Draggynn

Howdy folks,

So I finally got around to respeccing my storm/psy AV build post BotZ changes and am looking to solo more Archvillains. The build relies on soft capped range defense with Force of Nature to get me out of a jam when the next hit would kill me. Thus, I have a pretty stringent requirements for AVs I can handle:

1) No ranged mezzes (all it takes is one hold and I go down pretty quick without half my defense as Chimera demonstrated quite handily).
2) No significant -def in their ranged powers (cascading defense failures are equally ugly, thank you Shadowhunter for proving that)
3) No significant psi resistance (Sure I can stay alive indefinitely against Siege but I can't overcome his 75% psi resistance)
4) fewer ranged attacks is better as is not doing psi damage since I can only take so many hits before going down (Mother Mayhem can cut right through me, of course it doesn't help that I have no Psi resistance)

So ArchVillains that I have managed to solo (with the caveats that I used the blue wisp pet to fill the defense hole while I save up for the Gladiator's Armor +defense IO, small blues were used occasionally to recover from the Force of Nature crash, and I use Blackwand as part of my attack chain. Otherwise no temp, accolade, dayjob, veteran, booster pack, etc. powers were used):

Battle Maiden (no blues)
Bobcat (no blues)
Marauder (one blue)
Black Scorpion (two blues)

Any other AVs you think might be soloable?

Oedipus_Tex wrote a decent post about -recharge here. Of course with this combo, sustainability is not an issue on normal mobs.

With just Cold you can pretty much put everything at the recharge cap (that's 4 times as long for powers to recharge) as long as it's not more than +3 to you or an AV.

So more recharge is great against AVs? Well.....not really. AVs have 85% resistance to -recharge which means that if you want to get them at the -recharge cam you need 500% recharge....and you're not going to reach that. Against an AV trying to reach the 75% cap:
Sleet: 6%
Snow Storm: 9.4%
Mental Blast: 5.6%
Psionic Lance: 2.8%
Psychic Scream: 9.4%
Psionic Tornado: 5.6%

Thus you see the problem. That said, I love playing Storm/Psi which I would imagine has a similar synergy. The knockup from Psionic Tornado makes it an excellent opening move in combination with Freezing Rain. And since on teams I usually don't bother with Snow Storm since it's not worth the time to use when anchors are killed so quickly, Freezing Rain + Psychic Scream or Psionic Tornado puts mobs at the recharge cap so that I don't need to worry about Snow Storm.

Other Powers:

Mental Blast: meh

Subdue, again only a chance to immobilize but can be useful for keeping a mob in Sleet or away from you if spammed (although there is always a chance the immob won't go off)

Psionic Lance: If you like snipes I believe this is the longest Snipe in the game, and quite nice.

Psychic Scream: Also one of the largest cones available to defenders.

TK Blast: can be useful for knocking mobs into Sleet (or out with the current bug).

Will Domination: only has a chance to sleep, and will be mostly just be used as a heavy single target hitter since Sleet will break sleep.

Psionic Tornado: already discussed I love the chance to Knock Up.

Scramble Thoughts: nicer on a stormie since you have other stun powers to stack it with, but it at least lets you take out a pesky Lt. before the fight, and as long as it stuns the opponent, doesn't aggro the rest of the group (One of the advantages of having insane range on all of your attacks).

Psychic Wail: I'm not a nuke person.

As I mentioned briefly, having a very long range on all of your powers can also be advantageous when used in conjunction with Cold's slowing powers as you can get a long ways away and then fire at enemies as they try to run towards you, and can be it's own form of damage mitigation. Will Cold/Psi have crazy synergy....no. Will it be a lot of fun to play, yes.

Then I guess I would like in on the party as it appears there is still space. @Draggynn on Draggynn. I'll look forward to meeting everyone in Cimerora.

Pardon my ignorance, but what server is this going to be on? If it's Virtue I will go shopping and attempt to find appropriate apparel.

So I have good news and bad news.

Good news, I heard from Castle, they are aware of this issue and have investigated it.

Bad news:

I think a lot of good points were brought up in this thread that I hadn't though about, in particular Wassy's post.

I don't know that I have anything new to add, but my initial thought when I see that someone is running a "Draw Me!" contest, as someone put it, is "what a cheapskate" and I often wonder why anyone would enter in such a contest. Granted this is unfair assessment as I often know nothing about these people and maybe they have higher motives. And really, if the artists want to enter such a contest, it's their prerogative.

That said, I think TA's contest was a unique example due to the extensive time he has put into supporting and promoting numerous artists. Thus, in addition to the prize money, as others have commented, entering the contest also provides the entrants with exposure. I think to believe that any contest would have the same turnout in quality and quantity as TA's contest is very misguided.

Seeing as most of us can't offer the same sort of benefits and don't have the same sort of relationships with the community that TA has I expect other contests to be met with more of a "Why should I bother?" attitude. But then, I'm not familiar with the Deviant Community, so if you want to hold a contest, why not! As long as artists don't feel like they are getting spammed and harassed about contests I don't really see the harm (Although Wassy does bring up interesting points). I think if I was a professional artist though, I might see such a request as an insult...but who knows.

From an anthropological perspective, I'm actually rather curious what sort of entries someone without TA's stature would receive.

So there is a long standing bug in Freezing Rain which Rigel_Kent has termed the poofing bug (someone else may have named it long before him, I apologize if someone else deserved credit). This bug means that if enemies are within Freezing Rain when the rain stops, the debuff ends too, it goes "poof". From my testing it happened 16/25 times.

Furthermore, Freeizng Rain's slow and recharge debuffs should provide a 30 second debuff followed by another 30 second debuff at ~60% strength. If enemies are in Freezing Rain when it ends, even if the debuff lasts the full 30 second duration, the follow up reduced strength debuff never materializes.

Does Sleet also have this problem? Do Controllers also have this problem? Information would be appreciated.

Lots of good advice in this thread, If you are interested in more information than you ever wanted to know about Storm, you can glance at the storm guide I've been working on in sections over in the defender forums. It's targeted at defenders, but there is certainly information there that can apply to you. I only have Gale through Steamy Mist posted so far.