**WINTER OF WOE - BONUS OBJECTIVE POINT**
As previously announced, the team will be distributing an additional point toward milestones to anyone who completed the Absorbing Man fight in the first step of the Winter of Woe.
This point will be distributed at a later time as it requires the team to pull and analyze data.
The timeline has not been set, but work has started.
There is currently an issue where some Alliances are are unable to find a match in Alliance Wars, or are receiving Byes without getting the benefits of the Win. We will be adjusting the Season Points of the Alliances that are affected within the coming weeks, and will be working to compensate them for their missed Per War rewards as well.

Additionally, we are working to address an issue where new Members of an Alliance are unable to place Defenders for the next War after joining. We are working to address this, but it will require a future update.

It's Here! My Storm (Pyramid X) Guide

RockypantherxRockypantherx Posts: 3,897 ★★★★★
edited September 2020 in Strategy and Tips
Afternoon everyone, or whatever time it is wherever you are. Today I have a Storm (Pyramid X) guide for you. I was originally going to make this a video, but as it turns out, my laptop is too rubbish to handle video editing software.

So you have this instead. Which is probably for the better, it means you don’t have to hear my voice, which was once affectionately described as “akin to a cat being put through the wringer”.

I’ve had an...interesting relationship with this champion. Like a lot of people, I was pretty excited when her abilities were released, and the design and animations were excellent. Then the CCP videos released, and well, it wasn’t looking good. But I had a hunch, a hunch I shared with @ESF (Who’s breakdown’s are excellent, look them up). He was lucky enough to pull the 5* from early access I want to say. At that point, I couldn’t test my hunch myself, but he seemed to think I was on to something.

Well, when her arena came around, I grinded her out in the first round, putting up 12 million points.

Um, I missed. She went unusually high. Maybe it was due to Lockdown’s starting, or maybe people just liked the champ, but she went almost as high as Doom.

But I bounced back and put a few more points in over the second round. By a few, I of course mean 5 million more. I wasn’t pulling any punches. Ranked 18th or something.

But 4 stars aren’t very useful these days, I was really only interested in the 5 star. So when her featured came around, I decided to go all in. First crystal rolled over from her to a sig 60 Cyclops. That was kind of depressing. But I got her from the second crystal a few days later, and she was R5 by the end of the next day.

Second time round seems to be a theme between me and this champion. Finally, I could test my hunch. Between then and now, I kind of feel like I’ve become the ambassador for this champion.

But enough rambling, let’s actually get into the champion.

Let’s cover her base stats first, which are probably the champions greatest downfall. Her health is downright abysmal, it’s among the worst in the game. And you can feel that. The chip damage on this champion is hefty, and that’s with her above-average block proficiency. I think even the Act 6 attack nerfs she’ll still be taking a decent chunk. So when playing this champion, you’re probably going to want to get good at intercepting.

Her crit damage rating is pretty average, slightly above, but nothing crazy like Warlock. But her crit rate is what kills this champion for most people, It sits at a depressing 16.7%. Basically, nothing crits.

So when this champion released everyone was throwing SP2’s left, right and centre, and being ultimately disappointed because it never crit.

So the base stats aren’t particularly enthralling, but what else can she do?

Storm has two tempests. Ice and Lightning. She can activate either one before entering a fight through her pre-fight ability, and your choice persists throughout the rest of the quest. Unless you change it again of course. If she’s knocked down, she is going to activate both of her tempests for 12 seconds, and this isn’t affected by ability accuracy. So Crossbones, Black Widow, etc won’t shut her down. Quake isn’t knocking her down so she couldn’t care less. This duration is also paused during her heavy or special animations.

This ability can be troubling on defence, but our Kabam overlords gave us a way to overcome this particular obstacle. If she is power drained or power locked, both of her tempests are deactivated for 8 seconds

By default she starts with her ice tempest active, so let’s cover that one first. Storm is Coldsnap and frostbite immune while this tempest is active, so she can take on Icemen and Aarkus’ to her heart’s content without worrying about taking the coldsnap damage. This can also be used to counter Energy Absorption: Ice, which gives 50% chance to receive a small coldsnap debuff when coming into contact with the defender. Right now this node only appears in one Act 6 lane, along with Diss track, which she isn’t a good counter for, so it’s not a common node at this moment. This is just something to keep in the back of your mind for the future.

The ice tempest also gives basic attacks a 60% chance to glance. If your attack glances it can’t be critical, deals 50% less damage and has 100% less offensive ability accuracy. It’s a very powerful ability on defence, but it’s unfortunately not very reliable on offence, where it seems to be intended to make up for low health, but usually fails to do even that.

Her second tempest is the lightning tempest and this is the one you usually want to use on offence. It decreases the potency of incoming shock effects by 100%, which is usually better than a full immunity since you’ll be able to heal off of it providing it’s a debuff using willpower. This allows her to counter shock nodes obviously, as well as EMP mod and Hulkbuster’s shocks. However, doom will still be able to slap you since the shock debuff he places on you will still be active. Not that I would advise taking her against Doom regardless. It also means that enhanced shock nodes will cause her to take damage from shocks. This is because the 100% potency decrease is additive rather than multiplicative, unfortunately. So it has its upsides and downsides.

However, Its main use on offence is the 2% chance to stun the opponent per prowess, up to a max of 16%. This can allow for stun locks and you can build to your specials quicker since you usually won’t need a new opening when it procs, meaning you can stack more prowess and keep your second tempest active. Not to mention, these openings also reduce the block damage you might need to take.

Now that we’ve covered her tempests, the next integral part of her kit is her prowess. Each time she or her opponent fills a bar of power, she is going to gain 1 prowess if one tempest is active, 2 if both tempests are active. Each of these prowess increases her special attack damage by 40%, last 10 seconds, and stack to a max of 12. However, the first 3 prowess you gain will last indefinitely. Which is kind of nice. If she has 6 prowess effects active when launching a special attack, she will go unblockable for 1.8 seconds.

She has one other way to gain prowess, and that’s through her heavy attack. When you charge your heavy, you’ll see a counter appear alongside your buffs, that gradually increases the longer you charge your heavy, up to 100. When you launch a special while charging your heavy, you’ll gain a prowess that’s potency relates to the number on the counter. So if the counter is at 50 when you throw your special, she’ll gain a prowess grating 50% extra special attack damage. You can usually reach 100 within the duration of a parry, but this prowess contributes to the 6 you need to make you special unblockable. So, say you have 5 prowess, and you let off your special while charging your heavy. That heavy prowess will count as the 6th and you’ll gain the unblockable. Try and use this before every special attack you throw. It’s a bit easier with the SP3 as you don’t need to be next to the opponent when you throw it.

It takes a bit of practice to get it down, just remember you don’t need to lift your right thumb off the screen. Just hold down your heavy with your right thumb, and tap the special button with your left.

Next, let’s look at some of her passive abilities. Storm deals energy damage on her basic attacks. This is useful in a few situations, namely Korg and Morningstar. She won’t take thorns from Korg, nor the bleed from morningstar. Bear in mind that these hits still make contact, so she isn’t going to counter regular thorns. It also has its bad matchups though, like human torch. Do not take her against human torch. It’s a really, really terrible idea.

She also has some base energy resistance. Not as much as Sorcerer Supreme or Havok, but it exists. It’ll help mitigate some damage, like Magik’s limbo, Mephisto’s aura of incineration, and even just incinerate’s in general. I wouldn’t recommend taking her in to any of these matchups, but if you’re desperate she might do slightly better than other champions

Finally for this section, one of her best features. If the opponent purifies a stun debuff, it is instantly replaced with a passive stun lasting 2 seconds. So she can reliably parry Agent Venom, Kingpin and other shruggers. But it also has some useful applications that aren’t immediately obvious. She can parry Annihilus, who is a major pain for a lot of players still. She can also stun on Masochism. The opponent will still get the heal, but you’ll get an opening, which is the most challenging aspect of the node most of the time. Finally, she can get past Mordo’s astral evade via this. No fun and interactive evade or degen here. And it’s actually beneficial if they have this passive stun since it lasts longer than your regular parry. In fact, if you know it will be shrugged off, you can go for a 4 hit combo, then straight into a 5 hit combo, further pushing your aggressive playstyle. If the passive stun instantly procs, then just go for a 2 hit combo then straight into your 5 hit combo. I’m sure there are other great examples where this can be used, but if there is an insane one the community will find it. If they give her a chance

It is worth noting here that this will not allow her to stun on debuff or stun immune matchups, nor will it allow her to bypass limber. As someone in my alliance thought.

Now that we have all her base mechanics out the way, let’s get into the exciting stuff. Her specials.

The SP1 places a passive slow on the opponent for the duration of the special attack provided the opponent isn’t tech, reducing unstoppable and evade ability accuracy be 100%. Basically, the opponent can’t evade the attack, and if they are unstoppable, they will act like they aren’t for the duration of the special attack. She’s not an unstoppable counter by any means, but it can sort of work for some matchups like Juggernaut to time out the unstoppable.

However, the meat of this attack occurs when your ice tempest is active. For each hit that, well, hits the opponent, she will gain a prowess buff increasing special damage by 10% for the rest of the special. Basically, she’ll gain 40% more special damage on her final hit. Speaking of the final hit, while ice tempest is active, it places a passive coldsnap on the opponent for 14 seconds, dealing, what amounts to, basically no damage. While this coldsnap is active opponents can’t evade, so she becomes an ok evade counter if you’re struggling for one. Not quite Killmonger level, but it can work as long as you don’t die before your first SP1. And because the coldsnap is passive, it can’t be shrugged off and can be placed on debuff immune opponents. Happy days.

Next up, the Special 2. This will place a shock on every hit, dealing an...alright amount of damage. It’s nothing special, but if the opponent shrugs it off, they’re going to take the damage the shock deals over its duration in a burst of shock damage. Basically, unless they’re immune to shock, they’re going to be taking shock damage from this special one way or another.

However, if your lightning tempest is active, each shock is going to have its potency increased by up 90% based on the opponent’s stored power. Thankfully, the secondary effect here makes this practical. While your lightning tempest is active, each prowess Storm has will reduce the power the opponent gains from this attack, maxing at 100%. They can still gain power from external sources, like Hyperion’s power gain, but as long as you have 4 prowess, and this includes your heavy charge prowess, they won’t gain power from being struck here.

If you’re using this special you’re going to want the opponent to almost be at 3 bars of power to maximise the benefit of the increased shock potency. The fact she can place shock with this attack means she can work for Thunderstruck. While writing this guide, I went and tested it for myself, and I was...blown away actually. I only took her into the first Deadpool fight on the Thunderstruck path in 6.3, but she slaughtered that guy in one SP3 and 2 SP2’s. So yeah, she works for Thunderstruck fine.

Finally, her Special 3. This is where I differ from most other players, and indeed, most of the CCP. This is your ‘go to special’. It activates both of your tempests for 35 seconds, giving you both sets of utilities and immunities, plus double prowess. Not to mention it also gains a 150% attack bonus if both of your tempests are active.

Therefore, due to her abysmal crit rate, and the attack boost, this becomes your damage special. It is guaranteed high damage after your first SP3, as long as you’re playing aggressively. I generally average about 9 40% prowess when launching any SP3 after the first, plus the heavy prowess. On my R5 with suicides, this lands about a 140k SP3 each time after the first one, but if you manage to keep 12 active, it can easily hit 150 to 160k.

What’s this about her having awful damage? Because that’s Havok level right there, maybe even exceeding it.

As for her signature ability, this activates both of her tempests while she is below a certain health threshold, starting at about 10%, and scaling to 25% on the 4* and below, and 30% on the 5* or 6*. This sig ability is absolutely not required and is honestly kind of useless. She’s that flimsy that if you’re at these thresholds, you probably won’t last much longer. It might be a nice to have, but don’t give her an awakening gem or sig stones unless you have them expiring.

Finally, her synergies. She’s got nice ones, for herself and others

Firstly, she has a synergy with Sorcerer Supreme, or Kali as she is actually called, that gives Storm 50% nullify resistance. This isn’t going to be super useful, but it might reduce buffet and power snack procs and Sym Supreme’s auto nullify and staggers. As for the benefit to Kali, it gives her a bar of power at the start of the fight, It’s nice but pretty minimal unless you need slow on the first hit of the fight.

Next, she has a synergy with Bishop that gives her prowess buffs 4 seconds more duration. This improves her playability a bit but you don’t need it. It’s still fairly easy to stack 7 to 11 prowess as long as you’re playing aggressively. As for the benefit to Bishop, it gives him a small power gain buff every 15 seconds for 5 seconds that also gives him a fair chunk more special damage when this power gain is active, but it’s not enough to salvage Bishop.

She also has a synergy with classic storm that allows the alternate tempest that activates off the SP3 to last 8 seconds longer, taking its duration to 43 seconds. This is nice, but like the Bishop synergy, if you’re playing aggressively you don’t need it. As for the benefit to classic Storm, it gives her up to 100% Shock, coldsnap and incinerate resistance based on stored power. It could be kind of useful, but if you need shock or coldsnap immunity, just bring this Storm. Even then, it’s based on stored power, so you’ll still eat a ton of damage building to it

Her next 2 synergies don’t benefit her, only the synergy members.

First up here, we have a synergy with Classic Black Panther, Black Panther Civil War, and Killmonger, giving them all 30% bleed duration. Classic Black Panther and BPCW need a lot more than this, but it’s really really nice for Killmonger. His bleeds are already pretty potent, especially the SP3 bleed, and this just boosts it even more. I love running this synergy with my R3 6* Killmonger.

Finally, for her synergies, she gibes Classic Spidey, Spider Gwen and Miles Morales a 30% boost to evade ability accuracy and when they activate evade they leave the opponent stunned for 2 seconds, with a 12-second cooldown. Not that big for spider Gwen, but nice. It’s actually really helpful for Miles and Spidey since one of the most annoying things when playing them is when they evade when you got to parry. This mitigates that by ensuring you get a stun if they do evade when you go to parry, that actually lasts longer than a parry stun. If I’m not mistaken you should be able to get a double medium and then a full combo off of this stun

As it stands when I’m making this, both Prof X and Apocalypse have synergies with her. I can’t test them yet, so if I release this before I get a chance to, here is my preliminary breakdown.

Her synergy with Apocalypse gives her a 70% chance to activate a passive prowess for each prowess buff already active, each increasing special damage by 20% for 6 seconds. I think this is going to be crazy. She already hits like a truck, and this will just elevate her further.

The second part of this synergy gives her 30% critical rating and 20% prowess potency if she is a horseman of the apocalypse, which already gives her another 50% special damage. This is absolutely freaking massive. Let me do some quick maths here for you

Let’s assume you have 9 prowess when you launch a special, that’s how many I have on average after throwing one SP3. This horsemen synergy takes that benefit from 360% to 432%. Add the prowess from the horsemen ability, that’s another 60%. You charge your heavy until your dormant prowess is full before throwing off your special, that’s another 120%. Right now you’re at 612% special attack damage. That’s up from 510% without the synergy. Already that’s crazy. But wait, you also have a 70% chance to activate another prowess for each prowess already active. With the horsemen active, you will have 10 active when this procs, so let’s stay true to the chances and you get 7 more prowess, each increasing your special damage by 20%. But that 20% is actually 24% due to the horsemen part of the synergy, so that is an extra 168% special damage.

That takes the total to a staggering 780% extra special damage. So yeah, this synergy is pretty good

As for the Prof X synergy, it gives her up to 60% extra prowess duration and up to 100% special attack damage, which is really really nice, but it takes Prof X a few fights to ramp that up. The base 15% and 25% is nice. You also get 20% extra shock potency. Which is also nice but not that important.

One important aspect for a lot of ‘End-game’ players, is suicides compatibility. And her relationship with suicides is complicated. If you’re spamming SP2’s, she sucks. But using only SP3, she’s pretty friendly and gains a great benefit since she has no way to increase damage on her basic hits, so she gets the full 60% bonus. I run with them fairly sustainably.

Lastly for this guide, the rotation. As I’ve previously mentioned, in most high-end content, SP3 spam is the way to go, but what about short to medium length fights? Well, this is difficult to say. It depends on the rank of your Storm, and the health of the opponent

A rule of thumb I’ve worked out for my R5 is:
1. SP2 spam for 100k and below
2. SP3 then SP2 for 100k-200k
3. SP3 spam for 250k+

You’ll need to adjust this accordingly, but if in doubt, go SP3. You’ll work out what feels right as you use her more.

My video editing may not have worked, but it didn’t stop me creating some videos to illustrate a couple of my points:

Storm X vs Thunderstruck:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRpHiQBvtU0

Storm X Damage Showcase:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqgsTjtmDfA

Thanks for reading, and if you’ve got a Storm X lying around, take her out for another spin. You might be surprised.

Post edited by Kabam Porthos on
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Comments

  • SpideyFunkoSpideyFunko Posts: 21,795 ★★★★★
    FINALLY! IT HAS ARRIVED!
  • RockypantherxRockypantherx Posts: 3,897 ★★★★★

    FINALLY! IT HAS ARRIVED!

    I KNOW! IT TOOK LONG ENOUGH!

    WHY ARE WE SHOUTING?!
  • RockypantherxRockypantherx Posts: 3,897 ★★★★★
    Kill_Grey said:

    Damn, probably the longest post I've ever seen, lol.

    How many hours did it take you to write all that?

    Eh, maybe 5 overall. My Act 6 one was longer, I actually had to cut that down as I reached the text limit on the forums
  • Kill_GreyKill_Grey Posts: 8,666 ★★★★★

    Kill_Grey said:

    Damn, probably the longest post I've ever seen, lol.

    How many hours did it take you to write all that?

    Eh, maybe 5 overall. My Act 6 one was longer, I actually had to cut that down as I reached the text limit on the forums
    Bro! 5 hours?!

    Also, there's a text limit? 👁️👄👁️
  • RockypantherxRockypantherx Posts: 3,897 ★★★★★
    Kill_Grey said:

    Kill_Grey said:

    Damn, probably the longest post I've ever seen, lol.

    How many hours did it take you to write all that?

    Eh, maybe 5 overall. My Act 6 one was longer, I actually had to cut that down as I reached the text limit on the forums
    Bro! 5 hours?!

    Also, there's a text limit? 👁️👄👁️
    Yeah there’s a text limit

    And what can I say, I have no semblance of a life. My Act 6 feedback took about 16 hours. I’ll post that when the nerfs go live next month
  • SpideyFunkoSpideyFunko Posts: 21,795 ★★★★★

    FINALLY! IT HAS ARRIVED!

    I KNOW! IT TOOK LONG ENOUGH!

    WHY ARE WE SHOUTING?!
    Because I’ve been waiting for this! So which tempest do you recommend activating?
  • Kill_GreyKill_Grey Posts: 8,666 ★★★★★

    Kill_Grey said:

    Kill_Grey said:

    Damn, probably the longest post I've ever seen, lol.

    How many hours did it take you to write all that?

    Eh, maybe 5 overall. My Act 6 one was longer, I actually had to cut that down as I reached the text limit on the forums
    Bro! 5 hours?!

    Also, there's a text limit? 👁️👄👁️
    Yeah there’s a text limit

    And what can I say, I have no semblance of a life. My Act 6 feedback took about 16 hours. I’ll post that when the nerfs go live next month
    Jesus! 🙆‍♂️
  • RockypantherxRockypantherx Posts: 3,897 ★★★★★

    FINALLY! IT HAS ARRIVED!

    I KNOW! IT TOOK LONG ENOUGH!

    WHY ARE WE SHOUTING?!
    Because I’ve been waiting for this! So which tempest do you recommend activating?
    Lightning unless you need coldsnap immunity
  • Thicco_ModeThicco_Mode Posts: 8,852 ★★★★★
    very insightful, my friend. I don't have her but she sounds fun to play. I hope they send a quake your way
  • RockypantherxRockypantherx Posts: 3,897 ★★★★★

    very insightful, my friend. I don't have her but she sounds fun to play. I hope they send a quake your way

    I hope so too. Thanks
  • RockypantherxRockypantherx Posts: 3,897 ★★★★★
    edited September 2020
    Deleted
  • RockypantherxRockypantherx Posts: 3,897 ★★★★★
    @Shieldweb_001 heres the guide we were talking about
  • manveertherealmanveerthereal Posts: 1,359 ★★★
    the respect you need for spending 5 hours
  • PseudouberPseudouber Posts: 748 ★★★
    Nice! I pulled her and have been messing around with her some. This will help. Thanks holmes
  • RockypantherxRockypantherx Posts: 3,897 ★★★★★

    Nice! I pulled her and have been messing around with her some. This will help. Thanks holmes

    Glad I could help
  • MeebletonMeebleton Posts: 552 ★★★
    This took you 5 hours to write and you couldn't even answer the most important question about Storm X. Why's she blue tho?
  • RockypantherxRockypantherx Posts: 3,897 ★★★★★
    Meebleton said:

    This took you 5 hours to write and you couldn't even answer the most important question about Storm X. Why's she blue tho?

    She’s just really f***ing cold

  • youaintrightyouaintright Posts: 185 ★★
    I STAN
  • RockypantherxRockypantherx Posts: 3,897 ★★★★★



    DUDE

    PERFECT TIMING

    Looks like I’m gonna be here a while 😂


    Geez that is fate if I’ve ever seen it. Hope you enjoy her!
  • KDSuperFlash10KDSuperFlash10 Posts: 5,869 ★★★★★



    DUDE

    PERFECT TIMING

    Looks like I’m gonna be here a while 😂


    Geez that is fate if I’ve ever seen it. Hope you enjoy her!
    Ikr😂! Thanks bro!
  • shield456shield456 Posts: 1,979 ★★★

    Afternoon everyone, or whatever time it is wherever you are. Today I have a Storm (Pyramid X) guide for you. I was originally going to make this a video, but as it turns out, my laptop is too rubbish to handle video editing software.

    So you have this instead. Which is probably for the better, it means you don’t have to hear my voice, which was once affectionately described as “akin to a cat being put through the wringer”.

    I’ve had an...interesting relationship with this champion. Like a lot of people, I was pretty excited when her abilities were released, and the design and animations were excellent. Then the CCP videos released, and well, it wasn’t looking good. But I had a hunch, a hunch I shared with @ESF (Who’s breakdown’s are excellent, look them up). He was lucky enough to pull the 5* from early access I want to say. At that point, I couldn’t test my hunch myself, but he seemed to think I was on to something.

    Well, when her arena came around, I grinded her out in the first round, putting up 12 million points.

    Um, I missed. She went unusually high. Maybe it was due to Lockdown’s starting, or maybe people just liked the champ, but she went almost as high as Doom.

    But I bounced back and put a few more points in over the second round. By a few, I of course mean 5 million more. I wasn’t pulling any punches. Ranked 18th or something.

    But 4 stars aren’t very useful these days, I was really only interested in the 5 star. So when her featured came around, I decided to go all in. First crystal rolled over from her to a sig 60 Cyclops. That was kind of depressing. But I got her from the second crystal a few days later, and she was R5 by the end of the next day.

    Second time round seems to be a theme between me and this champion. Finally, I could test my hunch. Between then and now, I kind of feel like I’ve become the ambassador for this champion.

    But enough rambling, let’s actually get into the champion.

    Let’s cover her base stats first, which are probably the champions greatest downfall. Her health is downright abysmal, it’s among the worst in the game. And you can feel that. The chip damage on this champion is hefty, and that’s with her above-average block proficiency. I think even the Act 6 attack nerfs she’ll still be taking a decent chunk. So when playing this champion, you’re probably going to want to get good at intercepting.

    Her crit damage rating is pretty average, slightly above, but nothing crazy like Warlock. But her crit rate is what kills this champion for most people, It sits at a depressing 16.7%. Basically, nothing crits.

    So when this champion released everyone was throwing SP2’s left, right and centre, and being ultimately disappointed because it never crit.

    So the base stats aren’t particularly enthralling, but what else can she do?

    Storm has two tempests. Ice and Lightning. She can activate either one before entering a fight through her pre-fight ability, and your choice persists throughout the rest of the quest. Unless you change it again of course. If she’s knocked down, she is going to activate both of her tempests for 12 seconds, and this isn’t affected by ability accuracy. So Crossbones, Black Widow, etc won’t shut her down. Quake isn’t knocking her down so she couldn’t care less. This duration is also paused during her heavy or special animations.

    This ability can be troubling on defence, but our Kabam overlords gave us a way to overcome this particular obstacle. If she is power drained or power locked, both of her tempests are deactivated for 8 seconds

    By default she starts with her ice tempest active, so let’s cover that one first. Storm is Coldsnap and frostbite immune while this tempest is active, so she can take on Icemen and Aarkus’ to her heart’s content without worrying about taking the coldsnap damage. This can also be used to counter Energy Absorption: Ice, which gives 50% chance to receive a small coldsnap debuff when coming into contact with the defender. Right now this node only appears in one Act 6 lane, along with Diss track, which she isn’t a good counter for, so it’s not a common node at this moment. This is just something to keep in the back of your mind for the future.

    The ice tempest also gives basic attacks a 60% chance to glance. If your attack glances it can’t be critical, deals 50% less damage and has 100% less offensive ability accuracy. It’s a very powerful ability on defence, but it’s unfortunately not very reliable on offence, where it seems to be intended to make up for low health, but usually fails to do even that.

    Her second tempest is the lightning tempest and this is the one you usually want to use on offence. It decreases the potency of incoming shock effects by 100%, which is usually better than a full immunity since you’ll be able to heal off of it providing it’s a debuff using willpower. This allows her to counter shock nodes obviously, as well as EMP mod and Hulkbuster’s shocks. However, doom will still be able to slap you since the shock debuff he places on you will still be active. Not that I would advise taking her against Doom regardless. It also means that enhanced shock nodes will cause her to take damage from shocks. This is because the 100% potency decrease is additive rather than multiplicative, unfortunately. So it has its upsides and downsides.

    However, Its main use on offence is the 2% chance to stun the opponent per prowess, up to a max of 16%. This can allow for stun locks and you can build to your specials quicker since you usually won’t need a new opening when it procs, meaning you can stack more prowess and keep your second tempest active. Not to mention, these openings also reduce the block damage you might need to take.

    Now that we’ve covered her tempests, the next integral part of her kit is her prowess. Each time she or her opponent fills a bar of power, she is going to gain 1 prowess if one tempest is active, 2 if both tempests are active. Each of these prowess increases her special attack damage by 40%, last 10 seconds, and stack to a max of 12. However, the first 3 prowess you gain will last indefinitely. Which is kind of nice. If she has 6 prowess effects active when launching a special attack, she will go unblockable for 1.8 seconds.

    She has one other way to gain prowess, and that’s through her heavy attack. When you charge your heavy, you’ll see a counter appear alongside your buffs, that gradually increases the longer you charge your heavy, up to 100. When you launch a special while charging your heavy, you’ll gain a prowess that’s potency relates to the number on the counter. So if the counter is at 50 when you throw your special, she’ll gain a prowess grating 50% extra special attack damage. You can usually reach 100 within the duration of a parry, but this prowess contributes to the 6 you need to make you special unblockable. So, say you have 5 prowess, and you let off your special while charging your heavy. That heavy prowess will count as the 6th and you’ll gain the unblockable. Try and use this before every special attack you throw. It’s a bit easier with the SP3 as you don’t need to be next to the opponent when you throw it.

    It takes a bit of practice to get it down, just remember you don’t need to lift your right thumb off the screen. Just hold down your heavy with your right thumb, and tap the special button with your left.

    Next, let’s look at some of her passive abilities. Storm deals energy damage on her basic attacks. This is useful in a few situations, namely Korg and Morningstar. She won’t take thorns from Korg, nor the bleed from morningstar. Bear in mind that these hits still make contact, so she isn’t going to counter regular thorns. It also has its bad matchups though, like human torch. Do not take her against human torch. It’s a really, really terrible idea.

    She also has some base energy resistance. Not as much as Sorcerer Supreme or Havok, but it exists. It’ll help mitigate some damage, like Magik’s limbo, Mephisto’s aura of incineration, and even just incinerate’s in general. I wouldn’t recommend taking her in to any of these matchups, but if you’re desperate she might do slightly better than other champions

    Finally for this section, one of her best features. If the opponent purifies a stun debuff, it is instantly replaced with a passive stun lasting 2 seconds. So she can reliably parry Agent Venom, Kingpin and other shruggers. But it also has some useful applications that aren’t immediately obvious. She can parry Annihilus, who is a major pain for a lot of players still. She can also stun on Masochism. The opponent will still get the heal, but you’ll get an opening, which is the most challenging aspect of the node most of the time. Finally, she can get past Mordo’s astral evade via this. No fun and interactive evade or degen here. And it’s actually beneficial if they have this passive stun since it lasts longer than your regular parry. In fact, if you know it will be shrugged off, you can go for a 4 hit combo, then straight into a 5 hit combo, further pushing your aggressive playstyle. If the passive stun instantly procs, then just go for a 2 hit combo then straight into your 5 hit combo. I’m sure there are other great examples where this can be used, but if there is an insane one the community will find it. If they give her a chance

    It is worth noting here that this will not allow her to stun on debuff or stun immune matchups, nor will it allow her to bypass limber. As someone in my alliance thought.

    Now that we have all her base mechanics out the way, let’s get into the exciting stuff. Her specials.

    The SP1 places a passive slow on the opponent for the duration of the special attack provided the opponent isn’t tech, reducing unstoppable and evade ability accuracy be 100%. Basically, the opponent can’t evade the attack, and if they are unstoppable, they will act like they aren’t for the duration of the special attack. She’s not an unstoppable counter by any means, but it can sort of work for some matchups like Juggernaut to time out the unstoppable.

    However, the meat of this attack occurs when your ice tempest is active. For each hit that, well, hits the opponent, she will gain a prowess buff increasing special damage by 10% for the rest of the special. Basically, she’ll gain 40% more special damage on her final hit. Speaking of the final hit, while ice tempest is active, it places a passive coldsnap on the opponent for 14 seconds, dealing, what amounts to, basically no damage. While this coldsnap is active opponents can’t evade, so she becomes an ok evade counter if you’re struggling for one. Not quite Killmonger level, but it can work as long as you don’t die before your first SP1. And because the coldsnap is passive, it can’t be shrugged off and can be placed on debuff immune opponents. Happy days.

    Next up, the Special 2. This will place a shock on every hit, dealing an...alright amount of damage. It’s nothing special, but if the opponent shrugs it off, they’re going to take the damage the shock deals over its duration in a burst of shock damage. Basically, unless they’re immune to shock, they’re going to be taking shock damage from this special one way or another.

    However, if your lightning tempest is active, each shock is going to have its potency increased by up 90% based on the opponent’s stored power. Thankfully, the secondary effect here makes this practical. While your lightning tempest is active, each prowess Storm has will reduce the power the opponent gains from this attack, maxing at 100%. They can still gain power from external sources, like Hyperion’s power gain, but as long as you have 4 prowess, and this includes your heavy charge prowess, they won’t gain power from being struck here.

    If you’re using this special you’re going to want the opponent to almost be at 3 bars of power to maximise the benefit of the increased shock potency. The fact she can place shock with this attack means she can work for Thunderstruck. While writing this guide, I went and tested it for myself, and I was...blown away actually. I only took her into the first Deadpool fight on the Thunderstruck path in 6.3, but she slaughtered that guy in one SP3 and 2 SP2’s. So yeah, she works for Thunderstruck fine.

    Finally, her Special 3. This is where I differ from most other players, and indeed, most of the CCP. This is your ‘go to special’. It activates both of your tempests for 35 seconds, giving you both sets of utilities and immunities, plus double prowess. Not to mention it also gains a 150% attack bonus if both of your tempests are active.

    Therefore, due to her abysmal crit rate, and the attack boost, this becomes your damage special. It is guaranteed high damage after your first SP3, as long as you’re playing aggressively. I generally average about 9 40% prowess when launching any SP3 after the first, plus the heavy prowess. On my R5 with suicides, this lands about a 140k SP3 each time after the first one, but if you manage to keep 12 active, it can easily hit 150 to 160k.

    What’s this about her having awful damage? Because that’s Havok level right there, maybe even exceeding it.

    As for her signature ability, this activates both of her tempests while she is below a certain health threshold, starting at about 10%, and scaling to 25% on the 4* and below, and 30% on the 5* or 6*. This sig ability is absolutely not required and is honestly kind of useless. She’s that flimsy that if you’re at these thresholds, you probably won’t last much longer. It might be a nice to have, but don’t give her an awakening gem or sig stones unless you have them expiring.

    Finally, her synergies. She’s got nice ones, for herself and others

    Firstly, she has a synergy with Sorcerer Supreme, or Kali as she is actually called, that gives Storm 50% nullify resistance. This isn’t going to be super useful, but it might reduce buffet and power snack procs and Sym Supreme’s auto nullify and staggers. As for the benefit to Kali, it gives her a bar of power at the start of the fight, It’s nice but pretty minimal unless you need slow on the first hit of the fight.

    Next, she has a synergy with Bishop that gives her prowess buffs 4 seconds more duration. This improves her playability a bit but you don’t need it. It’s still fairly easy to stack 7 to 11 prowess as long as you’re playing aggressively. As for the benefit to Bishop, it gives him a small power gain buff every 15 seconds for 5 seconds that also gives him a fair chunk more special damage when this power gain is active, but it’s not enough to salvage Bishop.

    She also has a synergy with classic storm that allows the alternate tempest that activates off the SP3 to last 8 seconds longer, taking its duration to 43 seconds. This is nice, but like the Bishop synergy, if you’re playing aggressively you don’t need it. As for the benefit to classic Storm, it gives her up to 100% Shock, coldsnap and incinerate resistance based on stored power. It could be kind of useful, but if you need shock or coldsnap immunity, just bring this Storm. Even then, it’s based on stored power, so you’ll still eat a ton of damage building to it

    Her next 2 synergies don’t benefit her, only the synergy members.

    First up here, we have a synergy with Classic Black Panther, Black Panther Civil War, and Killmonger, giving them all 30% bleed duration. Classic Black Panther and BPCW need a lot more than this, but it’s really really nice for Killmonger. His bleeds are already pretty potent, especially the SP3 bleed, and this just boosts it even more. I love running this synergy with my R3 6* Killmonger.

    Finally, for her synergies, she gibes Classic Spidey, Spider Gwen and Miles Morales a 30% boost to evade ability accuracy and when they activate evade they leave the opponent stunned for 2 seconds, with a 12-second cooldown. Not that big for spider Gwen, but nice. It’s actually really helpful for Miles and Spidey since one of the most annoying things when playing them is when they evade when you got to parry. This mitigates that by ensuring you get a stun if they do evade when you go to parry, that actually lasts longer than a parry stun. If I’m not mistaken you should be able to get a double medium and then a full combo off of this stun

    As it stands when I’m making this, both Prof X and Apocalypse have synergies with her. I can’t test them yet, so if I release this before I get a chance to, here is my preliminary breakdown.

    Her synergy with Apocalypse gives her a 70% chance to activate a passive prowess for each prowess buff already active, each increasing special damage by 20% for 6 seconds. I think this is going to be crazy. She already hits like a truck, and this will just elevate her further.

    The second part of this synergy gives her 30% critical rating and 20% prowess potency if she is a horseman of the apocalypse, which already gives her another 50% special damage. This is absolutely freaking massive. Let me do some quick maths here for you

    Let’s assume you have 9 prowess when you launch a special, that’s how many I have on average after throwing one SP3. This horsemen synergy takes that benefit from 360% to 432%. Add the prowess from the horsemen ability, that’s another 60%. You charge your heavy until your dormant prowess is full before throwing off your special, that’s another 120%. Right now you’re at 612% special attack damage. That’s up from 510% without the synergy. Already that’s crazy. But wait, you also have a 70% chance to activate another prowess for each prowess already active. With the horsemen active, you will have 10 active when this procs, so let’s stay true to the chances and you get 7 more prowess, each increasing your special damage by 20%. But that 20% is actually 24% due to the horsemen part of the synergy, so that is an extra 168% special damage.

    That takes the total to a staggering 780% extra special damage. So yeah, this synergy is pretty good

    As for the Prof X synergy, it gives her up to 60% extra prowess duration and up to 100% special attack damage, which is really really nice, but it takes Prof X a few fights to ramp that up. The base 15% and 25% is nice. You also get 20% extra shock potency. Which is also nice but not that important.

    One important aspect for a lot of ‘End-game’ players, is suicides compatibility. And her relationship with suicides is complicated. If you’re spamming SP2’s, she sucks. But using only SP3, she’s pretty friendly and gains a great benefit since she has no way to increase damage on her basic hits, so she gets the full 60% bonus. I run with them fairly sustainably.

    Lastly for this guide, the rotation. As I’ve previously mentioned, in most high-end content, SP3 spam is the way to go, but what about short to medium length fights? Well, this is difficult to say. It depends on the rank of your Storm, and the health of the opponent

    A rule of thumb I’ve worked out for my R5 is:
    1. SP2 spam for 100k and below
    2. SP3 then SP2 for 100k-200k
    3. SP3 spam for 250k+

    You’ll need to adjust this accordingly, but if in doubt, go SP3. You’ll work out what feels right as you use her more.

    My video editing may not have worked, but it didn’t stop me creating some videos to illustrate a couple of my points:

    Storm X vs Thunderstruck:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRpHiQBvtU0

    Storm X Damage Showcase:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqgsTjtmDfA

    Thanks for reading, and if you’ve got a Storm X lying around, take her out for another spin. You might be surprised.

    Heck!!!!
    HOW DID U TYPE THAT!?!??!??!?
  • DjinDjin Posts: 1,962 ★★★★★
    shield456 said:

    Afternoon everyone, or whatever time it is wherever you are. Today I have a Storm (Pyramid X) guide for you. I was originally going to make this a video, but as it turns out, my laptop is too rubbish to handle video editing software.

    So you have this instead. Which is probably for the better, it means you don’t have to hear my voice, which was once affectionately described as “akin to a cat being put through the wringer”.

    I’ve had an...interesting relationship with this champion. Like a lot of people, I was pretty excited when her abilities were released, and the design and animations were excellent. Then the CCP videos released, and well, it wasn’t looking good. But I had a hunch, a hunch I shared with @ESF (Who’s breakdown’s are excellent, look them up). He was lucky enough to pull the 5* from early access I want to say. At that point, I couldn’t test my hunch myself, but he seemed to think I was on to something.

    Well, when her arena came around, I grinded her out in the first round, putting up 12 million points.

    Um, I missed. She went unusually high. Maybe it was due to Lockdown’s starting, or maybe people just liked the champ, but she went almost as high as Doom.

    But I bounced back and put a few more points in over the second round. By a few, I of course mean 5 million more. I wasn’t pulling any punches. Ranked 18th or something.

    But 4 stars aren’t very useful these days, I was really only interested in the 5 star. So when her featured came around, I decided to go all in. First crystal rolled over from her to a sig 60 Cyclops. That was kind of depressing. But I got her from the second crystal a few days later, and she was R5 by the end of the next day.

    Second time round seems to be a theme between me and this champion. Finally, I could test my hunch. Between then and now, I kind of feel like I’ve become the ambassador for this champion.

    But enough rambling, let’s actually get into the champion.

    Let’s cover her base stats first, which are probably the champions greatest downfall. Her health is downright abysmal, it’s among the worst in the game. And you can feel that. The chip damage on this champion is hefty, and that’s with her above-average block proficiency. I think even the Act 6 attack nerfs she’ll still be taking a decent chunk. So when playing this champion, you’re probably going to want to get good at intercepting.

    Her crit damage rating is pretty average, slightly above, but nothing crazy like Warlock. But her crit rate is what kills this champion for most people, It sits at a depressing 16.7%. Basically, nothing crits.

    So when this champion released everyone was throwing SP2’s left, right and centre, and being ultimately disappointed because it never crit.

    So the base stats aren’t particularly enthralling, but what else can she do?

    Storm has two tempests. Ice and Lightning. She can activate either one before entering a fight through her pre-fight ability, and your choice persists throughout the rest of the quest. Unless you change it again of course. If she’s knocked down, she is going to activate both of her tempests for 12 seconds, and this isn’t affected by ability accuracy. So Crossbones, Black Widow, etc won’t shut her down. Quake isn’t knocking her down so she couldn’t care less. This duration is also paused during her heavy or special animations.

    This ability can be troubling on defence, but our Kabam overlords gave us a way to overcome this particular obstacle. If she is power drained or power locked, both of her tempests are deactivated for 8 seconds

    By default she starts with her ice tempest active, so let’s cover that one first. Storm is Coldsnap and frostbite immune while this tempest is active, so she can take on Icemen and Aarkus’ to her heart’s content without worrying about taking the coldsnap damage. This can also be used to counter Energy Absorption: Ice, which gives 50% chance to receive a small coldsnap debuff when coming into contact with the defender. Right now this node only appears in one Act 6 lane, along with Diss track, which she isn’t a good counter for, so it’s not a common node at this moment. This is just something to keep in the back of your mind for the future.

    The ice tempest also gives basic attacks a 60% chance to glance. If your attack glances it can’t be critical, deals 50% less damage and has 100% less offensive ability accuracy. It’s a very powerful ability on defence, but it’s unfortunately not very reliable on offence, where it seems to be intended to make up for low health, but usually fails to do even that.

    Her second tempest is the lightning tempest and this is the one you usually want to use on offence. It decreases the potency of incoming shock effects by 100%, which is usually better than a full immunity since you’ll be able to heal off of it providing it’s a debuff using willpower. This allows her to counter shock nodes obviously, as well as EMP mod and Hulkbuster’s shocks. However, doom will still be able to slap you since the shock debuff he places on you will still be active. Not that I would advise taking her against Doom regardless. It also means that enhanced shock nodes will cause her to take damage from shocks. This is because the 100% potency decrease is additive rather than multiplicative, unfortunately. So it has its upsides and downsides.

    However, Its main use on offence is the 2% chance to stun the opponent per prowess, up to a max of 16%. This can allow for stun locks and you can build to your specials quicker since you usually won’t need a new opening when it procs, meaning you can stack more prowess and keep your second tempest active. Not to mention, these openings also reduce the block damage you might need to take.

    Now that we’ve covered her tempests, the next integral part of her kit is her prowess. Each time she or her opponent fills a bar of power, she is going to gain 1 prowess if one tempest is active, 2 if both tempests are active. Each of these prowess increases her special attack damage by 40%, last 10 seconds, and stack to a max of 12. However, the first 3 prowess you gain will last indefinitely. Which is kind of nice. If she has 6 prowess effects active when launching a special attack, she will go unblockable for 1.8 seconds.

    She has one other way to gain prowess, and that’s through her heavy attack. When you charge your heavy, you’ll see a counter appear alongside your buffs, that gradually increases the longer you charge your heavy, up to 100. When you launch a special while charging your heavy, you’ll gain a prowess that’s potency relates to the number on the counter. So if the counter is at 50 when you throw your special, she’ll gain a prowess grating 50% extra special attack damage. You can usually reach 100 within the duration of a parry, but this prowess contributes to the 6 you need to make you special unblockable. So, say you have 5 prowess, and you let off your special while charging your heavy. That heavy prowess will count as the 6th and you’ll gain the unblockable. Try and use this before every special attack you throw. It’s a bit easier with the SP3 as you don’t need to be next to the opponent when you throw it.

    It takes a bit of practice to get it down, just remember you don’t need to lift your right thumb off the screen. Just hold down your heavy with your right thumb, and tap the special button with your left.

    Next, let’s look at some of her passive abilities. Storm deals energy damage on her basic attacks. This is useful in a few situations, namely Korg and Morningstar. She won’t take thorns from Korg, nor the bleed from morningstar. Bear in mind that these hits still make contact, so she isn’t going to counter regular thorns. It also has its bad matchups though, like human torch. Do not take her against human torch. It’s a really, really terrible idea.

    She also has some base energy resistance. Not as much as Sorcerer Supreme or Havok, but it exists. It’ll help mitigate some damage, like Magik’s limbo, Mephisto’s aura of incineration, and even just incinerate’s in general. I wouldn’t recommend taking her in to any of these matchups, but if you’re desperate she might do slightly better than other champions

    Finally for this section, one of her best features. If the opponent purifies a stun debuff, it is instantly replaced with a passive stun lasting 2 seconds. So she can reliably parry Agent Venom, Kingpin and other shruggers. But it also has some useful applications that aren’t immediately obvious. She can parry Annihilus, who is a major pain for a lot of players still. She can also stun on Masochism. The opponent will still get the heal, but you’ll get an opening, which is the most challenging aspect of the node most of the time. Finally, she can get past Mordo’s astral evade via this. No fun and interactive evade or degen here. And it’s actually beneficial if they have this passive stun since it lasts longer than your regular parry. In fact, if you know it will be shrugged off, you can go for a 4 hit combo, then straight into a 5 hit combo, further pushing your aggressive playstyle. If the passive stun instantly procs, then just go for a 2 hit combo then straight into your 5 hit combo. I’m sure there are other great examples where this can be used, but if there is an insane one the community will find it. If they give her a chance

    It is worth noting here that this will not allow her to stun on debuff or stun immune matchups, nor will it allow her to bypass limber. As someone in my alliance thought.

    Now that we have all her base mechanics out the way, let’s get into the exciting stuff. Her specials.

    The SP1 places a passive slow on the opponent for the duration of the special attack provided the opponent isn’t tech, reducing unstoppable and evade ability accuracy be 100%. Basically, the opponent can’t evade the attack, and if they are unstoppable, they will act like they aren’t for the duration of the special attack. She’s not an unstoppable counter by any means, but it can sort of work for some matchups like Juggernaut to time out the unstoppable.

    However, the meat of this attack occurs when your ice tempest is active. For each hit that, well, hits the opponent, she will gain a prowess buff increasing special damage by 10% for the rest of the special. Basically, she’ll gain 40% more special damage on her final hit. Speaking of the final hit, while ice tempest is active, it places a passive coldsnap on the opponent for 14 seconds, dealing, what amounts to, basically no damage. While this coldsnap is active opponents can’t evade, so she becomes an ok evade counter if you’re struggling for one. Not quite Killmonger level, but it can work as long as you don’t die before your first SP1. And because the coldsnap is passive, it can’t be shrugged off and can be placed on debuff immune opponents. Happy days.

    Next up, the Special 2. This will place a shock on every hit, dealing an...alright amount of damage. It’s nothing special, but if the opponent shrugs it off, they’re going to take the damage the shock deals over its duration in a burst of shock damage. Basically, unless they’re immune to shock, they’re going to be taking shock damage from this special one way or another.

    However, if your lightning tempest is active, each shock is going to have its potency increased by up 90% based on the opponent’s stored power. Thankfully, the secondary effect here makes this practical. While your lightning tempest is active, each prowess Storm has will reduce the power the opponent gains from this attack, maxing at 100%. They can still gain power from external sources, like Hyperion’s power gain, but as long as you have 4 prowess, and this includes your heavy charge prowess, they won’t gain power from being struck here.

    If you’re using this special you’re going to want the opponent to almost be at 3 bars of power to maximise the benefit of the increased shock potency. The fact she can place shock with this attack means she can work for Thunderstruck. While writing this guide, I went and tested it for myself, and I was...blown away actually. I only took her into the first Deadpool fight on the Thunderstruck path in 6.3, but she slaughtered that guy in one SP3 and 2 SP2’s. So yeah, she works for Thunderstruck fine.

    Finally, her Special 3. This is where I differ from most other players, and indeed, most of the CCP. This is your ‘go to special’. It activates both of your tempests for 35 seconds, giving you both sets of utilities and immunities, plus double prowess. Not to mention it also gains a 150% attack bonus if both of your tempests are active.

    Therefore, due to her abysmal crit rate, and the attack boost, this becomes your damage special. It is guaranteed high damage after your first SP3, as long as you’re playing aggressively. I generally average about 9 40% prowess when launching any SP3 after the first, plus the heavy prowess. On my R5 with suicides, this lands about a 140k SP3 each time after the first one, but if you manage to keep 12 active, it can easily hit 150 to 160k.

    What’s this about her having awful damage? Because that’s Havok level right there, maybe even exceeding it.

    As for her signature ability, this activates both of her tempests while she is below a certain health threshold, starting at about 10%, and scaling to 25% on the 4* and below, and 30% on the 5* or 6*. This sig ability is absolutely not required and is honestly kind of useless. She’s that flimsy that if you’re at these thresholds, you probably won’t last much longer. It might be a nice to have, but don’t give her an awakening gem or sig stones unless you have them expiring.

    Finally, her synergies. She’s got nice ones, for herself and others

    Firstly, she has a synergy with Sorcerer Supreme, or Kali as she is actually called, that gives Storm 50% nullify resistance. This isn’t going to be super useful, but it might reduce buffet and power snack procs and Sym Supreme’s auto nullify and staggers. As for the benefit to Kali, it gives her a bar of power at the start of the fight, It’s nice but pretty minimal unless you need slow on the first hit of the fight.

    Next, she has a synergy with Bishop that gives her prowess buffs 4 seconds more duration. This improves her playability a bit but you don’t need it. It’s still fairly easy to stack 7 to 11 prowess as long as you’re playing aggressively. As for the benefit to Bishop, it gives him a small power gain buff every 15 seconds for 5 seconds that also gives him a fair chunk more special damage when this power gain is active, but it’s not enough to salvage Bishop.

    She also has a synergy with classic storm that allows the alternate tempest that activates off the SP3 to last 8 seconds longer, taking its duration to 43 seconds. This is nice, but like the Bishop synergy, if you’re playing aggressively you don’t need it. As for the benefit to classic Storm, it gives her up to 100% Shock, coldsnap and incinerate resistance based on stored power. It could be kind of useful, but if you need shock or coldsnap immunity, just bring this Storm. Even then, it’s based on stored power, so you’ll still eat a ton of damage building to it

    Her next 2 synergies don’t benefit her, only the synergy members.

    First up here, we have a synergy with Classic Black Panther, Black Panther Civil War, and Killmonger, giving them all 30% bleed duration. Classic Black Panther and BPCW need a lot more than this, but it’s really really nice for Killmonger. His bleeds are already pretty potent, especially the SP3 bleed, and this just boosts it even more. I love running this synergy with my R3 6* Killmonger.

    Finally, for her synergies, she gibes Classic Spidey, Spider Gwen and Miles Morales a 30% boost to evade ability accuracy and when they activate evade they leave the opponent stunned for 2 seconds, with a 12-second cooldown. Not that big for spider Gwen, but nice. It’s actually really helpful for Miles and Spidey since one of the most annoying things when playing them is when they evade when you got to parry. This mitigates that by ensuring you get a stun if they do evade when you go to parry, that actually lasts longer than a parry stun. If I’m not mistaken you should be able to get a double medium and then a full combo off of this stun

    As it stands when I’m making this, both Prof X and Apocalypse have synergies with her. I can’t test them yet, so if I release this before I get a chance to, here is my preliminary breakdown.

    Her synergy with Apocalypse gives her a 70% chance to activate a passive prowess for each prowess buff already active, each increasing special damage by 20% for 6 seconds. I think this is going to be crazy. She already hits like a truck, and this will just elevate her further.

    The second part of this synergy gives her 30% critical rating and 20% prowess potency if she is a horseman of the apocalypse, which already gives her another 50% special damage. This is absolutely freaking massive. Let me do some quick maths here for you

    Let’s assume you have 9 prowess when you launch a special, that’s how many I have on average after throwing one SP3. This horsemen synergy takes that benefit from 360% to 432%. Add the prowess from the horsemen ability, that’s another 60%. You charge your heavy until your dormant prowess is full before throwing off your special, that’s another 120%. Right now you’re at 612% special attack damage. That’s up from 510% without the synergy. Already that’s crazy. But wait, you also have a 70% chance to activate another prowess for each prowess already active. With the horsemen active, you will have 10 active when this procs, so let’s stay true to the chances and you get 7 more prowess, each increasing your special damage by 20%. But that 20% is actually 24% due to the horsemen part of the synergy, so that is an extra 168% special damage.

    That takes the total to a staggering 780% extra special damage. So yeah, this synergy is pretty good

    As for the Prof X synergy, it gives her up to 60% extra prowess duration and up to 100% special attack damage, which is really really nice, but it takes Prof X a few fights to ramp that up. The base 15% and 25% is nice. You also get 20% extra shock potency. Which is also nice but not that important.

    One important aspect for a lot of ‘End-game’ players, is suicides compatibility. And her relationship with suicides is complicated. If you’re spamming SP2’s, she sucks. But using only SP3, she’s pretty friendly and gains a great benefit since she has no way to increase damage on her basic hits, so she gets the full 60% bonus. I run with them fairly sustainably.

    Lastly for this guide, the rotation. As I’ve previously mentioned, in most high-end content, SP3 spam is the way to go, but what about short to medium length fights? Well, this is difficult to say. It depends on the rank of your Storm, and the health of the opponent

    A rule of thumb I’ve worked out for my R5 is:
    1. SP2 spam for 100k and below
    2. SP3 then SP2 for 100k-200k
    3. SP3 spam for 250k+

    You’ll need to adjust this accordingly, but if in doubt, go SP3. You’ll work out what feels right as you use her more.

    My video editing may not have worked, but it didn’t stop me creating some videos to illustrate a couple of my points:

    Storm X vs Thunderstruck:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRpHiQBvtU0

    Storm X Damage Showcase:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqgsTjtmDfA

    Thanks for reading, and if you’ve got a Storm X lying around, take her out for another spin. You might be surprised.

    Heck!!!!
    HOW DID U TYPE THAT!?!??!??!?
    WHY DID YOU QUOTE THAT?!?!?!?!?
  • DjinDjin Posts: 1,962 ★★★★★
    I got 5* SPX from epic featured crystal. Will rank her up soon.
  • RockypantherxRockypantherx Posts: 3,897 ★★★★★
    shield456 said:

    Afternoon everyone, or whatever time it is wherever you are. Today I have a Storm (Pyramid X) guide for you. I was originally going to make this a video, but as it turns out, my laptop is too rubbish to handle video editing software.

    So you have this instead. Which is probably for the better, it means you don’t have to hear my voice, which was once affectionately described as “akin to a cat being put through the wringer”.

    I’ve had an...interesting relationship with this champion. Like a lot of people, I was pretty excited when her abilities were released, and the design and animations were excellent. Then the CCP videos released, and well, it wasn’t looking good. But I had a hunch, a hunch I shared with @ESF (Who’s breakdown’s are excellent, look them up). He was lucky enough to pull the 5* from early access I want to say. At that point, I couldn’t test my hunch myself, but he seemed to think I was on to something.

    Well, when her arena came around, I grinded her out in the first round, putting up 12 million points.

    Um, I missed. She went unusually high. Maybe it was due to Lockdown’s starting, or maybe people just liked the champ, but she went almost as high as Doom.

    But I bounced back and put a few more points in over the second round. By a few, I of course mean 5 million more. I wasn’t pulling any punches. Ranked 18th or something.

    But 4 stars aren’t very useful these days, I was really only interested in the 5 star. So when her featured came around, I decided to go all in. First crystal rolled over from her to a sig 60 Cyclops. That was kind of depressing. But I got her from the second crystal a few days later, and she was R5 by the end of the next day.

    Second time round seems to be a theme between me and this champion. Finally, I could test my hunch. Between then and now, I kind of feel like I’ve become the ambassador for this champion.

    But enough rambling, let’s actually get into the champion.

    Let’s cover her base stats first, which are probably the champions greatest downfall. Her health is downright abysmal, it’s among the worst in the game. And you can feel that. The chip damage on this champion is hefty, and that’s with her above-average block proficiency. I think even the Act 6 attack nerfs she’ll still be taking a decent chunk. So when playing this champion, you’re probably going to want to get good at intercepting.

    Her crit damage rating is pretty average, slightly above, but nothing crazy like Warlock. But her crit rate is what kills this champion for most people, It sits at a depressing 16.7%. Basically, nothing crits.

    So when this champion released everyone was throwing SP2’s left, right and centre, and being ultimately disappointed because it never crit.

    So the base stats aren’t particularly enthralling, but what else can she do?

    Storm has two tempests. Ice and Lightning. She can activate either one before entering a fight through her pre-fight ability, and your choice persists throughout the rest of the quest. Unless you change it again of course. If she’s knocked down, she is going to activate both of her tempests for 12 seconds, and this isn’t affected by ability accuracy. So Crossbones, Black Widow, etc won’t shut her down. Quake isn’t knocking her down so she couldn’t care less. This duration is also paused during her heavy or special animations.

    This ability can be troubling on defence, but our Kabam overlords gave us a way to overcome this particular obstacle. If she is power drained or power locked, both of her tempests are deactivated for 8 seconds

    By default she starts with her ice tempest active, so let’s cover that one first. Storm is Coldsnap and frostbite immune while this tempest is active, so she can take on Icemen and Aarkus’ to her heart’s content without worrying about taking the coldsnap damage. This can also be used to counter Energy Absorption: Ice, which gives 50% chance to receive a small coldsnap debuff when coming into contact with the defender. Right now this node only appears in one Act 6 lane, along with Diss track, which she isn’t a good counter for, so it’s not a common node at this moment. This is just something to keep in the back of your mind for the future.

    The ice tempest also gives basic attacks a 60% chance to glance. If your attack glances it can’t be critical, deals 50% less damage and has 100% less offensive ability accuracy. It’s a very powerful ability on defence, but it’s unfortunately not very reliable on offence, where it seems to be intended to make up for low health, but usually fails to do even that.

    Her second tempest is the lightning tempest and this is the one you usually want to use on offence. It decreases the potency of incoming shock effects by 100%, which is usually better than a full immunity since you’ll be able to heal off of it providing it’s a debuff using willpower. This allows her to counter shock nodes obviously, as well as EMP mod and Hulkbuster’s shocks. However, doom will still be able to slap you since the shock debuff he places on you will still be active. Not that I would advise taking her against Doom regardless. It also means that enhanced shock nodes will cause her to take damage from shocks. This is because the 100% potency decrease is additive rather than multiplicative, unfortunately. So it has its upsides and downsides.

    However, Its main use on offence is the 2% chance to stun the opponent per prowess, up to a max of 16%. This can allow for stun locks and you can build to your specials quicker since you usually won’t need a new opening when it procs, meaning you can stack more prowess and keep your second tempest active. Not to mention, these openings also reduce the block damage you might need to take.

    Now that we’ve covered her tempests, the next integral part of her kit is her prowess. Each time she or her opponent fills a bar of power, she is going to gain 1 prowess if one tempest is active, 2 if both tempests are active. Each of these prowess increases her special attack damage by 40%, last 10 seconds, and stack to a max of 12. However, the first 3 prowess you gain will last indefinitely. Which is kind of nice. If she has 6 prowess effects active when launching a special attack, she will go unblockable for 1.8 seconds.

    She has one other way to gain prowess, and that’s through her heavy attack. When you charge your heavy, you’ll see a counter appear alongside your buffs, that gradually increases the longer you charge your heavy, up to 100. When you launch a special while charging your heavy, you’ll gain a prowess that’s potency relates to the number on the counter. So if the counter is at 50 when you throw your special, she’ll gain a prowess grating 50% extra special attack damage. You can usually reach 100 within the duration of a parry, but this prowess contributes to the 6 you need to make you special unblockable. So, say you have 5 prowess, and you let off your special while charging your heavy. That heavy prowess will count as the 6th and you’ll gain the unblockable. Try and use this before every special attack you throw. It’s a bit easier with the SP3 as you don’t need to be next to the opponent when you throw it.

    It takes a bit of practice to get it down, just remember you don’t need to lift your right thumb off the screen. Just hold down your heavy with your right thumb, and tap the special button with your left.

    Next, let’s look at some of her passive abilities. Storm deals energy damage on her basic attacks. This is useful in a few situations, namely Korg and Morningstar. She won’t take thorns from Korg, nor the bleed from morningstar. Bear in mind that these hits still make contact, so she isn’t going to counter regular thorns. It also has its bad matchups though, like human torch. Do not take her against human torch. It’s a really, really terrible idea.

    She also has some base energy resistance. Not as much as Sorcerer Supreme or Havok, but it exists. It’ll help mitigate some damage, like Magik’s limbo, Mephisto’s aura of incineration, and even just incinerate’s in general. I wouldn’t recommend taking her in to any of these matchups, but if you’re desperate she might do slightly better than other champions

    Finally for this section, one of her best features. If the opponent purifies a stun debuff, it is instantly replaced with a passive stun lasting 2 seconds. So she can reliably parry Agent Venom, Kingpin and other shruggers. But it also has some useful applications that aren’t immediately obvious. She can parry Annihilus, who is a major pain for a lot of players still. She can also stun on Masochism. The opponent will still get the heal, but you’ll get an opening, which is the most challenging aspect of the node most of the time. Finally, she can get past Mordo’s astral evade via this. No fun and interactive evade or degen here. And it’s actually beneficial if they have this passive stun since it lasts longer than your regular parry. In fact, if you know it will be shrugged off, you can go for a 4 hit combo, then straight into a 5 hit combo, further pushing your aggressive playstyle. If the passive stun instantly procs, then just go for a 2 hit combo then straight into your 5 hit combo. I’m sure there are other great examples where this can be used, but if there is an insane one the community will find it. If they give her a chance

    It is worth noting here that this will not allow her to stun on debuff or stun immune matchups, nor will it allow her to bypass limber. As someone in my alliance thought.

    Now that we have all her base mechanics out the way, let’s get into the exciting stuff. Her specials.

    The SP1 places a passive slow on the opponent for the duration of the special attack provided the opponent isn’t tech, reducing unstoppable and evade ability accuracy be 100%. Basically, the opponent can’t evade the attack, and if they are unstoppable, they will act like they aren’t for the duration of the special attack. She’s not an unstoppable counter by any means, but it can sort of work for some matchups like Juggernaut to time out the unstoppable.

    However, the meat of this attack occurs when your ice tempest is active. For each hit that, well, hits the opponent, she will gain a prowess buff increasing special damage by 10% for the rest of the special. Basically, she’ll gain 40% more special damage on her final hit. Speaking of the final hit, while ice tempest is active, it places a passive coldsnap on the opponent for 14 seconds, dealing, what amounts to, basically no damage. While this coldsnap is active opponents can’t evade, so she becomes an ok evade counter if you’re struggling for one. Not quite Killmonger level, but it can work as long as you don’t die before your first SP1. And because the coldsnap is passive, it can’t be shrugged off and can be placed on debuff immune opponents. Happy days.

    Next up, the Special 2. This will place a shock on every hit, dealing an...alright amount of damage. It’s nothing special, but if the opponent shrugs it off, they’re going to take the damage the shock deals over its duration in a burst of shock damage. Basically, unless they’re immune to shock, they’re going to be taking shock damage from this special one way or another.

    However, if your lightning tempest is active, each shock is going to have its potency increased by up 90% based on the opponent’s stored power. Thankfully, the secondary effect here makes this practical. While your lightning tempest is active, each prowess Storm has will reduce the power the opponent gains from this attack, maxing at 100%. They can still gain power from external sources, like Hyperion’s power gain, but as long as you have 4 prowess, and this includes your heavy charge prowess, they won’t gain power from being struck here.

    If you’re using this special you’re going to want the opponent to almost be at 3 bars of power to maximise the benefit of the increased shock potency. The fact she can place shock with this attack means she can work for Thunderstruck. While writing this guide, I went and tested it for myself, and I was...blown away actually. I only took her into the first Deadpool fight on the Thunderstruck path in 6.3, but she slaughtered that guy in one SP3 and 2 SP2’s. So yeah, she works for Thunderstruck fine.

    Finally, her Special 3. This is where I differ from most other players, and indeed, most of the CCP. This is your ‘go to special’. It activates both of your tempests for 35 seconds, giving you both sets of utilities and immunities, plus double prowess. Not to mention it also gains a 150% attack bonus if both of your tempests are active.

    Therefore, due to her abysmal crit rate, and the attack boost, this becomes your damage special. It is guaranteed high damage after your first SP3, as long as you’re playing aggressively. I generally average about 9 40% prowess when launching any SP3 after the first, plus the heavy prowess. On my R5 with suicides, this lands about a 140k SP3 each time after the first one, but if you manage to keep 12 active, it can easily hit 150 to 160k.

    What’s this about her having awful damage? Because that’s Havok level right there, maybe even exceeding it.

    As for her signature ability, this activates both of her tempests while she is below a certain health threshold, starting at about 10%, and scaling to 25% on the 4* and below, and 30% on the 5* or 6*. This sig ability is absolutely not required and is honestly kind of useless. She’s that flimsy that if you’re at these thresholds, you probably won’t last much longer. It might be a nice to have, but don’t give her an awakening gem or sig stones unless you have them expiring.

    Finally, her synergies. She’s got nice ones, for herself and others

    Firstly, she has a synergy with Sorcerer Supreme, or Kali as she is actually called, that gives Storm 50% nullify resistance. This isn’t going to be super useful, but it might reduce buffet and power snack procs and Sym Supreme’s auto nullify and staggers. As for the benefit to Kali, it gives her a bar of power at the start of the fight, It’s nice but pretty minimal unless you need slow on the first hit of the fight.

    Next, she has a synergy with Bishop that gives her prowess buffs 4 seconds more duration. This improves her playability a bit but you don’t need it. It’s still fairly easy to stack 7 to 11 prowess as long as you’re playing aggressively. As for the benefit to Bishop, it gives him a small power gain buff every 15 seconds for 5 seconds that also gives him a fair chunk more special damage when this power gain is active, but it’s not enough to salvage Bishop.

    She also has a synergy with classic storm that allows the alternate tempest that activates off the SP3 to last 8 seconds longer, taking its duration to 43 seconds. This is nice, but like the Bishop synergy, if you’re playing aggressively you don’t need it. As for the benefit to classic Storm, it gives her up to 100% Shock, coldsnap and incinerate resistance based on stored power. It could be kind of useful, but if you need shock or coldsnap immunity, just bring this Storm. Even then, it’s based on stored power, so you’ll still eat a ton of damage building to it

    Her next 2 synergies don’t benefit her, only the synergy members.

    First up here, we have a synergy with Classic Black Panther, Black Panther Civil War, and Killmonger, giving them all 30% bleed duration. Classic Black Panther and BPCW need a lot more than this, but it’s really really nice for Killmonger. His bleeds are already pretty potent, especially the SP3 bleed, and this just boosts it even more. I love running this synergy with my R3 6* Killmonger.

    Finally, for her synergies, she gibes Classic Spidey, Spider Gwen and Miles Morales a 30% boost to evade ability accuracy and when they activate evade they leave the opponent stunned for 2 seconds, with a 12-second cooldown. Not that big for spider Gwen, but nice. It’s actually really helpful for Miles and Spidey since one of the most annoying things when playing them is when they evade when you got to parry. This mitigates that by ensuring you get a stun if they do evade when you go to parry, that actually lasts longer than a parry stun. If I’m not mistaken you should be able to get a double medium and then a full combo off of this stun

    As it stands when I’m making this, both Prof X and Apocalypse have synergies with her. I can’t test them yet, so if I release this before I get a chance to, here is my preliminary breakdown.

    Her synergy with Apocalypse gives her a 70% chance to activate a passive prowess for each prowess buff already active, each increasing special damage by 20% for 6 seconds. I think this is going to be crazy. She already hits like a truck, and this will just elevate her further.

    The second part of this synergy gives her 30% critical rating and 20% prowess potency if she is a horseman of the apocalypse, which already gives her another 50% special damage. This is absolutely freaking massive. Let me do some quick maths here for you

    Let’s assume you have 9 prowess when you launch a special, that’s how many I have on average after throwing one SP3. This horsemen synergy takes that benefit from 360% to 432%. Add the prowess from the horsemen ability, that’s another 60%. You charge your heavy until your dormant prowess is full before throwing off your special, that’s another 120%. Right now you’re at 612% special attack damage. That’s up from 510% without the synergy. Already that’s crazy. But wait, you also have a 70% chance to activate another prowess for each prowess already active. With the horsemen active, you will have 10 active when this procs, so let’s stay true to the chances and you get 7 more prowess, each increasing your special damage by 20%. But that 20% is actually 24% due to the horsemen part of the synergy, so that is an extra 168% special damage.

    That takes the total to a staggering 780% extra special damage. So yeah, this synergy is pretty good

    As for the Prof X synergy, it gives her up to 60% extra prowess duration and up to 100% special attack damage, which is really really nice, but it takes Prof X a few fights to ramp that up. The base 15% and 25% is nice. You also get 20% extra shock potency. Which is also nice but not that important.

    One important aspect for a lot of ‘End-game’ players, is suicides compatibility. And her relationship with suicides is complicated. If you’re spamming SP2’s, she sucks. But using only SP3, she’s pretty friendly and gains a great benefit since she has no way to increase damage on her basic hits, so she gets the full 60% bonus. I run with them fairly sustainably.

    Lastly for this guide, the rotation. As I’ve previously mentioned, in most high-end content, SP3 spam is the way to go, but what about short to medium length fights? Well, this is difficult to say. It depends on the rank of your Storm, and the health of the opponent

    A rule of thumb I’ve worked out for my R5 is:
    1. SP2 spam for 100k and below
    2. SP3 then SP2 for 100k-200k
    3. SP3 spam for 250k+

    You’ll need to adjust this accordingly, but if in doubt, go SP3. You’ll work out what feels right as you use her more.

    My video editing may not have worked, but it didn’t stop me creating some videos to illustrate a couple of my points:

    Storm X vs Thunderstruck:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRpHiQBvtU0

    Storm X Damage Showcase:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqgsTjtmDfA

    Thanks for reading, and if you’ve got a Storm X lying around, take her out for another spin. You might be surprised.

    Heck!!!!
    HOW DID U TYPE THAT!?!??!??!?
    Writing obnoxiously long things is kind of my thing
  • KDSuperFlash10KDSuperFlash10 Posts: 5,869 ★★★★★

    I don't have Storm X, but when I do get her, I will remember to go back to this guide and read through it thoroughly. Thanks for making this

    This aged well...
  • KDSuperFlash10KDSuperFlash10 Posts: 5,869 ★★★★★
    Also, have you tried her out in the incursions? I would imagine she'd be insane with the prowess hack and buff cornucopia.
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