Storm Chaser just dropped as the newest adventure hero, and on a quick pass he may be the strongest starter the adventure line has produced in a long while.
I had him pegged for the Mechanist League. Look at the goggles. Instead he came out a Nature Guardian, chucking a boomerang cut from a tree that got hit by lightning.
Below I go through his base stats, level progression, globals, skills, and forge, then take him into the try screen to see whether the kit backs up the numbers.
Let's go chase this thing down.
Kolz's First TakeYou want him whether or not you ever field him. Cooldown at 50, a faction projectile at 90, crit at 120, plus another 2% crit off his forge, and every one of those lands on heroes you already play.
He sits at B+ instead of higher because of what is at the top of his forge. Both 5-star options key off his ultimate, his ultimate charges on kills, and Boss Brawl does not give you kills. My favorite mode gets nothing.
Note: Rankings here come from his kit and the try screen. I have not taken him into real content yet.
| 10 | +15% Area of Effect |
|---|---|
| 20 | +25 Evasion |
| 30 | -10% Cooldown |
| 40 | Chain Lightning: Boomerangs have a 5% chance to trigger Chain Lightning, dealing 290% damage to 3 nearest enemies. |
| 50 | All Heroes: -2.5% Cooldown |
| 60 | +10% Critical Hit Chance |
| 70 | All Heroes: +25% Damage when dealing Physical Damage |
| 80 | Stormcall: Every 3s call down 4 lightning bolts striking random enemies on screen, dealing 5140% damage. |
| 90 | All Heroes that share Faction: +1 Projectile(s) |
| 100 | Eye of the Storm: All kills fill the meter. Once full, Storm Chaser calls a thunderous tornado around him, dealing 8450% damage per tick. Enemies inside are slowed. |
| 120 | All Heroes: +2.5% Critical Hit Chance |
| 140 | Strong Stat Bonus: +10% Chance for a Critical Hit to deal 4x Damage |
| 160 | All Heroes: +100% Damage |
His base stat line is unremarkable. Physical damage, +1140% damage and 980 health once he is at 160, difficulty rated Medium. Move along.
The level progression is where he earns the pull. Area of effect at 10, evasion at 20, cooldown at 30. Those first three slots are the ones I check on every new hero, because area of effect and cooldown are what actually get you through the early chapters, and he opens with both.
Then 60 hands him +10% critical hit chance.
His 140 bonus is the sleeper: +10% chance for a critical hit to deal 4x damage. The way the math maths on that, it works out to roughly a 20% damage increase, which is about double the 10% printed on the card. That single line is why he does not fall off a cliff at high levels the way most early-game heroes do.
Level 50 is -2.5% cooldown for every hero you own. That is a top-shelf global, full stop.
Level 70 is +25% damage on physical damage dealers. Filler.
Level 90 hands +1 projectile to anyone sharing his faction. Projectile bonuses have diminishing marginal returns, so number four matters less than number two, but you take every one of them.
Level 120 is +2.5% critical hit chance across the roster, and his 3-star forge stacks another +2% crit onto all weapons on top of that.
So 4.5% crit and 2.5% cooldown land on heroes who have never met Storm Chaser. I am deep enough into the endgame that a chunk of that crit is wasted on me. If you have been playing under two years, it is not wasted at all, and that alone justifies the shards.
Boomerangs, everywhere. They stream out constantly and orbit back through you, and once the weapon was maxed they had blanketed the screen.
One honest caveat. Try mode runs on my god mode account with a ridiculous projectile count, so what you see in my footage is thicker than what you will get.
Eye of the Storm reads well in motion. The tornado sits on top of him and the slow inside it is the only crowd control anywhere in his kit.
The Stormwood Boomerangs are a physical weapon and the evolution hangs off Duplicator Tome. That is the friendliest evolution requirement in the game, because Duplicator already goes into almost every build. Heroes that evolve off Critical Tome or Cooldown Tome force awkward pickups in modes where you did not want those tomes. Storm Chaser never puts you in that spot.
One thing to notice before the picks. Not a single node in this tree touches the weapon. They all feed skills.
Left chains to 2 more enemies. Right gives each Chain Lightning a shot at setting off another one, which compounds with your cooldown. Neither one prints a percentage, so nobody knows the real gap yet.
Go Left when targets are scarce. Strike Again doubles up Stormcall on the same enemy, and that is what you want in Boss Brawl, Hard Mode Arena, and Dragon's Tower. Go Right for Normal Mode, where a wider Stormcall catches more horde.
+2% critical hit chance on all weapons. Push it early.
Two boomerangs instead of one. The difference is obvious the second you load into try mode.
Angry Clouds cuts Stormcall's cooldown while Eye of the Storm is running. Wrath of the Storm lets Eye of the Storm fire Chain Lightnings. Read both again. They key off the ultimate, and Boss Brawl never charges an ultimate. His most expensive forge level is dead weight in my favorite mode.
Skills carry most of a hero's damage in this game, so this is the section that decides things.
Boomerangs carry a 5% chance to set off Chain Lightning for 290% damage to the 3 nearest enemies. The important word is chance. This fires off attacks rather than a clock, which means cooldown drives it. Throw more boomerangs, get more lightning.
Normal Mode, Hard Mode, and Boss Brawl let you reach 90% cooldown. That is roughly ten times the number of procs you would see at zero, and skills that ride cooldown like this tend to be the good ones.
Nightmare Mode, Hard Mode Arena, and Dragon's Tower cap you at 40%. In those you would honestly rather have a timer-based skill.
Four lightning bolts drop on random enemies every 3 seconds for 5140% damage. We have seen this one before on plenty of heroes. He is a Zeus build who happens to throw a boomerang shaped vaguely like a bolt.
Kills fill a meter, and when it caps a tornado opens up around him doing 8450% per tick, slowing anything caught inside.
Meter-based ultimates do not go off in Boss Brawl, which is normal enough. What decides how good this actually is comes down to the kill count needed to charge it, and I do not have that number yet.
Storm Chaser is a genuinely good pull, just not for the reason you might expect. The globals carry him. Cooldown at 50, a faction projectile at 90, crit at 120, and another 2% crit off the forge means your whole roster gets better whether or not he ever leaves the shelf.
For a new player he is more than that. The area of effect, evasion, and cooldown run at 10, 20, and 30 is the best opening an adventure hero has offered in a while.
Where he falls off is Boss Brawl. Both 5-star forge options hang off an ultimate that never charges there, so my favorite mode gets nothing out of his most expensive upgrade.
Run your adventures for him anyway. It comes out to about 1300 gems if you pick up the discounted tickets along the way, and the globals alone are worth that.
So remember, always do your adventures!
