A Warshade looks at 50

[Azrath]

I make no apologies for stealing the title from Jimmy Buffets' biography.

 

I played the hell out of City of Heroes when it was live.  From the closed beta to shutdown.  Probably more hours that I should have spent focusing on real life; but hindsight is twenty-twenty.  With CoH back and my older, perhaps wiser self behind the keyboard, I thought it might be an idea to look back at the process of leveling up my very first Warshade in any incarnation of Paragon City; and share my thoughts on why I've made this my first 'main' character while my other friends are still generating alts, running one sewer, then rolling something different.

 

I knew I was going to be rolling a Kheldian at some point.  I'd gotten a Peacebringer to 50 on live and had a generally good time of it; while my best friend and main in-game partner swore by Warshades.  I figured I'd give it a shot, and thanks to these boards I found Dechs Kaison's warshade guide.  I laughed at the humorous approach; but one passage in particular stuck with me.

You are all forms at all times. Thinking anything else will cripple you without you even realizing it. You are never stuck in one form. Nova thrives on human and dwarf buffs. Dwarf protects human and nova. Human fuels dwarf and nova. Embrace this idea.

This, I realized, was something I'd always missed with my Peacebringer.

As a smurfsquid, I was locking myself into whatever form the team needed.  I wasn't playing a shapeshifter, I was playing three different characters who just happened to have a faster way of getting to the character select screen.

 

I started paying more attention to not just my own powers, but my enemies' attacks.

I began looking for gaps in enemy attack chains where I could flash out of Dwarf for a quick buff or Stygian Circle.  I was micromanaging like mad, cramping my fingers into pretzels to keep all the quick keybinds flying...

And the game rewarded me for it.

 

I'm not saying I'm perfect, far from it.  I still tend to 'mode lock'; particularly into dwarf form when I end up being the tank by darwinian necessity.  I'm still a hapless newb just trying to get the most out of their character.  I'll mis-time something, try to snag a heal from the corpses at my feet, and in that moment of vulnerability taste defeat.  And there are times when I've got three Fluffys up, a saturated mire and eclipse, hasten; just Stygian'ed back from the brink of defeat and I feel like a god.

 

I honestly feel now that this was the intent of the archetype right from the beginning.

Not three separate forms; but working in harmony.  It's hard.  It's so, so much easier to build for human only, or bi-form, or even tri-.  And it's not my place to tell anyone how to play their character, or how to have fun in this game we all love so much.

But a Brute, or a Sentinel, or whatever other AT can do the specific job better; and a tiny part of me mourns the lost potential even as I celebrate us all returning home to Paragon.

 

For myself?  I can proudly say that I'm a void-steppin, fluffy-wranglin, multi-Mire-stackin, Unstoppable MF'in Warshade.  I have dared the impossible, and that makes us mighty.

[Microcosm]

You have reached purple enlightenment. Welcome to the dance.

[Klaleara]

My Peacebringer was a human/dwarf build.  But I didn't play them separately, I was always switching between the forms, constantly using abilities.  It was so much fun, I absolutely loved it.  And she had some outrageous Costume Contest win rate, something like 80-90% (She was sexy).

 

Anyways, Glad to see a post like this.  I hated squid form, so I never incorporated it.  But I can't imagine how awesome all three would be.

[Azrath]

Given how stealthy Shades can get, and our ability to stack Sunless and Dwarf mire, quite a lot of fights as a Warshade start with the phrase 'Double mire into X" where X is something nasty in the AoE department.  Double Mire into Quasar, Unchain is a popular way of dealing a lot of AoE damage, but I'm rather fond of double mire into (nova) detonation

[BeornOTNS]

I seem to recall there was a way, with haste and the right IOs (4-5 Luck of the Gambler recharges, etc.), to have nearly perma-eclipse, 3 essences up at a time, and with proper slotting, an orbiting death that really hurt while not draining the warshade too much...

 

But I cannot find my old mids files.

 

Anyone have any builds (that use prime, mids messes with my newer files apparently [and I cannot seem to remove it]).

 

Thank you,

 

Beorn

[Microcosm]

I seem to recall there was a way, with haste and the right IOs (4-5 Luck of the Gambler recharges, etc.), to have nearly perma-eclipse, 3 essences up at a time, and with proper slotting, an orbiting death that really hurt while not draining the warshade too much...

 

But I cannot find my old mids files.

 

Anyone have any builds (that use prime, mids messes with my newer files apparently [and I cannot seem to remove it]).

 

Thank you,

 

Beorn

On my phone so don't have a build for you, but you can achieve perma eclipse with a good buffer, not just nearly perma. If you get perma hasten you've probably got perma eclipse too. And all that recharge just helps the pets as you say.

[Papaschtroumpf]

Look at RedLynne's example a few posts down. That build has a 91ish recharge on Eclipse and its duration is 90s, so almost perma. Because it's an exemplar friendly build you might be able to tweak it to get to perma. With the right alpha slotting it's definitely perma.

[Obsidius]

Double mire... so looking forward to getting my Warshade leveled up :)