Looking for Feedback on Storm Guide (02 Boost extract)

Well, I've been playing Storm Defenders (Well, okay, I'm a one toon kind of guy, Storm Defender) since March 2004, and I have often considered writing a guide. Over the years I have jotted down notes here and there, but I always felt like there was someone out there more qualified than I was to write a guide. Well, I've now been playing my storm defender so long I think I could play him while asleep, and although there may be more qualified people out there it seems like a new guide is in order. Plus soloing an AV on my Storm/Psy gave me a big ego.

However, when I started to write, I realized I had a lot to say, and wondered if anyone would really care. So I thought I would post sections as I go along to find out what people are interested in getting from a guide. I assume a basic understanding of the game, but not knowledge of how the mechanics work. So Below is my section on O2 Boost, and I would appreciate feedback on what you look for in a guide.

Is this "OMG WT? Too Long", do you wish it was organized differently, do you wish there were more numbers, more qualitative information/anecdotes, more information on leveling up, etc. Vigilance isn't explained and should be! ED doesn't need an explanation. Your color choice is HORRIBLE! You get the idea. Any feedback would be appreciated.

02 Boost:
Activation Time:2.27s
Recharge Time:4.00s
Endurance Cost:13.00
Available Level:1
Power Type:Click
Target Type:Friendlies
Power Range:80.00 ft.
Effect Area:Single Target
Effects:
@lvl 50: heal for 177
8.65 stun and sleep protection (60 seconds)
86.5 end drain protection (60seconds)
173% sleep resistance (60 seconds)
+108% perception (60 seconds)

Should I take it?:
YES!
Storm Defenders tend to have strong opinions about taking O2 Boost or not. I fall strongly into the, "If you didn't take O2 Boost you have no business being a defender!" camp. Unless you are planning on soloing, but then I hate gale, and would rather take O2 boost anyway.

Basic Slotting:
I suggest taking O2 boost and slotting it to the ED cap for recharge and heal. If you have slots to spare, or find that it is using too much endurance, add an endurance reducer. Because you have an inherent power that provides an endurance discount whenever your allies hurt, you may find the the endurance enhancer is entirely skippable. If, however, you find that you tend to use O2 Boost primarily as a buff, when your team is at full health, you may want to consider slotting it for endurance reduction.
What is this ED cap?
After buffing the attribute of a power to a certain point, through enhancements (set bonuses and external buffs are exempted except in pvp), the enhancements start to become less effective. For attributes in class A, meaning a lvl 50 SO provides a 33% buff to that attribute for a level 50 character(these include damage, recharge, accuracy, and endurance), this starts to happen at 70%. However, up until buffing an attribute 88% the enhancements are still 90% effective, and are 70% effective up to 95%. Once you cross the 95% threshold, enhancements are only 15% effective. Thus, the ED cap means 95% or the equivalent of 3 even level SOs.

The Heal:
At low levels, this heal is mostly a band aid that washes away when it even thinks there might be water coming (read not especially effective) but once you have access to higher level enhancements this can actually be quite a powerful heal (especially if you take Power Build Up from the Power Mastery Epic Pool which provides a 98% heal buff). With 95% boost from heal enhancements that's 345 points of healing and with Power Build Up it's ~520 (that's slotted heal other level). that's not too shabby, although you can only get 3-4 heals off at that level, depending on slotting. Although certainly not Storm's most powerful damage mitigation tool, usually storm's defenses are centered around certain anchors (wherever you happen to be with hurricane, your snow storm anchor, and wherever Freezing Rain and Lightning Storm are cast) and often teammates are not near these anchors. Rather than needing to run across the battlefield to a teammate on the other side (which may not be appreciated by your teammates if you're running hurricane, and may not be smart if you're pinning an enemy in a corner), O2 boost allows you to target an ally that is outside of your "storm zone". It will also have an immediate mitigation impact, making it one of your fastest damage mitigation tool. Especially on teams with more experienced players, who are already used to keeping their characters alive on their own, O2 boost is often the only healing required on a team (especially if you are using your other tools correctly).

The Stun and Sleep Protection:
In addition to providing a heal, O2 Boost also provide, stun and sleep protection, sleep resistance, end drain and -recovery resistance, and +perception. Unfortunately these buffs only last one minute often making it impractical to keep everyone on the team supplied with the buff. However, the buff is not something to be overlooked. If fighting enemies that are known to have high levels of stun and sleeps (Freakshow and Malta for example) it can often be good to keep those players without mez protection (squishies) buffed, especially if you notice that certain people seem to have a play style that gets them mezzed more than others. At the low levels, you encountered many enemies (Freaks and Lost) that have significant stuns often before many non-squishies have taken their mez protection. This makes O2 Boost invaluable at lower levels.
A Word About Mez Magnitudes:
The way mez's work in the game is that if the magnitude of a mez exceeds your level of mez protection, then you are subjected to that effect. For example if you have 2 points of hold protection and are hit with a magnitude 2 hold with a 6 second duration nothing happens. If however you have less than 2, say 1.9, points of hold protection, then you will be held for 6 seconds. Mez protection vs. mez magnitude however is calculated ongoing, so if at any point your protection exceeds the magnitude, you will no longer be under the influence of the mez. Thus, casting O2 boost on someone after they have been stunned, frees them from the effect. The same can be said for sleep, although any heal or attack will bring a player out of sleep, but, being able to preemptively prevent sleep is a special feature of O2 Boost. Note, that the mez protection from O2 boost can stack with itself, so multiple applications will increase the targets sleep and stun protection!
A Word About Mez Resistance:
Now mez resistance has no impact on whether or not you are held, but it will impact how long the hold lasts. If you have 50% hold resistance and are struck by the 6 second hold, you will then be held for 4 seconds. "Wait 4, seconds!!???" you may ask! Shouldn't that by 3 seconds? Well, no. The duration of a mez is calculated according to:

Oh, ouch, yeah. You're gonna want to cut that down a lot. Most of the people who look through guides are beginner-moderately experienced players for whom a lot of this isn't important. I think you should definitely cut the blurbs on status protection/resistance formulas.

Well, part of my hope was to try to create a pseudo complete guide that would have the answers to all of the questions in one place so that you wouldn't have to go hunting for them.

perhaps a beginners and advanced version?

Quick notes on my O2 Boost playstyle.

I don't really care about the healing effect, but I absolutely adore the status protection buff. Consequently I slot Golgis and spam it much like Clear Mind. For this type of usage, recharge reduction is optional (you're spamming it regularly but not faster than the 4s base recharge allows), while endurance reduction is important (the healing pretty much ensures you're getting no Vigilance ever). Recharge reduction is nice if you continue spamming during combat, and find you want to be able to throw out a fast O2 Boost as a heal between uses of it as a buff -- Storm has better panic buttons IMO though, so I skip the recharge slotting.

Also, this is minor, but if you have Stun or Sleep duration bonuses from sets, they should add a tiny bonus to some of O2 Boost's effects. Power Build Up too FWIW.

The red text isn't helpful to my eyes. I think you could give a newbie version of the power and then toss in the more hardcore info in a appendix where you expand on the info for various powers. There are a large number of guides that toss in a ton of info, but they tend to break it down so people can digest it in more favorable sizes.

So, thoughts on restructuring the Guide?

All non power specific information could be moved to an appendix, with links, so that will remove a lot of the text. For individual powers, would you list a basic followed by "advanced information" or would you have all of the "basic information" together, and all of the "advanced information" together?

And then the question would be what information would you want in the basic section, and what information would you hope for in the advanced section?

Color options to replace the red:
Choice 1
Choice 2
Choice 3: suggest an alternative.

If you're going to explain things like ED and Mez resistance, I reckon they're better set up as appendices which you refer to. O2 Boost isn't the only place where you'll want to reference ED if you're going into this level of detail.

I'd also maybe make a synopsis for each power, describe the core of the power in two or three sentences, before launching into the details. eg

"O2 Boost is a low strength single target heal. It also gives the target resistance to stuns and sleep (but not hold), resistance to endurance drain and improved perception for one minute, making it a valuable pre-emptive buff against certain enemies."

One spelling mistake I found, you mention "Malta scrappers" instead of sappers at one point.

Thank you for catching the typo, i'm sure there are many more in there .

I'm a numbers person, so the raw data means more to me, but it's good to be reminded that some people prefer a description, round 2 will incorporate that, as well as the shift of mechanics information to an appendix(the existence of which probably would have become inevitable as I fleshed out the rest of the powers).

I like the slotting recommendations. But combining that with ED definitions makes it more difficult to scan through to read the information that as an experienced player, I'd be interested in your take on.

Alternately a newbie storm player may not care that much about IO Set slotting to begin with. So I agree to split up the content a bit into basic and advanced, maybe into different posts.

Also I'd consider including build recommendations. But include multiples, i.e. a lvling build to 20, then 32, 45, 50, or whatever. I know my build changed as I leveled a couple of times.

One thing I'd mention about O2 is the realization that it's presence does not make a Stormy a 'healer'. It'll barely make a dent in a tanker for one thing. It's possible to get 'O2 locked' where the only thing you can do is spam O2. Once your in that situation it's difficult to find time to activate your other powers to help stabilize the situation. Also, I can't count the number of times I've looked at the team window, realized someone was taking dmg that I couldnt easily stop, try to target them, then hit O2, only to see that they're already dead. Storm players focus is on the targets, not their team 90% of the time. That can make it hard to pay attention to the green health bars sometimes...

I look forward to reading this. It may overwhelm anyone just wanting a quick idea of what Storm is about, but I've been playing the set for quite a while and I learned a thing or two up there myself, so I think it will appeal to people who want lots of information.

I agree that the ED part is applicable to all powers and should go somewhere outside the O2 Boost section. I'd also try to get the basic and advanced slotting sections adjacent.

And, while you're talking about slotting, something I always like to see in a guide is how important it is to slot, and what you'll get out of it, not number-wise but what effect it has playstyle-wise.

For instance, Thunder Clap will stun minions for a decently long time out of the box, so if you just want to use it occasionally, it'll be fine with X (insert your recommendation here), but with Y (more recommendation here), you can perma-stun minions with it.

Also, really like the advanced slotting section with the discussion of unique IOs.

O2 on a Storm defender - oh hell yes. With controllers it doesn't always matter so much as they control!!! But Stormies deffo and its got nothing to do with the heal. That heal is just duct taped on to get people to take the sodding thing but really its the resistance to end drain etc that I like.