Psylenz

Cold has no status protection like dispersion bubble. Insulation shield also has endurance drain protection. Adding freaks to the mix of sappers makes it all the more useful.

OOoo, thanks Zombie Man, I hadn't heard that one. It can definitely open up the epic shields earlier.

I really like oppressive gloom. A lot of times, the character does NOT have to go after a foe to stun him. Critters like warwolves coming knocking, up close and personal, often enough. Stacking stuns can create a big AoE of mezzed foes.

Dark miasma has -dmg, -resist, -tohit, -regen. The -regen has 3 sources: Twilight grasp (which is also -dmg and -tohit), howling twilight, which also has a good chunk of s l o w and don't forget Dark Servant's twilight grasp which is also -regen.

Thermal has heat exhaust and melt armor on long recharge. Heat exhaust is -damage, -end, -recovery, -regen. On my thermal mastermind I have to wait 16 seconds after the duration for it to fire again, but I did put a some extra recharge in my thermal build (no purps) 40% recharge bonus + hasten on top.

Melt armor is -resistance, -defense. Dark has NO -defense. -Defense is quite useful against AV and hard targets. However, it isn't stacked and my wait is 30 seconds w/o hasten.

What has not been touched on is Thermal's heal, forge, fireshields, and Thaw. Thermal's heals do not require a hit check, good for you and your pets. Forge is a buff, ~23% tohit, and 30% damage buff. Your mastermind can easily have forge on 3 pets, preferably the Big 3. Fireshields increase the resistance of pets and allies in two little clicks. Also with some resistance IO bonus slotting (Aegis and Impervium armor) with other IO bonuses my status resistance is ~30% to hold, stun, sleep, immobilize, confuse and fear -- another perk in AV fights. Thaw is generally overlooked, but a quick click can bring a pet or an ally back into the fight that is mezzed. Dark doesn't have anything like that.

If you want to softcap defense and resistance, you are NOT locked into the scorpion shield. Chill mastery has defense to smashing and lethal in Frozen Armor. I still am not a big fan of hibernate, but my appreciation for Flash Freeze has grown leaps and bounds the more that I implement it.

That's pretty solid. The only 'tweak' I would make would be for the global defense and resist bonuses in the Pet IO sets. As is, the build is very viable.

I play two defender bubblers, I think the best pairing is sonic blast. I also play a controller bubbler, and a Mastermind bubbler. No, it is NOT true about FF having less self-defense, if you remember to click Personal Forcefield when it gets really hairy.

Kinetics vs. Empathy: You can strip down your comparison of only buffs to empathy buffs, it is narrow-minded to do so since many of the buff activations are indeed also formidable debuffs. Damage debuff, endurance drain, recharge and speed debuffs can and do provide survivability to solo and teamed kinetics. Empaths cannot fort themselves, cannot increase their own speed. Empaths also have no -regen in their primary. Adrenalin Boost IS the best single target buff, but fulcrum shift is a damage capper for the team, along with a hefty debuff.

Back in the day, not quite as far as the long, long, ago, it was common practice to skip the last upgrade on Bruiser and many Robot masterminds skipped the first upgrade on Assault Bot for more burn patches and less flame thrower.

I don't recommend Frost Breath as an early powers on a stormer. It's a bit of a slow activator and can mess up your movement and rhythm. If you take it later after you have the tools to hold things together, it can be very effective.

Currently, Storm/Ice is the deadliest storm/? combo at least until fire blast is available. Ice Storm and Blizzard have blaster-equivalent damage! Freeze Ray/Bitter Freeze Ray DO have utility on hard targets.

I, too, would swap steamy mist with Aim in acquisition order.

Freezing Rain should be used to aggro/attack each and every spawn first, if you don't have gale available to blow them off their feet before they know what hit them from stealth. Freezing Rain does not need accuracy, most of the time Blizzard does not need accuracy, especially if you juice up the acc/dmg with Aim first. Lightning storm is NOT auto-hit but it does have a higher base accuracy than other secondary attacks - no acc needed. (In fact if you are going minimal slotting four ranged damage damage/recharge set IO enhancements would be the most economical slotting.)

I see you went with a patron set emphasizing endurance recovery. Storm is _very_ endurance cost intensive. Endurance cost would be my major concern from running leadership. I would not say it is impossible or unneeded, especially with your team emphasis. I would say you want ~60% endurance cost reduction if you want to run it 24/7.

Hasten is a power that isn't necessary early, but when you get to level 32, you will want it for the freezing rain, tornado, lightning storm trifecta. When you want these powers, and _I_ do, you want that NOW!

Hover is extremely useful to a stormy. You get in good position. You can put a stealth IO in hover if you want. Total invisibility from all except drones, nemesis, rularuu eyes is a good, good thing. Hover lets you position lightning storm up higher. Lightning strikes downward have less scatter. Higher storms means lightning storm will not groups that are close to the current target and draw extra aggro.

When I leveled my first stormy, we didn't have the indoor debt bonus so my SG of all defenders would go big-game hunting in Boomtown. As the song goes if you make it there you can make it anywhere, its up to you, Mr. Stormer Boomtown hurricane practice on green level mobs should give you a feel for the brush, the repel shove. You can practice stealthing in with steamy and taking spawns by surprise with freezing rain, and in your situation, put the chill in their bones with ice storm.

Deacon also left out dark/ice. Ice has the two blaster-level AoEs in Ice Storm and Blizzard. Ice Storm on a tar patch is a beautiful things.

I would submit that because Dark miasma has no inherent defense debuff that Rad blast is as useful as dark blast because of the overlap on -tohit. Of course there is no overkill in fighting debuff resistant foes Also, it seems like rad blast is very low on endurance cost.

I think it's

petsay_all <em jugglefire> hot hot hot

Check Sandolphan's guide

Forcefiled defense stacks with enforcer leadership manuvers. Good flip.

I have an Ice/FF controller that does damage at a glacial pace . At the same time, I am properly slotting Jack. I also wonder how much xp I do lose with arctic air since it seems they kill each other faster than I kill them (ha ha). Really slow, but he is really good on teams.

It's not particularly defender related, but mastermind's heal radius using twilight grasp is now the radius used by corruptors and defenders.

Periodically, I am getting some funky red line spikes - less now that the thunderstorm has passed through. My ISP has informed me that spikes of heat and unusual cold will cause connections with the cable ISP service to perform poorly.

I am rubberbanding and having server lag so bad I cannot even travel to a mission. Triumph and Virtue, not just one server not high pop servers only.