Dark Sustenance - I want to talk about it.

[tjknight]

I’d been looking for a new build to respec my old tri-form Warshade. The original build was never all that effective, and I figured I could do better. That’s when I remembered seeing a post here about a very good Human-Form Warshade build that had been shared on the old City of Heroes forums during the live days. Doomrider posted an updated version of it last year on the Homecoming forums, so I thought, “Why not give it a shot?” Fortunately, I already had most of the necessary IO sets slotted, so finishing the build only required a respec and about 100 million Inf. in additional IOs. Once I started running with some teams, I noticed something surprising: I was hitting the damage resistance cap (85%)  most of the time—*without* even using Eclipse. The secret? **Dark Sustenance.** 

 

 

Quote

• Your Damage Resistance will increase for each nearby Tanker, Mastermind, Corruptor or Defender teammate.
• Your Damage will increase for each nearby Scrapper, Sentinel, Stalker, Brute or Blaster teammate. 
• Each nearby Controller or Dominator teammate will grant you limited Protection from Control effects. 
• Finally, each nearby Peacebringer, Warshade, or teamed Arachnos Soldier or Widow grants you some resistance to attack time slow effects.

 

So far, I’ve *always* been teamed with at least two ATs that boost Damage Resistance. As a result, I’m consistently sitting at the damage resistance cap of 85% (or close to it, based on what I understand the cap to be)—and that’s without ever using Eclipse! Why isn’t anyone talking about this? All I ever hear is how underwhelming Kheldians are, but no one seems to mention how powerful **Dark Sustenance** can be. It’s especially effective for Warshade IO builds that focus on damage resistance, and also grants mez resistance and damage boosts on top of that varying on team makeup. 

 

I think this is incredible… or am I missing something here?

Edited April 22 by tjknight

[tjknight]

Screenshot, but showing Eclipse w/Dark Sustenance... still crazy amounts of resistance for a not a high amount of investment. The issue mostly has been with mez, but I have a "break free" macro that helps with that. 

[Laucianna]

It's good for exemplering without a doubt, but at level 50 it's 90% useless and reliant fully on other people being on your team whereas a lot of inherents don't need to be on a team. 

[tjknight]

Thanks for replying Laucianna - I'm "Sawgrass" on live btw!!!!  It was great playing your Unity event, it got me to dust off my Warshade.

 

I'm probably in a weird minority of people who like the inherent, but I do primarily team!!! So I know that playstyle choice makes a difference. I'd be fine if set bonuses and pool powers (Fighting, Leadership, etc...) were allowed to function in all forms. That would be a nice simple change that would make Khelds better overall. 

[Warshades]

On 4/22/2025 at 7:39 PM, tjknight said:

Why isn’t anyone talking about this? All I ever hear is how underwhelming Kheldians are, but no one seems to mention how powerful **Dark Sustenance** can be. It’s especially effective for Warshade IO builds that focus on damage resistance, and also grants mez resistance and damage boosts on top of that varying on team makeup.

 

I find it unreliable as you can't guarantee that you're paired with enough of the specific ATs to hit the resist cap, not to mention the slots, endurance, and power investment needed (3 separate toggle shields to slot and run) to help hit that cap without relying on Eclipse or Light Form. Conversely, you can ignore those shield toggles and use the slots for offense, getting more recharge bonuses to make the T9 perma, reduce endurance drain by running fewer toggles, and have access to more utility powers. The one caveat of this is that these perma T9 Kheldian builds are very much for late game content, 30+ at minimum. Personally, I'd probably just build a second build that's better at low level exemplared content which would be easy to switch to and have a high performing build for high lvl content. 

 

One thing that I would like to see if the inherent powers on Khelds are kept to the same theme (benefiting from other teammates) is switching the resistance buff to a defense buff (5% def to all instead of the 10% resistance). Defense would actually be useful so that you're hit less often (and when you do get hit, the Kheldian secondary has resist shields/T9 to reduce that damage). At 50 and once reaching perma Eclipse/Light Form, that damage resistance gain from the inherent is worthless.

 

IIRC, unless I misplaced the mid's file, this was my final build for my Warshade. Some of the key points to the build:

• Perma Hasten/Eclipse
• 100% recharge debuff resist
• Resist capped with 4-5 targets on Eclipse
• Proc'd out Gravitic Emanation, Gravity Well, Unchain Essence (this can be swapped to a proc'd out Essence Drain if you want an additional ST rotation power).
• Dwarf is there for access to double mire, otherwise it's a human WS build.

The build is endurance heavy, but Stygian Circle is readily available and easily recovers endurance. I do run ageless on mine to have fewer endurance issues in longer fights against AVs and get more recharge out of it, but you have the option of running Clarion if you want to avoid mez and not rely on break frees or Barrier to help out team on harder content. 

 

With regards to the alpha slot, I found Intuition to be beneficial. It has the same 33% damage buff that radial Musculature does but also provides a range buff (makes for faster travel with Shadow Step and increased effective arc on Gravitic Emanation), hold duration (kinda helps Gravity Well), and improves slow debuffs from your attacks (minor benefit). The additional range buff is what I found particularly more useful over the end mod from Musculature radial.

Warshade (Umbral Blast - Umbral Aura)4.mbd