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.

"If you can cover defense debuffs" means if you can find a solution to temporarily deal with it, such as overcapping with shadow meld, unleash potential, etc. If you don't do that the cascade can indeed be super painful, but I'm saying there are tools for it. The two res IOs are 6% combined, one of them with scaling for 10%, if that's what you mean. The reverse side is you get the 6% defense from steadfast and gladiators, which is twice as powerful before the scaling kicks in. And yes, the tank IO is bonkers and broken, but just in the context of tanks; I would not make the same statements in terms of tanks purely because of that IO. I consider EA and Stone to both be hybrid sets, especially EA which gets a chunk of resist that, all else equal, makes it much more desirable to me than Sr or Nin (though I do like Nin). No argument on fire; it's a much more offensive set and obviously doesn't (and shouldn't) deal as well. Even with a defense primary fire will struggle against the harder stuff. But elec and rad can be very solid. Having done both, I vastly prefer taking my elec scrapper into Aeon than sr.

To give the unpopular opinion, I almost always do resist or hybrid sets, including on stalkers/scrappers. The reason is, I use IO bonuses to get at or near s/l softcap on those characters, which then leaves me dodging the same attacks (in most cases) as the defense sets while further resisting the damage that does get through. You can't do the reverse as effectively, because 1) s/l defense covers any attack with s/l component (most attacks in game), while resist doesn't work that way; 2) the defense is still easier to come by in IOs than the resist; 3) Shadow Meld is available and quite potent, while no resist alternative exists (rune is there, but that's not as potent, and it's matched by unleash potential); 4) if you want to rely on insps instead to cover gaps or debuffs, defense insps are much more potent than resist insps, providing 12.5% def for a small vs 10% res; 5) on teams, defense buffs are everywhere while resist buffs are pretty uncommon. That's not to say all the resist sets are made equal or magically super sturdy, or that you don't have higher possible resilience on a brute. But I find great value in elec armor in particular, which gives +rech, immunity to end drain and high resist to slow on top of good resists so it can handle many of those debuffs that do get through better than other resist sets. If I wasn't going to softcap it, and playing until the point it is softcapped, it does feel substantially weaker than defense sets. I've tested elec and rad scrappers and stalkers against 4/8 ITF missions, Vicious Aeon missions, and just now took a swing and 801.2 on test with an /elec scrapper (I'm not sure I've done these before, but they're fun). Elec is particularly good at handling some of the problem enemies in these if you can cover the defense debuffs and boosts damage output through the +rech. YMMV, I guess.

You can extremely easily setup a bind or macro that toggles on the form and toggles off whatever other toggles you don't want to stay on draining endurance if this bothers you. Most player already use a bind to toggle on the form and switch trays, it's just a couple extra characters to add "powexectoggleoff". Toggle suppression affects more than shields, such as inky aspect, orbiting death, combat flight and pool powers.

It gets under two minutes while having the most utility of any primary and being paired with a secondary that provides no +dam, -res, -regen or +rech, just good defenses. I took that same character through the first mission of a vicious Aeon solo and it did fine. If it were in the 3 min mark I would agree it's bad, but I don't think it's reasonable to expect it to compete with the top most sets with that much utility. On a scrapper? Well I wouldn't play it there. On a brute or tank it is bad dps but has some other synergies.

I think I posted a staff/ice a few pages back, but it's possible I did not: AS SR PS MB until recharge gaps, then AS SR MB PS MB and after activating the +crit proc 2:03 2:32, bad run ~2:10ish 1:48 1:50 2:02 after I moved stalker's guile dam/rech to AS (eliminates second MB) 1:57? AS SR PS MB w/more recharge 1:45 2:07 That's with procs. It's not EM times, but it's also not too different from my claws/ice scrapper. It comes with an AoE +def, a ranged attack, and an optional +res attack (which lowers dps, but options are options), which makes it pretty attractive to me.

Stalker staff is quite good. Stalker claws takes its place though. AT synergy is a thing in some cases and that's probably good.

I gotta admit, with most of the bio times listed I don't really pay attention as the builds don't get to softcap and are flimsy as tissues in real content. But this one is interesting because Ice Patch can cover so much mitigation for one quick click. I need to revisit the Ice/Bio stalker I made a long time ago for the same reason.

Either 5 slot Panacea, everything but the base Heal, and use boosters if you wish (you can do this on pvp and purple enhancements without losing anything when you exemp, unlike with regular IO sets), or 6 slot Preventive Medicine (don't boost these). Both of those provide a recharge bonus while also enhancing the power. I often take Hibernate, which is a good place to one slot the Preventive Medicine proc, leaving Panacea as the better option for Energize.

I'll give you advice on electric since I've run that a lot. Until you get to the late game, IO'd wonderland, you'll want a build that looks a lot like other low-level builds, slotting for endurance reduction and resistance in your armors and endurance reduction in your attacks. Your game starts to change when you get Energize, but only a little. When you get Power Sink it changes further, and you can start to ignore endurance issues, but not entirely until you get enough recharge to keep Energize perma. At this point you're in the IO'd world and the set finally starts to show its power. It's a late-blooming set and a set that wants heavy investment. The upside is that once IO'd you can have an extra sturdy character with better proc capacity than other sets because you can ignore slotting for endurance and get bonus recharge. After you get Energize perma you'll want to focus slots on layering defense on top of the resistance. This is why it can pair better with primary sets that can provide defense themselves, but Street Justice will be fine. S/L defense is the easiest to build for and happens to cover most attacks coming at you. Either build for 45% S/L or get to 32% and plan to carry defense inspirations to cover the gap. With that on top of your resists you'll be sturdier than most other characters around, as defense sets can't do the same building for resist. As for power picks, skip Grounded and find a way to slot a couple -kb IOs instead along with Combat Jumping for immobilize protection. The Energy resistance and End Drain protection in Grounded are completely wasted, so it's a very low value pick as long as you get your KB protection elsewhere. Also, while the crashing t9 armors are generally not good, consider taking Power Surge. It allows you to get resistance to Toxic damage in those rare instances you need it. It also ends with an EM pulse that can hold enemies still around you when it crashes, which can be boosted with the Lockdown proc for another mag 2. That totals at mag 4 which will hold a boss. It still sucks when it crashes, but you might actually survive it.

I think you are overestimating the damage of two of the extracted essences. The changes suggested wouldn't make warshades a "pick 1 power and you're amazing" AT at all. It would reduce the current max damage under optimal conditions (3 to 4 of these pets surviving) to something that is more consistent and doesn't fall off a cliff as sharply. Two of these pets wouldn't make the shade go to "good at something", it would go to somewhere closer to some of the other low damage ATs at single target damage, instead of absolute bottom of the barrel. Actually still a bit lower without adding the damage to the summon. Some numbers might help my point. A procced to the gills, max incarnated warshade without pets does 227 dps. With weaken resolve you can bump that a little bit. With three pets out, using Barrier and getting lucky enough that they survive you get into the low 300s. This is roughly the same as a procced out, fully incarnated pb that doesn't have pets that will die. This is also comparable to a procced out, incarnated dp sentinel, which is similarly tough and similarly low damage. Meanwhile tanks, more survivable than these classes, can blow past that. This is in the context of procs; remove those and the numbers get muuuch worse to the point i dont have the patience to test it anymore. And if you're thinking of using sunless mire to bump that, those extra enemies increase the chance of killing the essences. Without pets, using 4 chief soldiers as fodder for sunless mire, the dps is increased by a wopping 2 because the activation time of the mire vs the buff value doesn't work out. So with two untouchable pets, we're still doing less damage than comparable PBs and sentinels, but we can actually keep doing that damage instead of hoping a defender will come along to solo the AV for us. Now I'm not arguing some other things shouldn't also be done, because they should in addition to this--such as toggle suppression, applying the Dark Melee buffs to Warshade's copied powers, perhaps some form of minor status protection from human shields. But ST damage is the single most broken thing about Warshades, and it's because this one power doesn't function adequately in its current form. Warshades do adequate aoe. They do minor control. They can survive well. You can figure ways around mez. But they are truly terrible at this one thing because this one power drops off in effectiveness. It's not that it's the only source of damage, but it's a normal AT's t9 that stops being functional.