Kheldians need some love and not reliant on Changeling to be competitive

[Greycat]

On 10/7/2025 at 3:01 PM, MsSmart said:

, but as it said, jack of all trades and master of none.

 

 

... is often better than a master of one. Funny how folks forget the rest of that phrase and how it rather changes the meaning. 

On 10/7/2025 at 11:18 AM, UltraAlt said:

 would also tend to say that Warshades were the first toe-in-the-pond of exploring villainy (Issue 3 release whereas COV was Issue 6). Sure Warshades are "recovering" Nictus which would make them more "rogue" than "villain", but they are obviously leaning more toward the darkside than Peacebringers (by the name alone).

That implies to me that Warshades are really more VEAT than they are HEAT which, again, makes me believe that the Khelidans are more EATs, in general, than HEATs.

 

The villain EAT was initially going to be the Nictus. Which, as I recall, due to player "villains get hero castoffs/second best/no real dev attention" complaint meant they went through and created the (still rather rushed feeling, to me, especially with the arc) Soldiers/Widows. 

 

As far as the rest... 

 

No, I don't use, or like, "changeling" binds. No, I don't feel "not competitive." I'm not here to compete. The only people who should worry about "compatitive" are the... what, 10 people? who PVP. Frankly, I tend to see "this AT isn't competitive!" arguments as ridiculous. (Same with "the team has to carry" nonsense.) Any "competition" is solely in your head. Meanwhile, I can create the characters who match the concepts I have for them and finish missions. (As far as the other post about "ebs/avs in Kheld arcs," the only NPC that ever causes an issue is Nosferatu. That's one, in a series of arcs going from 1-50. No, "solo an AV" is not where we want to balance the game. It's already stupidly easy to get ridiculously overpowered as it is.) 

 

Could they use tweaks? Sure. Newer content's being made with the idea people are IO'ing up and such, which is an issue as far as I'm concerned. What I'd most want to see for both epic sets we have (HEAT and VEAT) would be other-side arcs... though given what I've seen in some recent releases touching on Kheld lore, I'm less enthusiastic about that and would probably just AE something up. 

 

[macskull]

46 minutes ago, Greycat said:

... is often better than a master of one. Funny how folks forget the rest of that phrase and how it rather changes the meaning. 

Often. Not always. And this isn't one of those times.

[Laucianna]

Heya 💛

Just to clear some things up that Kheldians aren't the least played AT atm, that belongs to the VEATs, they are also not overpowered using changeling (Current best PB Pylon time is 15.10 DPS per key press. For comparison Scrapper is 78.807 DPS per key press), however they are also not rubbish without the changeling binds.

Important: They will remove Changeling and no changes should be made until Changeling is removed

Regarding Damage they could go up to 400% cap and a few changes to the recharge time of powers to increase their base damage.

Regarding Animation tweaks honestly all they need to do is make it so when you click a power, you transform into the correct form and fire it off without needing binds/macros. Also adding a "No FX" option to stop the blinding explosion if people want.

Regarding the inherent I used to think the same but it does come in usefulness at times, and sadly the game isn't made for solo play so in my personal opinion things shouldn't be changed for that.

Outside of that, I would like the ability to use power pools in the forms (Within reason, no Boxing Squids etc), the bonuses of the forms to linger after switching out of the form (So for 5-10 seconds you still have the damage boost of squid, or defence of Dwarf) to allow more flow between forms, finally a min FX of the forms where instead of full switching into the dwarf/nova model, it appears over you for a moment before fading so people who don't like the looks of the forms can stay in their base costume.

These are just my opinions, who knows what the devs have planned if anything 😄

[arcane]

1 hour ago, Laucianna said:

they are also not overpowered using changeling (Current best PB Pylon time is 15.10 DPS per key press. For comparison Scrapper is 78.807 DPS per key press),

Holy hell that’s boldly dishonest and intentionally misleading framing

[Laucianna]

3 hours ago, arcane said:

Holy hell that’s boldly dishonest and intentionally misleading framing

To me it is the clearest way to show it as people forget how much faster you have to play to do good DPS on a changeling, but if you prefer I can list it other ways:

Scrapper - 28 second pylon, 1,497 DPS, 19 attacks to kill the Pylon 
Peacebringer - 35 second pylon, 1,223 DPS, 81 attacks to kill the Pylon

I am not trying to be dishonest, Changelings are strong but they are far from OP imo

[Mayaedits]

4 hours ago, arcane said:

Holy hell that’s boldly dishonest and intentionally misleading framing

[Seed22]

4 hours ago, Laucianna said:

To me it is the clearest way to show it as people forget how much faster you have to play to do good DPS on a changeling, but if you prefer I can list it other ways:

Scrapper - 28 second pylon, 1,497 DPS, 19 attacks to kill the Pylon 
Peacebringer - 35 second pylon, 1,223 DPS, 81 attacks to kill the Pylon

I am not trying to be dishonest, Changelings are strong but they are far from OP imo

Now Lauci you know this is the forums. 

 

Our friend arcane here simply wanted to argue his feelings and you go here and give him empircal data. What're you thinking?! Debate him by calling him a sponge, or some such.

 

But seriously these are interesting to see. And very alarming tbh. Khelds even with changeling are in dire need of assistance as has been discussed to death. Removing this band aid would indeed put them into irredeemably bad territory imo

[dangeraaron10]

Removing changeling with no massive buffs to compensate would put them at "worse than Sents" territory.  I agree with the sentiment of removing form specific powers and buff the base kit to compensate with Nova and Dwarf having juiced scalers to make up for only being able to use the ranged and Melee attacks respectively.  

 

Maybe even a scaling buff that improves Nova and Dwarf damage the longer they camp the form.  

[Zormico]

On 11/8/2025 at 10:58 AM, Laucianna said:

Heya 💛

Just to clear some things up that Kheldians aren't the least played AT atm, that belongs to the VEATs, they are also not overpowered using changeling (Current best PB Pylon time is 15.10 DPS per key press. For comparison Scrapper is 78.807 DPS per key press), however they are also not rubbish without the changeling binds.
 

never thought of DPS per key press before, but ya, changeling does insane amount of them

 

20 hours ago, Laucianna said:

Scrapper - 28 second pylon, 1,497 DPS, 19 attacks to kill the Pylon 
Peacebringer - 35 second pylon, 1,223 DPS, 81 attacks to kill the Pylon
 

 

Curious who did these?  I saw your video of a ~50 seconds on PB but gez can't imagine either scrappers or PB doing these numbers

[Laucianna]

1 minute ago, Zormico said:

Curious who did these?  I saw your video of a ~50 seconds on PB but gez can't imagine either scrappers or PB doing these numbers

The videos are linked in the text so you can see 😄

[Zormico]

4 minutes ago, Laucianna said:

The videos are linked in the text so you can see 😄

Thanks, clearly blind and/or not turned on the brain yet today.  Those are pretty crazy, was surprised it was post nerfed TW scrap, just made a TW scrap a week ago and while I enjoy it and love the animation while momentum is up that end to the short window of bliss is jarring and PITA. Even more so if you have to spend even a second of that window to move to the next target

[Glorious]

On 11/8/2025 at 5:58 PM, Laucianna said:

DPS per key press

Holy fuck this made me laugh, lmao

[arcane]

Imagine being so tribal that you have zero qualms pretending that “damage per key press” is suddenly a legitimate balance metric because Lauci says so and arcane says otherwise. Hate matters far more than rationality to some of my favorite homies here.

 

Sometimes you guys get under my skin for real but shamelessly vouching for Lauci’s obvious gaslighting is more just embarrassing to me. 

Edited 22 hours ago by arcane

[LightMaster]

I think the real issue is not just not dealing enough damage, but it’s moreso a severe syndrome of being a “master of none”. The VEATs compensates a similar concept with having unique combinations.

 

Assault Rifle + Stealth as Bane or AR + Pseudo-Mastermind as Crab.

Psionic + Toxic damage on Widows, with Night Widows having fairly more tankiness and damage, and Fortunatas having more control powers and resistance to mezzes iirc.

Adding into those, what makes the VEATs so much better than the Kheldians is the fact that the VEATs have access of some of the best buff / debuff powers in the game. Toxic Web Grenande for Soldiers, for example, as well as their own Leadership powers alongside the Power Pool version that can be stacked.

 

Were the Nova and Dwarf’s upsides are a bit more amplified and the human’s support powers improved to be much more versatile, viable and less situational, maybe and I’ll say maybe they’ll have better places in at least on teams.

[Indystruck]

1 hour ago, arcane said:

Imagine being so tribal that you have zero qualms pretending that “damage per key press” is suddenly a legitimate balance metric because Lauci says so and arcane says otherwise. Hate matters far more than rationality to some of my favorite homies here.

 

Sometimes you guys get under my skin for real but shamelessly vouching for Lauci’s obvious gaslighting is more just embarrassing to me. 

 

seems like the easiest way to illustrate how much more PB has to do to be in the same ballpark

 

also I don't think you know what gaslighting means. you should probably consider being excellent to one another instead

[arcane]

People will come out in favor of 2+2=5 if their tribe tells them to. My opinion is that button mashing speed has zero bearing on how much DPS you are entitled to do on any given class and the way everyone instantly rallied behind key press based balance just now is flat earth tier baffling to me. Y’all do you.

 

No one has ever even tried to refute my observation that the changeling lobby is transparently lying; you guys are constantly arguing with some straw man that doesn’t exist. Awhile ago, when I challenged the frequent claim that “Changelings do the damage of low to mid tier scrappers”, Lauci cited the best scrapper pylon time in the history of the game and started doing a victory lap without ever actually refuting my position that Changelings absolutely do more DPS than the average blaster/scrapper. Go back and read the claim your side has made over and over; going to need data on “low to mid tier scrappers” to support that claim Lauci, not the fucking world record lol.

 

…to say nothing of them doing it with easily perma 85% resistance inaccessible to the AT’s they’re weirdly being compared to. But key presses, I forgot, my bad.

Edited 19 hours ago by arcane

[Laucianna]

32 minutes ago, arcane said:

Changelings absolutely do more DPS than the average blaster/scrapper.

So you are comparing a niche few to the average blaster/scrapper? If you wanted to be fully fair and compare the average blaster/scrapper to the average Kheldian then Kheldians are still losing that race, if you wanted to compare the average changeling player to the average best AT combo of a blaster/scrapper then a blaster/scrapper is still coming out on top. I compared the current two best times that I know of as it's impossible to test for the average time across all players as a whole unless there is some way I am missing, if there is I am all ears 💛

I do agree with you that Lightform/Eclipse are strong powers however! And I did also list the more normal comparisons of DPS in which the Scrapper still did a lot better at, I'm not trying to argue or gaslight anything and I am really sorry if it came off that way hun, just trying to add numbers and evidence to claims rather then "Peacebringer does OP/rubbish DPS, source is trust me bro"

[Mayaedits]

3 hours ago, arcane said:

Imagine being so tribal that you have zero qualms pretending that “damage per key press” is suddenly a legitimate balance metric because Lauci says so and arcane says otherwise. Hate matters far more than rationality to some of my favorite homies here.

 

Sometimes you guys get under my skin for real but shamelessly vouching for Lauci’s obvious gaslighting is more just embarrassing to me. 

[macskull]

Crazy how some people will come out of a 90 day forum ban and immediately start shit.

[GM_GooglyMoogly]

Oh hey!  A new Kheldian thread.  I'll put this on my list of things to read.

[arcane]

18 hours ago, arcane said:

Awhile ago, when I challenged the frequent claim that “Changelings do the damage of low to mid tier scrappers”

Absolute bottom line Lauci - if you are going to have people running around the forums making claims like the one I am quoting here, you need to figure out how to demonstrate that exact claim. As a former DPS tester who has tested much more than TW/Bio scrappers and who has seen your own eye popping DPS results, the context I am aware of tells me that the quoted claim is a lie. If you want me to stop asserting that, you or your pals are free to support and demonstrate *that specific claim*. Literally no one has bothered thus far, yet they keep restating the lie. That is my only problem here. Full stop.

 

I notice some other posters with prior histories of malice have failed to read or contend with the argument at all and have decided to just start with insults. I guess Googly can do what Googly wants in that regard.