my first 50 dom and still remains my favorite combo for them.

People will often cite that many of the earth powers don't benefit from domination, but that is fine by me because if you flip that statment it just means they don't rely on domination to excel. And excel they do. That isn't to say that domination mode doesn't benefit earth cause stalagmites is great with it. You just happen to still excel at control even when domination is down, which is great while leveling a toon imo.

Earth benefits tremendously from the difficulty slider option. Increasing spawn sizes was a great change for the set while solo because the powers tend to be large AOE's and aren't all on rapid fire recharges. So fighting bigger spawns is the way to go. Fire assault gets solid aoe damage by lvl 20 (well lvl 4 with firebreath really) so tackling big spawns is easy.

One more benefit to earth for doms is that they are very reliant upon their powers actually hitting. Once they mature they have ample tools to fall back on in the event things go wrong, but up until you start throwing lots of recharge at them they are very susceptible to getting whomped on if they miss with key powers. Earth solves that at lvl 6 with quicksand. Additionally QS keeps them bunched up and away from you should you happen to miss whereas most other doms would be surrounded and getting punched in the face at that point.

Earth/fire was a very easy leveling experience and only continues getting stronger as the game progresses. If you can fit the two res procs in animate stone the thing becomes an unstoppable beast too.

What do you want them to do exactly?
It couldn't be permitted to persist as it was functioning in rains.
It is obvious that the 'dev's' that made that statement had never looked at the interaction of these procs and rapid fire pseudo pets. If they had they would have never said it was WAI.

They simply overlooked this aspect which while it sucks, happens to the best of us. The alternative is that they are blathering idiots who actually thought turning sleet into a nuke was a good idea and only changed their minds when a handful of players complained...

Which is more likely?

If you are saying the game is so easy you don't need debuffs then that is a different issue than the relative strength of the interface debuffs.

buff/debuff still trounces raw damage teams in both speed and safety, so I'm not sure I totally agree with your premise if that is what you are stating.

Further to that debuffing AV's (aside from -res, -regen and to a lesser extent -dam) has never been the key to success with any of them. So you relating how the debuffs aren't very effective in that environment really only speaks to how AV's have arbitrary rules that reward and punish certain properties that players bring to the fight. But again has little to do with the relative strength of the interface debuffs because they would have to be through the roof to have an impact on AV's.

For clarity though I think the interface procs aren't particularly well thought out introductions to the game as they were implemented or given the direction they seem to be going with these recent changes.

Unresistable effects are a can of worms that are hard to deal with. It's why so few player powers are unresistable. It isn't by accident.

That said, turning sleet into a 20% tohit debuff on top of everything else it already does is not a trivial or meaningless debuff (pre changes). But again, no one in their right mind would have taken that path when you could turn it into a sleet-nuke.

The initial reports sound like the changes are too harsh, or not quite working the way they probably should be, but that can hopefully be hashed out.

Not in rains they weren't. They just didn't hold a candle to the nuke rain power, but rest assured something like diamagnetic stacked to the limit (almost instantly) over a large aoe was very good indeed. Just why would anyone go that route when you could nuke that same spawn?

It's not the first time they have said something is WAI until the point they actually take the time to look at it and see it is working as anything but intended.

The most likely explanation is that no one really bothered to look closely at how rains were operating and it wasn't until a mounting concern from the player base drew their attention to it.

If it was WAI the player call for examination would have been met with "we have examined it and it is working how we intended it to work in rains". End of story. Similar to shield charge it was probably just overlooked and even when initially brought to Castles attention he didn't take a close look.

The alternative is that it WAS working how they wanted it to work in rains and they are just really bad game designers... and the handful of people on the forums/ingame complaining about it got them to rethink their stance on designing their game. I don't think that is likely though.

This is true. They don't often nerf things into obscurity. I did not see this coming. I expected a 4ish sec limit to be put on auras/rains checking this proc.

Their choice suggests they have desire for this proc to be much more of a boon to single target elimination as opposed to aoe.

If you hit one target and are close enough to receive the buff you will struggle to run out of end no matter what you do (aside from some debuffers) and no matter how you are slotted. Just the caster buff is solid recovery but one could still bottom it out if you go full out

The 'why not' approach to game is slightly ahead of the 'throw a dart at a board' approach. Except occassionally throwing the dart results in a lucky good idea, whereas the 'why not'approach never does.

Are single incarnate powers supposed to be better than entire powersets? Im curious because if they are a dev needs to be beat with a hose for that decision. I know that hey arent but im struggling to grasp why you think they should be - other than 'why not' of course.

That is unfortunate as you seem very undereducated in this area. But if your baseline is a team sized nuke that is up every 15 seconds, then everything under performs - including reactive for anyone lacking a rain.

Edit: maybe content will scale up but if it makes reactive rain look weak then pretty much every existing power in the game will be weak. Which wouldnt be very good game design.

It would be a moot argument because obviously the power is working as designed. The question is whether it is working as intended.

The fact that is has made it to live is indication of next to nothing about the future of this power. It will just join a long list of powers that players have indicated were not functioning in an ideal manner for the balance of the game only to later be adjusted when developer time/research permits.

Additionally the WAI statement by the devs has already partially been recanted and they are now "examining" it.

Playing the game against team sized spawns isn't cherry picking...
And indicating that teams kill stuff fast isn't really addressing the state of reactive+rains. Or at least no more than it addressed it with something like shieldcharge.
You are woefully mistaken. You'd be casting sleet anyway, reactive actually turns it into one of (if not) the best dpa attack in your arsenal. Sleet casts in 2.25 seconds and can take out a +2 lut. It is astounding from a dpa, dpe, and dps standpoint.

But a person wouldn't 'just' cast sleet against an AV and call it a day (although you can now do that against many normal spawns).

Perhaps not, but it actually blows shieldcharge+LR (as in the combo of those two powers together, not just individually) out of the water over time on a spawn to spawn basis. Additionally Plant/x/fire(or ice) doms are making out like bandits with this proc too. As are /fire armor toons.

Many of the pseudo pets attack 7-10x faster than the typical player powers. To combat this aspect in the past they put the 10 sec limiter on these kind of powers (because rains would have always been broken with any of the procs if allowed to fire it on each tic...think back to old pgt kind of broken except maybe moreso...). On the interface procs they have instead implement a stacking limit (though this isn't new as we already saw similar in achilies for instance). If you are allowed to stack the proc 6 times and the pseudo pet attacks 7+x faster than the average power it will just default down to stacking/attacking 6x faster with this proc than the avg powers.

Attempting to balance around that vast of a performance difference would be challenging to say the least.

Even the notion of it being ok in a team because you can't have multiple copies of it still doesn't explain away why some powers are permitted to wield the proc with such greater efficacy where the largest difference one would expect to see would be between a fast set like iceblast and a slow set like broadsword...which wouldn't even be a factor of 2x as fast.
I guess. I kind of hope not though.

Would you agree that having a rain type power is a large advantage over not having one?

When you look across the game what 'damaging attacks' are capable of being fired off 5 times per second?

Maybe a MM with all pets attacking can stream attacks close to that fast? But in a large aoe with 16 (or more given how rains work) targets easily put to the max limit.

What's the possibility that was overlooked when they put these powers into the game? I mean take a look across the game, most toons attack at a rate in excess of once per every 1.5second (proly closer to once every 2 seconds. A rain power hits 7-10 times in that same time frame.

Logically, if it is actually working as intended in a rain then it would stand to reason that it is under-performing in virtually all other powers. The rate of occurrence is just that far apart.

I'm definitely aware of where ill/cold lines up in the grand scheme. I'll just leave it at that.

But the power of ill/cold just highlights how out of whack this proc is in rains. It overshadows the most powerful controller build just by using sleet. Where does that leave cold and storm trollers that aren't nearly as strong? What of all those toons that don't have a rain power? Should having access to a rain power be a given right to have a nuke that is up every spawn?

It is broken in rains, it is really that simple. It will be altered at some point. If you are enjoying it (I think it is fantastic in non-rains, strong, but not ridiculously so) then all the power to you. But don't be too surprised when it finally gets altered.

I'm not sure I necessarily agree that the other interface choices are that disappointing. I mean compared to reactive yes definitely. I mean diamagnetic in a rain gives you what 30% tohit debuff? That is as strong as slotted defender darkest night.. If reactive wasn't overwhelmingly OP'd in a rain, that would be a very attractive aspect to add to a power like sleet.

Same goes for the damage debuff of paralytic. In something that insta layers it to the limit it is indeed very good. Actually same for the -rech (not sure of the strength of the -special) of gravimetric.

With the way rains function with these procs they are all actually very very good (or at least I consider being as strong as a signature defender power good). but you'd be a fool to take it over the ability to turn that same power into an every spawn nuke...

*the -regen proc takes flak. I suspect given the strength of the other debuffs found in interface that the decimal is in the wrong spot. Fully layerd it is probably meant to be ~600% -regen (or slightly better than something like lingering rad).

I don't find it at all fun in sleet...
It overwhelms everything else about my toon, which was carefully and meticulously crafted.

My sleet now makes old PSW look like consume from a damage standpoint...

I can walk through a x8 mission using one power and finish faster than I could before using my entire build (multi billion ill/cold that is undoubtedly faster than the vast majority of builds out there to begin with). That's fun for about 2 mins to me and then gets incredibly boring.

No doubt it is terrific for actual attacks, it is a great and strong proc. But in fast ticking rains it is beyond ridiculous.