Korith

For their cast times, Tornado and Lightning Storm add an incredible amount of damage. They're staples in a /Storm AV soloing build (though I'm still a little bitter about Lightning Storm no longer firing faster via inherited Recharge Buffs...that was fun!)

I'll note, however, that Illusion doesn't have access to an Immobilize, so Tornado might reduce your damage output if the AV goes a-running too often.


Still, assuming that Lightning Storm and Tornado waste no time in shooting at your AV:

Tornado casts in 1.17 seconds, causing 60 ticks of 6.67 smashing damage (before buffs, debuffs, enhancements and resistance). That's 342 points of damage per second of cast time. If you're spamming powers, this is one of the best damage/cast time powers you're going to get your hands on. With two freezing rain debuffs going at once for a -60% resistance debuff, and slotting for +95% damage, you can expect to inflict 1248.6 points of damage with each casting, total, provided that the AV doesn't escape the damage aura of the Tornado. For 1.17 seconds of casting, forget about the End cost. Just spam it.

Lightning Storm casts in 2.03 seconds, and fires 12 blasts of lightning for 40.04 energy damage (again, before buffs, debuffs, enhancements and resistance). That's 236.7 points of damage per second of cast time. With the same enhancement assumptions as Tornado, above, you can expect a single casting of Lightning Storm to inflict 1499.1 points of damage, total.

Spectral Wounds, even with its fast cast time, won't keep up with that sort of damage/cast time.

Stalkerpwned with a tray of reds, using mostly SOs.

He's still not invincible.

"Oh I wish I were an Oscar Meyer Weiner
That is what I'd truly like to be-e-e
Oh I wish I were an Oscar Meyer Weiner
So everyone would be in love with me"

"You can't solo Trapdoor"
"You can't solo Army of Me"
"You can't solo Giant Monsters"

Answer: I got all the badges from AE on my main badge hunter. Continuing in AE won't earn me any progress on my other badges (well...maybe damage taken? Does that count in AE?)

So it's Be7# 1-0 already?

You will be missed, Castle.

Now, if you're willing to throw a few million inf around, the Merit reward (60) for the second and later reinforcement of Vigilante or Rogue alignment can net you 6 A-merits for every 5 alignment missions...but you need to hold on to the regular merits and then switch your alignment to hero or villain to cash in on that, and even then can only cash in for an A-merit once every 18 hours.

Convoluted? Absolutely. But if that 20% long-term rate in Alignment Merits is worth the 20 million influence/merit and the wait to you, then maybe there is a little advantage to playing the gray side

It took me about 4-6 hours of soloing, plus 150 Vanguard Merits, to get enough shards to slot a Spiritual enhancement for my Grav/Storm/Mu controller.

It took substantially longer than that to get an uncommon, but I did so with only one task force in the process.


The best way to get Shards, mind you, is to beat up a whole lot of bosses. For the chances of the drop and the difficulty of beating them, they'll most likely provide the best return for your time, unless you're of a build that has great difficulty with bosses.

Being KM/SD, I'm betting you don't have any real difficulty with bosses.



(All that said, I'm hoping to collect all the Alpha boosts on this Controller eventually, which will mean finding time to run more TFs....and since I want the badges for quite a few of these TFs, I've got yet another reason to do them )

I'm still leaning towards the Leviathan Awakened.

Tried taking on Trapdoor solo with an Ice/Dark tank last night, set to +4/x6

Now THAT is impossible. I'm going to have to change my difficulty
(I hadn't logged in on said tank in a while, so I forgot how high I'd pumped the difficulty)

30 minutes of pounding minions and TrapDoor, even after pulling the Arachnos in the second last room to boost up my Soul Drain wasn't enough. I wasn't carrying Nukes or Shivans...those might have done the trick.

"MOM! What did you do with my vitamin D supplements?"

/jokingly_sarcastic_complaint I can't solo the Master of Statesman's Task Force on my Controller


...Yeah, I like that this game has challenges, in particular that it has challenges that aren't strictly insurmountable to those who put some thought into how to get around them, especially if they're not picky about which character they pull it off with.

My Grav/Storm and my MA/Willpower heroes have dropped Giant Monsters, solo. How awesome is that? Doesn't mean it was easy, or quick, but it's doable!

Come to think of it, now that I've got Mu Mastery, I'll have to take another swing at soloing NightStar as an AV on the Grav/Storm, once he swings back to hero side.

I'm usually solo, but I don't mind teaming. If anything, I make sure that when I am about to team, I'm not about to draw fiancée aggro...but don't tell her she's getting a copy of the game for Christmas

That said, they do work together very well.

Marshal increases your endurance by 5, which also increases your recovery (as recovery is a percentage of your total endurance for each tick)

Endurance Reduction reduces the amount of endurance each of your attacks use.

If you had, say, +49.8% recovery from Stamina, and +10% recovery from inventions, you'd have an average recovery of 1.67 x 1.598 = 2.67 endurance per second.

With the Marshal accolade, that gets increased by 5%, to 2.80 endurance per second.

Supposing your attack chain and toggles have 33.3% endurance reduction before adding the Alpha slot, and go through 5.00 endurance per second, you'd have a net loss of 2.20 endurance per second, and run out of endurance in 47.7 seconds (which is pretty normal...perhaps even long for "only" 5.00 endurance per second being spent at 33.3% endurance reduction)

Adding the Alpha slot enhancement to that would increase your endurance reduction to 66.3%, which would change your endurance consumption using the same sequence from 5.00 endurance per second to 4.01 endurance per second, changing your net loss of endurance to 1.19 endurance per second. Congratulations, you can now go "all out" for 88.2 seconds!

If you could increase your recovery and/or decrease your endurance consumption to the point where you can go "all out" and not use endurance in excess of your recovery, then you've reached the point of perpetual motion, where you're free to unleash your attacks without need for pause (unless, of course, something smacks you with a fair amount of endurance drain and/or a recovery penalty)