Thorm

40 to 50 city zone is Peregrine Island, aka "PI". You'll find a ferry in Talos.

Singy can't be healed.

And yeah I support the don't skip Hurricane, it is kind of the signature power! Even if it's situational, it's storm!
Still, if you were to pick just one, whatever the primary, it'd be freezing rain. 3-slot recharge in there, and then maybe end red.

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you want 207.5% global recharge from IOs to get PA perma.

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K, thought I forgot something... Slotting recharge in the power!
So assuming you get 97.5% recharge from PA slots (pretty good already), you'd need 110% global recharge!

Whatever your primary, you MUST pick up Freezing Rain with Storm.
#1 Storm power in my book.

Lightning Storm is good to have too!
I'd prolly say that's #2!

Then I'd say get Hurricane, pretty cool situational power, especially with Grav to follow up wormhole into a corner. That takes a bit to learn, and it's frustrating how you don't end up using more but it's VERY potent.
#3 for grav!

I really like Tornado myself, but on a grav it's much less potent than on an earth or fire as you can't spam -KB on everything. Still very nice for strong single targets that are immune to KB or that you're spamming your hold on.
Just remember it comes with heavy dmg (if you can negate the KB) or otherwise HEAVY KB, as well as defense debuff, disorient, and some "afraid" effect. It's autohit, too.
I'd say #4 or #5.

I know lots of people don't pick snow storm. It's a power I really like... I guess you can go without it. Still a major debuff imo, I enjoy the slow, I enjoy the -fly, I enjoy the auto-hit, I enjoy dropping it on top of FR, I enjoy slotting procs in there...
#5 or #4!

O2 I rarely pick, it's an ok heal once slotted up, but doesn't really feel like it's part of Storm for me, more like something else on top of the package... I use it on my fire/ cause I hate loosing imps all the time, I don't have it on the grav/, I have it on a /dark defender... Your choice really, but won't help you or your pet on a grav/ and I think most other choices would benefit your team more...

Then TC I don't really like on my storms, think I still have it on the grav, pretty good to stack on top of WH for disorient resistant mobs / bosses but you really can play storm without missing it imo. At least I never got addicted to it.

Thinking about it now, I think the phantoms are actually summoned during PA activation?
Will have to double check ingame, would change numbers some.

I'm really not sure, just pulled my numbers from CoD (PA, AM & Hasten stats) and ran a quick math, but maybe I'm wrong...

240 / 4.075 ~= 58.9
That's where I pulled the 307.5% bonus from.

To get PA perma you need to have PA recharge + activation <= PA duration.

Each phantom lasts 60s, but they're summoned 1s apart, so "total" PA duration would be 62s (from 1st phantom summoned to last phantom vanishing).

PA activation is 3.1s.

That means you need to get PA recharge to 62-3.1 = 58,9s.
PA "base" recharge is 240s.
That means about 307.5% recharge bonus.
Hasten + AM brings 100% to the table so you want 207.5% global recharge from IOs to get PA perma.

That is if I'm not mistaken.

Created an earth / thorny.
Would need some general advice on that combo. Mainly on what powers to skip and why.
This is for pve only, don't really care about the pvp part, but feel free to post if you got input on this too.

For now the little guy is 18, skipped prison, cages and crystals from earth and picked everything from thorny (had earth experience but not thorny so I kinda had to try).
I like darts, skewer & impale (ok impale is a bit slow but I love that animation), I use fling thorns when facing multiple (3+, sometimes 2) but I can't say it feels great for now (everything is still underslotted)...

I also usually pick stamina at 20, but if I wanna do that, I'll have to respec out of 2 powers. Was thinking about fling thorns & aim. While I like aim, I think I can cope with a couple more levels without. And I'm not doing that much AOE for now.

My main question was about thorntrops. Is that useful / worth it with earth? Sands provide a nice slow area, so I guess thorntrops would be just for the fear? Or to stack with sands? Anyone working with both?

Then the AOE, fling thorns & thorn burst, how good are these in the "end" (let's say at least slotted with 4 or 5 SO's)? I can't see myself going without any AOE, and while I LOVE the cages graphics, I don't really like slotting cages with procs & spamming these for dmg...
On the other hand I'm quite lazy with lining up a cone as short as fling thorns... I guess thorns burst will be ok being pbae.

I really enjoy how the combo seems to kill targets' defense, and can't get enough Quicksand, I really love this power (that's partly why I avoid cages, they tend to mess with the sands!).
I also like how Aim & Stalagmites share the same recharge, quite easy to fire both together, really helps offset the low acc of the stun, at least with crappy enhancers, heh. Handy when you cannot sands first for the def debuff.

Anyways, here are some randoms thoughts from these early levels, I'd really appreciate if people who've played that combination in the 30s & up could share how they specced, and what they enjoyed or disliked.

Thanks.

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Hot Feet is on ranged damage scale, not melee damage scale. (Kane1 March 10th)

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I'm happy to throw this in as an issue if other people agree.

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Whirling hands and ice sword circle are PBAoEs and are on the melee scale. Sounds like an issue to me.

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Hotfeet radius 20
WH radius 8
ISC radius 10

Great guide CDN, thanks much, made me try it! (and I'm having loads of fun)

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Gloom:
Your second single-target attack. This will be the first point of contention in this guide. Some people prefer Moonbeam, the snipe, for their big single target attack, but I found I move around a lot lining up my cones and debuffing with hurricane. Hence, I didn’t want an attack that rooted me and is interruptable. I find Dark Blast + Gloom work perfectly to whittle down a Boss while my AoE’s take care of the minions.

Moonbeam:
Snipe attack. Good damage, but I didn’t want an attack that forced me not to move while it activated. This is a personal choice. Some people prefer this over Gloom.

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Just wanted to add something on the moonbeam vs gloom subject :

While I usually go with gloom on my dark's, this time I went with moonbeam, just for a change, and I was quite pleased to find out that the snipe works awesome with storm powers, especially hurricane, but also snow storm, freezing rain, etc.

You're not getting interrupted much when your foes are getting knocked down / back, are slowed, and have their accuracy nuked down.

Sure the animation time is still huge, but you get the pulling goodness of a snipe, and you can also use it in combat. So for people who like snipe powers, I'd say go for it here, works well with storm!
(and I gotta say I like moonbeam's animation / sound)

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One more comment, chilling embrace for dominators does not do -res, just -movement -recharge.

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Oh are you sure?
I thought that was just blasters that didn't get the -dmg?

Also on the CE topic, isn't it worth it to stack hot feet + chilling embrace? I mean to slow more with less enhancements, ofc that costs a power slot + some end.

But CE + hot feet (or artic air for ice primary) seemed like nifty combos to me (haven't tried though).