Requesting help with a Storm/Ice build

I'm certainly not the first person to say that, and I don't think I said to use Hurricane as an panic button, but rather that it isn't always needed. You can turn on hurricane preemptively if you know a mob is large, have a mezzer you need to take out of the action, a boss to pin a corner, or any other number of reasons. But if you're going up against a small group, or on a large team with lots of buffs, the largest debuff in the game doesn't matter because you really don't need the extra defense. It's all about knowing when you need the power and when you don't.

In addition Hurricane can easily hurt more than it helps. Hurricane will scatter mobs making it harder to keep them debuffed and breaking up groupings that are well suited to AoE. When I see a Storm Defender that keeps hurricane on all the time, I usually worry a little that they don't really know what they are doing. (Yes, there are folks that can do an excellent job running in circles keeping mobs herded, but that's a small minority of players.)

On the other hand, Steamy Mist has no comparable tradeoff between chaos and buff/protection. So, no, I don't see that as contradictory at all. To me it's the same things as saying, "Damage is good, but please don't spam tornado all the time"

I would say we were having a nice discussion and debating the pros and cons of using various powers and slotting. And that's sort of the point of a discussion isn't it? You say something, and then I say something, and hopefully everyone does better because of it.

I had not taken a serious look at the endurance merits of the build, because these days I use cardiac, and forget sometimes lots of people aren't necessarily intending to bother with any incarnate content on their characters. So I think it was very helpful for you to point that out as an area of concern. This way people looking at the thread can note that, and decide if the build is going to helpful to them or not.

For me, the point of a thread like this, is to try to provide the best advice we can, and improve builds. Simply calling a build gimped without any further guidance or advice is counterproductive to that aim, so I did goad you a little bit to provide more concrete evidence and I think your view point became clearer and more helpful because of it. It was not my intention to make you feel antagonized, and I'm sorry that my goading had that effect.