Microcosm

Dominator pets come with their own defense or resistances, and dominators can lock down entire mobs pretty easily. Warshades have some control but nowhere near the levels that doms do; part of that also locks you out of form shifting if you try to maintain inky. Dom pets can also be resummoned when defeated as long as they're recharged. So much of a warshade's single target effectiveness hinges on this one power. Fixing this one power would indeed fix the vast majority of the single target issues they have and shouldn't have. There are other QoL changes that need making, but that's largely irrelevant to this problem.

They should stick around like they currently do. We don't have to do the untouchable thing, but they need some sort of survival change. Giving them a modicum of defense or resistance like most other pets get really doesn't do it because the Warshades have no tools to buff or heal them unlike other pet classes. The best you can hope for is to be in a team with healers or to stun the enemies with Gravitic + Inky, but Inky's radius is so small that doesn't work out in practice except against tightly packed, very weak enemies. I think inheriting Eclipse is a good alternative, though they will end up being very flimsy against those single hard targets again. But if you can keep resummoning them off an attack on said hard target, it might work out. I'm also, for the record, not against Carnifax's idea, though I prefer this one as it gives an extra beefy attack to use occasionally against single targets.

I would be ok with a different survival change. I've pushed before to allow them to inherit your eclipse buff like they do with sunless mire, including whatever it's current duration is. This would have some get a long buff and others a short one. I wouldn't want to limit them to two in that instance though. I'm currently thinking the two capped untouchables just because the warshade doesn't have the buffs and heals of other pet classes. In some situations where they're getting heals and buffs from teammate/leaguemates they can survive well enough, but there are just too many scenarios where they are essentially useless.

I agree they shouldn't fly into melee. That's an issue with many pets that the current dev group has fixed for some (masterminds), but not all, so hopefully it could also get applied. However, if you fix that and don't make them summoned off the living target as an attack you still have the problems that they die off during AV etc fights over time, can't be summoned against ghosts, etc.

Two reasons: because we are capping the number of pets to 2 when you could currently get 3 to almost 4 currently (though they will die so it's academic); and to turn it into a strong attack on a long recharge to give a slight boost to the overall single target damage a Warshade can do, regardless of pets. Peacebringers do much better single target damage, because their best dpa attack has half the recharge time of the Warshade's, and their "pet" is a nuke that works just as well on a single target as it does on a group.

Warshades have a few issues that need adjustment, but I don't want to rehash all that. I have a particular idea that I think would specifically help with both the pets and single target damage (some). Dark Extraction is currently a large portion of the Warshade's single target damage. It suffers, however, from several problems: 1) The Extractions themselves are too flimsy, being the only non-nuke pet in a primary or secondary that has no inherent defense or resistance. This is made even worse by the fact that, unlike other pet classes, Warshades have no ways to provide buffs or heals to keep the pets alive. All of this means they essentially die to a stiff wind. 2) They are also on a timer, and require a defeated enemy to summon. This is ok, some of the time, but means against hard targets they will start to die off due to their timer (if they didn't magically already die from the enemy). This progressively neuters the Warshade's abilities against hard targets more than any other class, because the pets can't be protected or resummoned during the fight. The resulting petless Warshade ends up contributing possibly the lowest damage in game while also not providing any significant buffs or debuffs against the hard target. 3) Because extractions need to be summoned from a defeated enemy, there are particular enemies and missions where they simply can't be summoned. CoT ghosts are a prime example, as the enemies disappear on defeat instead of leaving a selectable body. The other half of this issue is that if you pick a defeated enemy that is about to disappear and execute Dark Extraction, the power can go off without an Extraction being summoned. My suggestion to fix these issues is to make Dark Extraction a summon off a living target, that does heavy damage to the target. Along with this I would drastically lower the recharge time, make the pets untouchable, but cap the number of pets out at a time to two (currently with very high recharge builds you can get 3 with a brief window of 4 out, assuming they survive). Summoning off living targets means the Warshade can continue to contribute when facing longer-lived enemies, can still use Extractions against ghosts and the like, and would add slightly to their single target damage as it turns the Extraction itself into a long recharge, single target attack. The cap of two active pets is to allow the power to be used more frequently as an attack without creating an unstoppable army of pets, and to balance out making the pets untouchable like Voltaic Sentinel. The untouchable part seems necessary since Dark Extractions still have the unique tax of being on an expiration timer, requiring a target to summon, and being in a class that provides them no protection. Thematically, you would be ripping part of the soul out of your enemy, doing heavy damage and making it fight for you, which feels...right.

Some sort of end drain protection in dwarf has also been a want for a long time, and at least this would keep you from getting detoggled out of it. But ya, preferable if you could keep the perf shifters as well. Maybe make them give the smallest possible +End buff so you can still slot those if you want. Not like it would come anywhere near being overpowered...

WS's are in a worse spot. They need the Dark Melee improvements that set got but they never did (so Soul Drain/Sunless Mire front loads its buff, Siphon Life/Essence Drain recharge reduced and damage increased, Midnight's Grasp/~Gravity Well damage frontloaded). They need the pets to not kamikaze since they're all range attacks and to be able to inherit Eclipse buffs like they once did or have any form of survival buff so they aren't the only non-nuke primary/secondary pet in the game with zero protection while also having the tax of being on a timer and needing a defeated enemy to summon. They need to not have most of their powers knock their enemies away from the pbaoe buffs they rely on in the name of gravity (lol). And they need toggle suppression. They could use other things as well, but they need these. PBs just need toggle suppression. They could use other stuff, but the toggle suppression would make using the forms the AT is predicated on actually a good thing in general. So ya, toggle suppression for a start since they both need it.

K. I disagree. PB human feels much better, but WS does not to me. It would be ideal on either one to be able to play all the forms and not need to sit there retoggling all the things when back in human or just say screw it and ignore those powers entirely.

I have basically stopped playing my kheldians until we get something like this and a fix for dark extraction fragility as form shifting is just not worth it and human form feels like it's missing too much on its own. Khelds have been my favorite AT since i9, but I just don't feel it anymore.

Just fyi, the first enemy gives 10% + 2.5% recharge, so capped at 35% at 10 enemies. Two enemies give 15%, which is the same as Stone Armor gives or 1.5 extra purple sets. Four enemies makes 20%, which is the same as Electric Armor/SR give or 2 purple sets.

Check the last couple pages of the Pylon thread and the Trapdoor thread; we've been discussing this exact combo and there are some builds posted. TLDR: Rad has stronger survival potential and can help the AoE weak EM better than bio, so do that unless you want bio for some specific theme or general preference.

😮 My elec/ice corr pulled a 1:30 once, but that was with a Mistress from Soul Mastery... maybe I should switch to mace.

Ya I use it in regular play, I'm just iffy on the pylon part. I know there was a big discussion a long time ago about the patron pets in builds that didn't have the recharge to keep it up all the time, seems similar. Although in a way you could make the argument for fiery embrace I guess... think I will keep use it going forward. I still can't get to your 1:09 though. That 1:12 was after many, many tests.

I hit a 1:12 with using meltdown before starting and some lucky procs. I'm still not sure how I feel about using meltdown: if you use while on the clock you add over 3 seconds of activation time, which lowers its overall damage value, and, more importantly, it's uptime is technically worse than hybrid at a little less than half. So do we treat it like hybrid and say it's not allowed because of its uptime or give it a pass because it's in the power set? With previous, less damaging sets, if I used meltdown I included its time in the overall and it ended up as a wash. Em definitely seems to get more than that, but again it's only half the time at best.

I use insps to cover blind and confuse on rad and electric armor characters, but if you don't want to rely on that you can swap assault for tactics. Provides small protection but it's often enough.

Hey Sai, I see the logic of this, trying to get bone smasher to keep critical strikes triggered as much as possible. I switched Bone Smasher to all procs (including moving heca there) and a +5 Acc/Dam from Glad Strike. (This drops my s/l defense by 5% but I'm just ignoring it for the sake of a test). I dropped a +5 Dam in ET in place of the heca proc, and another proc in TF in place of the critical strikes proc and got the below: 1:36 1:44 2:01 1:51 1:39 1:39 I then dropped a proc out of BS and moved the Heca +5 Dam there as well, replacing it with another +5 basic Dam in ET and got the below: 1:48 1:46 So I think I'd keep the Heca +5 in ET and the extra proc in Bonesmasher, though only two runs could be throwing that off. Overall I'm not really seeing much of any difference with critical strikes in bone smasher. I assume this might be because TF doesn't benefit itself much from increased crits. When you say you got a 1:09, is that with a hybrid toggled on or am I doing something terribly wrong?

Ya, I figured you were doing the one small purple to softcap thing. I've been survival testing build against 4/8 itfs and vicious Aeons lately, so I have wanted to start at 45 and use shadow meld or insps to deal with defense debuffs on resist characters if I can. It actually occurred to me your build would be great on a brute, because you don't take shadow meld anyway and with meltdown you'd be hitting the brute resist cap, which is a pretty huge difference. In terms of chain, it's more of a priority order depending on the recharge levels of ageless at that point in time. I prioritize rad therapy in case that -res is working, then ET, TF, MB, BS, EP.

I can share the one I used here. It looks like our difference is a little bit of procs, Moonbeam and the -Res in Radiation Therapy. Your build is much higher resistance and recharge than mine, while I chased softcap. You don't get Shadow Meld and Meltdown doesn't do very much, but if you like higher resist consistency yours makes more sense. Here's mine

Ya I hadn't tried SM yet, but I just did: Scrap sm rad 1:46 1:55 1:42 switch to kinetic combat +2 procs in stone fist 2:01 1:57 1:42 1:51 This set is hella awkward. I'm using SS > SF > MB > SF > HM > (SF if SS not recharged) and slip in Rad Therapy when up. Occasionally, as Ageless becomes less effective, I have to slip in Boxing, which makes me sad. I think I'd need to add in Stone Mallet to the build or drop some defense for more global recharge to make it seamless, so might be room for a small improvement. It also just scrapes by on Ageless Radial refilling the endurance when it's recharged, vs EM which does fine because ET doesn't use endurance. The AoE feels about equally as crappy as EM's. I'll give it to SM on the soft control though, as the knockdowns are far more useful than stuns.

Yes. 4 procs, a golgi and a Dam/End/Rech boosted. Sure, EM/Rad scrap without the two scrapper IOs: 1:55 1:37 1:52 2:02 (I fumbled this one) 1:39

Been doing a little of EM testing, catching up on the changes. All of these are with Musc Core, Degen Core, Ageless (some core some radial), Pyronic Core, Assault Core (Off): Scrap EM/Rad 1:35 1:42 1:40 1:39 1:25 with meltdown at start 1:36 with meltdown at start Scrap EM/Fire 1:36 1:37 Scrap EM/Bio for giggles 1:15 1:14 1:20 (added boosters) 1:18 (blistering cold instead of procs in bone smasher to cap s/l defense) 1:20 I find the AoE in EM is not good still, which is why I started with Rad to get the two pseudo AoEs to help there. I ended up getting rid of Power Crash because it just isn't working for me, and it's fine with the Rad AoEs and Whirling. I also tried it on a brute and ended up getting about 2:00 for a couple runs, which wasn't worth it to me because the brute only got more survivable when Meltdown was clicked, and lacks Shadow Meld for defense debuffs. I tried /Fire because it also fills in some AoE, but even softcapped to s/l it's just way squishier than Rad (no surprise). Lastly the /Bio was just to see the difference there. I wouldn't play that one because it doesn't give enough AoE help for my taste, and, again, even softcapped to s/l it's just not as robust as the Rad for what I like to do. EDIT: went back and tried the em/rad brute again a few times after looking at some other builds, and getting about a 1:52 average. So it still lacks Shadow Meld of course, but with Meltdown and Reactive defenses unique at full tilt it's hitting Brute resistance caps on s/l/e/f/t and close on negative, I'm thinking it may actually be worth it to me.

You can do bind [somekey] "powexecauto Divine Avalanche" to turn it on, and then press the Z button to turn off the auto. I'm not sure if repressing your bind key would also turn it off without testing, but Z turns them off by default. Edit: actually just checked in game, using the same key will also turn it off of auto if it already is on, so there you go.

It's actually 30 seconds and has +regen too, just fyi. It is probably the best t9 around, barring maybe light form.

Bio generally won't do it as well because it doesn't have the +rech bonus and this chain with procs requires a lot of global recharge. You can do stuff like this with bio, but you'll have to pump everything into recharge and not do as much defense, so you'll end up with a build that folds like a wet paper towel. This is why Bio is not always the answer. Billz did it on the previous page, for a small improvement, basically matching the top Stalker db times of about 1:30. To me that's not a decent trade at all, as the Stalkers in question are much sturdier than the bio build has to end up being.