Let's talk weaknesses

[Microcosm]

Note, this post is about UberKheld-World Problems. I'd like to talk about the weaknesses we can have in the top-end builds we have made or plan to make. Everything is still relevant to lower level or non-maxed builds, but the point of this post is to discuss high-end builds facing the most difficult of situations. Most of the people posting in this subsection should be aware of the monstrous survival rates and excellent damage for 99% of content. So what about that 1% of times where conditions just aren't ideal for a Kheldian? To that end, I want to avoid the "mez/kill them before they kill you" argument, which holds for the 99% of situations but maybe not for that 1%. I'll start below but please contribute if I missed a problem or solution or you just disagree.

 

Mez

This one's been talked about before quite a bit, and it applies more to Shades than PBs thanks to light form. We've got several options, including Dwarf form (though this locks you to a couple of powers only), Break Free inspiration combination, Clarion, or building for enough defense to avoid the mez altogether. You might try for s/l softcap, or attempt to get ~32.5 positional defenses and use a small luck to finish the job. Building those defenses will be a bit of a theme here, and is nice in general as it makes you even more survivable.

 

End Drain

End drain can be a bummer, and we have 0 protection against it. Enemies may not kill you if they drain you because of the nature of Eclipse/Light Form, but it's kind of hard to fight back if you get drained. Again, I'm not talking about that one sapper in the crowd we can kill or mez, but the +4/x8 clockwork shooting electric blasts at you, or huge groups of carnies you just melted. There are no special IOs or bonuses that can solve this one, so what we have left is building for defense, either s/l/e (covers those electric blasts which are frequent end drain offenders) or positionals.

 

Slow/-Rech

Unlike other armor sets, Khelds depend a lot on recharge to get that t9 perma. You can again build for defense, but there are those times this won't work all that well. I'm thinking mainly of a pack of OG Knives of Artemis all dropping caltrops. If you haven't experienced this on a character with no -rech protection and one with large -rech protection, you should go treat yourself 😉 We do now have the winter IO sets, with which it's possible to build for >100% -recharge resistance.

 

Single Target Damage

Khelds can do fantastic AoE damage, some of the best. Single target damage, not so much. They can definitely do adequate st damage given their other abilities, but it's not the best in the world. For this one, using Procs can make a good difference, especially for PBs who are already self-contained with their endurance issues and can focus on adding more procs and less end-redux. Warshades' end recovery comes from defeated bodies, which... don't always exist when hitting a single hard target, especially if you've got pets around clearing out those mobs early in the fight. A large part of a Warshades' damage can come from those pets though, so keeping them alive for the big single target encounter is important (see below).

 

Psi (PBs)

PBs have a psi whole in Light Form, which WSs do not. We know this. I think we've also seen all sorts of build that emphasize adding psi protection through IOs which can get really high values there. Building for defense can help as well, though there are a small handful of enemy psi attacks that aren't typed with a position.

 

Keeping Pets alive (WS)

This is a big one for high-end content. WS pets provide a lot of our damage, partially just because you can keep three out with high recharge. But all that damage is useless if the pets are killed. These little guys like to fly in the face of enemies, probably closing to melee because they are waiting for one of their ranged powers to recharge and this is what the AI generally does. So the options we have are try to get some defense into them via maneuvers/grant invis/pet defense IOs, using Dwarf taunt or pool power taunt to keep focus off of them, or using the Hybrid toggle for taunt. You won't be able to get significant defense into them, unfortunately, and slots on the pets are already super tight. Using Dwarf taunt locks you into Dwarf for the AV fight (not necessarily a problem), but the taunts and Hybrid taunt won't protect them from AoEs from that big target. What seems like the best option is to combine taunting with constant position changing to keep distance between you and fluffies to avoid AoEs. Doesn't work for pylons and will lower your own dps a bit from all the repositioning.

 

Thoughts? What would you like to add?

[Honest Abe]

It looks like you have covered pretty much everything.  

 

Joining a team always helps.  

 

If soloing one needs the right...build, buffs (e.g. inspirations), abilities, and tactics to get the particular job done.  However, job's vary and therein lies the difficulty. 

 

Most will find constantly altering their build, buffs, abilities and tactics to match the situation to be too laborious of an undertaking.

 

I think it's important to keep in mind...Whenever you choose for something you choose against something else.

 

AIB

   

[Haijinx]

Big weakness is having to do a bunch of toggles when switching back to human form. 

 

 

[Demon Shell]

If I could change only one thing, it'd be debuff resistance. Keldians get none. Not in human form, not in dwarf. If teamed with another epic AT they get 10% Recharge Resist each and that's it. Bare in mind, when you pick "Tank" on the Playstyle list at character creation, Keldians are up there with Brutes/Tankers, and the latter 2 always have decent debuff resist values in at least some areas.

 

On a resist-based AT that shouldn't be expected to dodge most incoming attacks, it should be 10% all debuff resist.

 

The mez protection from Controllers/Dominators should be doubled, too.

[Microcosm]

19 hours ago, Honest Abe said:

I think it's important to keep in mind...Whenever you choose for something you choose against something else.

   

Very true words, AIB. I think that also points to building defense as a good goal, because it simultaneously addresses several of these. For those willing to put in obscene amounts of inf though, we can take advantage of hot swapping builds with the /selectbuild n command now available. It puts all abilities on cool down, but can be judiciously used I think.

 

Haijinx, that is definitely a QOL improvement that needed to happen but never did. Maybe we'll get there with the new team. What I tend to do now is build for defense without toggles, though I know others end up just dropping the forms which is sad. It makes no sense to have to retoggle after form switching, but that's a design flaw really.

 

Demon Shell, I hear you and it seems like the way to deal with that is to carry extra purple insps when heading into defense debuff content. I assume you mean defense debuffs, but if you mean resist debuffs khelds actually do a bit better than others cause we can build past the resist caps as a cushion fairly easily. But I'm also not aware of any pure resist based set that gets defense debuffs resistance, so we aren't really alone there. Other option on the defense side (though a short duration one) is to pick up the defense accolade. I think I'll add this to the list though.

[Demon Shell]

5 hours ago, Microcosm said:

Demon Shell, I hear you and it seems like the way to deal with that is to carry extra purple insps when heading into defense debuff content. I assume you mean defense debuffs,

Debuff resist values, not resist debuff resistance (which I don't think exists).

 

Endurance debuff resistance, recovery debuff resistance, perception debuff resistance, to-hit debuff resistance, recharge debuff resistance, movement debuff resistance, and yes, defense debuff resistance. But, if they were going to give us all of those minus one, defense debuff resistance would be the one to drop. Defense is not part of a Keldian's natural kit; they're expected to be hit (which is why debuff resist is so important). I also wouldn't ask for so much coverage if we got more than 10% per Epic AT (or any at all while solo).

[DSorrow]

4 hours ago, Demon Shell said:

resist debuff resistance (which I don't think exists).

Resistance debuff resistance exists, it's conveniently baked into Resistance. So, Resistance resists Resistance Debuffs. Slightly confusing, but what this means is if you have 50% S/L Res, 25% E/NE Res and 0% others and an enemy hits you with -20% Res (All), you'll end up with the following Resistance changes:

• (1 - 0.5) * (-20%) = -10% S/L Res -> net S/L Resistance after debuff = 50% - 10% = 40%
• (1 - 0.25) * (-20%) = -15% E/NE Res -> net E/NE Res after debuff = 25% - 15% = 10%
• (1 - 0) * (-20%) = -20% other Res -> net other Res after debuff = 0 - 20% = -20%

All of this is just a pretty confusing way of making a -20% Res debuff mean that overall, you'll just take 20% more damage across the board regardless of your Resistance starting point. For example, in the S/L case a 100 point attack previously hit you for 50 damage and now it hits you for 60 and in a similar E/NE case, a 100 point attack did 75 damage and now it does 90, for an increase of 20% in both. 

 

Furthermore, Resistance also gives you -DMG Resistance. 50% S/L Resistance halves the effect of -DMG for your S/L attacks. 

[Yeoman]

On 9/3/2019 at 6:39 PM, Microcosm said:

What I tend to do now is build for defense without toggles...

How much non-toggle defense (and which type?) are you able to get into your build?  If I wanted to try to protect my Dwarf from sappers and zappers, I figure I'd need to focus on Ranged Defense.  I was able to put together a Nova/Dwarf build with 31.3% Ranged Defense, non-toggle.  Is that enough to feel reasonably safe that I won't crash out of Dwarf form when tanking Malta?  If not, are there builds out there that get a Dwarf much closer to 45%?

[Haijinx]

2 hours ago, Yeoman said:

How much non-toggle defense (and which type?) are you able to get into your build?  If I wanted to try to protect my Dwarf from sappers and zappers, I figure I'd need to focus on Ranged Defense.  I was able to put together a Nova/Dwarf build with 31.3% Ranged Defense, non-toggle.  Is that enough to feel reasonably safe that I won't crash out of Dwarf form when tanking Malta?  If not, are there builds out there that get a Dwarf much closer to 45%?

Would be nice for the Dwarf to get some END protection.   

 

And a Taunt Aura 

 

[Microcosm]

8 hours ago, Yeoman said:

How much non-toggle defense (and which type?) are you able to get into your build?  If I wanted to try to protect my Dwarf from sappers and zappers, I figure I'd need to focus on Ranged Defense.  I was able to put together a Nova/Dwarf build with 31.3% Ranged Defense, non-toggle.  Is that enough to feel reasonably safe that I won't crash out of Dwarf form when tanking Malta?  If not, are there builds out there that get a Dwarf much closer to 45%?

That's actually a really good number for your range defense. If you pop a small luck inspiration you will be just barely shy of the softcap. So as long as you carry around luck's you will be about as protected from sappers as you can be.

 

You can get higher numbers if you go s/l, but that won't cover this scenario and it requires all sorts of build sacrifices. It might be possible to get s/l/e up to that level, but other parts of the build would probably suffer.

 

I've always thought dwarf should have end drain protection like Haijinx said since you really shouldn't be detoggled from dwarf by anything. I don't know if the original devs thought that was too much or not.

[Yeoman]

Thanks for the feedback!

 

EDIT: I just built the above mentioned Nova-Dwarf PB on the test server.  With 31.3 ranged def, I took on an Arachnos radio mission at +2 x4.

 

It went *okay* for a while, but then I ran into a group that ultimately drained me dry, knocked me out of dwarf form, and sent me to the hospital.  The end drain was the Mu strikers.  I guess the two purples I popped didn't help because presumably other Arachnos were debuffing the hell out of my defense with melee attacks. 

 

All in all, not a confidence-builder for investing in a tanky build on my home server. :)

Edited September 12, 2019 by Yeoman

[Microcosm]

2 hours ago, Yeoman said:

Thanks for the feedback!

 

EDIT: I just built the above mentioned Nova-Dwarf PB on the test server.  With 31.3 ranged def, I took on an Arachnos radio mission at +2 x4.

 

It went *okay* for a while, but then I ran into a group that ultimately drained me dry, knocked me out of dwarf form, and sent me to the hospital.  The end drain was the Mu strikers.  I guess the two purples I popped didn't help because presumably other Arachnos were debuffing the hell out of my defense with melee attacks. 

 

All in all, not a confidence-builder for investing in a tanky build on my home server. 🙂

Well that's unfortunate. If I remember correctly, tarantula mistresses have a large -def debuff that might be typed as just psi. Were you monitoring your defense with combat attributes?

[Yeoman]

I wasn't monitoring it that time, but I've just been back on doing more Arachnos missions, and I've been monitoring ever since.  Some very serious defense debuffing happening.  I would go into a pack with softcapped ranged defense, and then get dropped to red numbers like -20 within a minute.  I haven't reproduced the catastrophic endurance drain since though, so I'm guessing that I must have been facing 3 or 4 Mu strikers that first time.  

 

I've just activated Crimson as a contact, so I will try out the build vs sappers now.

 

EDIT: Malta mission with similar results.  Not sure what was debuffing me, but I dropped from softcap (56% on the monitor) to -3% in an instant.  The sappers also sometimes got lucky shots and drained me out of Dwarf form when my ranged def was softcapped.  The ranged defense definitely makes a big difference.  Without it in the build, I was getting knocked out of Dwarf pretty much the moment a sapper aimed at me.  Here, I was able to survive much longer, with several encounters.  But the debuffs on my ranged defense were coming fairly regularly, and the sappers knocked me out of form regardless of ranged defense on occasion.

Edited September 12, 2019 by Yeoman
update

[blayzemaster]

19 hours ago, Yeoman said:

I wasn't monitoring it that time, but I've just been back on doing more Arachnos missions, and I've been monitoring ever since.  Some very serious defense debuffing happening.  I would go into a pack with softcapped ranged defense, and then get dropped to red numbers like -20 within a minute.  I haven't reproduced the catastrophic endurance drain since though, so I'm guessing that I must have been facing 3 or 4 Mu strikers that first time. 

I find with Arachnos the real problem is Mu Guardians - otherwise you can open with a stun (at least as Warshade) and then take out the other Mus as priority Alpha. the Guardians are boss rank so they resist it though. Arachnos is the most variable I find as some groups are fine, and then some groups are just "lol no", they have nasty variety.

Edited September 12, 2019 by blayzemaster

[Whitest Light]

Of all the major holes in a PB (I can't speak much for Shades), the only one I feel I can't do anything about is Endurance Drain. Defense just isn't part of the set and though I can achieve a fair bit of defense via set bonuses, I know those are accessory and not built-in to the actual Primary/Secondary. Recharge Debuff Resistance can also be added via sets so while that is a major concern for PBs/WSs, there are options available, even if they're expensive or have other opportunity costs attached.

 

Endurance Drain, though, that's a big hole against certain enemy types. But, to be fair, a lot of ATs struggle against Sappers, Mu, etc. They were intentionally designed to be a threat to high level toons. So while I would greatly enjoy having some Endurance Drain Resistance somewhere on my PB, I also understand that we can't have everything. 

 

If I could bake in some Drain Resistance, it should probably be attached to Dwarf Form as the "tankiest" form shouldn't get detoggled due to endurance draining attacks. That being said, Light Form is candidate since it has Recovery attached to it and it would stand to reason that it would resist your Recovery being negatively effected. Alternatively, and I'm not a big fan of this because I'd have to totally rebuild my character, you could put some Endurance Drain Resistance in the Human Shields. 

 

While we're talking about weaknesses, let me ask a question: If Human Shields also offered decent Mez Protection (on par with other melee classes), how would that affect your builds? Would it make Dwarf less appealing? Would it make Light Form/Eclipse less mandatory? 

 

An additional question, if Human Shields re-toggled after form switching, would that drastically affect your build? 

 

 

[Lines]

Endurance is certainly a bigger problem for PBs than for Shades. Stygian Circle has that covered under most circumstances.

Until some energy blaster hasn't slotted their knockback for knockdown. Then we're stuffed.

[Demon Shell]

18 hours ago, Whitest Light said:

While we're talking about weaknesses, let me ask a question: If Human Shields also offered decent Mez Protection (on par with other melee classes), how would that affect your builds? Would it make Dwarf less appealing? Would it make Light Form/Eclipse less mandatory? 

 

An additional question, if Human Shields re-toggled after form switching, would that drastically affect your build?

As a human-only PB, I already don't use Dwarf. I don't even use the shields because Light Form has me covered for resist (they're just proc mules).

 

Light Form offers me capped resist, a measure of mez protection, increased recovery, and (far more important than even I anticipated) results in me running no toggles (because I'm resist/max hp/regen rather than resist/def). And that means if my end gets drained, I'm not dead. I have time to react.

 

I do get mezed now and again, but I'm in DA. I'm getting hit with mez for which Light Form has no protection (fear/confuse). Even still, I'm thinking of switching from Clarion to Ageless, because the worse debuff, for my specific build, is -recharge/slow. If I lose all of my end, I can typically bait out a Panacea/Performance Shifter proc to get a tide-turning hit in. Between Inner Light, Gaussian procs, and my own defense debuffs, to-hit debuffs are rarely noticeable. And obviously defense debuffs are inconsequential, because I have nothing to lose. But if my recharge dips too low and I lose Light Form or I can't use a heal, then I'm dust. For these reasons, more than anything else I'd like End/Rec/Rech/Move debuff resistance.

 

Dwarf (and to a lesser extent, Nova) on the other hand needs more, because they have less tools at their disposal. And for my money, the simplest path to addressing that would be eliminating that discrepancy. If you're in Nova, you just have 4 extra abilities in addition to your regular ones (and your form buffs). If you're in Dwarf, you just have 6 extra abilities in addition to your regular ones (and your form buffs). If you're human, you have access to neither set of moves, but you get something like an increased healing/mez duration buff (ala Power Boost).

 

Oh, and the animation time/mez level on Pulsar is unacceptable.

[chi1701]

My simple issue is that forms are still very restrictive as to what abilities you have access to whilst in your forms. With incarnates and set bonuses, would giving pbs/ws access to some or every ability whilst in your forms be overpowered and why?

[Iron Alex]

On 9/2/2019 at 7:31 PM, Microcosm said:

Note, this post is about UberKheld-World Problems. I'd like to talk about the weaknesses we can have in the top-end builds we have made or plan to make. Everything is still relevant to lower level or non-maxed builds, but the point of this post is to discuss high-end builds facing the most difficult of situations. Most of the people posting in this subsection should be aware of the monstrous survival rates and excellent damage for 99% of content. So what about that 1% of times where conditions just aren't ideal for a Kheldian? To that end, I want to avoid the "mez/kill them before they kill you" argument, which holds for the 99% of situations but maybe not for that 1%. I'll start below but please contribute if I missed a problem or solution or you just disagree.

 

Mez

This one's been talked about before quite a bit, and it applies more to Shades than PBs thanks to light form. We've got several options, including Dwarf form (though this locks you to a couple of powers only), Break Free inspiration combination, Clarion, or building for enough defense to avoid the mez altogether. You might try for s/l softcap, or attempt to get ~32.5 positional defenses and use a small luck to finish the job. Building those defenses will be a bit of a theme here, and is nice in general as it makes you even more survivable.

 

End Drain

End drain can be a bummer, and we have 0 protection against it. Enemies may not kill you if they drain you because of the nature of Eclipse/Light Form, but it's kind of hard to fight back if you get drained. Again, I'm not talking about that one sapper in the crowd we can kill or mez, but the +4/x8 clockwork shooting electric blasts at you, or huge groups of carnies you just melted. There are no special IOs or bonuses that can solve this one, so what we have left is building for defense, either s/l/e (covers those electric blasts which are frequent end drain offenders) or positionals.

 

Slow/-Rech

Unlike other armor sets, Khelds depend a lot on recharge to get that t9 perma. You can again build for defense, but there are those times this won't work all that well. I'm thinking mainly of a pack of OG Knives of Artemis all dropping caltrops. If you haven't experienced this on a character with no -rech protection and one with large -rech protection, you should go treat yourself 😉 We do now have the winter IO sets, with which it's possible to build for >100% -recharge resistance.

 

Single Target Damage

Khelds can do fantastic AoE damage, some of the best. Single target damage, not so much. They can definitely do adequate st damage given their other abilities, but it's not the best in the world. For this one, using Procs can make a good difference, especially for PBs who are already self-contained with their endurance issues and can focus on adding more procs and less end-redux. Warshades' end recovery comes from defeated bodies, which... don't always exist when hitting a single hard target, especially if you've got pets around clearing out those mobs early in the fight. A large part of a Warshades' damage can come from those pets though, so keeping them alive for the big single target encounter is important (see below).

 

Psi (PBs)

PBs have a psi whole in Light Form, which WSs do not. We know this. I think we've also seen all sorts of build that emphasize adding psi protection through IOs which can get really high values there. Building for defense can help as well, though there are a small handful of enemy psi attacks that aren't typed with a position.

 

Keeping Pets alive (WS)

This is a big one for high-end content. WS pets provide a lot of our damage, partially just because you can keep three out with high recharge. But all that damage is useless if the pets are killed. These little guys like to fly in the face of enemies, probably closing to melee because they are waiting for one of their ranged powers to recharge and this is what the AI generally does. So the options we have are try to get some defense into them via maneuvers/grant invis/pet defense IOs, using Dwarf taunt or pool power taunt to keep focus off of them, or using the Hybrid toggle for taunt. You won't be able to get significant defense into them, unfortunately, and slots on the pets are already super tight. Using Dwarf taunt locks you into Dwarf for the AV fight (not necessarily a problem), but the taunts and Hybrid taunt won't protect them from AoEs from that big target. What seems like the best option is to combine taunting with constant position changing to keep distance between you and fluffies to avoid AoEs. Doesn't work for pylons and will lower your own dps a bit from all the repositioning.

 

Thoughts? What would you like to add?

EVERYTHING YOU said  i was going to say.. but let me also add

 

photon seekers should have the  pet attack ui attached to it .. so you can focus attack where you want them.

 

WS heal  should be changed from the dark melee version to the dark blast version.

ws should be able to use a weaker version of its powers when there is no enemies to buff off ..

eclipse should give mez protection per enemy..

 

PB'S LIGHT FORM CRASH should take out the health crash.. I would even take 75% end drain and no health drain.. becuase you have to use a heal just to protect you from your own power crash. 

 

conserve power should be more like another stamina power passive and always on and protect against end drain..

 

stygian cirlcle with each use protects against end drain.

 

ALL FORMS SHOULD SUPPRESS TOGGLES AND NOT DROP them so you can morph seamlessly to human form and back without spending the time clicking them back on..

 

 

ill think of some more later..

[Orivon]

So here's my take on this list for PBs
 

Mez- I would say the 1% is if I'm fighting a pack of Illusionists or AVs with large magnitude it does become an issue. But then, it would be for anyone. If I do get some status effect, it usually doesn't last long anyway, and I have no toggles to worry about dropping in my tri-form.

End - This I think is our biggest one really but if you know your enemies going in, you can adapt your alpha strike to deal with some of this. LF helps as well as Conserve Energy and IO procs. Late game, this is can be mitigated with Ageless Destiny. I would say there is one IO that can help with this and that's Panacea because it grants you an infusion of end rather than a recovery buff. But I wouldn't say it fills this hole.

Slow/-Rech - I do enjoy the fact that we have so many powers to slot that it allows us more variety of IO choices for set bonuses. My character has over 200% recharge and winter's gift slow res. So even if I get slowed, the fight won't last long enough for this to matter and I can use dwarf TP to move around. If it is long and drawn out, Dwarf can substitute for the remaining time until either LF has recharged or the fight is over. You can also use the phase shift to let status effects expire. The 1% problem is in the ITF Shadow Cyst mission. Now, that fight can last a while because they're all bosses. I could see soloing that to be an issue for sure.

Single Target Damage - I can agree our damage scale is lower than others. But I never felt like our attacks were weak, just that we have long animations. Radiant Strike is quick, but if Incandescent Strike was more like Bone Smasher, that might up our DPS a little. But I will never argue against having our damage boosted 😛 

Psi - Sure, we don't get it from LF but with IOs and bonuses and with our heals and +HP, we can really handle this damage type well. It's also rare to be on a team without some Blasters, Scrappers, Stalkers, or Brutes to buff our resistance and many times adding their bonus to what I already have will cap my Psi res without me having to do anything. The 1% might be a pack of Seers, Carnies, or an AV.

Edited September 21, 2019 by Orivon

[Orivon]

On 9/16/2019 at 11:47 AM, chi1701 said:

My simple issue is that forms are still very restrictive as to what abilities you have access to whilst in your forms. With incarnates and set bonuses, would giving pbs/ws access to some or every ability whilst in your forms be overpowered and why?

Wouldn't that kind of defeat the whole purpose of the forms then? They're meant to be a totally different set of powers.

[Iron Alex]

On 9/21/2019 at 11:31 AM, Orivon said:

 

Single Target Damage - I can agree our damage scale is lower than others. But I never felt like our attacks were weak, just that we have long animations. Radiant Strike is quick, but if Incandescent Strike was more like Bone Smasher, that might up our DPS a little. But I will never argue against having our damage boosted 😛 

 

yeah sing target damage could be way better.. i do agree lowering the caste times.. most times i feel grounded with the pb.. with a lower animation time.. and our already fast recharge builds.. it will see more fluidic.. we could prob fire GB,G EYE, BACK TO GB BEFORE WE EVEN LAND ON THE GROUND. 

 

 

[chi1701]

On 9/21/2019 at 6:57 PM, Orivon said:

Wouldn't that kind of defeat the whole purpose of the forms then? They're meant to be a totally different set of powers.

True, but with IOs set bonuses and incarnates granting the human form permanent hasten, permanent light form, permanent inner light and permanent essence boost can come close if not out doing the performance of the forms. So if human form at 50 has the potential to out dps nova as well as coming exceptionally close to dwarf form in terms of resistances but keeping the high dps that human form brings, and can come with all the standard team buffs and utilities, what is the benefit of forms then?

Edited September 23, 2019 by chi1701

[Orivon]

17 hours ago, chi1701 said:

True, but with IOs set bonuses and incarnates granting the human form permanent hasten, permanent light form, permanent inner light and permanent essence boost can come close if not out doing the performance of the forms. So if human form at 50 has the potential to out dps nova as well as coming exceptionally close to dwarf form in terms of resistances but keeping the high dps that human form brings, and can come with all the standard team buffs and utilities, what is the benefit of forms then?

A benefit of the forms may be what some consider to be our largest problem: more powers. Since form transformations are instant, they’re basically buff powers that give you more attacks per power pick. Allowing us to have access to more powers for IO hacking. I think a build with nova will still out damage a human build because the form itself gives +damage and then the base of all the attack powers are already a higher scale than a blaster’s.  So the ceiling is higher. Dwarf gives you more mez protection, heal, HP boost, and a teleport. Plus all the strengths you mentioned will work in forms allowing them to go even further than by themselves. It’s also just a fun part of the lore and how our characters specifically are woven into the story, which I find pretty cool!:)

 

Downside? They cost endurance to run (kinda wish they didn’t), presents a problem for human toggle abilities, and will need to be slotted haha

[Microcosm]

On the pb side of things, I still take the forms explicitly for exemping. Any content below light form/dawn strike/solar flare makes the value of both forms very clear. Otherwise I tend to stay in human at 50. For warshades I think the forms remain valuable all the way through incarnate content, unless you are trying to run a lot of human toggles.

 

I feel like we've gotten on a tangent of "how do we make khelds better", which was not really what I was intending to spark. The intent was a discussion of build and play tactics to overcome the few things that aren't 100% the best at all times. The blinged out versions of these characters are some of the tankiest in game and simultaneously have excellent AoE potential. I don't think you'll get very far arguing for large buffs other than quality-of-life things like toggle suppression with that being the case. Not to say the discussion is invalid, because there are certainly some clunky design decisions still affecting khelds which you all have highlighted.

Edited September 24, 2019 by Microcosm