Storm Summoning Guide excerpt for feedback(Snow Storm)

This is an exerpt for my guide on Storm Summoning featuring the power Snow Storm. For other sections of my guide posted for feedback see:
Gale
O2 Boost
Steamy Mist
Freezing Rain
Hurricane
Thunder Clap
Tornado

I have already posted my guide to Gale and O2 Boost for feedback which can be found in this thread.

The original target of the guide (over a year ago) was for relatively experienced players, but those that didn't have a firm grasp of underlying game mechanics. The goal of this guide was also to be one stop shopping for any questions you might have about Storm Summoning so it is quite comprehensive (I hope). Based on feedback I have modified the structure of the guide to attempt to make it more accessible to new players, although it now has a strange combination of treating you like you know a lot and like you know nothing.

Although the guide is intended to be comprehensive, I would not call it objective and is certainly subject to my biases, although I attempt to present contrasting view points as well.

All feedback is welcome, although I wouldn't worry too much about grammar at this stage as I have not done a thorough proofreading seeing as the guide is likely to change. I am particularly interested in any questions you have about Snow Storm that you don't see answered, or information that you believe I have wrong or that I have omitted.

And I think the guide should now be up and links active. If I appeared to have missed connecting any links, please let me know.

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Draggynn on Virtue: lvl 50 Storm/Psi, 1389 badges
Draggynn's Guide to Storm Summoning(Gale-Tornado, updated 6/25/2011)
Avatar by Wassy full reference here

Snow Storm (Basic Version):
Snow Storm is an auto-hit power anchored on an enemy that reduces all enemies' movement speed and recharge in an area around that enemy. Snow Storm will also prevent enemies from flying while within its effect. Snow Storm is a toggle that requires endurance to maintain and will end once the target dies, the enemy moves out of range, or you run out of endurance.

Should I take this Power? 3/5
At lower levels, absolutely! The recharge debuff means that enemies take longer between attacks and therefore deal less damage to your team, while the slow movement effect means that any time the enemy tries to move, say switching between ranged and melee attacks, they will take longer to get there, also buying your team more time. However, at the higher levels, your team's damage output is often so high that they kill everything before Snow Storm would have an appreciable effect, and the team doesn't need the extra time that Snow Storm would buy you.

How should I slot it? (basic version)
Slotting Slow Enhancers in Snow Storm will not increase it's -recharge, but only it's -speed. Combined with Freezing Rain, you will have hit the -speed cap (90%) so there is no need to slot for slow, unless you intend to use snow storm on its own or against VERY strong enemies because of the purple patch. The number of endurance enhancers you want will depend on how often you use snow storm: 1 endurance slot may be sufficient, but if you find you are using it a lot, you may find 2 slots useful. Depending on how reliant you are on Snow Storm, you may also find recharge to be useful in a team setting, so that you can get the storm back up faster after your anchor is killed, although I find its better to get incidental recharge as part of IO Sets rather than slotting for it explicitly.

Snow Storm (Advanced Version):

What are Snow Storm's stats?
Available Level: 2
Activation Time:2.03s
Recharge Time:10.00s
Endurance Cost:0.52/s
Power Type:Toggle
Target Type:Enemies
Power Range:80.00 ft.
Effect Area:AoE -- 25.00 ft. radius (10 targets max)
Attack Types:AoE, cold
effects @lvl 50 (although only -max run speed changes with level):

-62.50% run speed on target
-62.50% strength to recharge on target Ignores buffs and enhancements
-3.50 max run speed on target Ignores buffs and enhancements
-62.50% strength to jump height on target Ignores buffs and enhancements
-62.50% jump speed on target
-62.50% fly speed on target
1.60 fly protection on target

Strategy:
Should I open with Snow Storm?
Too often I see Stormies open with Snow Storm. Opening with Snow Storm is a HORRIBLE idea, don't do it! Snow Storm provides a sizeable recharge debuff and a runspeed debuff, but provides no damage mitigation for an alpha strike (the first volley from enemies). At the start of the fight, all mobs have all of their powers recharged so opening with snow storm simply lets them know that you are there and lets them aim all of their fire power at you. If you are providing the opening, Snow Storm is best used after Freezing Rain which will provide some damage mitigation with its knockdown. Even if you are not providing the opening, you should apply Freezing Rain before Snow Storm, both for the damage mitigation and because your team will thank you for the -res debuff.
If you're on a team, pay attention to the way the person responsible for managing aggro is playing. Sometimes the tank or scrapper will want to round up a couple mobs and/or hide behind an object to get the mobs to clump up (herding). If it is a crowded room, sometimes the tank (or any other AT) will attempt to attract the attention of just small number of enemies (pulling). If they appear to be doing this, wait until after the mobs have come to the tank or the group to apply snow storm. If you apply it before then, it will simply slow those mobs down and make it take longer for them to reach a nice clump where they can be mowed down with a couple of your team's AoEs. If you are apply too early in a pulling situation, you could end up attracting the attnetion of the whole group, thus defeating the purpose of pulling. As before, if you have Freezing Rain, you should usually apply that before Snow Storm. If you don't yet have Freezing Rain, or it is still recharging, and there is not a hero herding mobs to a particular location, then you should wait until the heroes taking the alpha strike jump in to apply Snow Storm (they do not need to have firmly established aggro, but you don't want snow storm to be the only thing the mobs take into consideration).

How do I make use of Snow Storm's -fly?
Easy, just target the flyer and toggle Snow Storm on. This can be extremely useful fighting enemies with mobs that like to take off and flee (freakshow for example) and to ground flying AVs, making it easier for the team to take them down and keeping the flyers from going out of range of melee characters. It works very well as a "Get Down Here!" power.

How do I choose an Anchor?
Because Snow Storm is an AoE effect anchored around a particular mob and will stay active until that mob dies choosing the right mob can make a difference. However, Snow Storm has a large enough AOE that the location of the anchor inside the spawn is not all that important. Your primary consideration is choosing a mob that will be killed last. Although some people advocate shouting out "XYZ is the anchor, kill it last" most teams won't pay attention and to be honest it doesn't really matter. I recommend watching your team and seeing which mobs they tend to kill last. Minions tend to die rapidly from AoE attacks, so they are almost always a bad choice. Some teams have heroes that go straight for the bosses since they're the biggest threat and take them down first (in which case choose the Lts.) other teams tend to take on everything with equal vigor in which case bosses are a good choice because they will stay alive longer.
I also advise choosing a target towards the back of the spawn since it will usually take your team longer to get to those mobs. If your team keeps killing your anchor, don't get upset about, Snow Storm recharges fairly quickly, so simply choose a new anchor, and recast it when it comes back up. If your team is killing your anchor faster than you can choose them, then the team probably doesn't need the additional debuff from snow storm and you can skip it until your team finds enemies that it takes them longer to kill.
Additionally, you should keep an eye on your anchor. If your anchor starts to run away from the group you may consider cancelling Snow Storm so that if he runs into another group, it won't attract that group as well. Depending on how quickly your Snow Storm recharges you may choose to switch to a mob that is still in the middle of the fray rather than one that is fleeing on the other side of the room. Fortunately, your enemy will be running away very slowly so you will have time to react.


How should I slot it? (Advanced Version):
Why shouldn't I slot slows in Snow Storm?
Remember that slow enhancers don't effect the -recharge of snow storm. Together, Freezing Rain and Snow Storm will put non Arch Villain mobs (up to +3, read here about the purple patch and AV Resistance) at the -recharge cap and -speed cap. The only fights in which additional slow might be useful are AV fights. Ideally in an AV fight, the AV will not be running so the -slow should do nothing. If, however, you decide to slot Snow Storm and Freezing Rain for slow you can reduce the AVs -speed from -20% to -40% which means that it will take him 30% longer (if it would normally take the AV 10 seconds to travel a distance, with unenhanced Snow Storm and Freezing Rain it would take 12.5 seconds, and enhanced it would take 16.6 seconds). See the appendix for more detailed calculations.

Should I slot the Pacing of the Turtle: Chance for -Recharge?
In general, no. With Snow Storm and Freezing Rain on a target, enemies up to +3 will be at the -recharge cap as shown here, so an extra dose of -recharge isn't going to do anything. The only enemies against whom this proc might be useful are AVs. The proc provides a 20% chance to apply a 20% recharge debuff for 20 seconds. Against AVs this 20% debuff is reduced to 3% making it worthless. Since you should always be using Freezing Rain, this proc really only makes sense if you are not going to use Snow Storm and you want to slot it in Freezing Rain instead.

What happens if I slot the damage proc in Snow Storm?
The Impeded Swiftness: Chance for Smashing Damage will have a chance to proc every 10 seconds on every mob affected by Snow Storm at that point. This is the way all procs in toggle powers work, they check every 10 seconds. This proc is really only useful against large mobs where the proc might get you some useful hits against minions. The proc provides a 20% chance to deal ~72 damage (@lvl 50 click here for damage scaling) which works out to 1.44 damage/sec/target making it next to useless on hard/small numbers of targets.

Which IO sets should I slot?
Accuracy and Damage are wasted in Snow Storm, since it is auto hit and doesn't deal damage, so slotting any of the slow sets is usually a waste. I like slotting the Tempered Readiness and the Pacing of the Turtle End/Rech/Slow personally. But whether Snow Storm warrants another slot will depend on how much you use it.

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Draggynn on Virtue: lvl 50 Storm/Psi, 1389 badges
Draggynn's Guide to Storm Summoning(Gale-Tornado, updated 6/25/2011)
Avatar by Wassy full reference here

APPENDIX II (relevant to Snow Storm)

What is the Purple Patch?
The purple patch refers to the way in which effects scale based on the relative level between you and the target. The term purple patch comes from enemies substantially above your level being purple. The purple patch effects debuff strength, mez duration, knockback magnitude, and damage. The modifiers are based on the relative level of the target
-3: 1.33 +4: 0.48
-2: 1.22 +3: 0.65
-1: 1.11 +2: 0.80
0: 1.00 +1: 0.90
The full table can be found here
So if your attack normally deals 100 damage and you are attacking an enemy that is 3 levels above you, your base damage will be only 65 before resistances are taken into account.

How does -recharge work, and what is the -recharge cap?
Recharge debuffs are calculated the same way that recharge buffs are calculated which is:
Recharge_Time = Base_Recharge/(1+Recharge_Modifier). This means for a power to recharge in half the time you need a Recharge_Modifier of 100%. To calculated -Recharge simply enter a negative value: Snow Storm provides a -62.5% reduction to recharge which is Base_Recharge/(1-.625 ) = 2.67*Base_Recharge.
Freezing Rain on the other hand provides -50% recharge reduction which is Base_Recharge/(1-.50)=2*Base_Recharge.
Now the maximum -recharge permitted by the game is 75%which is reached by Freezing Rain and Snow Storm together for a total recharge of 4*Base_Recharge.

How does -recharge work on AVs and Higher Level targets?
Like damage, -recharge debuffs are affected by purple patch which reduces the effectiveness of powers as foes become a higher level than you. Together, Snow Storm and Freezing Rain provide (62.5% + 50%) = 112.5% recharge which even with the purple patch is the recharge floor for anything up to +3 Mobs (Okay, so +3 mobs are technically -73.13%, but still.)
Unfortunately things get a little trickier when dealing with Arch Villains since they resist debuffs by 85%. (@lvl 50, 60% @lvl 1 see here for complete scale.) This means that before level scaling your recharge is only 16.9% which is only a 20% increase in recharge.

How does -Speed work, and what is the -Speed Cap?
Speed debuffs are very straightforward. A -50% speed debuff means that enemies move at half the speed. A -75% speed debuff means that enemies move at 1/4 of the speed. However, all enemies and players have a -speed floor of 90%. This means that you can't slow enemies to less than 1/10th of their original speed. However, some enemies, such as Werewolves are resistant to -speed effects.

How does -Speed work on AVs and Higher Level targets?
Like damage, -speed debuffs are affected by the purple patch and are less effective against mobs that are a higher level than you. Together Snow Storm and Freezing Rain provide a (-62.5%+-70%) -132.5% recharge debuff. This means that even with the Purple Patch, any regular mobs up to +3 of your level will be at the -slow floor (Okay, so +3 mobs are technically only at -86%). As with most debuffs AVs resist the -speed debuff by 85% (@lvl 50, 60% @lvl 1 see here for complete scale) so an even level AV will only be slowed by ~20%. With enhancing to the ED cap this can become ~40% on even level AVs. At 20% it will take then enemy 25% (1/(1-.2)=1.25) longer to reach their destination and at 40% it will take an enemy 67% (1/(1-.4)=1.67) longer to reach their destination.

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Draggynn on Virtue: lvl 50 Storm/Psi, 1389 badges
Draggynn's Guide to Storm Summoning(Gale-Tornado, updated 6/25/2011)
Avatar by Wassy full reference here

I read (almost) all of this one and everything looks good. Missed the appendix and anchor choosing, but I didn't see any problems with any of the other ones.

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50s: Bla- Arch/Mental Cont- Mind/FF, Earth/Cold, Ill/Therm, Earth/Rad Dominator- Plant/Psi, Elec/Earth Corr- Fire/Storm, Arch/Sonic, Rad/Kin, Beam/Sonic, Psi/Time Stalker- Elec/SR Def- Storm/Dark, Emp/Psi, Dark/Elec, FF/Arch, TA/Ice, TA/Elec, Kin/AR, Cold/DP, Traps/Psi Scrap- Fire/Shield Tanker- Dark/Mace, Ice/Kin Brute- Claws/WP, SS/Energy, BS/Elec

You did a lot of hard work in writing up and describing the ins and outs of snowstorm, but (don't you hate that word) I believe you left something out. Snowstorm has an AoE interrupt that will prevent certain foes from doing certain nasty things. Embalmed vahzilok are unable to detonate in the area of snowstorm. Certain self-destructive Circle of Thorn mages also are unable to explode in a snowstorm. My favorite interruption is that skyraider raider engineers are unable to set up forcefield generators while under the effect of snowstorm. I am sure there are other interruptions I have missed - oh I think snowstorm interrupts Rikti communications officers from opening portals.

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Triumphant Defenders Forever
Psylenz FF/Psi, ArticQuark Storm/Rad, Symon BarSisyphus Bots/psn, Max VanSydow Thugs/Dk, Cyclone Symon Bots/stm, Blue Loki Ice/Cd, Widow 46526
HelinCarnate:OMG it is so terrible. I have the option to take 3 more powers but no additional slots. Boo F'ing hoo.

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Draggynn on Virtue: lvl 50 Storm/Psi, 1389 badges
Draggynn's Guide to Storm Summoning(Gale-Tornado, updated 6/25/2011)
Avatar by Wassy full reference here

I see no problems or serious omissions with the guide, so I'll just blather a bit about Snow Storm, and if you read anything that sparks an idea, great, if not, great.

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I have started slotting Slows in Snow Storm lately due to the poofing Freezing Rain debuffs bug.

As for anchor selection, the usual anchor selection strategies apply. Try farthest LT, farthest boss, farthest any, see what works. But there's also an extra anchor selection strategy: anchor the flyer. The -fly being the main reason you'll want to keep Snow Storm around even after the poofing Freezing Rain debuffs bug is fixed.

I open with Snow Storm only on sewer type newbie runs when Freezing Rain is not available. And even then, jousting to get yourself out of line of sight is extremely important, since Snow Storm will send an immediate, unmitigated alpha strike your way.

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Draggynn on Virtue: lvl 50 Storm/Psi, 1389 badges
Draggynn's Guide to Storm Summoning(Gale-Tornado, updated 6/25/2011)
Avatar by Wassy full reference here

If an enemy leaves Freezing Rain's area of effect before the rain expires, the debuffs will last 45 seconds from the last tick to hit the enemy, as expected. If any enemy is inside Freezing Rain's area of effect when the rain expires, the debuffs may last 45 seconds, or may cancel immediately. I can't figure out exactly what causes this, but my intuition says it's related to the Oil Slick lighting bug. This is still happening as of the last live patch.

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I think that corner herding should be mentioned in some way. It's a situation in which it's viable to use snow storm before freezing rain.

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Draggynn on Virtue: lvl 50 Storm/Psi, 1389 badges
Draggynn's Guide to Storm Summoning(Gale-Tornado, updated 6/25/2011)
Avatar by Wassy full reference here

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Having Vengeance and Fallout slotted for recharge means never having to say you're sorry.

Right, the corner herding can be useful with some spawns who are very scattered, so if you dropped Sleet or Freezing Rain you'd miss half of them and the others would get a nice alpha on you. Put Snowstorm on while hopping behind cover or out of range (running with superspeed and jumping while casting gets you out of range of a lot of counterfire), while a slow way to pull, can make things a lot safer. In this case, put Snowstorm on a relatively close mob, not a distant one, so the further ones run into snowstorm and they all arrive slowed.

And definitely keep an eye on running anchors, they've changed the AI in recent years so if mobs aren't getting to hit you enough, they tend to run away. I have absolutely seen an anchor turn and run from his own spawn, and turn and run back as soon as the debuff was dropped. More of a danger with other toggle debuffs, since they don't slow the foes. I don't know if its worth adding a mention to never use Snowstorm on Wolves, since they (1) are largely (entirely? not sure) immune, and (2) run around like mad at high speeds, so will definitely aggro other mobs.

I tend to like a End/Slow IO for my default slot in it, since I don't always have Sleet/Freezing Rain stacked with it, depending on the situation (second spawn, still recharging, etc.). You can often buy those IOs for less then crafting cost.

One other fairly important interruptable item is in the STF, if Lord Recluse isn't damaged and has a toggle debuff on him he doesn't spawn his lvl 54 Bane bosses. Snowstorm is one of the few (along with the rad and dark toggles) powers that can do this, and preventing those bosses can mean the difference between success and failure on the TF.

Finally, a lot of people don't really "get" what -recharge on mobs is doing to help them. It might be worth adding a sentence or two comparing that to something people have more familiarity with. Unslotted granite armor is 20% Def, 50% resist, reducing incoming damage by roughly 70%. Unslotted (for slow) Snowstorm with -62% recharge will be reducing incoming damage by roughly 62%, and it has the advantages of "defense" rather then "resistance" since a mob firing a mezzing attack half as often is equivalent to them firing at normal rate and missing half the time. Better yet, its defense that doesn't get debuffed. Do you think people should be recruiting characters to their teams who can provide near Granite levels of protection to the entire team?

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Draggynn on Virtue: lvl 50 Storm/Psi, 1389 badges
Draggynn's Guide to Storm Summoning(Gale-Tornado, updated 6/25/2011)
Avatar by Wassy full reference here

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Nice guide so far.

I wrote a long post about -Recharge some time ago but never made it a complete guide. You're welcome to source from it if you want or even just tack it on as an appendix.


http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=218111

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Draggynn on Virtue: lvl 50 Storm/Psi, 1389 badges
Draggynn's Guide to Storm Summoning(Gale-Tornado, updated 6/25/2011)
Avatar by Wassy full reference here

As a lifetime Stormer, I have to say you've covered everything quite well. Aside from the corner pulling and interrupts that have been discussed, I don't see anything else missing.

Can't wait to see your full work up on my favorite set

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