Warshades

I will add that Carnies are a bit of an anthises to what rad/ss wants to do. You are not a stand in the middle and soak up damage tanker, you are a proc bomber that kills enemies quickly so they don't get a chance to deal a lot of damage for you to soak up. Carnies ability to go intangible can make it difficult for you to mass murder the illusionists, which is partly what can lead to stacked mezzes when you're trying to deal with multiple groups. I don't know what your playstyle is, but I personally don't herd groups with my rad/ss. Partially because I skipped taunt and the other part is that all the AoEs have fairly quick recharges where everything (other than GZ) is usually up and recharged between groups. Rather than herding groups together (and even when you do, there is still a target hit cap), I prefer to just steam roll from one group to the next. This also helps the other issue with resist based tankers in avoiding excessive debuff stacks and allowing debuffs to expire as you go from group to group.

I'll preface that this is my own personal opinion on how end heavy the primaries are. This is also very build dependent even if you don't count secondary power picks. What power pools you pick (fighting, leadership, etc) can make a big impact and a lot of toggles. D Tier: dark and stone armor. C Tier: shield B: Invuln, WP, SR S: Ice, bio, rad, fire, electric Note that some are in S because of the end recovery powers that they have (energy absorption, consume, etc) and that without those powers they could potentially jump 2 tiers.

A few points: Don't skip beta decay. You can 1 slot it with Achilles proc. If you're trying to lean into damage, I would absolutely proc out ground zero and rad therapy, those will be your heaviest hitting AoEs since the base recharge is long enough to almost always guarantee procs activate. They also have high base accuracy. You could consider musculature alpha to get more dmg, especially for proc'd out GZ and RT. You could consider /psi mastery. If you're not going for soul to get DN, then psi has the better single target attack in Dominate (fast activation, hold, and excellent to proc out with higher base accuracy also) and you can add FF +recharge to psi tornado (which also adds some mitigation with knockdown). You went a bit overboard with the resists. Unless you're running an old mids version that is counting SMoT proc, I believe you currently have to manually factor in the resist you'd get from SMoT (6.7% if you want to be conservative, 13.4% if you plan on spamming the power to keep up 2 stacks). You won't need to build for more than 83.3% resist at the most. Don't have access to view your build in mids, but those are the main things that jumped out to me from your screenshot. Edit: should also add that you may want to build high recharge debuff resist. Rad armor is reliant on several clickable powers like particles shielding and rad therapy for sustainability. If your recharge is debuffed and those powers aren't up, you're more likely to end up dying. While this would add some cost to the build, 2-3 piece winter sets would help you build it relatively easy if you swap out some of the HOs for them.

You could try out stone/staff. While stone armor has an easier time building higher resists than ice armor, it can still benefit from the +all resist buff from staff's form of body to make it easier to hit hard cap.

This one is a work in progress, tough ice armor tank. 64-65% s/l/e/n resist built. Add in form of body from staff giving 13.3% resist to all, 5% resist to all from barrier, and 6.7% resist to all from SMoT proc and you're getting an additional 25% resist to all. Hits near 90% resist cap to s/l/e/n and 60-70% on f/tox/psi resist. Also has access to chilling embrace for additional -dmg debuff to foes to stack with DN from soul mastery. Tanker (Ice Armor - Staff Fighting)2.mbd

I don't have an answer on how it could or should be changed, just that it definitely needs a revamp, that's all. Cosmic balance providing mez protection/kb resist when solo wouldn't be bad at all. I would also have cosmic balance provide defense instead of resistance when teamed with tanks/defenders/MMs/corrs. At the very least, boosting defense would actually be useful at lvl 50 since neither get any inherent defense buffs outside of shadow cloak that a WS can get. Resistance seems incredibly redundant at lvl 50 when you can get eclipse and light form permanent/near perma and sit at capped resists anyway. Even while lvling, resistance isn't that needed since the kheldian secondaries provide resistance shields and dwarf form provides massive resistance buffs. The lack of being able to switch (outside of having multiple builds so you could in theory switch whenever you want) doesn't make them difficult to play, it makes them more specialized and allows them to excel in what each build is able to and focused on doing. VEATs are not the most exciting to lvl naturally to 50, but they are an incredibly powerful AT once leveled and built, much more so than kheldians. While khelds are supposed to get buffed from teammates (and I argue how useful that buff from cosmic balance really is for reasons already stated), VEATs provide buffs to both themselves and teammates with their excellent tactical training toggles. They also scale much better as damage dealers than kheldians. Which is an issue for anyone wanting to run a human only kheldian. Why penalize a particular style of playing an AT while rewarding those that want to bi or tri form? But it penalizes soloing.

Don't know much of anything about Dragoons, but I'll throw my vote for ice armor/staff pairing if there's an ice themed Dragoon. One of the forms from staff provides a sizable resist to all buff which you can keep up permanently while fighting. This would help shore up the lower resists on ice armor and can make it really sturdy. Just as a caution, staff has some very low damage output.

I think the bigger issue is that Kheldians were designed very early into the game's life and they just haven't scaled as well with all the power creep that had come out since. When kheldians were available for example, we didn't have IO sets and bonuses. On SOs/HOs only, there likely wouldn't be such a noticeable difference in power between them and other ATs. At the very least, the damage cap and base damage/scale of powers needs to be adjusted and buffed. I don't need kheldians to do blaster level damage, but they (at least human version) fall well short compared to what most damage dealing ATs are able to output. I could get behind kheldians being designed for expert mode, but then why not do the same for arachnos widows/soldiers? They're significantly easier to play, get better damage, provide more support to the team, and get mez protection. Meanwhile, kheldians (particularly human form) are stuck being a sub par damage dealing AT with a lacking amount of mez protection and a lot of annoying KB. The KB actually runs counter to how Warshades are meant to be played as they benefit most when enemies are grouped together. Stygian Circle/Eclipse want enemies grouped up, Orbiting Death wants enemies grouped up, Unchain Essence wants enemies grouped up, Inky Aspect wants enemies grouped up to stack with Gravitic Emanation. Yet several of the attacks (Quasar, Unchain Essence, Dark Detonation, Gravitic Emanation, and Shadow Blast) all have KB components. The point here is that cosmic balance is an inherent power that, when soloing, provides nothing. The closest argument that could be made is that gauntlet doesn't provide a tanker much of anything when soloing, but the counterpoint is that the gauntlet taunt would perhaps help stop enemies from running away and thus keep them in melee range for tankers to hit. There are also further arguments to be made that the kheldian inherent is pretty useless even on teams. End game builds tend to go towards perma light form or perma eclipse, thus making any resistance gains irrelevant. Similarly because of the low damage cap, you might not benefit much if at all from the damage buff from the inherent on a team. The inherent should absolutely be addressed and hopefully turned into something that is more useful in all situations. Personally, I think the secondary that kheldians have is fine. At the most all it needs is some form of mez protection, which I'll point out again, VEATs get (regardless of which way they build) whereas khelds only get it through dwarf form, or a limited amount from PBs light form. I would mainly just like to see something that can help reduce some of the KB that a lot of powers do to KD and a boosted damage cap and base damage on several attacks. Not all of the human attacks need to be buffed, but there are several that severely under perform. I don't think those are game breaking changes to make and would go a long way towards making kheldians more enjoyable (not insanely over powered) to play.

I've not attempted to farm with an /ice armor brute so can't comment on how easy or hard it is to set up a farm that only deals cold damage. Following up on @Maelwys comment about running it for a farm and prioritizing fire resist and fire defense, here is an adjusted build that strives to achieve 45% fire defense and near 90% fire resist (it's at 85% which should be sufficient when factoring in the -dmg from chilling embrace). For farming purposes, you want to take musculature. You also want to avoid taking a recharge boosting alpha slot since it reduces proc chances of damage procs in powers. Similarly, I've swapped the dam/rech purples you had in powers for dam/end, you'll notice if you compare the difference that powers will deal (on average) more damage with the dam/end slotted (again because recharge reduces the chance for damage procs to fire off). I've added cross punch to provide another cone attack that can hit more targets and also accepts the FF +rech proc to help with recharge. Mu mastery is more ideal for farming since it provides 2 AoE attacks that can hit multiple targets compared to just 1 in fire mastery. The -res in melt armor takes to long to recharge to be a regular part of an attack chain and make up the loss of another attack. This build should have no problem standing in the middle of a fire farm at +4/8x without dying as long as you're actively playing (needs energy absorption to hit 45% fire def). Just be sure not to use it on any fire farms that still have the fire sword attacks as they have a -def component. Concealment pool was removed to add maneuvers, also picked up glacial armor as it can mule LotG and allow you to be better for general content if you want to do anything besides farming. I've messed around a lot with the levels at which certain powers were chosen and you can adjust those as needed, my main goal was building for enough fire def/res. I would personally have gone with spine primary which has a few more cone attacks (ripper and throw spines) along with a damage aura and faster animating attacks compared to radiation. Edit: also spines can be customized to make it look like icicles. Gumbo - Brute (Radiation Melee - Ice Armor).mbd

Opening up more powers to be usable while in Nova/Dwarf form would be awesome and the form powers are basically copy/pastes of the regularly available ones (although losing double mire on WS wouldn't be as fun). Overall though, human only form Khelds could use a massive revamp. Damage needs to be buffed across a lot of powers, and maybe increase in damage buff cap. Outside of a few powers like Gravity Well/Radiant Strike, nukes, and a few others, most attacks are severely under powered. Knockback. It is extremely annoying that a ton of powers across khelds do knockback and essentially require wasting slots to slot a kb to kd IO. I can understand keeping it on a few powers, such as the nuke for example, but it would be nice to change a lot of the kb powers to kd instead, or at least offer players the choice of making them kd. You could even add umbra/luminous mastery epic (why do VEATs get epics while HEATs do not?) that has an always active passive power (similar to Widow's Fate Sealed) that changes KB effects to KD as an example. Animation times could use an update. I don't know why Incandescent Strike is still animating at 3.3 seconds when all other such powers with the exact same animation (i.e. Thunder Strike, Total Focus, etc) have been reduced to 2.53. Would also be nice if Dark Extraction and Unchain Essence animation time could be decreased, also would it be to much to ask for Unchain Essence to release the energy of live foes as well as dead? Would make targeting a little less cumbersome. Overall, I think the kheld secondaries are fine and don't really need adjusting, but the primary powers are in need of some buffs. Once buffed, you could then remove the ability to do changeling builds which IMO feels like it's abusing the way form changes are coded to be able to deal more damage. Longbow counterpart to Arachnos MMs would be a nice option as a "hero" themed MM.

Quick example of some of the changes I would suggest. This can be fine tuned a bit more, but with 1 SMoT proc and barrier, that's a permanent +11.7% resist to all and 5% def to all. Will get you to soft cap s/l/e/n with 1 target within range of invincibility and 43.5% on f/c. Hard cap to s/l/e/n with ~65% f/c resist, 60% toxic, and 86% psionic. The low fire/cold resist is due to splitting some sets to partially proc out KO Blow and Stomp. However, cold damage is nearly none existent and fire isn't all to common either compared to s/l/e/n. You may need to set targets within range of invincibility to 0 and then back to 1 to reset defense numbers on mids. It tends to not display defense properly when loading in a build with invincibility and currently you need to manually add in SMoT proc resists (6.7% to all per stack) when figuring out total resists as it doesn't add the resist from the proc at all on mids. Hope this helps. Sylvie Stardrive [Tanker] (Invulnerability - Super Strength).mbd

I don't personally have a rad/dark tank, I do have a rad/ss one and for me a double stacked rage is sufficient. In the event I'm facing things with a lot of tohit debuffs like a mob of CoT demons or the shadow things from MJ arc, I'll usually be teaming and teammates can take care of killing them. There are very few mobs that truly stack enough -tohit to impact a double rage. Dark melee would be affected a bit more since a max target soul drain only provides 30% tohit buff compared to a double stacked rage with membrane exposure HOs providing nearly 60%. Ideally, you'd start any fight with soul drain if it's up, which at least would maximize the tohit buff before any debuffs can land and decrease the chance of hitting max targets with soul drain. I have not, but sounds like a fun experiment. My rad/ss has plenty of knockdown between stomp, hand clap, and psi tornado so I went for the dmg procs on my build.

The issue at lower lvls for SS is the lack of AoEs until you get Foot Stomp (unless you plan to take Hand Clap early). While gauntlet and the aura from invincibility will help in maintaining aggro, being able to hit the enemies is usually the best way to get them to focus attacks on you. The other problem on certain maps is that mobs can be more spread out. Even when you have Foot Stomp, sometimes having taunt can be helpful for drawing aggro of enemies that are further away from you and out of range of invincibility and Foot Stomp. There are other situations that can arise, like ambush spawns (ITF for example) where it would be beneficial to have taunt. Edit: can't look at the build in mids right now, but one thing you can do is split the superior gauntleted fist into 2 sets of 3 to double up on the 6% e/n resist. Instead of having 4 pieces of reactive def in invincibility, consider using a 4 piece set of shield wall to get more e/n resist. I also wouldn't do a full set of Sudden Accel in Hand Clap. 4 slot it with kb to kd proc, FF +recharge proc, and 2 dmg procs (iirc the taunt and there's one other from either kb or stun iso sets). Stacked rage + invincibility will generally take care of any accuracy issues. If you want to increase dmg and reduce the impact of -dmg from rage crash, you can similarly proc out Foot Stomp and KO blow with 5x dmg procs and 1x FF+recharge proc. Rage crash doesn't affect the dmg that procs do when triggered. Some of the resist passives seem a bit overslotted. You can also use up to 5x imperium armor psi resist and 1x aegis psi resist uniques to fill the psi hole of invuln. Dull pain is also overslotted, it's not really a reliable heal power, it's more so just a + max HP power. 2-3 slots is plenty to slot a heal + heal/recharge. Unstoppable you could drop completely. Invuln tanks have little difficulty in reaching hard cap or near hard cap resists to everything, no point in picking up a crash T9 that won't contribute anything useful and has a bad crash. Rage can be slotted with the hami enhancement that buffs recharge/tohit/def to boost both recharge and tohit, helps with accuracy. You also shouldn't need the full 6 piece set of SMoT. Iirc the last bonus is s/l resist, something that invuln has no issues capping.

Very quick build to maybe offer some ideas, there are probably several ways you could tinker and improve it further. You're basically sitting at 1 SMoT proc away from hard capping everything other than cold and psi, neither of which are very common. The cold hole isn't worth trying to fix in radiation armor imo, but you could move some slots from weave to give impervium psi resist uniques if you wanted even higher psi resist. I didn't bother with dark consumption since rad armor doesn't really suffer from endurance issues and the recharge is to long to make it a useful part of an attack chain. Regarding ground zero, I fully proc'd it out since soul drain should provide you with more than enough +to hit to have sufficient accuracy, but you could remove 2 dmg procs and do a 2 piece superior avalanche (acc/dmg and acc/dmg/rech) to improve accuracy and get recharge debuff resist. This would also open up more options for siphon life as you wouldn't really need blistering cold set for the recharge debuff resist. I went for a full bombardment in psi tornado for the resist buffs but they are likely overkill. You may benefit more from doing a 5 piece ragnarok and FF +rech proc in psi tornado. Hope this helps offer some ideas. Tanker (Radiation Armor - Dark Melee).mbd

Uun covered a lot of the points, I'll just add a few more I noticed: You're chasing toxic/psi resist a little to hard. Prioritize the most common damage resists first (s/l/e/n). ~30% for tox/psi is more than enough. Similarly, you're chasing max hp and regen a little to hard as well. No need to 3 slot gaussian to get a small amount of max HP when you can benefit more from getting another 4.5% e/n resist by running a 4 piece shield wall. Shield wall also provides a higher max HP bonus than either gaussian or LotG sets. Not sure how useful the BU gaussian proc is in focused accuracy as I normally don't go for energy mastery on my builds. I switched it to BU, but if it works well in FA then you can keep it there. I moved around a few slots to get you more 4 set pieces of shield wall for the e/n resist and split superior gauntleted fist as Uun mentioned. You can consider a 4 piece multi strike in whirling hands along with the FotG -res and a damage proc to get more useful resist bonuses. You could also boost your total defense a bit more by placing a gladiator armor unique in tough in place of the end/rech unbreakable guard, although if you want to keep the 5 piece unbreakable guard, I'd replace the end/rech for the resist/end/rech. Posted the very quick rework below. Gets you to 67% s/l, 70% e/n, 50% f/c, and 30% tox/psi resist. You can make some adjustments as you want/need. The 3 piece touch of death can be swapped to mako's bite if you want higher tox/psi resist instead as an example. Tanker (Super Reflexes - Energy Melee).mbd Edit: actually just noticed that you had scaling resist HP% preset already on the auto toggles, which explains why the resist numbers seemed unusually high. At 100% HP, the resists are at 42% s/l, 45% e/n, 25% f/c, and 30% tox/psi.