Gulbasaur

Preach. Thank you, that's all incredibly helpful. I'm so used to passives that toggles seem a bit daunting from an endurance management perspective but I shall persevere.

I was umming and ahhing about playing a brute because I usually play peacebringer and I like the variety... but this thread sort of confirmed it for me. I know they end up very solid, but right now it feels paper thin - peacebringers can pretty much hit damage resistance cap by level 21 in a team of 8. Brutes... can't. I'm level 28 and I still feel fragile compared to white dwarf form. Churning out the damage is cool, though, and rad/rad gives you a lot of healing, endurance management and sorta-cleave from contamination. I know they can get obscenely high damage, but at the moment it feels a bit... middling. Probably just mid-level blues. Anyone got any advice on hot to get the best from /rad? It feels like I have a hell of a lot of toggles to contend with. Is beta decay worth running most of the time for the recharge bonus? Is it worth slotting gamma boost for endurance and/or heal? It seems like a bit of a double-edged sword, that power. As it's very toggle-heavy, I feel like getting low health will cause my endurance to crash, leading to sudden death... or is the recharge really that good?

It's one of the things that stops peacebringers and warshades just being recolours of each other. It's a very solid short range AoE and that's fine.

I don't object to them on principle; in some games they can really be useful. The trouble it, City of Heroes has a much higher focus on crowd control, team dynamics and buffs/debuffs than many games. If a defender fires off Fulcrum Shift, is the DPS theirs? If you drop -regen, -res and -def on an AV, is the extra DPS yours? Without you on the team, your team DPS would be much lower so shouldn't you get credit? If I flip out of Nova into Dwarf form, my DPS will drop by about half, but I'll also stop the brute from dying by taking aggro off her while she recovers so she can carry on punching things. How do you measure that? An off-tank can prevent a wipe, thus keeping the team's DPS higher than if they were all defeated. DPS meters only measure DPS. If you're not a pure DPS character, it's basically irrelevant.

I'd say that you probably don't need the toggle shields between Light Form and White Dwarf. You haven't slotted them, so I'd suggest going for some utility powers like Recall Friend or Grant Invisibility to protect the squishies. By the time you get Light Form, you'll be at res cap in most team situations anyway. Essence boost stacks with White Dwarf, so you end up with an obscene amount of HP - I've tanked Psychic Babbage with zero psi resistance because I had enough HP and a good team so we could out-heal its damage while I held aggro. It wasn't classy, but it worked. Personally, I wouldn't bother slotting health; you've got a heal, two +HP skills, can hit resistance cap without even trying and can go invulnerable on demand. I just don't see the need for it and think the slots would be better used elsewhere (e.g an extra accuracy in antagonize). You might be better off with just 3 endurance reducers in Nova, unless you really want the set bonus. Nova's extra endurance recharge doesn't even cover its endurance cost (almost, but not quite) so you'll work out mathematically a bit better off with just end reduction.

Both forms have an endurance cost of 0.26 end per second and recover 0.25 end per second - they basically cover their own cost. That said, you can put in enhancements to reduce the endurance cost or speed up regeneration to get some 'profit' from it.

Go kheldian. Peacebringers and warshades can blast and tank. You flip between blasty mode and tanky mode as needed and eventually sort of do both at the same time (although you have to flip-flop between forms to manage aggro). They're the ultimate I Get Bored Easily archetypes - they're not the best at anything, but they're very good at quite a lot. Typical experience as a peacebringer teaming with brutes as tanks: buff up a bit, blasty-blast, apologise about knockback, blasty-blast until brute gets down to 25% health, shift into dwarf form and take over on aggro-management duty, wait until only bosses remain or brute is back to 100% then go into human form for some serious melee damage then back to nova for ranged damage. If you have tanks in your team, you'll probably stay in nova (floaty blast prawn) or human mode, but it's handy for when you accidentally pull two sets of mobs - you can fly in, nuke them, nuke them again and then tank out the rest until things get calmer. There's something cool about not knowing what role you're playing until you enter a team - look at the archetype icons in the team roster and think "ah, I'm the tank today" or "cool, I'll DPS until the tank needs help then take over while they recover". You can hit resistance cap fairly easily and more than double your hit points by pressing two buttons. The peacebringer inherent power allows you to be better at whatever your team needs (warshades get better at whatever your team does) so you never feel like you're just coasting along.

They're implemented as normal power pools. You can pick up mystic flight from the sorcery powerset and get a teleport/flight power. They're available in game now via the same methods of levelling up as all other power pool powers. You don't talk to the P2W vendor - you just pick them while levelling.

The heal proc seems very buggy for me as well. Alas. It was clearly not working as intended. On the plus side... light form seems to let you shapeshift now (as of i24?) - the power description text has been changed as well. This was absolutely news to me, and I can't see it in any patch notes. It looks like Light Form is a good place to dump all your enhancement sets now, as it benefits from recharge and resistance and a few sets do that with some nice bonuses.

This is all pretty excellent... and I was wondering what the max HP was for dwarf. With essence boost, it can surely be even higher as I go from ~850 to ~2k at level 35 with dwarf and the +HP boost on peacebringer. Maybe the IOs in the crappy bolt attack is a good idea... hmm Edit: must have been a bug. I was getting double-digit heals in dwarf form and triple-digit heals in human..

City of Heroes and City of Villains sold and marketed as two separate games... I brought my peacebringer along to the first crossover mission (Valentine's Day, maybe?) and transformed into my bright dwarf in the middle of combat. A few seconds later, I got a whisper from a villain saying "How did you do that?"

I left pre-shutdown in i8 or early i9 (I don't know exactly) so IOs and enhancement sets are new to me. Are the kheldian archetype sets worth completing? (I'm on a peacebringer but they look fairly generic)? I got the Form Empowerment one from Kheldian's Grace and another for the +7% accuracy because they looked worth getting. Is it worth rounding out to five or six for it? Essence Transfer looks a bit underwhelming. Are there any must-haves? I'll probably go for 3 Overwhelming Force so I can neuter the knockback on the radial nova blast eventually and get the small damage increase. Lastly, because slots are more of a challenge on kheldians, where would you recommend putting them? At the moment, I'm thinking the nova and dwarf AoEs because they have to go *somewhere* and Overwhelming Force in the nova radial blast makes sense for the knockdown.

Both have similar powers up until about level 20. Peacebringers can fly and warshades can teleport from level 1, but by level 20 both can do both. Peacebringers Pro: Wholly self-sufficient. Cosmic balance helps you round out a team (tanky characters make you hit harder, hard-hitters make you tank better), which makes teaming very smooth. Lowers enemy defence so fights get easier over time. You are a disco ball. Light Form allows you to turn into a blaster that can tank. Human form does crazy melee damage. Con: In close quarters (caves, offices), the transform flash takes up the whole screen. Some keystone powers have very long cooldowns. Pet is so unpredictable it has to be spawned at point-blank range. Warshade: Pro: In large battles, can buff own damage enormously. Lower enemy recharge speed so fights get easier over time. With mires and eclipse, you can turn into a flying blaster that can tank. Human form has some crowd control. Con: Sad emo purple. Dark Sustenance increases your abilities so blasters make you more blasty and tankers make you more tanky, so you don't really have a time to show off until later levels. Slightly reliant on huge groups of mobs to get the best performance.

Anything you toggle on in human is toggled off going into dwarf or nova. Fire-and-forget click powers like hasten, essence boost and inner light persist (until they run out naturally). Always-on/auto powers also persist.