Greycat

My few widows ended up more melee than Fortunata. They're scary in that arena. But for general play, I lean Warshade and am *highly* biased in that direction. I will say that, to me, going human-only Warshade is missing out - if nothing else, for the second mire in Dwarf. But then I also like that I can h ave a non-expensive "naturally grown" build that can put out three fluffies for ranged damage while tanking in Dwarf, too. You will, in any case, end up in melee in a Warshade, given one of the higher damaging attacks is your melee range hold, you want to be in melee for Mire (and Stygian) and the like. But that's more "you'll be in melee range" rather than "you'll be a melee build." Things will be blowing up all around you. That's just the Warshade way. Heck, you'll *want* to be higher than +0/0 anyway to get more enemies around once you're up a little ways. As far as "useful to teams," eh. I tend to have a beef about that, since all it brings to mind is someone telling an emp/ or /emp "stop blasting/controlling, just heal" or screaming at other sets for shields and such. I tend to link "I think your AT is better for the team" with "I'm greedy." Just enough bad experiences that it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. That said, the VEATs bring built in leadership (and stacked, if you want to sacrifice other utility.) If you're going human only, you can, of course, dip into that leadership pool yourself. As a warshade, you're bringing (a) a warshade, which everyone should appreciate. (b) individual teleports. You get it at low level, which I know isn't as big a thing now with all the *other* teleports we have but is still useful. (c) optional - enemy TP, for pulling, yanking minions out of walls, etc. (d) Stealth (plus your own teleport.) Scouting's still a thing. (e) force multipliers that will work even if you're mezzed or killed in the form of the cotton candy of death (they do not despawn if you die, since their "cost" includes a defeated enemy.) Just off the top of my head.

Long term can be great. AE, RP in between, have an idea of what you want but try to alter AE (or other RP) sessions to take in what's happened, get some open-world interaction as well... Lot of work, but it can be worth it.

I've generally been in the minority of power changes. I *liked* the crashing nukes and T9s. Permadom requiring a team. Full strength quantums, voids and cysts. Configurations that made you think "Is this situation worth using this power and risking the crash now, or do I save it?" As opposed to perma-this-that-the other. I remember the ITF being a challenge instead of a 10 minute speed run. Heck, I remember teams needing and failing respecs 🙂 But, well. Game's changed. It's mostly a character idea and RP area for me now... and I'm fine with that.

Calm down. The original post mentioned specifically Solar Flare. Nova? Fly higher. Knockback is now KD, or at least minimized. And given the OP was talking about melee, that's not normally done in Nova to begin with. Generally I don't *want* KB reduced in my Nova powers. Also I've been running triform since live at about I3-I4. I'm *quite* aware of how to deal with slot crunch. And I tend to use positioning to deal with knockback. *shrug* I use it to my advantage. My point was that there's already a way to change that that doesn't (a) require any programming work from the team and (b) doesn't affect anyone else.

There are IOs available to turn the knockback to knockdown, if you want them.