Microcosm

Tanks and brutes have a 90% resist caps, not 75%. They also have higher hp and Max hp (tanks the most), which also means regen gives more hp back for the same percentage. And, in the case of tanks, their protection is in the primary set instead of secondary. This means the base numbers on those powers are slightly higher. Scrapper v stalker damage, stalkers outstrip scrappers in single target except in cases where power sets aren't available to stalkers (Titan weapons), or powers in the sets that help with dps may have been replace to add stalker specific powers or make them not hurt hide. For example, you won't find a damage aura in stalker secondaries. For AoE, there's usually an aoe attack missing from the set to make room for assassin's strike and placate on stalkers. This is not true on every set, such as elec melee.

Testing an Ice/Ice stalker mentioned above. Slowest time of 2:30, fastest of 2:11. Generally about 2:20. So that's averaging around 400 dps. This doesn't lend itself to procs all that well, as I can't leverage force feedback +rech, multiple -res procs or decimation build up outside of patron powers. I've procced out Freezing Touch and Frost, but that's it. That dps seems really good to me, given the low proc opportunity and no offensive boost from the secondary. But it also has solid AoE, the layered survival of Ice Armor (my favorite armor), Ice Patch, and could get by without Ageless thanks to Energy Absorption. I'm really like this combo. I'm tempted to try an Ice/Fire stalker, to try combining Ice Patch with Burn, but it might be too squishy against things with knock protection.

Tried it on test, at 50 this works and so does ebon eye in dwarf (if you've fired it as human first). Ebon eye in dwarf is a bigger deal than shadow bolt in Nova, imo, because it seems to not have the gigantic range penalty of shadow bolt in dwarf. With shadow bolt, the idea of a range attack in dwarf sounds great until you realize the range is almost nothing...

I mean, honestly I feel TW is just op, power creep from the end of the game. I have also felt the same about that proc. The chance to fire seems reaaally low against single targets. On the ice/ice I was testing yesterday it fired a couple times per pylon, but that's it. (I'll post times for that later). On a separate note, I just tested a procced version of a Nova form warshade. The idea being to stay at range so the pets would survive, which didn't work out too well still. Sometimes they rush the pylon (which is fine), and sometimes they rush to me (no longer fine) and die. So I ended up just going at the pylon without the pets just in Nova form, about 200 dps. So this is not the answer for warshades, though I didn't think it would be. Nova is for sustained aoe... I'll probably test a chain that switches forms in the middle next.

I think the thing to really glean out of your point, is the end drain being pointless part. End drain is an offensive "mitigation" tool in more sets than just electric blast, and it realistically doesn't do anything in pve. Would be a good thing for the devs to take a pass at.

1. Some people go human form and skip the forms to make full use of those powers and pool powers. I personally prefer triform, but yes, pool powers are not great for tris other than hasten. 2. The toggles armors are useless if you are swapping forms. The eye blast may look inferior, but fired from Nova it gets a damage modifier boost so it's actually good. I don't find shadow blast useful on dwarf. Quasar is great now; I don't like Unchain Essence, but others do. Its activation and recharge times are way too long. 3. If you play dwarf, slot dwarf, but you don't have to 6 slot the attacks. 4 kinetic combats grabs you a bunch of s/l defense and adequately boosts the attacks given the slot crunch. Dwarf mire is one of the best attacks you have, so slot that guy. 4. Your approach is good. You can also find the double mire trick if you search some older threads to simultaneously execute both mires. This is excellent for nuking, or for just keeping yourself at the damage cap when you get enough recharge. 5. Your approach won't change much at high levels, except you'll be able to nuke every other mob without switching to a form of you get your recharge up and double mire. It will be super safe though with eclipse. 6. Some rely on dwarf for mez protection, and some only play at 50 with Clarion destiny. The easiest answer to me is to use insp combining to keep a stream of break frees in your tray. This is a shameless plug, as I wrote the guide on insp combination which can be found in the guides subsection of the boards. You'll get the hang of it (sounds like you partially already have). Also learn the power of gravitic emanation (with the kb to kd io for me) and get some io sets going. The pets, eclipse and the nuke are real game changers when you get there.

On the pb side of things, I still take the forms explicitly for exemping. Any content below light form/dawn strike/solar flare makes the value of both forms very clear. Otherwise I tend to stay in human at 50. For warshades I think the forms remain valuable all the way through incarnate content, unless you are trying to run a lot of human toggles. I feel like we've gotten on a tangent of "how do we make khelds better", which was not really what I was intending to spark. The intent was a discussion of build and play tactics to overcome the few things that aren't 100% the best at all times. The blinged out versions of these characters are some of the tankiest in game and simultaneously have excellent AoE potential. I don't think you'll get very far arguing for large buffs other than quality-of-life things like toggle suppression with that being the case. Not to say the discussion is invalid, because there are certainly some clunky design decisions still affecting khelds which you all have highlighted.

That seems like something is wrong... you're softcapped to s/l, with 46% resist to s/l +energize and +radiation siphon. That should be pretty darn beefy. Maybe change the slotting on radiation siphon for extra healing? Do the mobs in that farm have +tohit or something?

Not sure what you mean by as a pet, I'm using it the same way as before which is summon to start the fight and then not resummoning it. I've got a FF +rech proc and both -res procs in it, along with three of the Superior Frozen Blast set (all the recharge ones except the proc).

Doesn't seem like it, or the difference is just eclipsed by tw's sheer damage, or one set of runs was luckier than another.

And one more... did a procced out warshade to see what it could do. I didn't expect much out of this one as warshades are simply not made for sustained single target encounters. Did two runs, one without pets and one starting with three pets, but got exactly the same time. The pets would add a significant amount of damage if they survived, but they always rush the pylon and die pretty quickly to the aoe. I stopped using sunless mire because against a single target it was eating more dps than the dmg buff was worth. T4 Misc core T4 Ageless core T4 Degen core 227 dps, both runs. This is a human-only proc shade, built for this task or standing up to an AV indefinitely with no other buffs and no ability to leach from large mobs. As such it's softcapped to Melee, and nearly hard capped to s/l/e/n with a single application of eclipse. F/c @ 67, t @49 and psi @ 30. No desire to use this in actual play, but it's interesting.

I was testing a bane build today and noticed the pylons are back to normal suddenly, so I swapped to preemptive per your request and did two runs: (hybrid not toggled) 1:10 for 676 1:22 for 595 Also a side note on survivability, did a moonfire tf with this guy on live last night. Ran off by myself, totally fine until I hit large packs of pure Galaxy Archons (all negative damage) at a higher level and with bosses. Negative is one of the lower resistances for /electric and they were also using almost all range attacks, so it required Eye of the Magus. If there were a few Galaxies in the group, it wasn't a problem at all, just when the entire group or entire room was Galaxy Archons. Had I had Power Surge at that level it would have been ok too, but would have had to time the crashes. As for the bane, did one run with him. I had a bane on live but have forgotten what to do with them, so it's probably not optimal. But I attempted a mostly proc build with him: T4 Musc Core T4 Degen Core (no other incarnate) 2:44 for 362 I will probably do more runs later. I have to figure out the correct order to use things, because the -res debuffs don't stack so you really don't want to spam those. I hit Surveillance and Shatter Armor too often and Pulverize not often enough. He also had no issue with +4/x8 Rikti, although when a boss did hit him it hurt a lot. I think he would be up a creek against anything with -def debuffs, as I remember this being an issue with my bane on live, and I am only slightly over softcap. Edit: messed up the dps on the bane...

This is what City of Data had on Cross Punch for all the ATs... don't know if it's accurate, but my guess is yes. http://web.archive.org/web/20140821065027/http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/powers/power.php?id=Pool.Fighting.Cross_Punch&at=Class_Scrapper

It looks like you got what you wanted with pushing resistances, at least to s/l/e. Your defense numbers and recharge are pretty low. What this could practically mean is you'll take more f/c/n/t/p damage than you like. I'm guessing you plan to use Defensive sweep as part of your single target rotation since you don't have Crushing Blow, and that will help against the melee attacks of those other types but also lower your dps a bit. One thing I can tell you is you don't need Energy Mastery at all if you are willing to use Power Sink when you need endurance. Might be a good idea to pick up some defensive pool powers instead and slot LotGs for the +rech and defense. Incarnates, go Musculature alpha all day. There's pretty much no reason to use anything else, unfortunately. Then on destiny, I like using Rebirth with /Electric for the extra heal and +hp to make Energize's regen better. You can use Ageless instead though if you want even more endurance and extra recharge. Everything else is kind of to taste.

I would go so far as to say you shouldn't take smoke flash at all, ever. It's not a great power in the first place, and on top of that you can completely replace it with a temp power that can be repurchased as often as you like.

I think I would do an elec/elec stalker if you wanted a speedster. You're so fast your enemies can't see you, and you attack with and are protected by lightning discharged from your speed. If you build in some s/l defense it would also be pretty sturdy, and it should do good damage for both st and aoe.

I don't disagree, most things are valid if someone wants to do those builds. I just personally wouldn't play a build like that because I like to exemp to do tfs and such. So I keep it in context when I see a build of how it might also function in content I want to do. Unless I'm willing to spec out an exemp-friendly build too for it. @TheAdjustor, I feel you on that. I have a warshade that is just an absolute monster at anything other than a pylon/AV... Can handle +4s without issue and pump out tons of AoE, but he's not likely to show up in this test any time soon.

I don't know, I feel like if you build enough to survive a pylon you're going to survive a good deal of content, even assuming just the s/l part. You're not doing max survival while pumping max dps, that seems like a different test. It's a totally valid test, just a different one. That said, builds that gimp everything to only be used on a pylon, I don't see the point other than "oh, neat". Or if the build is so reliant on incarnates it won't function below 50, that's not a build I would ever play except as a secondary build, because you're locking yourself out of most of the game. As an example, the proc PB build I made would be something I switch to when facing an AV, but it shouldn't be taken as "this is what PBs can generally do for dps" because it's not at all what you would run standard.

I've got a Nucleolus in each attack, a kismet and tactics, though I didn't use tactics for the pylon tests (except one, didn't see a difference). Pre-Ageless I would definitely not run it with my slotting unless I needed the confuse/fear protection. I just found some +4 Rikti mobs on test and took a whack, not a problem. +3 mobs don't even seem to drop the health. Pulled two packs of +4s, still not an issue. The health does drop, but it's replenished by Energize at some point. The build also does have Power Surge and Hibernate if it became a problem. I deslotted Alpha to remove the level shift, still not a problem but it takes noticeably longer to clear the mob without that extra damage. Now if this was +4s against Arachnoids or some very specific, Toxic heavy group, the build would have issues outside of running Power Surge. I know people hate crashing t9s, but I take it on Electric to patch that toxic hole. It also has a pbaoe hold when it crashes which can help. With the ppm changes, the lockdown proc is all but guaranteed to add an extra +2 mag to that, so it should hold bosses when it crashes if you are unlucky enough to still be fighting. So I was going to do that for you, but something has changed drastically on test. Pylons are now showing as 54 (purple) objects, as opposed to unknown level (yellow) objects, are significantly sturdier it seems and knocking me back through 15 pts of kb protection.... so I'll wait til we get apples to apples again. This might be related to the mothership raid changes they are pushing on test, which, if so, will totally change pylon testing.. How about I share the build, for science! Caveat: removed the LotG Defense IO from Defensive Sweep and the Shield Wall for two extra -kb IOs specifically for pylon testing. I could take Grounded instead, but it's an otherwise extremely skippable power so I never do.

Well that's unfortunate. If I remember correctly, tarantula mistresses have a large -def debuff that might be typed as just psi. Were you monitoring your defense with combat attributes?

Been waiting for test to have incarnates again for a while for several characters. So I've been noodling. Bio is getting all the attention because of it's +dmg. That just doesn't feel right because I really think electric armor (one of my top two favorites) doesn't get enough love. Electric, besides just being very sturdy and having a damage aura, provides ridiculous endurance management and +rech. In fact, it offers so much endurance management I can skip slotting end redux in any of my attacks, and can do so without Ageless if I use Energize and Power Sink. By not slotting for endurance at all, I can fit more procs in to my attacks and make up the difference of not having the +dam. Note I did try a bio armor build on test without Ageless as well, could noooot get this tactic to work. With Ageless, I probably could but then the build is useless at anything but lvl 50 content. I've used the electric armor build on live without incarnates already, and it works fairly well until you exemp below Power Sink (so lvl 30). Below Power Sink it sucks wind too much unless you have a buffer. TW/Elec Scrap T4 Musc Core T4 Degen Core T4 Ageless Core T4 Assault Core Hybrid off: 1:19 (613) 1:11 (668) Hybrid on: 56s (813) 54s (838) Before incarnates were back, I was running the build by using Power Sink liberally. I tried with Char, Moonbeam, and Water Spout and got the best results with Water Spout at 2:20 (402) and 2:29 (385). For the incarnate times above I started off with waterspout but didn't resummon after the initial cast. Edited to add the dps

That's actually a really good number for your range defense. If you pop a small luck inspiration you will be just barely shy of the softcap. So as long as you carry around luck's you will be about as protected from sappers as you can be. You can get higher numbers if you go s/l, but that won't cover this scenario and it requires all sorts of build sacrifices. It might be possible to get s/l/e up to that level, but other parts of the build would probably suffer. I've always thought dwarf should have end drain protection like Haijinx said since you really shouldn't be detoggled from dwarf by anything. I don't know if the original devs thought that was too much or not.

This is not true of Dark Armor or Warshade stealth powers (and I doubt it is for the Arachnos one but don't know for sure). Neither of them suppress their defenses in combat. This is how they were made to be 'better' than pool versions of stealth, which is required since they are primary/secondary powers. Back when Arbiter Hawk did the Kheldian changes, he temporarily nerfed Shadow Cloak so that it suppressed until some of us brought up that it was a secondary power and should match the Dark Armor power it was copied from. He promptly changed it back 🙂

It looks like you don't have any end redux slotted in your attacks either. You could find some cheap damage/end ios from various sets and frankenslot those in instead of pure damage, which should help a lot.

I love ice armor.. for stalkers and scrappers. It gives you a good mix defense, resistance, +hp/heal, recovery and regen. Mixed sets like this are just ok on SOs but respond reaaally well to IO builds. Its t9, icy bastion, is the reason to like it on scrappers and stalkers more than tanks and brutes because the latter two get Hibernate instead. Hibernate is awesome, but you can get it from a patron pool for scrap/stalk. I do use shield on occasion, depending on the build (mostly if you need more aoe damage), but ice is my go-to.