Azrath

Eben Brooks: Beat up the Scum My friend the big badass Fights badguys out in RV I'm not high enough to pass So I'm stuck here farming XP I don't have epic pools I don't have diddly squat. It's not having what you need It's knowing what to slot.

*looks down at waistline* The older I get, the more I want that power.

All Incarnate abilities, inherent abilities (Hello Fitness) and Accolade powers remain available in squid/dorf form.

I'm a Warshade, so I can teleport. But I took Super speed for the stealth, and then Combat jumping for a luck of the gambler mule vertical assist alongside nebulous form. But I really like flying. And I don't get a lot of use out of Resucitate anymore... And yes, I did take the medicine pool simply because I had baked-in Recall Corpse Friend and teamed with a Blaster a lot. Hmm.

Given how stealthy Shades can get, and our ability to stack Sunless and Dwarf mire, quite a lot of fights as a Warshade start with the phrase 'Double mire into X" where X is something nasty in the AoE department. Double Mire into Quasar, Unchain is a popular way of dealing a lot of AoE damage, but I'm rather fond of double mire into (nova) detonation

Super speed gives 35 feet of stealth. Coupled with Shadow Cloak (35'), you're generally well-protected against detection from anything short of Giant Monsters & Turrets (100'), sniper-type enemies (149'). Putting a Stealth IO in brings you up to 100 feet of stealth, so as long as you're more than a foot away, giant monsters can't see you. Activate Nebulous Form (cyclic 20' of stealth) and even GMs have a hard time picking you up. At that point, the only things spotting you are sniper-type enemies; as well as Knives of Artemis, Rikti Drones, and Rularuu Sentinels (All of whom flat-out ignore Stealth) And ambushes, because they always know exactly where you are.

Heh. I was on a team here on everlasting and I'd just MF'ed the hell out of a spawn while the rest of my RP team was recovering from the prior fight in a long hallway. Stygian'd back up to full and cut loose with my battle cry. M̴̧̪̲͓̙͕͉̟̾͆̄͋̋̊ȗ̵̢̪͎̮̓̽̆̎͗͘͜͠ͅs̶̩͋́͂͑t̵̛̼̟̽̕ ̷̳̥̦̮̙̼̍̍f̸̧̪͔͖͔̚̚͝i̸̜̿ń̶͈̲̓̊͐̚d̸̮͕̺̖͊̾́̄͐̍̈́̕ ̴̡͒̌̊̋́́m̵̠̳̲͎͔͓̗͗̆ṑ̴̮͇̈́̃̈́̕r̷̨̛̥̲̩͇̺̙̓̐̊̅ę̴̢̯̣̫̮̦̯̎ ̷̼̹̩̹̥̦̰̎̿͛́͊͂̓̚b̸͎͒̓ó̶̡̭̀d̸̬͙̯̘̙͂́ͅĩ̸̡̈e̴̗̥̘͌̿̾s̷̟̩͕͉̥͉͍̀̃͂̈ Team Lead: ...Uhh... you OK there Penny? Another player: She's fine, she's a Disciple of Dechs. Of course, by then I'd run off into yet another spawn...

Elaborating on this (because we're warshades, everything we do is elaborate); essentially everyone else picks one character, but we're a trio tag team. Our decisions aren't just 'which power will be available next for my attack chain?"; we have to consider which of our forms we want to be in at any time, what buffs are available / expiring, and which powers we want to enhance with those buffs. A scrapper runs up to a spawn and might lead with a debuff or aoe before dropping into their attack chain. A Warshade ghosting up is thinking "Ok, do I want to double-mire into a nuke-corpse nuke; or eclipse-mire into nova cone/aoe; or hold into..." About the only consistent thing about Warshade combat is that we end with Stygian Circle and Extract Essence before going to find more bodies.

Hey look guys, Jack came back!

On the flip side, the character designs, logos and such are trademarked; and trademarks only last for 10 years, need to be renewed in the middle of that; and only survive if you actively defend them. Which, you know, NCSoft hasn't been doing because they just threw everything in the trashbin and walked away. But I'm a Warshade, not a lawyer.

There is a particular sort of person who will cling to a grudge until it dies of old age; then take it to a taxidermist to have it stuffed and mounted so they can pass it on to their grandchildren.

What AT lets you pick mind control and assault rifle?

Coy and Pan are about as fast as Ninja/Beast run + sprint; but as mentioned detoggle everything else so you can't stack them with sprint (and possibly Swift/hurdle, but I'd have to double check). Panther lost its stealth component. Basically they're million-inf roleplaying toys.

Welcome home.

A Kinetic Melee / SR brute was my first and highest Incarnate on live. It's particularly potent on Brutes because every single attack, in addition to building Fury, also decreases enemy damage and increases your own like a mini Siphon Power. Who doesn't love more damage, faster?

All four Fitness inherent powers, the Archetype inherent, and Incarnate abilities remain available regardless of form.

Stygian Circle recovers both Endurance and Health. It lets you go from "trying to remember your Stygian return keybind" and "about to be de-toggled" to full fighitng shape and that's not even frankenslotted for awesome. Say it with me now: M̴̠̹̯̟̓ṵ̸̑̐s̶̺͇̾̈͌̈́͠t̸̡̥̬͕̮͌ ̷̼̱̿́͋͐͝f̴̢̝̬̥̀̈i̸̹̹̒̆n̵͉̖͑̉͜d̶̗̊ ̵̢̻͕̄̀̄͋ͅm̴̟̮̾͊͜o̵̝̍̽r̷͉̀̌e̵̫̻͌̅ ̸̢̪͒̒̅͑̽͜b̶̛͍̜̗͋̓̋ö̷͕͈͇̔d̴̳̮̕i̵̹̰̓̓ĕ̶̠̳͋̾s̴̱̘͓̾͗͂

Agility's Endmod affects not just Stamina, but also the two forms' baked-in +end. And Stygian Circle, like that needed more awesome. :D

I'm using them as a place to stick the two Kheldian archetype-specific enhancement sets. *shrug*

Active Incarnate abilities also don't grey-out. I'm not sure if it's an I25 thing, but I can double-mire into Void Judgement. Alpha definitely keeps going in all forms. On a related note, I'm kind of flip-flopping between Agility (+endmod, +recharge) or Cardiac (-endcost, +resist). I think the sincher will be: How high does Cardiac take your dwarf-form resistances solo?

About the only update the guide needs is to cover the basic blasts now not being complete trash. On an unrelated note, I'm currently using Agility in my Alpha slot; but Cardiac is sitting over there waving its +Resistance like a floozy... any opinions?

I'm capable of running perma-Eclipse on my Warshade; and it takes less than a half dozen mobs to saturate it to the resist cap, along with enough Stealth to sneak up on Lusca. A high level shade can ghost in, Eclipse, Mire, nuke, corpse-nuke, grab a fluffy, refill their bars and move on. Eclipse needing enemies nearby doesn't make it worse than Light Form. If you aren't around enemies, why do you need the buff? :) I'm sure there's some Hamidon-soloing corner case where one is superior to the other; but for the most part they're both perfectly viable.

I make no apologies for stealing the title from Jimmy Buffets' biography. I played the hell out of City of Heroes when it was live. From the closed beta to shutdown. Probably more hours that I should have spent focusing on real life; but hindsight is twenty-twenty. With CoH back and my older, perhaps wiser self behind the keyboard, I thought it might be an idea to look back at the process of leveling up my very first Warshade in any incarnation of Paragon City; and share my thoughts on why I've made this my first 'main' character while my other friends are still generating alts, running one sewer, then rolling something different. I knew I was going to be rolling a Kheldian at some point. I'd gotten a Peacebringer to 50 on live and had a generally good time of it; while my best friend and main in-game partner swore by Warshades. I figured I'd give it a shot, and thanks to these boards I found Dechs Kaison's warshade guide. I laughed at the humorous approach; but one passage in particular stuck with me. This, I realized, was something I'd always missed with my Peacebringer. As a smurfsquid, I was locking myself into whatever form the team needed. I wasn't playing a shapeshifter, I was playing three different characters who just happened to have a faster way of getting to the character select screen. I started paying more attention to not just my own powers, but my enemies' attacks. I began looking for gaps in enemy attack chains where I could flash out of Dwarf for a quick buff or Stygian Circle. I was micromanaging like mad, cramping my fingers into pretzels to keep all the quick keybinds flying... And the game rewarded me for it. I'm not saying I'm perfect, far from it. I still tend to 'mode lock'; particularly into dwarf form when I end up being the tank by darwinian necessity. I'm still a hapless newb just trying to get the most out of their character. I'll mis-time something, try to snag a heal from the corpses at my feet, and in that moment of vulnerability taste defeat. And there are times when I've got three Fluffys up, a saturated mire and eclipse, hasten; just Stygian'ed back from the brink of defeat and I feel like a god. I honestly feel now that this was the intent of the archetype right from the beginning. Not three separate forms; but working in harmony. It's hard. It's so, so much easier to build for human only, or bi-form, or even tri-. And it's not my place to tell anyone how to play their character, or how to have fun in this game we all love so much. But a Brute, or a Sentinel, or whatever other AT can do the specific job better; and a tiny part of me mourns the lost potential even as I celebrate us all returning home to Paragon. For myself? I can proudly say that I'm a void-steppin, fluffy-wranglin, multi-Mire-stackin, Unstoppable MF'in Warshade. I have dared the impossible, and that makes us mighty.

/macro NoKS emote BuzzOff$$local "I have this under control. You are needed elsewhere.

Simon Curtis: Superhero