SeraphimKensai

I've played every AT to 50, with often times tons of time spent with each across all content (mm is my newest AT that I'm getting the hang of still, but the others I'm pretty decent at). Warshade plays somewhat similar to a PB, albeit it relies on using mob density for it's main mechanic. Warshades shine brightest when they are surrounded by tons of mobs. The main thing is to arrive for enough global recharge to perma Eclipse, then it's basically the same as perma lightform as long as you hit enough mobs. Stygian Circle it's AOE heal is the same, more bang for you buck the more you hit. It has a PBAoE Dot toggle, dark extraction, your nuke, etc. Sunless and Dwarf Mire each work the same way, the more mobs they hit the more damage you will do (that's in place of buildup). Because it's all about mob density/aoes, it pairs extremely well with stealth. You have a stealth power in your secondary, and you can slot a stealth IO into Sprint. That will let you position yourself to pick your engagements. Also with stealth, you have an inherent recall friend so you can help tf's speed up missions as well. It's a fun AT to play, and I'd argue the most complex in the game, especially if you go 3 form, and juggle all the mechanics.

Nice, but was hoping for the rage update as well.

Not saying to do this and not directing you to any specific places but....there are numerous methods outside of the game to do essentially what you want via macros. Like I said, I recommend you not use them, but the methods do exist.

Could always change it to Freem. Joke aside, it is useful in Hammi raids and Shard TFs if people are careful. The biggest issue I see with it is that the speed of those in the group is not the speed of the one with the power, if they could fix that alone it would make it a better situational power. Otherwise, radical idea changing it to Grant Flight, targeted AoE 2 minutes of flight. So if someone has the buff it's like a temp jetpack on them for 2 minutes and the time is something for them to manage (either land or get a rebuff in time).

So far on HC I have the following: Ill/Dark - Incarnate/Io Grav/Sonic - Incarnate/Io Fire/Pain - Incarnate/Io Earth/Thermal - lvl 38/Io Ice/Poison - lvl 33 Dark/Rad - lvl 50 Elec/Cold - lvl 50 The Illusion/Dark troller has the most pets a controller can have, but also likely the least control a controller can have. It's fun constantly dropping PA/Fluffy etc on targets. Dark has great sustain/utility. Drawback is that SI and the stealth from Dark are mutually exclusive so it comes down to a help yourself or your team. The grav/sonic is really good at positioning mobs into a corner where I have sing with disruption field and liquefy. Using the impact mechanic it does pretty good damage. Synergistic with a traps or devices player as well. The fire/pain does pretty good damage as fire imps are damage buffed via pain, plus healed. Hot feet, fire cages, and bonefire (with a kb to kd proc) really make the combo shine. Earth/thermal - really strong controls and defense debuffing along with a pbaoe self heal that also heals animate stone and any allies nearby. Heat exhaustion and Melt Armor are also stellar. Ice/poison - strong debuffs between the ice controls and poison powers. 2 single target holds for stacking on bosses/AV's. Artic air/ice slick. Shiver has a wider cone than neurotoxic breath. Noxious gas is fun great. Poison Trap should be noted that it's different than the traps set in that this one is mainly a sleep rather than a huge Regen debuff. Dark/rad - really strong soft controls. Floors enemy chance to hit between dark control and rad infection. Serious debuffs. AM. Elec/cold - only multi hitting sleep, strong at sapping, good end management. Infrigidate is a proc monster, heatloss synergizes well with the end sapping nature of the build. Defense shields for the Gremlins. All the combos are fun and have reasonable synergy between them creating some potentially powerful controllers.

I had that thought as well to a degree, and have started trying my hand at making a mini taskforce via AE. Albeit, I'm not very experienced at making content on the AE, I suppose it would be a good opportunity to gain experience. For the AE taskforce, I'm aiming at making it a high level (I'm going to test whether to do lvl 50 or lvl 46, basically whether or not incarnate powers can be used), and hopefully difficult challenge for players. I originally thought, and still think this would work as a great zone wide event like rikti dropship raids and such to have another "raid like" event for our playerbase. AE content is hard capped at no more than 5 missions, but I've seen some good arcs have multiple parts, extending their overall length past 5 missions. That said the overall length should be long enough for storytelling purposes, but not unnecessarily artificially add to the length just to make it take longer. That said, I can open the discussion here towards possible mission ideas, as our community is a very creative and constructive one. Story background, the Nictus led by Arkhan and Requiem have been preparing to launch an invasion on Earth for a long time, a lone Nictus refugee defects to join the Warshades and inform Shadowstar of the pending Invasion... Mission Ideas I've thought up so far: 1. Investigate the Nictus Invasion, the refugee gave Shadowstar the location of one of the invasion cells that Arkhan had been working at, players arrive to investigate as Shadowstar rallies help in the rear. 2. Pursue Arkhan, the refugee was right Arkhan was there but narrowly escaped, pursue her to find out more about the pending invasion. Discover a clue to lead you to the next location. 3. Infiltrate the Base, steal the schematics for the Quantum Technology. Arkhan and Requiem are meeting, both retreat. 4. Defend Striga Isle, Arkhan has unleashed her Nictus expeditionary forces to take over Striga Isle, by planting Shadow Cysts. Destroy them all. 5. Hold the Line, Arkhan has attacked Peregrine Island. Hold her forces at Bay until help arrives. Requiem arrives to assist Arkhan, and deals a cripplingly blow to the resistance. Retreat to regroup with Shadowstar. Any thoughts? Mission ideas? Ultimately I'm looking to segue the AE arc to a point that would make sense for a possible zone wide invasion based event.

I always liked the Cysts, because they presented a challenge to a regular team especially if they caught them unaware. I've always been one for having a decent challenge, and cysts were one of the toughest npc spawns in the game if they weren't dealt with right away.

I wouldn't want to team up with Nazi's either, but I figured there's other factions that might have an interest like the Awakened PPD that I mentioned.

Ah I had read the Council invented the quantum guns and void hunters, but since they are led by Arkhan and Requiem (their goal being to infect the whole world), it would probably need missions by player teams to assault a base and steal the quantum guns to help them fight the invasion. You're absolutely right about existing mobs getting infected, although the lore says the host typically has to be willing unless they are weakened (albeit getting blasted by a horse of unbound nictus would definitely weaken something), so it's definitely possible I suppose that Sally or Hamidon could get infected with a Nictus.

Hey folks, I proposed a suggestion for a Nictus invasion to help give the community some more kheldian content, feel free to check out the suggestion at it's forum link: The Nictus Invasion. Thanks.

Could even bring in Sunstorm, Shadowstar, Moonfire, the Awakened PPD, etc. to lead players to fight back the invasion via objectives and such. Could be a fun event. Examples of possible objectives: 1. Raid Council Outposts/Bases for Quantum weapon temp powers, nictus fragments, etc. 2. Fight off localized assaults (Atlas Park City Hall, Portal Corp, the Vanguard Base, etc.) in zones to prevent Shadow Cysts from portaling in tons of unbound nictus. 3. Nictus infused monster hunting. What happens when Lusca, Kraken, Jack In Irons, Sally, Death Surge, Paladin, etc. get infected with a Nictus? They become more of a threat with new powers for us to fight off. 4. Arkhan/Requiem have achieved nigh ultimate power and fighting over leadership of the Nictus Invasion Force. Stand with heroes, villains, vigilantes, and rogues to decimate the invading force's leadership.

Is it just me, or do Shadow Cysts not spawn anywhere besides in the ITF? Any chance we can get an event to have a Nictus Invasion (similar to a rikti invasion, but with free floating nictus, crystals, dark/bright Nova's, and black/white dwarves). Perhaps the Council can spawn in forces led by Requiem and Arkhan to welcome the invasion, giving us opportunity to lead expeditions to steal temporary power quantum gun arrays to players, and maybe a quantum nullifier (new temp power idea to give player Kheldians extra protection from the Negative Energy of the Quantum guns). The Nictus could try and set up Cyst Seeds to bring in more of their invasion force and flood a zone, and players could band together to fight them back. If a zone is being invaded, standard 100% debt protection like they do during rikti dropship, Halloween events, etc. Any thoughts?

You can use a spines/Elec scrapper to farm SL if you build up the defense via IOs, it gets pretty decent resistances overall. AoE centric, it would be a decent combo.

Wow just stumbled upon this thread and read through it all. I had an Ill/ff troller back in live which I enjoyed, but as IO's came out it was essentially shelves as everyone builds for defense. I've recently rolled a fire/ff troller. Of all the suggestions that I read through, I think the ones with the most merit at least in my opinion were as follows in order of priority would be: 1). Self Buffs with Deflection and Insulation. 2). DDR with PFF, Deflection, Insulation, and Dispersion. 3). The Absorb mechanic coming into Dispersion. 4). An incremental Defense Debuff on enemies inside the range of Force Bubble. Regardless which changes one favors, I think we can all agree that FF needs some love.

Also you'll want your dwarf form, because you can switch into it even while messed and then you've got status protection. It's basically a break free that turns you into a tank.

IMO, I really enjoy 3 form perma eclipse double miring warshades that rain down umbral fire on their targets, refill based on their corpses, and steal the souls of them to fuel your minions. I wouldn't really try a single form version mainly because of double mires.

I run a FortNight multi build hero that has 3 fully built builds. One as a Night Widow focusing on Melee, one as a Fortunata focusing on Ranged, and the last as a Blood Widow focusing on maximizing support via pools. The thing is a beast, I just wish there wasn't a 1 minute CD on swapping builds.

As someone with 3 lvl 50 controllers and 2 on the way, it sounds good.

Warshades benefit more from form swapping then Peacebringers do because of how Sunless Mire works. In which case you'll always want at bare minimum with a Warshade Dwarf form so you can have 2 stacking mires. Nova is nice then as a floating howitzer of soon while buffed.

I have both fully IO'd, warshade with a MF-3 Form build and What I call a FortNight (multi build using Fortunate/Night Widow with full IO set builds, while mine also has a third build for a support based blood widow as well). The Warshade is fun if you can have density, and it's a very active build hot swapping forms on the fly multiple times per enemy group, it relies on damage resistance. The FortNight is fun, although super expensive, for mine I bought IO's for.3 builds (eg. 15 LotG 7.5's), you can swap forms once/minute. Less active than the Warshade. Lots of Leadership, and super defense softcaps for incarnate content. (Drawback to a FortNight, when you swap builds all your CD's go on cool down immediately, including long recharge prestige powers like ATT).

I'd pick stalker. More damage and can be built to be super survivable.

Dominators really come into their own once you start slotting them, and then the play style completely changes once you have enough global recharge to go permadom. When you're permadom, you will become the steamroller.

I like Galaxy Brain's idea about having the armor toggles that are exclusive with granite offer some modified benefits to running with Granite. Perhaps they could be used to mitigate some of the negatives associated with Granite. Example ideas of the armors when used with Granite (note: in Granite the normal armor effect of the armor toggles is nullified,and outside of Granite, the Granite effects are nullified): Brimstone - The heat of the armor boosts your recharge by 5% per enemy within mudpots'range. This allows you to negate your -65% recharge debuff when surrounded by 13 mobs, and at agro cap boosts it by 20%. Crystal - Jagged crystals boost your damage by 3% per enemy within mudpots' range. This allows you to negate the -30% damage debuff at 10 mobs around you, and if you are at agro cap of 17, boosts damage by 21%. Minerals - Minerals fortify your strength to allow you to jump, or fly. It can be enhanced to reduce the 90% movement speed reduction on you as well. Caveat: only one armor toggle in addition to Granite can be used at once? Thoughts?

That would be cool, but I'd settle for having a Null the Gull in our own bases.

I've looked over a lot of builds for forts and night widows regarding how people slot Mind Link. The power takes Defense Buff and To Hit enhancements, it does not take recharge. A common goal ppl have is to perma Mind Link. Back when Widows and Forts 1st came out, a common trick was to slot in Membrane HO's as the power would then benefit from both the Defense Buff, To Hit, and Recharge of the HO. Fast forward to today. In both Mids Reborn, Mind Link has a base recharge of 240 seconds. It shows Mind Link benefitting from a HO:Membrane, so slotting 3, makes the recharge 123.1 seconds, effectively making the power Perma by itself. I see numerous builds recommending Membranes, and realistically they are pretty spendy, on Everlasting right around 30 mil for both the normal and synthetic version. I did testing last night on Mind Link on Everlasting.... (Note: I have 5 LotG global recharge IO's, Mental Training, and Hasten affecting my recharge, nothing else). I have CD timers turned on for my powers. Mind Link with no slots and with a single HO: Membrane - Mind Link's recharge is not affected by slotting the Membrane at all in game, despite Mids Reborn/Pines showing that it is. It is definitely affected by global recharge reduction, but since the power does not accept recharge reduction enhancements, locally, it does not benefit from that. The power also boosts To Hit, while someone might be curious how much To Hit buff someone gets with 3 Membranes, that would be 7.8% to Hit Buff, the base amount without slotting for To Hit Buff is 5%. For perspective unslotted Tactics ot Tactical Training: Leadership, each give 10% To Hit Buff unslotted. Follow Up does 10% unslotted, and Build Up does 20% unslotted. It doesn't seem like Mind Link really gives a decent enough To Hit Buff for me to merit slotting for To Hit Buff. I use the power for capping defense, which as I assume everyone here is rather intelligent, does as well. Because of all that, and based on current pricing trends, I can not in good fashion recommend anyone to use Membranes in Mind Link, unless someone really is slot starved and wants to buff both Defense and To Hit. IO Sets are significantly cheaper and you can then build towards global set bonuses as well. So at some point the power was changed to not allow benefit from the recharge of slotted enhancements that reduce recharge on a local level (which I did quit back during i16 until coming back this past spring, so there was a lot of time for the power to change).