Microcosm

Ya Rebirth is releasing their version with toggle suppression as well as some power sharing that frees up slots and build picks on Sunday to live (also allowing you to run orbiting death and inky in other forms unsuppressed so they're actually useful). I've recreated my shade and pb over there at this point.

Well I can tell you guys I went ahead and remade my Warshade on Rebirth in prep for this. Simply the ability to keep OD and Inky on in the forms was enough to sink that, much else all the other changes. I prefer my PB as human form, so will probably not remake that one at this point; the double stomp is one major reason to go multi-form there and that would disappear with these changes, so not particularly interested in that. Now have to find someone that wants to trade HC inf for Rebirth inf 🙂

That is fair. I'd be salty still about losing the ability to slot so many kinetic combats in a build. I wonder if the hold procs in Gravity Well still function while acting as Dwarf Smite. Will have to figure out how to get that stuff on their test server.. Edit: Found another quirk, after playing a little. Common tactic is to use Gravitic Emanation then switch to Nova to wail on a crowd. However, now that GE is shared across human and nova forms, if you hit it in Human it goes on the long cooldown timer, so you can't use it for a while in Nova. If you use it in Nova form it has the shorter recharge to use as part of an AoE chain, but not not really doable if you use it in human first.

Alright, I logged in over there long enough to train to 50. Ignoring some of the differences with Homecoming, here are some thoughts: Toggle suppression/inky and OD working in forms is excellent. However, the defense toggles suppressing outside of human makes human probably still the most survivable form if you can deal with mez, which isn't right. I don't think I would ever toggle on dwarf unless I wanted to taunt something. Seems like some part of pool powers working in forms would be better. The power rerouting is definitely not the way I would have dealt with slot crunch. It absolutely neuters the ability to slot for many bonuses as it removes three Melee powers by combining them or replacing them (gravimetric snare replacing dwarf strike). Speaking of gravimetric snare, you need to take that now to have a fully functional dwarf, and it's a pretty garbage power. So you maybe pick up Essence Drain by taking dwarf, but you pay it back by having to take gravimetric snare. I think a better fix would have been to just grant x number of extra form-only slots if you take the forms or something. Ability to use some powers in forms: gold.

Thanks Doom. I think I will jump over. Dwarf Mire and Sunless mire also have pretty drastic cast time differences. These are some understandable tradeoffs. Not sure I would have made exactly the same changes, but it looks like a net positive in a big way. One other thing we lose: while the slot crunch has been an issue, each distinct form power got a "free" base slot. This mattered when trying to stack certain bonuses (kinetic combat). This is a fair trade for the ability to use more powers, but just want to call it out.

Do we know if the toggle suppression works with pool powers like Weave? OD and inky are a big deal, but dropping to human and retoggling defensive/leadership powers would be a missed opportunity. I also see no change to dark extraction, which is pretty needed, and it looks like light form is usable in dwarf but eclipse is not? Guess I need to get on rebirth to see...

PBs also have significantly better single target dps capabilities, +hp, the ability to max their resistance without any enemies around, and nearly the aoe capabilities that shades do. A little mez protection wouldn't bridge that gap, honestly. Ideal solution to me though is still toggle suppression with a little mez protection from the human shields to make them worthwhile again.

@JasperStone you can use the movement commands to cause this, like /bind r "+down$$powexectoggleon Ninja Run$$powexectoggleon Sprint". You have to hold down r a little bit; if you just tap r only one will turn on. The +down doesn't do anything unless you're flying, in which case it moves you down. You can also use +up, +forward or +back. They just turn the action into "move this direction until the key is released." This works with toggleon commands, not with execname.

It's this and the -res proc it can take. I've tried IStrike procced out in a few chains, and it always just falls flat. It does do knockdown, though, which is a nice change from all the knockback everywhere else.

Here are my tips since no one is jumping in: If you want to max things out on a pb, you probably want to just stick with human and not worry about dwarf except when exemping. If toggle suppression was a thing it would be a different story, but since it isn't you are generally better off keeping your defense toggles from pool powers running in human. Getting Lightform perma is fairly easy, especially if you are going to use ageless destiny. Frankenslot Lightform with a few res/rech ios and boost them, then grab Hasten and a few recharge set bonuses. Once you get there, you can decide how much defense you want, but you can get to softcap if you push for it. For damage, I believe the best chain around is radiant strike, cross punch, and gleaming blast, with photon seekers whenever they are up. You can get two -res IOs in with that chain and quickly cycle radiant strike, which is your best single target attack. IStrike is a trap which you can use if you want, but it will lower your overall damage. For AoE, you can live with solar flare, cross punch, the nuke and photon seekers, but this is where you could consider the forms to give you more aoe attacks. Again though, it will detoggle weave/maneuvers/combat jumping/combat flight so may not be worth the defense loss.

To capture the "essence" of the AT, I think your secondary would be Ninjitsu. It was originally just a stalker set and somewhat different from all the other armors. It's fits into the stealth theme and functions decently without the IO set meta. Your other options, if you don't want to delve into IOs, are probably SR and EA, as they will function better without the set bonuses than most the other armors. I don't think there is really a primary that defines the AT as much, so it's kind of whatever you want on that end. I would point you to one of the sets that has more AoEs for a better/consistent higher level of play without IO bonus meta. These would include Electric, Ice, Rad, Savage, Spines, Staff or Street Justice. Of those, Ice probably synergizes best with Ninjitsu because adding Ice Patch to Caltrops will wreak havoc on the AI and make enemies flop slowly on the damage patch. If you ever do want to get into the IO meta, let me know 🙂 That's where I spend all my time.

Smoke flash and misdirection don't put you in the special "Hidden" status that gives you the free crit. Disappointing, I know. Back on live I took /nin because I thought it gave the extra placate for the same reason, and found out it does not. In fact, I encourage you not to take smoke flash at all. Not only does it have a very long cast, but there is a purchasable temp power that does the exaaaact same thing without a power pick. Misdirection at least does -res.

Was reading through this thread for the fist time and saw this, which got me really curious. I have done bio on scraps and stalkers several times, but honestly I just don't like it (especially on stalkers) because it is just so paper thin. With the tank modifiers though, it seems to be pretty sturdy without even messing with s/l defense. I haven't tried a 4/8 ITF yet, so not sure about the def cascade there, but it does pretty well on the 801.2 on beta. 801.5 killed me fast as I couldn't hit anything and they whittled me down. Anyway, once I got the hang of it, I got the below: 4:27 with procced dna siphon 3:49! dropped dna proccing, with extra recharge in rage 4:21 messed up several times 4:22 didn't mess up? So except for that one outlier time, ever so slightly slower than Gob's. In terms of pylons, after some experimentation I got it to these with hybrid slotted but inactive, Rage stacked: 2:08 2:05 (chain is Dark Det, Gloom, KB, Cross Punch, Gloom, Haymaker) That is nuts for a tank. I dig it. A lot. I have to add, I've got issues with some aspects of this test. Namely, I think the cave map heavily disadvantages cone users vs pbaoe and taoe. I started taking a db character in here and it's just nearly impossible to line up the cones for max effectiveness. You can't even do the jump-then-execute trick, as the ceilings are low. So it's kind of interesting for comparisons between pbaoe sets, but I don't think it's a real comparison for cone sets. I know that won't matter to everyone, but just thought I'd toss it as my 2 cents. While I'm here, I'll add a stalker for data, though again, I sucked with the cones so this might not be ideal representation: db/elec 7:30 (lethal also seems extra resisted here?) pylon time varies between 1:25 and 1:30, hybrid off I ran a staff/ice stalker as well, which did quite a bit better, but it appears I did not write down that time where I thought... its last three pylons were 1:57, 1:45, and 2:07. I might rerun the trapdoor later.

Staff is a super high utility set, and therefore a low damage one. Procs can help increase the damage, but it's not going to become competitive with the high damage sets. And it honestly shouldn't. If you want to get closer to the damage sets, as mentioned above, you'll need to run it as a stalker. This still isn't going to the be highest damage, but it gets significantly closer as you trade some of the utility (the ability to change forms) for build up, and one AoE cone for Assassin's Staff. The highest damage I've found in staff is to partially proc out AS, and heavily proc Serpent's Reach, Mercurial Blow and Precise Strike. Every other combination of attacks lowers overall damage output, procced or not. Sky Splitter is a wonderful power, but only because it grants you resistance at full combo levels which is stackable. It is not great if you're chasing damage, at least not in any combination I have tried. It consumes perfection stacks, which removes the damage bonus they give you for the attacks that follow (including AS), and it also takes so long to activate that you aren't building as much Assassin's Focus in between Assassin's Staffs, which lowers the average damage of that power. You could let AS wait and execute more attacks to build focus, but any time that AS is recharged and you aren't hitting it you are losing dps. One other note: I have found that Waterspout with Ragnarok and a -res proc helps with damage more than a snipe. I believe this is because staff doesn't have a lot of -res opportunities in single target damage, and it already has a ranged attack to take the good ranged procs that you will want to use. I haven't tested this with higher levels of tohit to boost the snipe's damage, however, so YMMV.

My mistake on Shield Wall, going off memory. If you aren't factoring in pools/patrons etc., then I would have to agree with the assessment as resist sets would generally not be able to keep up with defense cascades, but that also lowers bio's value, for example, as the tohit it provides boosts snipes' damage, etc. I don't look at it in a vacuum like that, which is the whole reason I even use Rad on a Stalker when Elec has superior resists: Rad can add AoEs to some sets that are ok but need more AoE. Looking for good primary/secondary pairings and the max I can get out of them are what appeal to me, so that includes pools, patrons, sometimes incarnates and sometimes even inspiration tray strategies. If I were going to look at it from "just the set and IOs", I would recommend no one ever touch bio under any circumstance.