FlammeFatale

I have one too! 🙂 It is interesting how we took very different routes with the same powersets. I am guessing yours is a team player. Mine is more of a solo corruptor. I am emphasizing survivability: - Rune/Melee hybrid rotation for mezz protection and resistances. - Hover-blasting capabilities (with ranged + E/N softcap). - Perma-holding bosses with suppressive fire / dominate. Corruptor - Dual Pistols - Empathy.mbd

Yes this could be a different thread, because this is not specifically about Council and CoT changes. But there is really no point in starting a thread. Testing is finished. I tested a few builds on the test server prior to patch release. I test solo, because there are too many variables in a team environment and everything is easy for a team anyway. I had a couple remarks (increased unbalance between strong performers and weak performers, problem with Fortunata Mistresses for some powersets). But people had already made the same remarks on the feedback threads. I did not feel the need to post the same thing. After patch release, I played my level 50 characters (all T4 incarnate). I have only 21 or 22 of them. So not many, but I believe I know them well since they are the only characters I play. I tested each of them against arachnos/carnies/CoT/council. My findings confirmed what I had found on the test server for a few of them. The characters suffering disproportionally are the characters with: - weak damage (controllers and to a lesser extent, masterminds). - weak mitigations, mezz dependance for survival (controllers again and to a lesser extent my dark/dark dominator). - weak powersets (empathy). All the other characters are unaffected. There is some extra tediousness (rezzers) but increased interest too because of the new mobs.

I agree 100%. I will just copy-paste something I wrote in another sub-forum: "Maybe it is only me, but I feel the page 7 patch, which increases some enemy groups difficulty, has widened performance disparity between powersets. My stronger characters remain unaffected by the patch, while my weaker characters feel the increased difficulty. My kheldians are mid-tier performers and do not notice any increase in difficulty. My VEATS which were already extremely strong are buffed, WTF? We have a situation, unchanged strength and weaker weakness, which is the opposite of balance." I should add I do not have real issues with the council and CoT changes, except that I have never liked self-rezzing mobs. It does not add difficulty, only tediousness. What bothers me most is the change to Arachnos Tarentula Mistresses. Confuse and fear immunity to whole enemy groups is a nerf to some weaker ATs like controllers. I do not blame the devs who are a small volunteer team doing a great job. They cannot test everything and foresee every potential unbalance increase. But I feel if you cannot test thoroughly, then perhaps you should not make too many changes.

Yes. There could still be randomness, but the process would not be purely binomial.

Incarnates: You will cap damage against a crowd but not necessarily against the bosses left once the crowd is cleared. For this reason, my incarnates are geared to getting more damage. My defaults are Musculature Core Paragon for the Alpha and Assault Radial Embodiment for the Hybrid. Against easy mobs or in teams, I can also use Spiritual Alpha or Melee Hybrid. But solo against tougher mobs, I prefer damage.

I forgot I park my crafter in Wentworth for the discounts.

I like this one. I posted the same idea inadvertently without having read your post. Else, as far as the inherent is concerned, why not give small buffs based on missing ATs in the team, rather than today's opposite? 1) This would help solo play. 2) No one needs extra buffs in a team setting. 3) This is probably easy to code. Now to be frank, as much as I like Kheldians, my WS was my main back on live, I think some specific powersets in some ATs are much more in need of a change than kheldians. Maybe it is only me, but I feel the page 7 patch, which increases some enemy groups difficulty, has widened performance disparity between powersets. My stronger characters remain unaffected by the patch, while my weaker characters feel the increased difficulty. My kheldians are mid-tier performers and do not notice any increase in difficulty. My VEATS which were already extremely strong are buffed, WTF? We have a situation, unchanged strength and weaker weakness, which is the opposite of balance. This is not a criticism of the dev team, which are a small group of volunteers working for free. They can only do and test so much. But I think, since they have limited resources, these type of things should be prioritized compared to changing kheldians for the sake of it.

To come back to my original post, what I find nice with changeling is not the damage. As I said, I only use it for the warshade double-mire and the PB dwarf heal. Okay, I use it also to proc Warp perception, but this is a rare situational use. Kheldians, warshades in particular, do not need more damage. They have plenty already. If anything, what my warshade lacks the most is endurance. The boss combo I dislike the most is two mu guardians. What I like with changeling is how it makes the combat flow feel smoother, more fluid. Else, I find the kheldian playstyle can be a be jagged and very clicky. I would not care about changeling removal, without any compensating buff to Kheldians, provided the devs find a way to make the gameplay smoother, with ideally less clicks. Perhaps something like triggering the form change automatically when using a power from a different form. BTW, animation cancels works on some other ATs too. But I cannot find any discussion about it elsewhere than in the Kheldian section.

I am sorry Koopak, but results from a "log parser in development" by someone "that you cannot name", are not even anecdotal. Also, I just checked the pylon testing rules. First post in the thread: "External survivability buffs can be used, but only if explicitly stated and can ONLY affect survivability or mez resistance". I think this summarizes my point. You can do great on pylons if you forego survivability and mez resistance. I am not sure this is good advice for general game play though.

It depends on the character. I try to find day jobs that can help them a bit. - for characters with psi holes I like the job in First Ward mental asylum. - the resistances from Cimerora or Dark Astoria can be nice too on other frail characters. - characters with endurance issues appreciate the arena. - my TA/A defender likes the portal sleep gas because it can stack with her own sleep power.. etc...

Well, by definition, if you don't need it, it is wasted. But in my experience, you need quite a lot against certain enemy groups at max difficulty. When you faceplant, you deal 0 damage. Also, I am not sure we are talking about the same thing. You mention increasing damage "from outside sources". What are these outside sources? When I test a build, I test it solo. I don't get buffs from team mates or a buffbot. Are you talking instead about inspirations in the mail? Power amplifiers? I do not use any of these. Same with "quick completion of content". I am not aiming for quick completion of some content. I am aiming for completion, not necessarily quick, of all content.

There is a difference between "completely disregarding", and noticing that they are not representative of performance in actual gameplay. Single-target damage is important against AVs, as you said. In this case, pylon times can give an indication of performance. But AV fighting is again only a very small part of the game. 95% of the game is fighting groups of enemies. In my opinion, to evaluate a build, it is more important to see how it performs solo against various types of enemies and missions. How does it handle 3 waves of +4/8 arachnos ambushers? 3 waves of the new CoT? Mob spread out is some missions, so that they cannot be AoEd? 2 groups so close you cannot avoid fighting both at the same time? 4 simultaneous new tarentula mistresses with my poor poison controller (confuse immunity)? With my poor Dark dominator (confuse AND fear immunity)? Under those stress-tests, I found that the most important was, in this order: 1. Survivability This means defense (with positional being king), resistance, controls, debuffs, heals... 2. AoE damage 3. ST damage ST damage is only third, unless you want to specialize in soloing AVs. But then you would not roll a warshade and probably not a PB either. I think one of the good things about pylon testing is that it is standardized. It is good for comparing attack powers and rotations for a given AT. It is impossible to standardize my method of testing builds. I can only use it to compare my own characters, not to compare them to other players. But who cares how other players perform? I don't. This is not a competitive game.

... or just give them access to epic pools. I believe they are the only AT with no access to these.

Hello, I would not add any slots to fire imps. I do not have imps in the team build and they are the most disposable power in the solo build. - They do not deal much damage, even fully slotted. They are like a fire-and-forget small dot. The fire-and-forget part is nice, but the small dot part is quite small. - When they are killed, I just summon them again. This controller is a slow killer and the cooldown on imps short enough (with force feedback in bonfire and ageless destiny). - If I slotted them more, I would have to take the slots away from other powers which I feel are more important to meeting my goals. At this stage, I do not see any improvements I could make by spending more inf. My defense/mitigation goals are met. I would like more endurance and of course more damage. If anyone can suggest me any modification that would improve my endurance first, and perhaps my damage, without decreasing my controls and defense/resistances, I would be very happy.

Ummmmm.... What? Explain. Do you mean the mention of tankers and VEATS? I should not have written that, for three reasons. First, it is off-topic. Second, everybody's definition of OP is different. It depends on what they focus on in game. And third, I have only 20 level 50 characters (I play my characters to all T4 and mostly level them in missions, not fire farms). Therefore my sample is small. And now that I think about it, my most powerful character is neither a tanker nor a VEAT, but a blaster. When I say OP, I am only talking about the relative rankings of my levels 50s. I rank their performance solo against 4/8 arachnos/carnies/rularuu. That's about it. What are my ranking criterias? - time to finish the missions. - frequency of faceplants. - required skill. Do I need to press only 3 buttons or do I need to make use of all the powers available? Do I need to resort to tactics like corner pulling, kiting, or can I just facetank? - cost of build. Can I perform with only standard sets or do I need purples/winter enhancements? Based on those criteria, my tanks and VEATS are OP: average time to finish missions, no faceplants, no required skill, low-cost builds. My warshade is mid-tier: average time to finish missions, rare faceplants, requires skills, 1.5 billion inf build. My Fire/FF controller and DP/empathy corruptor are weak: long time to finish missions, some faceplants, require skill. Mid-cost (controller) and low cost (corruptor) builds, but spending more inf would not change the results.

Wispur, no one obliges you to double click. You can play the way you like. E.G. If you single click instead of double click a nova power in human form, nothing happens. You have a choice. Everybody is happy, players who like the changeling playstyle and players who do not. Edit: You are not losing much. The changeling playstyle does not add as much power as some people pretend. Pylon times are a fringe activity and irrelevant to the main game, which is about fighting a variety of enemies with a variety of damage types, resistance types, mezzes, debuffs etc... in a variety of missions. Due to slot vs enhancement limitations, a kheldian can only slot effectively 2 forms, and maybe one power in the third form. This is not like you can make good use of every power in every form. Personnaly, I only use the changeling macro for double mire on the warshade and dwarf heal on the PB. Animation cancel? Sure, it adds speed. I have been playing changeling as far back as live. When was it, 15 years ago? But beforehand I just used a programmable mouse to trigger chains: form change/power execute/form change. It only required one key press, not a double click. It took a bit longer with animations, but who cares if it took me 10 seconds longer to clear a spawn? Certainly not me.

I would be 100% happy with the devs leaving the kheldians alone. In fact, as Laucianna pointed out, this is what my solution more or less leads to. I do not think kheldians need a power boost or a nerf. They are a mid-tier AT right now. There are more powerful archetypes primary/secondary combos, but there are weaker ones too. However, I feel they could use some improvement in "combat flow", for lack of a better term. Believe me, I love kheldians, more precisely warshades. My main back on live was a warshade. But their gameplay is very clicky. It is more akin to playing the piano than a MMO. And without animation cancel, there are a lot of combat flow interruptions. It feels not only clicky but also jagged. We could use some kind of small change which makes the gameplay smoother and less click intensive. The devs already went in the right direction with their change to toggle suppression.

Thank you. Is it possible to move this post to the suggestions/feedback section?

You are right. Yet this means some improvement: - Smoother, more fluid game play. To perform the trick, timing must be precise and is not a constant. It varies I guess based on ping/server issues. For me, it fails maybe once in twenty uses. This is mildly annoying. If it was coded into the game, it would (presumably) not fail. - Friendly to new kheldian players. No need to learn about the changeling tricks, not everybody reads the forum or discord. No need to write binds or macros. - Potentially, but I do not know enough about game coding mechanics to presume so, less work for devs and quicker time to implementation. It is mainly QoL for everybody involved: veterans; newbies, devs. But what would you change about kheldians? I certainly have ideas, but they are probably pipe dreams only relevant to my particular personal build and gameplay.

I read that the devs were looking at the kheldians and afterward would address the changeling trick. I have a solution which kills two birds with one stone. Make it so that the changeling trick becomes part of the kheldian arsenal. Double-clicking any power casts it from any form then drops the caster to human form. Double-clicking to execute a power is a common mechanic in many games. This solution has a couple advantages: - Revamp is minimal. No need to change ingrained habits and muscle memory. Veteran combat flow is just made a bit smoother just like with the toggle suppression fix. Beginner game experience is vastly improved. No more need to learn complicated macros. - AT is neither nerfed nor boosted. Power ceiling of a well played kheldian would be unchanged. No need to worry about balance issues. Actually, kheldians would remain a bit on the weak side. But they do not need to be OP like tankers or VEATS. I do not know if this change is easy to implement. But the game already recognizes doubleclick in binds and macros.

I have a fire/FF controller with two alternate builds. The first build is for soloing and the second is for grouping. The solo build can do 4/8 including arachnos and carnies. He can do these enemies at max difficulty, but not as easily as other archetypes. All the powers in the build must be used. Against those groups, I found that building against psi damage and adapting my tactics (e.g. leading with bonfire) was a game changer. A few remarks: - the solo build uses detention field. Sometimes this skill is demeaned, but if you consider it as a long duration perma-hold which works against bosses, it is great solo. It allows me to neutralize one dangerous boss while I finish the rest. - Repulsion field is great. It provides almost 100% melee mitigation. I have it always on against dangerous enemies. - The key skills of the team build are Power Boost and Clarion Radial Epiphany. They really improve defense buffs. Controller Beta - Fire FF - Solo.mbd Controller Beta - Fire FF - Team.mbd

I also have a 0% defense PB, which can solo 4/8 Arachnos and Carnies just fine. So I am adding my comments. With 0% defense, everything hits you. Every single mezz, debuff and drain. But: - you don't care about enemy damage with overcapped resistances and three heals. - you don't care either for resistance and defense debuffs (obviously). - for some reason, other debuffs don't seem to affect me much. Mezzes are adressed by T4 Melee Core Embodiment, dwarf form, or just waiting the few seconds they last. Be extra careful however in spawns with several mezzing bosses. I have been almost perma-locked in spawns featuring two Carnie Master Illusionists, until I slotted Melee Core Embodiement, a key power which will deserve a comment later. The only problem is endurance drains, in particular when they hit at the same time as the Light Form crash. My solution is using Ageless Radial Epiphany to refill the end bar. The PB is one of my few characters who is using this power reactively rather than premptively. Anyway, losing endurance is not that big a problem. It is alleviated by conserve energy, decent recovery and not using any toggle in combat. The only toggle I am using outside of combat is Stealth. I am using it to position inside spawns prior to unleashing the nukes. It also allows to avoid ambushes. Melee core embodiement: It seems a weird choice for a character spending some time at range, already capped in resists and not exactly a top-tier damage dealer. Intuitively, Assault Hybrid is better. It probably is. But even without it, I still deal enough damage to finish +4 bosses in a bearable amount of time. Melee Hybrid provides a permanent 30% regen boost. More importantly, it front loads huge mezz protection and regeneration. It also plugs and overcaps the psi hole. It is a solution to mezzes. And a character with overcapped resistances to all + 431% regen is basically unkillable. There is great synergy between regen and resistances. Melee Hybrid is only up half the time however. This does not stop me unless I see several mezzing bosses around. In this case, I have to patiently wait for off cooldown. My build is in the appended file. Credits to the "you're a goddam PB" guide suggestions which I adapted to my playstyle as I leveled the character. Tri-Man - Tri-Form Peacebringer V3.mbd

The problem with a ranged warshade is significantly less ST damage than a melee warshade. Ranged warshades have good AoE damage. But this damage is not needed, since there is enough AoE damage in human form (+double mire) to clear spawns quickly. But as you wrote, distant mobs (stragglers and runners) are a pain in the neck. A few tools can mitigate the problem, not entirely erase it, mind you: - Melee Radial has a taunt aura which works with a warshade. It won't compete with a tanker though, and you lose damage without Assault hybrid. But it is fun to see the mobs massing on the warshade. I guess you could combine it with the dwarf antagonize, for some serious taunting. The dwarf taunt can be used in human form with a bind: "powexectoggleon Black Dwarf$$powexecname Black Dwarf Antagonize". - Starless step is the same power as combat teleport. It works very well to catch static stragglers with a bind like: "powexec_location target shadow step". But runners keep running during the animation, so you end up teleporting a few feet too short for melee with those. - Most builds have at least 2 ranged attacks in human form: shadow blast and ebon eye. They can finish minions and lieutnants from range. But bosses definitely call for melee.

Or you could try a DP/Empathy corruptor instead of a defender. I have one on the test server, where I try various concepts to choose the next character I'll level to 50. This will be this corruptor, because it is extremely fun to play. It has low DPS but is surprisingly survivable as long as I don't forget to pop a break free when both Melee Hybrid and Rune are on cooldown. Softcapped to Energy/Negative and Range. Possibility to hover blast. 2 holds to perma-hold one boss. It can solo Carnies and Arachnos at 54*8, which is kind of my litmus test to determine if a character is good enough. But beware it is very slow. It takes forever to clear the +4 bosses. It is not what I would call a strong character. It is difficult to play. One has to keep track of cooldowns and also manage positioning. My focus is solo play. One could replace assault by adrenalin boost for a more team oriented character, but then it will solo even slower: Corruptor - Dual Pistols - Empathy.mxd

Hello Dungeoness. Sorry for the very late reply. I had stopped playing for a while. I came back for the Toggle Suppression patch and I must say this is a real QoL improvement for warshades. The play is much smoother now. I am still playing the same build with just a couple marginal changes. Their effect is so marginal that they are not needed at all. - Black Dwarf Strike; added a fifth slot (by removing the second slot in Shadow Cloak) and replaced Kinetic Combat by Superior Blistering Cold. - Health: added a Miracle + recovery (by removing the 5th slot of Gravitic Emanation). - Misdirection: replaced the acc enhancement by an acc/rech. Below is this latest build. Flamme Fatale.mxd