Storm Summoning Guide excerpt for feedback (Freezing Rain)

The power works exactly the way it is described if an enemy leaves the patch before it expires. However, if an enemy is still in the patch when it expires there is around a 65% chance that the debuff will vanish completely. Thus giving you only 15 seconds of debuff instead of the full 60. Even if the buff continues for the full 30 second duration, you will not get the 15 second lingering effect of the power at all. This bug has been termed "The Poofing Bug" due to the way the debuff suddenly goes "Poof" with the disappearance of Freezing Rain.
Even with this bug, Freezing Rain is still one of the most powerful debuffs in the game. However this bug can make it more important to supplement Freezing Rain's slow with Snow Storm and makes it even more crucial to have a high recharge on Freezing Rain. It also becomes advantageous to knock enemies out of the Freezing Rain if you do not have need of the knockdown mitigation as this will prevent the "Poofing Bug".

Strategy:
Can I open with Freezing Rain?
As far as opening moves go, starting with Freezing Rain is a much better than opening with Snow Storm as the knockdown from Freezing Rain will stretch out the alpha strike, giving you more time to react and more time for you team to take on some of the aggro. That said, if there is someone on your team that is equipped to handle aggro, like the tank perhaps, it is probably a good idea to let the tank go in first. As Freezing Rain will slow mobs it is usually best to wait until mobs are in their "final position" to cast Freezing Rain as otherwise it will just take them longer to get there. Thus, if the tank is herding groups or someone is pulling around a corner, wait for the mob to arrive before using Freezing Rain (unless of course you are using one of the defensive tactics discussed below). It is also worth remembering that you don't need line of sight to summon Freezing Rain so it can be used from around a corner where enemies can't see you to slow down the retaliation even more, much the way you would pull with Snow Storm .

How can Freezing Rain be used as a positioning tool?:
Because of the "avoid" effect that comes with Freezing Rain, mobs will try to escape the rain. This mechanic can be leveraged to your advantage. If you would like to drive the mobs away from you, you can cast Freezing Rain closer to the front of the mob, near you, so that the shortest path out of the rain is away from you. If you would like to push the mobs towards you, use Freezing Rain centered more towards the back of the mob to drive them in your direction. You will discover when doing this that it is not a pure tactic as there are many other factors that go into the decision making of mobs besides the avoid effect; they will not all attempt to take the shortest path out of the rain. However, think of it as a way to gently suggest mobs follow a particular path. (If you want to strongly urge them use Gale, Hurricane of Lightning Storm). However, learning to position your Freezing Rain, will make things run just a little bit smoother for you.

How can Freezing Rain be used defensively?:
Remember that avoid effect? It means that mobs don't want to be in that rain. Thus you can use Freezing Rain as a barrier to keep mobs away. Granted not all mobs will stay out of the Rain. Think of it more like cats and a river: they can cross the river, but they really don't want to and will be unhappy if you make them. Those enemies that do try to cross the rain will be slowed and therefore may not make it across even if they want to. There are many way s to use this to your advantage. If your team is performing a long pull and over aggros, use Freezing Rain halfway through the oncoming mob so that your team only needs to deal with half the group at a time. If you've acquired too much aggro, run through a door or around a corner, breaking line of sight, and cast Freezing Rain on the doorway or hallway. Mobs will be more hesitant to enter, allowing you to deal with just a couple at a time rather than the whole group (or three groups). In this situation also consider using Lightning Storm[to be LINKED later] and toggling on Hurricane[to be LINKED later] for extra defense. You can also cast Freezing Rain directly on top of you to keep mobs out of melee range or to drive them away if for some reason Hurricane[to be LINKED later] is unavailable.
Damage will knock enemies out of stealth so, like all rain powers, Freezing Rain can be used to find stealthed enemies.

Will Freezing Rain cause scatter and archvillains to run?
Well, yes, and no. Since it does have the avoid effect enemies will attempt to flee the Freezing Rain. However while fleeing they are significantly slowed and being knocked down frequently so they won't make it very far. Furthermore, most decent tanks should be able to generate enough aggro to overcome the avoid effect keeping mobs in the rain. Remember though, that the avoid effect only lasts for.75 seconds, so if they are continuing to run beyond the .75 second period it is not directly Freezing Rain. However the mob artificial intelligence has a chance to flee if it has no attacks recharged or has not successfully had a hit in a certain period of time. Thus the fleeing could be related to the slow in Freezing Rain or the -recharge, but is not directly related to the avoid effect. However AVs resist slows and recharge so much that an AV running all over the place is most likely not the fault of Freezing Rain but another AI mechanic in effect.

Why is -resistance good?
Resistance debuffs are beneficial because they increase the damage that everyone on your team deals against a target. For every target effected by Freezing Rainy your allies will do 35% more damage. Now this is better than simply applying a +damage buff, because resistance debuffs are multiplicative. What do I mean by that? If you apply a 40% damage buff to an ally this increases the damage modifiers on their powers by 40%. What do I mean when I say this? I mean that if you ally had 100% damage bonus from enhancements in a power, then when they received the buff they would have a 140% damage bonus. Thus if the base power dealt 100 damage, instead of dealing 200 damage, they would now deal 240 damage. Thus the actual damage bonus 240/200 = 1.20 or 20%. This number will continue to decrease as the damage bonuses already on the ally increase. On the other hand, if your ally attacked an enemy with your 35% damage resistance debuff on it, instead of dealing their normal 200 damage, they would deal 270 damage (200*(1+.35)). The resistance debuff increases the damage dealt by 35%, regardless of how many damage buffs your allies have on them. This means that -resistance is one way to get around the damage cap. If you team is at the damage cap thanks to fulcrum shift, the only way to increase their damage is to reduce the resistance of your enemies.
But wait! you may be wondering, isn't that advantage of a buff rather than a debuff that enemies can resist debuffs but they can't resist buffs?? This is why +defense can be better than -tohit against Archvillains after all. Fortunately, No, -resistance can't "really" be resisted. See the appendix for an explanation of how resistance to a resistance debuff works and the effects on Archvillains and higher level foes.

Why is Freezing Rain's -defense a good thing?
Freezing Rain will cap your teams chance to hit against +1 mobs with no defense even if they have no accuracy slotted in their powers as seen here. This makes Freezing Rain incredible beneficial at low levels as Beginner's Luck starts to wear off, but people don't yet have access to Single Origin enhancements, or are leveling so quickly that they aren't updating their enhancers. Freezing Rain is practically accuracy slotting for your whole team (when it's up at least). This also means that you can feel freer to use veteran attacks (which you cannot slot for accuracy) as you can rely on Freezing Rain to provide the accuracy.
Now, as you enter the higher levels, most players will have at least some accuracy slotted in their powers and accuracy from set bonuses, so they will often be at the to-hit cap. In these situations the -defense component is significantly less important except in certain situations. There are a number of enemies that have unreasonably high defense and can slow down teams considerably while they whiff (attack while missing) away at the enemies. This includes certain enemies "god modes" like Paragon Protectors, Moment of Glory, Sky Raider Engineers with their forcefield generators, Fake Nemesis with their Dispersion Bubble, Nemesis lieutenants with vengeance, Rikti Drones, Night Widows in general,(the list goes on and on and I don't think the guide really needs more bulk). In these cases the defense debuff from Freezing Rain can essentially negate their increased defense. Yes, Freezing Rain needs to hit, but remember that the streak breaker mechanic means that it almost always will. Suddenly enemies are subjected to a large (in can be enhanced to ~50%) defense debuff and the whole team's attacks suddenly start connecting.

So Freezing Rain will let me negate archvillain's God mode?
Well, no. The -resistance portion means that you will be doing 35% more damage (subjected to purple patch modifiers) but the defense debuff is resisted by AV Resistance which is 85% (@lvl 50, for other levels see here). This means even slotted to the enhancement diversification cap, the -defense is only (50*.15)=7.5% which certainly is not going to be enough to stop an AVs elude. In particular if you're on the Statesman's Task Force where Mako is level 54 and therefore your debuff is also subjected to the : (50*.13*.48)=3.1%. Against Mako you would make more of a dent in his elude from a small yellow than you would from Freezing Rain.

How should I slot it? (Advanced Version):
Why shouldn't I slot slows in Freezing Rain?
The reason for not slotting slows in Freezing Rain, is the same reason for not slotting slows in Snow Storm . Together Freezing Rain and Snow Storm put enemies at the -speed cap (-90%). If you are intending to use Freezing Rain without Snow Storm , then it may be beneficial to slot a little bit of slow, but the knockdown from Freezing Rain will do more to keep enemies from leaving the rain patch than the slow. Furthermore, it is important to note that slotting for slow doesn't increase the -recharge, only the -speed.

Why is recharge so good in Freezing Rain?
Recharge in Freezing Rain is good because, the more recharge you have the more fights Freezing Rain will be available for. But perhaps even more important than that, Freezing Rain will stack with itself!!! Please remember in the following calculations that the Freezing Rain bug discussed above means that it is likely you will not see this behavior. Remember there should be 15 seconds of debuffing rain which applies a 30 second debuff, which is followed by a 15 second lingering debuff. Out of the box enemies should always have their speed and recharge reduced. The power needs to be recharged 2 seconds before I want it to go into effect due to its activation time . For those of you who are number savvy, I am ignoring Arcanatime (the impact of discrete server ticks). If you are interested in learning about arcanatime, look here.

39.5% recharge (43 seconds recharge, after 45 seconds): permanent res and defense debuff, combined with 15 seconds of overlapping -100% run speed, -80% recharge (if the power wasn't bugged).

114.3% recharge (28 seconds recharge, after 30 seconds):At this point you have 15 seconds of overlapping full debuff (-70% res -60% defense, -140% speed, -100% recharge) alternating 15 seconds of -35% res, -30% defense, -100% speed, -80% recharge). above this value and you start to have a period of 3 slows stacking.

192.7% recharge (20.5 seconds recharge, after 45 seconds): At this point you have perma -70% res -60% defense, and 7.5 seconds -140% run speed, -100% recharge alternating with 15 seconds of -170% run speed, -130% recharge.

233% recharge (18 seconds recharge, after 40 seconds): At this point you have 5 seconds of -105% res, -90% defense, -210% speed, -150% recharge followed by 20 seconds of -70% res -60% defense, -170% run speed, -130% recharge.

391.7% recharge(13 seconds recharge after 45 seconds): At this point you are able to perma the rain portion of the power which means that even if you get hit by the poofing bug everytime you have made the debuff permanent. Without the poofing bug you now permanently apply -105% res, -90% defense, -240% speed, -180% recharge.

400% is the recharge cap, and it is unlikely you will be able to reach this number on your own. you can get 100% recharge from enhancements and hasten provides 70% recharge. The fifth set bonus for the very rare enhancements is 10% recharge, so with 5 sets of those you would be at 220% recharge. As you can see you will only hit the recharge cap with external buffs, like speed boost, AM, and Adrenaline Boost to name a few.

I want to damage with Freezing Rain! How do I do that?
In Freezing Rain, a damage proc will have two chances to fire. Once with the first tick of rain, and once at the 10 second mark. Thus with two chances to fire, a damage proc that has a 20% chance to deal 72 damage at lvl 50 will add an average of ~29 damage per use of Freezing Rain. Clearly slotting a proc is better than slotting for damage when the base damage of the power is only 25 damage. However, in order to leverage both procs enemies must be kept in the rain for the first 10 seconds, and the two damage ticks with a chance to proc must hit. It is for these procs that it may become worthwhile to slot Freezing Rain for accuracy. There are 5 damage procs that Freezing Rain can accept:
Positron's Blast: Chance for Energy Damage (20%)
Javelin Volley: Chance for Lethal Damage (20%)
Shield Breaker: Chance for Lethal Damage (20%)
Touch of Lady Grey: Chance for Negative Energy Damage (20%)
Impeded Swiftness: Chance for Smashing Damage (20%)

All of these procs use the proc damage scale. To break this down more, at lvl 50:
With one proc there is a 20% of dealing 71.75 damage to a target.
with two procs there is a 4% chance of dealing 143.5 damage and a 32% chance of dealing 71.75 damage
with three procs there is a .8% chance of dealing 215.25 damage, a 9.6% chance of dealing 143.5 damage and a 38.4% chance of dealing 71.75
with 4 procs there is a .16% chance of dealing 287 damage, a 2.56% chance of dealing 215.25 damage, a 15.36% chance of dealing 143.5 damage, and a 40.96% chance of dealing 71.75 damage
with 5 procs, there is a .03% chance of dealing 358.75 damage, .64% chance of dealing 287 damage, 5.12% chance of dealing 215.25, a 20.48% chance of dealing 143.5 damage, and a 40.96% chance of dealing 71.75 damage.

Of course, if you slot all of these procs, then you can't slot the recharge that I recommended above, and you can't slot that extra bit of -defense to punch through Moment of Glory and other tricky tier nines.

I've heard about this Achilles' Heel proc, should I slot it?
Probably. If you team, then yes. If you fight higher level foes and bosses, then yes.
This proc has a 20% chance to provide a 20% -res debuff for 10 seconds. Like the damage procs it has two chances to fire in Freezing Rain: once on the first tick, and once at the 10 second mark. Because Freezing Rain won't have debuffed enemies on the first tick, it may be advantageous to slot Freezing Rain for accuracy to increase the chance that the proc will land. This proc also has the advantage that it is not subjected to the purple patch. That means that even against +4 enemies it will still provide a 20% resistance debuff while Freezing Rain's debuff will be reduced to 16.8%. However, the debuff is still resisted by resistance. Unfortunately the debuff will not stack, so there is no chance of achieving a 40% resistance debuff thanks to multiple Freezing Rains.
Although the proc is quite strong, in order to make the Achilles' Heel proc better than a damage proc you must deal 360 damage in 10 seconds. Against a single hard target, where you can focus your fire, this is certainly doable, but depending on your Area of Effect potential, you may actually deal more damage using a damage proc than the Achilles' Heel proc. It is also worth mentioning that at level 50 a minion only has 430 hit points. This means that, thanks to the -res in Freezing Rain, the minion is dead before you can deal the requisite damage. Of course, against lieutenants and bosses you don't run out of hit points, and on a team you don't have any trouble reaching that 360 damage mark. So as long as you regularly encounter lieutenants and higher, play on teams, or fight higher level enemies, the Achilles' Heel proc is worthwhile.

Why shouldn't I slot the Pacing of the Turtle: Chance of -Recharge?
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. However, if you are not going to use Snow Storm regularly, then placing this proc in Freezing Rain might be useful to have a chance to get enemies to the -recharge cap with just one power.

What happens if I slot the Analyze Weakness: Chance for +toHit?
When you summon Freezing Rain there is a 10% chance that you will get a 20% to-hit buff for 10 seconds. The power will have no impact on Freezing Rain's chance to hit and will do nothing at the ten second mark when procs have a second chance to fire. Since once you use Freezing Rain you will have a massive defense debuff on enemies, and the proc's chance to hit is low, I think there are much better things to slot for.

So which IO sets should I slot?
Personally, I like slotting the two end/recharge/slow in Freezing Rain, and Achille's Heel proc. With the remaining slots you want to hit the enhancement diversification cap on recharge, which can be accomplished with 3 Touch of Lady Grey enhancements for +1.5% health (~15 hit points) and 2.5% recovery, or 3 Undermine Defenses enhancements for +2% damage +1.8 endurance. If you are looking to spend fewer slots, I would recommend just the Achilles' Heel proc and 2 recharge IOs, anything less than that is a travesty. If you decide to use damage procs, remember to consider slotting some accuracy in there. There are various defense and recharge bonuses that you could pick up by slotting Freezing Rain very sub-optimally, but I wouldn't recommend them.

Good catch I will update that on this version rather than waiting for the final version.

done.

Although remember that due to the poofing bug, things aren't actually this good.

It is my intention to leave this guide general without reference to a specific secondary, but you are welcome to develop such a formula if you would like.

I don't combine the Achilles heal with the damage proc in calculations (It's not terribly difficult to do, but is a lot of bookkeepting), but you'll note that there is an explanation of what would happen with all 5 damage procs slotted.

There is also a pretty detailed explanation of when a damage proc is better and when the Achille's Heel IO is better. I would agree that in most situations against an AV, the proc is better.

I'm not a big fan of Positron's Blast in Freezing Rain, since at that point it mostly just becomes a Set Mule and the recharge you get in FR itself is relatively low. If you are desperate for global recharge bonuses, then this is the way to go, but I would go with enhancements that play more to FR's strengths.

[minor threadjack]

Ice slick + Freezing Rain/Sleet for much win!

Earthquake + Freezing Rain/Sleet for UBER debuffing.

Wow...**blushes** thanks Local. I would like to think of it in part as a community effort combining my own experiences with advice I've seen over the years. I don't expect though that this guide will be anywhere near as complete as yours, but largely because we have different aims. My intention is for this to be guide about Storm Summoning, independent of secondaries, and to provide advice that all Stormies can use to play better (although I have a clear focus on defenders). As such, I do not intend at this point to provide any builds or secondary specific synergy advice, so there will be large areas that won't be covered by the guide, but that is by intention.

I'll take typos on this section if you want to post them or just PM me, but I wouldn't bother on the earlier sections. Gale and O2 Boost have been pretty overhauled given some of the feedback I received on tone, and to try and incorporate many of the excellent suggestions people had. I'm holding off until I have a the full guide to post the revised sections, since I'm still fiddling with the way the appendices will work on the full guide, and don't want people to provide feedback on something that may change substantially again.

I've been torn about including the controller numbers since the guide is already fairly bloated as it is, and I don't want to include 2 sets (or more) of calculations everywhere. Also my Controller */Storm experience is limited, so I'm not sure I'd feel qualified to attempt to write that section. However, I hope that controllers can get something useful out of the guide and leave the rest. At some point once I've finished, I may go back and revise to include Controllers, but for now, I think I have enough on my plate.

I'm still unpacking boxes from my cross country move, but I should be back to working on Thunderclap in the not too distant future.

yeah, its not a pretty fit but it was done to be aligned with my set bonuses...

bah, leave that to the controllers, or post it in the controllers forum....

Think you can work out a Thunderclap overlap formula? Its pretty feasible to do, and the power-stacking magnitude will stun out bosses....