kheldians The (Almost) Complete guide to Kheldians

[Goddess Laucianna]

So I just want to start of by saying this guide is not 100% complete and never will be, I intend to keep adding to this guide with every new bit of information I learn from personal experience or what others have told me (You can help add to it by messaging me in game at: @Laucianna)

 

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All Kheldians!

 

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To start with Kheldians (The race of Aliens that make up both PeaceBringers and WarShades) are one of (if not) the hardest AT (Archetype - Think of it like a class in most other MMOs) to learn in the game due to having 3 different forms and learning how to maximise each of them to the best possible outcome, so please do not go into a Kheldian thinking it's going to be a stroll in the park, and even when you finish your character to perfection you will never be the best at one set thing.

 

However! As the saying goes "a jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one." and you get bet your backside the Kheldian is the Jack of all Trades AT!

 

Can you tank as well as a Tanker? No but you can tank better then everyone else whilst out damaging the Tanker.

Can you match the damage of a Blaster? No but you won't die when an enemy looks at you as make them regret looking at you.

Can you lead a random Team/League? You excel at it with the ability to fill whatever role is missing, or pump out nukes and DPS.

Can you solo x8/+4 content with ease? Without a doubt!

 

 

Lore:

 

Lore in CoH is iffy at the best of times due to retcons, incomplete stories, and of course: the sad fact the game is no longer being officially developed. Thankfully however we can get a decent picture when it comes to us Kheldians so if you don't really care where your character comes from feel free to skip this part 😄

 

The original Kheldians were beings of pure energy (This is visible in game as a PeaceBringers Lightform) who had an average lifespan of only 5-10 years, this is where the first big bit of lore comes in as there was two solutions to this short lifespan issue; the first being to bond with another life form, this however alters the personality of the Kheldian as it is not a case of two minds sharing one body, but the two minds merging into a singular mind, taking aspects from both minds. The second option is what created the Nictus (And later the WarShades), that being to use science to drain the life force from other life forms by force, Kheldians who did this became corrupt and eventually led to a war between the original Kheldians and the Nictus (a war that carries on today).

 

This led to both sides exploring more of the universe to uncover different species to either use as hosts or drain of their life, before coming to earth there are only two confirmed alien races the Kheldians came into contact with, that being the Dwarf and Nova forms. This happened thousands of years ago as there has been confirmed Kheldians all throughout history (Just look at Cimerora where the Nictus are in effect).

 

Now we explored what PeaceBringers are, being original Kheldians who make consensual bonds with their hosts, but WarShades are a whole different story: WarShades were originally Nictus (Hence all the life stealing powers) who due to their own personally reasons realised what they did were wrong and have since began making consensual bonds with hosts, yet still tainted by the evil sciences used by their time as Nictus.

 

Now the original Devs of CoH were leading up to the Battalion being the big bad of the game but never got around to fleshing it out much, however they are especially relevant to Kheldians as (I believe) in the future the Battalion ends up using Kheldians as a fuel source due to them being pure energy.

 

 

The 3 forms:

 

All Kheldians get access to 3 forms: Human, Nova (Nicknamed Squid), Dwarf (Nicknamed Lobster). A build only using the base Human form is called a Human-Only, a build using the base Human and either the Nova or Dwarf form is called a Bi-Form, and finally a build that uses all 3 forms is called a Tri-Form. You also get our quirky builds (Like a petless MM) where people go Nova-Only or Dwarf-Only.

 

Human:

Your base form, everyone gets this and some people refuse to leave it, and it has all your nukes, toggles, and general attacks. This form can also be your tankiest since you get access to toggles like Weave and Maneuvers and I personally tank in this form, only switching in to dwarf to apply my taunt.

 

Nova: 

Your go to for ranged damage, this form does not have melee at all but you don't need it, you have 2 AOEs and 3 ST attacks (Glinting/Ebon Eye are usable in this form) enough to have a full rotation of powers to use from level 2!

 

Dwarf:

Your go to for taunting, since we are a super tanky AT it only makes sense for us to be able to taunt as well. Dwarfs have 1 taunt, 1 heal, 1 teleport, 1 AOE, and 3 ST attacks (Gleaming/Shadow bolt carry over to this form but with less range). Since this is our taunting form all of the Dwarf attacks will also help taunt the enemy just like a tanker/brutes would.

 

 

The difference between a PeaceBringer and a WarShade:

 

Apart from the obvious appearance and power differences, the main difference between the two is fighting groups of enemies or solo enemies like AVs (Arch-Villains = Toughest mobs). PeaceBringers once they have enough recharge to keep Lightform perma can go toe to toe with an AV a lot better then a WarShade can, however if you chuck in a group of mobs a WarShade will shoot ahead in both damage and durability. So the main deciding factor should be if you would rather be a constant reliable character you go PeaceBringer, however if you want to use your enemies (both dead and alive) as steroids you go WarShade.

 

Binds:

 

The following Binds I believe are useful for all Kheldians to use:

 

/bind Tab "targetcustomnext enemy alive$$targetcustomnext enemy alive quantum$$targetcustomnext enemy alive dwarf$$targetcustomnext enemy alive nova$$targetcustomnext enemy alive void$$targetcustomnext enemy alive cyst"
 

^^ This bind will target the most dangerous enemies to you first before a normal enemy ^^

 

 

Regarding Knockback:

 

Love it or hate it, sadly a lot of people hate it and it is most of our powers, if you do not care what people think and want to knockback enemies freely go ahead! You can skip this bit 😄 otherwise you have two main solutions to the issue:

1 - *Learn to control your knockback* (at least for AOEs) is the name of the game. And that's done through positioning. Obvious things, sure, like "Don't stand next to the tank and knock everything away," but also "On a PB, you have fly. use it. Knocking back into the floor is enhancement-less knockdown." Knock things *into* patches/melee. And on a 'shade (or if you want to make the investment into a pool on a PB) there's always Shadow Slip. (Thanks to @Greycat)
 

2 - Turn it to knockdown (Super useful CC at any level) using an enhancement, that being:
 

Sudden Acceleration: Knockback to Knockdown
 

This will turn your power from a Knockback to a Knockdown which is amazing Crowd control (Keep in mind, Dwarves attacks are already Knockdown and do NOT need to be converted). Personally I only convert my Area of Effect powers to knockdown as I only Single Target bosses+ or they die in 1 or two hits.

 

 

Toggle Suppression:

 

Massive thanks to @Glacier Peak for reminding me! Recently Homecoming brought out something called "Toggle Suppression" which is a MASSIVE Quality of Life improvement! To put it simply, if you have anything toggled on whilst in human form, if you shift into Nova/Dwarf to attack and then switch back, it will keep all your toggles on! They are now only suppressed when in Nova/Dwarf form so you don't get their bonuses, but you do not have to sit and re-toggle all of them when you switch back to human.

 

Note that this does not count for Incarnates as they are still active in all forms even if you switch.

 

 

Numbers:

 

To prevent every AT from getting 100% resists or doing the same damage, each AT has a different cap on how much resist they can get, and how much their Melee and Range damage scales. To start off with the easier one we will talk about damage resists, so for the example below we will show how much damage you would take if an enemy hits you for 500 damage:

 

Tank/Brute - 90% dmg resist = 50 damage (10 hits = 500 damage)

Kheldians - 85% dmg resist = 75 damage (10 hits = 750 damage)
Others - 75% dmg resist = 125 damage (10 hits = 1250 damage)

 

Damage scaling is a bit more confusing as it has different numbers for both Melee and Ranged damage that you deal, but for this example we will stick with dealing 500 damage (not including enemy resists) in the different forms as each one has it's own scaling:

 

Human - 0.85 Melee/0.8 Ranged = 425 damage Melee/400 damage Ranged

Nova - No Melee/1.2 Ranged = 600 damage Ranged

Dwarf - 1 Melee/No Ranged = 500 damage Melee

 

 

Lore Pets:

 

From what I know there are 3 main candidates for Lore pets pretty much across all ATs that I have listed below and why you might want them, honestly this is purely up to you and what you want more of from your pets:

 

Banished Pantheon - Gives the enemy a -res debuff and the Radial side gives an unattackable AOE pet

Longbow - Gives the enemy a -regen debuff and both are ranged attackers

Polar Lights - They actually use Nova attacks! They are great at AOE and are super small so don't block small areas.

 

 

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PeaceBringers!

 

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Peacebringers are like the Paladins of City of Heroes, they use their own inner power of "light" to empower their attacks, boost their resists, and even heal their allies. Much like Paladins in other games a PeaceBringer can do it all without much worry, yes they will not be as fast as a WarShade in their ideal environment, but PeaceBringers will also not suffer when the conditions are not ideal for them.

 

 

Perma-Lightform:

 

Perma-Lightform is the goal of almost every PeaceBringer out there, since when this is on 24/7 you should always be capped on resists (Except psi) and it is not the easiest to do since we don't get any power apart from Hasten to boost recharge, however the number you are aiming for before hasten is around 90% however I would aim to get perma hasten on any PeaceBringer meaning you want a total of 180% recharge with hasten on. Below are a few good ways to get this:

 

Luck of the Gambler 7.5% global recharge - You can have 5 of these

Superior Essence Transfer - you get 10% recharge for 3 of these in one power and you can have 6 total

Any other purple set - 10% recharge for 5 of these, perfect to make the final slot a knockback to knockdown

Panacea - 7.5% recharge and it stacks on top of Luck of the Gambler

Agility Core Paragon - Gives a massive Recharge bonus to all powers plus adds to your defence!

 

Cosmic Balance:

 

Every AT gets a special power just for them, we Kheldians get one that is one of the best if you enjoy teaming. We gain different bonuses depending on what kind of team mates we have nearby, including bonuses to damage and resistance. Below is a list of all the ATs and what bonus they give:

 

Tanker/Mastermind/Corruptor/Defender - 20% Damage increase

Scrapper/Brute/Stalker/Blaster/Sentinel - 10% Damage resistance

Controller/Dominator - 1 Mag Mez resist

Kheldians/Arachnos - 10% slow resist

 

 

Hints:

 

 - Lightforms "Whispy" appearance disables NPC collision for you whilst it is active, this makes it super easy to position yourself for an optimal nuke, or to escape being trapped in a corner.

 

Binds:

 

/bind lshift+lbutton "powexec_location cursor White Dwarf Step"

 

^^ Teleports you whilst in Dwarf form ^^

 

/bind numpad1 "gototray 4$$powexec_toggleon bright nova"

 

^^ Causes you to go into nova and switch action bars ^^
 

/bind numpad2 "gototray 5$$powexec_toggleon white dwarf"

 

^^ Causes you to go into Dwarf and switch action bars ^^

 

 

/bind numpad0 "gototray 1$$powexec_toggleoff White Dwarf$$powexec_toggleoff Bright Nova"

 

^^ This bind will make your numpad 0 key revert you back to human form ^^

 

 

** Things to be wary of: **
 

 - The crash from Light Form, when light form ends you are taken to 50% of your max HP and lose 50% of your endurance, it is paramount that do not get taken off guard by this, even with perma Lightform on auto cast, with the 50% loss of endurance it could detoggle all your defences and unable to heal, causing you to die by a thousand cuts.

 

An easy way to count this is to make sure you have both flashing on for fading powers and cooldown timers on your power (Options - Windows - Powers), once your lightform is almost ready you know that soon your previous lightform will drop and you can prepare a heal.

 

 

A Basic Build:

 

The build below is no where near and endgame build, however it should be a cheap build to work at as you level and understand the character. Once you get level 50 you can start swapping the sets out for more expensive ones, or fully redo the build based on what you want more out of it. For instance you could make it more tanky, do more damage, be Human form only, even faster recharge, pick up different powers that you want instead. the possibilities are incredibly vast when playing a Kheldian so have fun with it! I know I am still adding touches to my builds after playing for over half a year straight! XD

 

Peacebringer Basis.mxd

(This build will set you back around 300m (Subject to change depending on the AH at the time))

 

Doom's End game builds:

 

Below are two builds made by @Doomrider for both Human only and Tri Form playstyles, these are great once you hit 50 and have the influence to slot out your Kheldian and want to get into kicking ass ASAP before developing your own build for your Kheldian (Massive thanks to Doom for making these <3)

Doom's Peacebringer Tri form.mxdDoom's Peacebringer Human Only.mxd

 

 

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WarShades!

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I will be honest my knowledge of WarShades is very limited, so anyone with any experience I would be super happy to hear from! But from what I do know they are basically like Vampires/Deathknights, using the lifeforce of your alive enemies to boost your resists and dmg to absurd levels, killing them all with your now absurd damage, and finally using the now dead bodies around you to heal and damage lost, recover any endurance used, and most fun of all: Extracting what little remains of their corpses as your own personal pets to kill the next group of enemies! (Thanks to @mathemagic for explaining more)

 

Dark Sustenance:

 

Every AT gets a special power just for them, we Kheldians get one that is one of the best if you enjoy teaming. We gain different bonuses depending on what kind of team mates we have nearby, including bonuses to damage and resistance. Below is a list of all the ATs and what bonus they give:

 

Tanker/Mastermind/Corruptor/Defender - 10% Damage resistance

Scrapper/Brute/Stalker/Blaster/Sentinel - 20% Damage increase

Controller/Dominator - 1 Mag Mez resist

Kheldians/Arachnos - 10% slow resist

 

 

Hints:

 

 

Binds:

 

/bind lshift+lbutton "powexec_location cursor Shadow Step"

 

^^ Teleports you ^^

 

/bind numpad1 "gototray 4$$powexec_toggleon dark nova"

 

^^ Causes you to go into nova and switch action bars ^^

 

/bind numpad2 "gototray 5$$powexec_toggleon dark dwarf"

 

^^ Causes you to go into Dwarf and switch action bars ^^

 

 

/bind numpad0 "gototray 1$$powexec_toggleoff Black Dwarf$$powexec_toggleoff Dark Nova$$"

 

^^ This bind will make your numpad 0 key revert you back to human form ^^

 

 

** Things to be wary of: **

 

 - A lack of bodies (Both alive and dead) is the biggest fall of a WarShade, it means you are not doing as much damage, or being as tanky as you can be.

 

The best solution if you are solo or the team does not mind moving is bringing a tough mob like the AV to a group of weaker mobs, you should easily be able to kill them whilst tanking the AV which grants you more dead bodies to use!

 

 

 

A Basic Build:

 

The build below is no where near and endgame build, however it should be a cheap build to work at as you level and understand the character. Once you get level 50 you can start swapping the sets out for more expensive ones, or fully redo the build based on what you want more out of it. For instance you could make it more tanky, do more damage, be Human form only, even faster recharge, pick up different powers that you want instead. the possibilities are incredibly vast when playing a Kheldian so have fun with it! I know I am still adding touches to my builds after playing for over half a year straight! XD

 

Warshade Basis.mxd

(This build will set you back around 300m (Subject to change depending on the AH at the time))

 

Doom's End game builds:

 

Below are two builds made by @Doomrider for both Human only and Tri Form playstyles, these are great once you hit 50 and have the influence to slot out your Kheldian and want to get into kicking ass ASAP before developing your own build for your Kheldian (Massive thanks to Doom for making these <3)

 

Doom's Warshade Tri form.mxdDoom's Warshade Human Only.mxd

 

Closure:

 

Thank you for reading this guide and hopefully it has helped you on your path to playing your own Kheldian, I just want to finish this with saying there is no right way to play a Kheldian so have fun with the AT and as a nice little bonus I added some cool facts about Kheldians below ❤️

 

 

 

Most beings are, for lack of a better description, like apartments to Kheldians. They can move in, if the host is willing (or very weak,) and they can separate at will.

 

The Kheldian stretches its hosts lifespan when joined. In addition, in the future it can make an energy "copy" of any being it's been joined with in the past - such as the Nova and Dwarf forms.

 

The Nova form is actually an alien the Kheldians encountered living in a gas giant.

The Bright Novas are called Mefnanim,

The Dark Novas are called Hulmanim.

 

The Polar Lights Incarnate Lore pets actually use Kheldian powers, in case you wanted even more Kheld on your character ❤️

 

The Peacebringers are regular Kheldians, beings composed of light and are dedicated to hunting down the Nictus and destroying them for what they did to the Kheldian race.

 

When a Kheldian is forcibly separated from the host, the two halves can "feel" the other's out there. We don't know if this happens with a willing separation or not.

 

Shadowstar, the Warshade leader, has been around since ancient Egypt - 3000 to 5000 years (So Aliens might of built the Pyramids).

 

Nictus are Kheldians who, when faced with the short native lifespan of the Kheldian people, turned to science and changed themselves into beings of darkness.

 

It's possible a Kheldian could visit, for example, five other planets, have five more species of hosts, and become octoform not just a tri-form.

 

With a continual chain of hosts, Kheldians are functionally immortal (It is also rude to ask how many hosts a Kheldian has had, like asking a women her age).

 

The White Dwarf form is actually an alien race called the Kurukt, and lived on neutron stars.

The Black Dwarf form are called the Ruktur, who are said to have lived on the surface of a pulsar.

 

Warshades are Nictus that have had a change of heart, merging willingly with another instead of trying to force their way in. They fight alongside the Peacebringers against the Nictus.

 

Being energy, Kheldians have no natural "shape." At best they appear as wisps of energy. Occasionally bad tempered, deadly wisps of energy, but wisps nonetheless.

 

We don't know of "native" Kheld gender. The hosts obviously have gender, but native Khelds - unknown. (⊙.⊙)

 

Edited Friday at 06:46 PM by Goddess Laucianna
Updated Dark Sustenance to be correct thanks to McJigg

[Glacier Peak]

Love this! Great read so far, I'll be coming back to it again in the future. 

 

Would you consider Light Form and Eclipse to be a 'Fourth Form' ?

 

Edit: Also, didn't Sentinels get added to Cosmic Balance bonus?

 

Edit 2: I think it's worth mentioning Toggle Suppression or whatever name they went with, meaning Kheldians can go to different forms and not have to retoggle.

Edited January 3 by Glacier Peak

[Goddess Laucianna]

19 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

Love this! Great read so far, I'll be coming back to it again in the future. 

 

Would you consider Light Form and Eclipse to be a 'Fourth Form' ?

 

Edit: Also, didn't Sentinels get added to Cosmic Balance bonus?

 

Edit 2: I think it's worth mentioning Toggle Suppression or whatever name they went with, meaning Kheldians can go to different forms and not have to retoggle.

You are 100% right! Personally I would say Lightform and Eclipse to be human form as a shield only build tends to go into the niche builds (Like nova only). Yes I believe sentinels give slow resist too, I will double check. And omg how did I forget toggle suppression!!!!!

[Xiddo]

Hey GL, pleasure to see you on the forums too. You invited me to the global channel.

Sents are in the same category as brutes. So res for PBs/ dam for WS.

 

This reminds me, I need to send you my build.

[Goddess Laucianna]

19 hours ago, Xiddo said:

Hey GL, pleasure to see you on the forums too. You invited me to the global channel.

Sents are in the same category as brutes. So res for PBs/ dam for WS.

 

This reminds me, I need to send you my build.

 

Glad to see you too hun! I am pretty sure I tested in game when I added Sentinels that it was the same as Scrappers though hun, are you able to test it on your end to double check and let me know?

[Xiddo]

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=inherent.inherent.cosmic_balance&at=peacebringer

Aye, for PBs blaster/brute/scrapper/sent/stalker are all the same!

[Foxy]

For a tri-form PB, what would be considered must have powers and which ones can be skipped or are limited in their usefulness?  

[Orivon]

6 hours ago, Foxy said:

For a tri-form PB, what would be considered must have powers and which ones can be skipped or are limited in their usefulness?  

Light Form is kind of obvious because it's your main defensive power. I took Reform Essence and Essence Boost to help keep your health up and dealing with LF crashing at less than ideal moments. Also helps bump up max HP.  Inner light is a must because it helps with ToHit and Damage and it's effects are stronger for a couple seconds and then reduce after but you can get your recharge time low enough to have the remaining Inner Light stack with your new one for some extra buffs. At this point it can be somewhat up to play style. I chose a lot of the shields because I was slotting them with +Psi Res IOs (my psi res is up to 77%) and stealth power pool for some extra Luck of the Gambler 7.5% recharge IOs. My build has changed over the years and just updated it recently to remove all human attacks except for Glinting Eye (usable in Nova form), Photon Seekers, and Dawn Strike. I primarily use Nova and Dwarf attack powers.

 

As far a skipping: Pulsar is up near the top for me and the animation time is kinda long. Which is also why I have respec'd out of Incandescent Strike. It's a really fun power to watch but it's a longgg activation. Since you're talking tri-form you can skip all the human attacks so you don't have to slot them and you'll have a better version in Nova form.  You could skip Group Energy Flight because these days it's easy for people to get around and not really necessary.

 

Lastly, I take Glowing Touch because I like to heal (also slotting Panacea for set bonus) and it does come in handy in a pinch but this may not be someone else's play style so you could potentially skip this too.

 

Hope this helps!

[Goddess Laucianna]

13 hours ago, Foxy said:

For a tri-form PB, what would be considered must have powers and which ones can be skipped or are limited in their usefulness?  

It would highly depend on your playstyle hun (Part of what makes a Kheldian so unique to play). If you plan on staying in your forms to do all your damage/tanking that you want to pick up long lasting buffs like Hasten and Essence Boost etc, utility powers like Stealth or teleport, or slot mules such as infiltration for defence procs or the shields for resist procs. However if you plan to play but going in and out of the forms you can pick up so shorter lasting buffs like Inner light, some of the more hard hitting Human attacks like Radiant Strike or Gleaming Blast, and of course the two nukes we have access to. I am going to try making some cheap tri form builds to post here that people can use as a basis to go from, but most Kheldian players mould their character differently depending on what you want (Such as @Orivon picking up Glowing touch because they want to have that)

[Foxy]

Thanks to both of you - that does help a lot and gives me things to consider before I respec.  

[Orivon]

I'm on Excelsior if you'd like to team up and I can show you how I play my PB.

[biostem]

All else being equal, there are really 2 questions you need to ask yourself:

 

1. Are you going tri-form, dual-form, or human only.

 

and

 

2. If you chose tri- or dual- above, how good are you with keybinds/macros, cuz you're gonna need/want them!

Edited January 14 by biostem

[johng99]

This might help too.  I use the top number row to attack, the arrow keys to move and the mouse to click things.  So I added this macro to my WS: 

/macro SQ "powexectoggleon dark nova$$goto_tray 7" then I copied the powers down to tray 7.  And of course, for the dwarf:

/macro LB "powexectoggleon black dwarf$$goto_tray 8" then copied those powers to tray 8.

Unfortunately, there is no "human" form to turn on, you turn off the other forms.

So I stole this from above: /macro HM "powexec_toggleoff Black Dwarf$$powexec_toggleoff Dark Nova$$goto_tray 3"

I also added to trays 7 & 8 a "human" macro.  /macro HM "powexectoggleoff dark nova$$goto_tray 3" and of course /macro HM "powexectoggleoff black dwarf$$goto_tray 3"

 

Also, I have "FLY and land" macros.  /macro FLY "powexectoggleon dark nova$$autorun 1$$goto_tray 7" and /macro land "powexectoggleoff dark nova$$autorun 0$$goto_tray 3"

Switching to the nova tray is a good idea if you get attacked while flying.

 

I also stole the tab key bind from above.

 

SQ = squid, LB = lobster, HM = human

 

[Xoza]

Always happy to see more... Kheldian energy in support of our Archetype.

[Orivon]

I highly recommend an MMO mouse or at least one with some extra buttons because it made playing my PB, and CoH in general, much easier. My key binds are all done on the mouse.

 

This is my current set up with my Steel Series Aerox 9

 

 

G - bright nova

V - white dwarf

X - light form

Left Shift - down flight

F - energy flight

T - white dwarf step

B - combat flight

 

Then I combine multiple binds to the same key:

 

1 - "powexecname photon seekers$$powexecname bright nova bolt$$powexecname white dwarf strike"

2 - glinting eye/dwarf smite

3 - dawn strike/nova blast/dwarf flare

4 - essence boost/nova scatter/dwarf antagonize

5 - reform essence/dwarf sublimation

6 - glowing touch/nova detonation

7 - quantum flight

Shift+7 - quantum acceleration

8 - conserve energy

9 - teleport target

0 - inner light

[Greycat]

On 1/3/2023 at 5:38 PM, Goddess Laucianna said:

Love it or hate it, sadly a lot of people hate it and it is most of our powers, if you do not care what people think and want to knockback enemies go ahead! You can skip this bit 😄

 

For those of us who do want to address the Knockback issue there is sadly only one reliable enhancement you must put into all the powers you want to convert from Knockback, that being:

 

... there might be one enhancement, but it's not a "knock stuff around willy nilly or use this" choice.

 

*Learn to control your knockback* (at least for AOEs) is the name of the game. And that's done through positioning. Obvious things, sure, like "Don't stand next to the tank and knock everything away," but also "On a PB, you have fly. use it. Knocking back into the floor is enhancement-less knockdown." Knock things *into* patches/melee. And on a 'shade (or if you want to make the investment into a pool on a PB) there's always Shadow Slip.

 

(Side note, once you're at least 50+1 and have threads - or cash - to spare to pick up Ultimates, MSRs will love your Warshade for Slipping those tasty, tasty Rikti into the meatgrinder.)

 

Ancient PB guide of mine - I mean, old forums, 2010...

https://web.archive.org/web/20120904221601/http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=238237

 

Obviously some things have changed, but it's a perspective. I'll still slot a Winter's Gift in because Dwarf has so few attacks... one fewer on a PB, after all, since the heal's not also an attack.

[Goddess Laucianna]

1 hour ago, Greycat said:

 

... there might be one enhancement, but it's not a "knock stuff around willy nilly or use this" choice.

 

*Learn to control your knockback* (at least for AOEs) is the name of the game. And that's done through positioning. Obvious things, sure, like "Don't stand next to the tank and knock everything away," but also "On a PB, you have fly. use it. Knocking back into the floor is enhancement-less knockdown." Knock things *into* patches/melee. And on a 'shade (or if you want to make the investment into a pool on a PB) there's always Shadow Slip.

 

(Side note, once you're at least 50+1 and have threads - or cash - to spare to pick up Ultimates, MSRs will love your Warshade for Slipping those tasty, tasty Rikti into the meatgrinder.)

 

Ancient PB guide of mine - I mean, old forums, 2010...

https://web.archive.org/web/20120904221601/http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=238237

 

Obviously some things have changed, but it's a perspective. I'll still slot a Winter's Gift in because Dwarf has so few attacks... one fewer on a PB, after all, since the heal's not also an attack.

Thank you for the point hun! I added it to the guide as it is a viable option to save a precious enhancement slot if you can control the knockback ❤️

[mathemagic]

Hi Laucianna,

Longtime Warshade main here.  If you don't mind, I'd like to correct a bit of your warshade post.  First off, warshades need LIVE bodies even more than dead ones.  Eclipse increases your damage resists for every live body it hits.  I would also recommend that one go for perma-eclipse in the same manner that you describe for light form.  Also, the two mires, human and dwarf, increase damage output for every live body they hit.  And the effects from Eclipse and the mires carry over into Nova or Dwarf.  So you can jump into a pack of baddies, Eclipse and double mire, then turn Nova with capped resists and max damage output.  You should be surrounded by dead bodies in no time.  Use the dead bodies for your Dark Extraction pet, and Stygian Circle, which refills your health and stamina bars for every dead body it hits.  Hope this helps.

[Goddess Laucianna]

1 hour ago, mathemagic said:

Hi Laucianna,

Longtime Warshade main here.  If you don't mind, I'd like to correct a bit of your warshade post.  First off, warshades need LIVE bodies even more than dead ones.  Eclipse increases your damage resists for every live body it hits.  I would also recommend that one go for perma-eclipse in the same manner that you describe for light form.  Also, the two mires, human and dwarf, increase damage output for every live body they hit.  And the effects from Eclipse and the mires carry over into Nova or Dwarf.  So you can jump into a pack of baddies, Eclipse and double mire, then turn Nova with capped resists and max damage output.  You should be surrounded by dead bodies in no time.  Use the dead bodies for your Dark Extraction pet, and Stygian Circle, which refills your health and stamina bars for every dead body it hits.  Hope this helps.

 

Hiya!

 

Thanks for the info hun! My knowledge on WarShades is a lot more limited so a massive thank you for letting me know, I have updated the intro to WarShades to better reflect the playstyle you mentioned, let me know if I am still missing anything ❤️

 

 - Lauci

[mathemagic]

Thanks for the mention.

Your opening WarShade paragraph is one of the most concise, entertaining descriptions of a WarShade in action I've read.