Let's talk weaknesses

[chi1701]

6 hours ago, Microcosm said:

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.

Im not interesting to making khelds better but have better quality of life improvements. I cant really comment on how effective human form is vs nova and dwarf. What I would like to see is the chance for forms to feel more fluid and have improved quality of life improvements. Popping in and out of form every 30s, 90s and 120s is both annoying and can be risky. However, if each form could carry over a choice of 3 powers which can be used in the forms, this could allow the forms to more than just dps or off tank, could choose 3 based on team or solo.

[DSorrow]

35 minutes ago, chi1701 said:

Im not interesting to making khelds better but have better quality of life improvements. I cant really comment on how effective human form is vs nova and dwarf. What I would like to see is the chance for forms to feel more fluid and have improved quality of life improvements. Popping in and out of form every 30s, 90s and 120s is both annoying and can be risky. However, if each form could carry over a choice of 3 powers which can be used in the forms, this could allow the forms to more than just dps or off tank, could choose 3 based on team or solo.

I kind of like the form switching gameplay my Warshade has now, but I have to agree that in longer sessions it does become a bit irritating to hop in and out in order to be able to use something like Hasten, Eclipse or Mire. Additionally, with all the powers you get from the different forms it feels like my slots are spread extremely thin leading to many powers only muling IOs and my human form only existing for the self buffs.

 

Completely changing the forms is probably a no-go because of the cottage rule and the fact that getting rid of them would fundamentally change how the ATs play. However, it would be nice if instead of a bunch of form specific powers, the forms just gave you maybe one or two unique powers, the shapeshift and some applicable modifiers. For example, the Dwarf form might only get Taunt as a form specific ability, but be able to use all the human form abilities including Range but suffer a significant -Range debuff. Dark Nova could work pretty much how it does now: extra Recovery, Damage and ToHit but with a penalty to Resistance which could be offset by the toggles.

 

These aren't obviously very finalized thoughts, but basically I'd like the forms to go at least slightly into the direction of Bio Armor's Adaptations in terms of QoL.

[Orivon]

7 hours ago, Microcosm said:

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.

When things aren't 100% going my way, it usually involves endurance drain and recovery debuffs. A tactic I use to combat this involves Conserve Energy as well as Ageless Destiny. I can't stop -end attacks from happening, but Ageless will give me endurance to get the fight back, and Conserve Energy will help make sure I only sip at my end reservoir if my recovery has been tanked.

 

Another time things aren't going my way is a mob full of holds, slows and mez. Like a pack of seers or Illusionists or a large mob of nictus/void. LF+Dwarf greatly helps but if I start to get overwhelmed I can use Quantum Flight to phase out and wait for the status to wear off (this particularly works for slows and debuffs), re-buff and counter.

[Bossk_Hogg]

I really think they need to give human form some mez protection in the shields. Sure, sure, perma lightform, but the AT should be workable with the shields provided and before being purpled out the wazoo. The mez protection offered by teaming is utterly pathetic. Mag 3 protection in the shields is hardly asking too much. 

 

Maybe the inherent could get a boost solo or on small teams, similar to how defiance works? Given khelds do roughly defender damage solo (ie, abysmal), this would in no way be OP. Compared to VEATS, khelds have a much lower baseline performance. 

[chi1701]

27 minutes ago, Bossk_Hogg said:

I really think they need to give human form some mez protection in the shields. Sure, sure, perma lightform, but the AT should be workable with the shields provided and before being purpled out the wazoo. The mez protection offered by teaming is utterly pathetic. Mag 3 protection in the shields is hardly asking too much. 

 

Maybe the inherent could get a boost solo or on small teams, similar to how defiance works? Given khelds do roughly defender damage solo (ie, abysmal), this would in no way be OP. Compared to VEATS, khelds have a much lower baseline performance. 

Keldians have mez protection, its called Dwarf form.

[Bossk_Hogg]

7 minutes ago, chi1701 said:

Keldians have mez protection, its called Dwarf form.

Yeah, I meant in human form. Where we get to express our creativity in costumes and use some actual powers, rather than looking like every other single crab and being limited to 5 powers. 

 

But you knew that and are being obtuse. Human form needs something badly. The damage sucks, the survivability sucks, the shields are useless except as mules. It's not like you're going to be tanking for a team in human form even with mag 3 protection, so dwarf has some use. It just might make it bearable before you have perma light form.  Because the game shouldn't only be fun at 50, and PB's sure aren't much fun before that...

 

Remember, khels were designed by the same dumbass devs who thought it would be fun to only allow one tank toggle at a time and didnt take animation time into account for their DPS calculations. 

Edited September 24, 2019 by Bossk_Hogg

[chi1701]

32 minutes ago, Bossk_Hogg said:

Yeah, I meant in human form. Where we get to express our creativity in costumes and use some actual powers, rather than looking like every other single crab and being limited to 5 powers. 

 

But you knew that and are being obtuse. Human form needs something badly. The damage sucks, the survivability sucks, the shields are useless except as mules. It's not like you're going to be tanking for a team in human form even with mag 3 protection, so dwarf has some use. It just might make it bearable before you have perma light form.  Because the game shouldn't only be fun at 50, and PB's sure aren't much fun before that...

 

Remember, khels were designed by the same dumbass devs who thought it would be fun to only allow one tank toggle at a time and didnt take animation time into account for their DPS calculations. 

Keldians are a multi role class, jack of all trades master of none. I want my dwarf and nova to have access to abilities that human form has access to but cant always get what you want. If human form gains access to mez protection, what buffs would you give Dwarf form to compensate?

[Bossk_Hogg]

48 minutes ago, chi1701 said:

Keldians are a multi role class, jack of all trades master of none. I want my dwarf and nova to have access to abilities that human form has access to but cant always get what you want. If human form gains access to mez protection, what buffs would you give Dwarf form to compensate?

They did indicate they were looking at kheld tanking, but were waiting until tankers were sorted out, which makes sense. I would assume at minimum a higher damage cap and some debuff resistance are in order. Nova form is probably about where it should be, other than a cap increase so it can take better advantage of the inherent.

 

Khelds do 15-20% more damage than defenders, which is pretty weak given that many defenders are packing a 30% resistance debuff somewhere (and get a 30% damage buff solo).  They also have the same damage cap. The human form really doesnt offer much -  a few CC tricks for warshades and a single target heal (yay?) for peacebringers. VEATS do a much better job as jack of all trades, providing meaningful buffs to the team. Sentinels do more damage than khelds in human form, have armor and mez protection and utility in their epics. And sents are considered underperforming damage wise by the devs. A bit more damage and mez protection in human form seems warranted. On live, most of my human powers were just set mules to get perma light/more fuzzies and then back to nova blasting.

[Demon Shell]

22 hours ago, Microcosm said:

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.

I maintain the answer is debuff resistance (specifically for Endurance, Recovery, Recharge, and Movement) and increased Mez protection from teaming with Controllers/Dominators.

 

And I don't mean "debuff resistance while in Dwarf Form" I mean always. Until Hell freezes over and Dwarf/Nova can use Human abilities, I no longer have any interest in shapeshifting. I'm tired of dropping to Human just to activate a buff, pet, or nuke. Most of the time it's just a bunch of unnecessary extra key presses before I can get back to what I was doing.

[Action Sloth]

I'm very late to the party, but figured I'll throw in my two cents concerning what I think are some of original post's more significant criteria from the perspective of playing my Human Form WS with the builds in forum post linked in my sig, and from my general experience doing speed runs, farming, and other "high-performance" in-game activities. These are just my own personal opinions and observations ✌️ (though many agree with things others have said)

 

Mez - While for PBs of all flavors and triform WSs, it's not as much an issue, as Micro states: high defenses really help a lot here and in several of the other areas. I prefer to take Clarion to actively address the hole, my reasoning for which I will explain shortly, but running with SC'd S/L/M, and even with just S/L, I find the mezzes rarely come through while scrapperlocking through most level 50 content. And if I play intelligently and focus or lock down Mez threats, even less so. 

However, getting mezzed at all is a huge issue, and ideally you want a solution that is low management and consistent/constant. For a Human Form WS there are really only 3 options: BFs, Clarion, or rotating Rune/Melee.

BFs are honestly fine if you are running a high defense build and you stock up before going into content you know you may need them, and it frees up at least one power choice, but I don't think I need to explain the downsides of relying on insps for survivability. 

Clarion is my choice as you can have perma Mez resist with T3 for not just you but your team, it can be used when mezzed like a long-duration break free (so you can be lazy like I am and typically not use it until I need to), and it only requires one power choice. While Destiny has great options, and Barrier can really help keep pets alive, it still feels like a much lower opportunity cost than the next option:

Rune/Hybrid Melee. I am not a fan of this combo for most builds, but especially not for a WS. You have to take 3 powers to get Rune as well as use your Hybrid slot, this wouldn't be so bad if you weren't essentially using half of Rune (as your res will be capped from Eclipse). Mystic flight doesn't offer much over super speed's stealth and speed when coupled with inherent teleport, and the other powers in the set are more useful, but not more useful than other options in terms of addressing other issues with the AT. I feel as though the opportunity cost of your Hybrid slot is arguably lower than that of the Destiny slot, I feel like Assault Hybrid is a valuable resource for increasing DPS and partially circumventing our low damage cap, which seems to be the biggest issue compared to other classes running "high-performance" content.

 

Single Target DPS - I feel like this is one of the core issues, as much of the "high-end/high-performance" content revolves around DPS, as in large groups, especially of equally IO'd and incarnated characters, a lot of the difficulty becomes at least somewhat trivialized, and speed and efficiency become important factors. And when survivability solo or in groups is not a concern, what else is there to focus on but damage? Our AoE damage is fine, but if we are considering speed and efficiency, the largest speed bumps in content are AVs/GMs, and not masses of trash mobs. Addressing this is tough and honestly I have to go much further out of my way to be an asset on speedrun teams when I am on my WS than I do with a Brute, Blaster, debuffer, or Kin. Having this in mind, after reaching my recharge and defense goals, I focused on minmaxing the damage of my slotting. Making sure to maximize the damage/recharge enhancement values of my main dps skills while fitting in as many damage or -res procs as possible and where/when appropriate. That makes your damage pretty decent, but it's not great. Using Mire (double mire too, but that introduces the retoggling issue that other have mentioned) gives us a pretty consistent and near constant damage boost, but in teams with kins (which my group and many others always run with when doing most content) you can hit your damage cap without Mire (or Build Up for you PBs) and then you're back in the same spot. This is why I use Assault Hybrid, as it not only gives an additional passive damage buff, but the double hit tree allows you to artificially supercede that limited damage cap for a time, providing (I believe) a very valuable and unique means of increasing our damage as Khelds. Beyond all of that, I found making macros to convert insps to reds and just constantly eating them to stay damage capped as I mow through mobs and refill my tray.

 

Keeping Pets Alive - This is other side of the DPS question for WSs. While the above applies to both PBs and WSs, there is more of an argument to made for taking other Hybrid and Destiny powers in order to keep your pets alive. I found it more rewarding to focus those aspects of my build on consistency and my own DPS. Since the pets can still die even with buffs, or you might not always have your maximum out, I felt that by going the route I detailed previously, I was always getting the full value of my power choices at all times.

 

I have more to say about the other topics, and I'll get to them later, but I need a break for now haha. I think these are the big three for me as a Human Form WS though, and hopefully I've said something useful ✌️

 

Edited September 28, 2019 by Action Sloth

[Iron Alex]

I made a post about this in the section.. but the redraw of our powers.. when you fire the attack the kheldian will pause for .2 sec then can fire again.. its not as fluid as blaster sets.. or any other attacking set.. think old katana on scrappers.