Wings_NA

It's definitely a challenge compared to some other ATs. Here's what I did: I read Plasma's ultimate guide and largely followed his Gold Standard Tri-Form builds. You can always tweak and tune or respec along the way.

Even though it's from I8, most of the info is still good, or good enough to get you going.

I strongly recommend you set up some keybinds and/or macros to automate your shape-shifting and power tray setups. I followed Plasma's very closely, which are in that thread. You create three keybind text files, one for each form, and then manually load the first one (bindloadfile "full path to file") and from then on the keys (he used Q and E, I followed that) will switch between the forms and rearrange your power trays for the form you're in.

Warshades get a lot of benefit from changing to human form, immediately activating a power, and then changing back. That's something that can also be automated with clever enough binds. A lot of people use the Numeric Keypad for those. I haven't progressed that far, so I'm always fumbling around trying to get the timing down to fire off everything.

You don't *have* to use macros or keybinds, but it sure does make things easier.

Read the pinned sticky about strategies and keybinds, lots of good info there.

Look in C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\VirtualSto re\ProgramFiles (x86)\...

Arcane technical details about it here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/m...07.06.uac.aspx

IrFanView is probably considered a Legacy App and is therefore not allowed to write to the "real" C:\Program Files folder but is instead redirected invisibly to the Virtual Store.

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...Do you guys feel weak when facing a lethal resistant mob?...

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Yes!

Lethal resistant mobs make me feel like I'm level 14 again, running out of endurance by the time I defeat a spawn.

I can't comment on your build. I never really got into all the IO Set bonuses, though I'm sure you'll get lots of good advice here.

Edit - Forgot to mention, I have a level 39 Invuln/BA tanker, which is what I'm basing my experience on.

Pinnacle too. Lots of single red spikes in Netgraph. Rubberbanding, mobs warping around, attack animations not synchronized with damage, both in city zones and in missions.


Edit - Seems to just be the East Coast servers. No problems on any of the West Coast servers I've tested.

Server locations

One of my first tankers that I really played was Invuln/EM, though he was semi-retired for a long time (I lost a lot of interest in Invuln after the I5/I6 nerfs).

I've tried to play him a few times since the EM nerfs and I just really dislike it. The animation and recharge changes really put off the timing of everything for me. It always seems like I have awkward pauses in my attack chain, and a lot of the Build Up buff is wasted due to long animations.

It just doesn't feel right, even solo. If I needed the slot he'd be the first on my delete list. A shame, that, for a while he was my 'main.'

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Lol, when I started my WS the beginning of the week, I could not get a team to save my life. Then it occured to me why, so I put this in broadcast.

"Lvl 6 ws lft, had my 50 before AE came out"

I got an invite in about 5 seconds.

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I've got to steal, er, paraphrase this and put it in my seach comment.

I wondered why it was hard getting on teams. I guess everyone thinks I'm a 30-day wonder.

For the record I only have one level 50, he was originally created May 19, 2004 as one of my first batch of toons, and I think I finally dinged 50 sometime in late 2008. (Too many alts).

I finally decided to try Kheldians about a month ago and have really enjoyed both my WS (level 29, Liberty Server) and PB (level 21, Virtue server). I wish I hadn't waited so long to give them a try. They are certainly a challenge to play, but in a good, fun way.

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When it comes down to it, I'm sure some would have no problem being able to find the patch update release notes stating what changes have been made to Khelds and then just using that with the guides, but given the amount of changes, its probably time for a new guide or slightly updated one. In the very least, can someone with honed Search-Fu bring up the list of changes specifically?

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The I13 updates are listed on this page:

http://www.cityofheroes.com/news/pat...nsibility.html

Search for 'Peacebringer' and 'Warshade' and you'll find the changes.

There's no reason you can't travel out of your starting zone. Just take the Yellow Line tram. Go into the main entrance to the tram (not the exit-only on the right), and click on the tram doors when they are open. Then, select the other zone you want to go to.

Just remember that there is an entrance area and an exit area, which are separate.

I just recently started my first two Kheldians myself, one of each flavor, and I'm following the guides others have linked to in this thread.

Still only in the mid-teens (Peacebringer) and mid-20s (Warshade), but basically my take on the two is this:

PB plays more like a blaster/scrapper hybrid. It plays more like you expect. Find stuff, kill it, use self-heals as needed. Works better on a team than solo, but if you've ever soloed an Energy/Energy blaster then you'll be able to solo a PB.

Taking on a Void means focusing all your attacks on that one foe until he's dead. This to me is where a Warshade has a better chance solo, they have more tools to deal with Voids.

Warshade reminds me more of playing a /Devices blaster. A lot more strategy. Stealth, TP Foe, a melee-ranged Hold. It seems to have a lot more utility, at the expense of raw power.

Also, anything that resists Negative Energy (CoT, Banished Pantheon) are going to make you sad. Especially things that don't leave corpses for Stygian Circle (CoT Ghosts, damn them). A friend suggests getting the Ghost-Slaying Axe over Sands of Mu (Vet reward power), specifically to deal with these types of foes on a WS.

With both, mezzers are a pain. You'll have to take them on in Dwarf form (unless you land your hold first with a Warshade), and just beat on them slowly until they die.

Here's the biggest tip I can give you - get on big teams. Once you're on a relatively large team, you'll go "OH! That's what Kheldians are good at." I was on a team at level 21 on my Warshade, just after getting Dwarf but before SOs, and I was at the 85% resist cap for all damage (non-psi) due to the team buff. Find me a level 21 tanker that can achieve that.

Soloing is doable, and quite challenging. If you like playing on "hard mode" to really learn all the tricks of your powers and tactics, soloing a Kheldian will do it. But if you're used to breezing through content on Invincible on a scrapper, you'll be in for a surprise, at least at the lower levels.

And no matter what, set up all the keybinds mentioned in the guides. You MUST rebind TAB to pick out Voids/Quants first, and have binds to shift forms and change trays on the fly. In 4+ years of play the only keybind I ever used was a teleport bind, but I find they're essential on Kheldians.

My suggestion is to roll up one of each and see how they play for you. They mature rather late and are slot-starved forever, so don't give up on them in the early levels.

I've been using an ATI HD4850 for a while with no problems. Great performance at 1680x1050 resolution.

They're down close to that $100 price you're shooting for (after rebates). NewEgg has a number of them.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLis...eon%20HD%204850

Ah... tied to billing, then. Gotcha.

Nice idea. I hope to see some of my long departed friends return this weekend.

So if you reactivate all the dormant accounts, doesn't this utterly defeat the name reclaim policy just announced? Or will they actually have to log in for their account to get flagged as active?

Well, they have to keep an eye on future revenue. One of the best sources of "new" subscribers is old subscribers reactivating their accounts.

The last thing they want to do is to send out a two-week free reactivation for Issue 15 and have everyone who comes back get mad because they lost their names, and not resubscribe.

I'm sure they've got a pretty good idea (maybe an exact count) of how many names they'll free up with this.

Huh, that's odd. On Test, my Axe Tanker still juggles his axe if you don't attack right away after Taunting.

I don't have a Macer so I can't test it with Mace. Maybe the demise of Mace Juggling is exaggerated.

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ULTIMUUUUUUS!!!!!!

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Don't forget, you promised to kill yourself after you kill him. Just make sure you remember to do it in the right order.

The Brickstown anecdotes are similar to what I was noticing. I tested in two zones, Brickstown and Eden.

What I noticed it with primarily was Crey, Freaks, and DE. I tried using a 37 Fire/Fire tanker (no Burn) and a 36 Invuln/EM tanker.

Especially with Crey Paragon Protector bosses, they would maybe take a couple of shots at me and then zoom off, and I mean fast. Then they'd zip around aimlessly before flying/running back over to me and fighting a little more, then off again.

Devouring Earth Lesser Devoured bosses did the same stuff.

They were acting almost exactly like the DE Swarms AI. Except instead of annoying bugs that would fly in, buzz around your head, and fly off, it was bosses.

Now I am familiar with the street-sweeping groups where one guy is gonna run no matter what. But this would typically be after engaging them in combat., and not necessarily when they were close to defeat.

Minions, lord bless 'em, would stand there and fight to the last man. Bosses tended to run first, Lieutenants seemed to take off if you killed their minions.

On the other hand, I was quite happy when three Paragon Protectors in a group in Eden would pop Elude or MoG and then run for the hills while the timer ticked down, coming back just in time for me to kill them when it dropped.

I think maybe they turned up the mob AI from "annoying" to "extra stupid."

I agree. If it's their intent to show us who is currently affected by a Taunt Aura (an idea I like), then they need a new "I hate you" graphic rather than the existing +Acc buff graphic so we can tell what's going on.

It's a good idea, though. Not that you could possibly notice it in major combat, but still, good to know who you have under your spell.

Of course, this change wasn't mentioned in any patch notes, no matter what the intent.

Apparently Castle did a bit of data mining on his own and discovered that the Taunt auras are broken at the moment, and the Gauntlet effect from pool attacks has NEVER worked. So I guess he'll be working this weekend.

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Interestingly, while researching this problem, I discovered that Gauntlet from pool powers like Boxing or Air Superiority have, apparently, never worked. That'll be fixed as well.

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Ah, that confirms a long-standing belief of mine. Back when Gauntlet was first introduced, you'd see little "Miss" text occasionally floating above the heads of nearby foes when you were using your Tanker attacks, and we assumed this was the Gauntlet effect missing.

We never, ever saw the "Miss" indicators when using pool attacks, so I assumed Gauntlet never worked on pool attacks. I had even posted my observations, but I was told I was wrong because the devs said it worked with pools too.

Then the "Miss" messages were removed in a later patch, so I forgot about it.

*Vindicated!*

Ok, so I was trying to test out some of the oddities with both keeping aggro and the functioning of Invincibility since the I8.1 patch.

I noticed something very odd. On my level 36 Invuln tanker, I walked up to a group of gray (level 24) Council in IP. One Lt., two minions. They didn't aggro due to the level difference.

1. Activate Invincibility. They all took one swing at me (normal behavior).

The two minions then just stared at me. They wanted to run but the Taunt effect made them stay there staring at me, but not attacking because the AI told them to run, not attack. This is also normal behavior.

However, the LT took off running. Using Taunt made him stop and stare, just like his minions. Ok, that isn't normal. It implies that Invincibility only taunts minions.

2: While Invincibility was up, I noticed the yellow "crosshairs" +ACC buff indicators swirling around the two minions (but not the LT). I looked very closely, it wasn't the debuff indicator. Around me was just the purple +DEF indicators.

The +Acc buff indicators kept swirling around the two minions for about 12-15 seconds after I turned off Invinc, at which point the Taunt must have expired and they ran away.

I have Invinc slotted with 3 Def and 1 ToHit buff. I removed the ToHit buff and re-ran the experiment, but it didn't make any difference.

Now either the +Acc indicators are just there to tell you that those minions are being hit by Invinc, and they chose an indicator from their existing set of graphics, or else we're actually buffing their accuracy.

I've never noticed the indicators around the foes before, so I assume this is something new with this patch.

Anyone else notice this?

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I could be wrong here... but it sounds to me like the Gauntlet AV/GM changes is effecting everything now. My understanding of the Gauntlet change was that it only had those toHit rolls against AV/GMs. But it sounds like every time Gauntlet goes off it is trying to make the toHit roll, even against minions and LTs. How can we test this?

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It's gotta be something with Gauntlet and or the built-in punch-voke. When something starts running, I can get them to turn right around with Taunt.

I saw a lot of this today too. Stuff just runs away from me now rather than standing around to fight. Not using Burn, just Blazing Aura with single-target and AoE attacks.

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burn is borked so hard to tell.... it sticks to where ever you first used it so when you move (even past 100') you reburn the first spot used.

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That's...strange. I'll look at it tomorrow.

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I am not seeing this. I just logged on with my Fire/Stone tanker on test and did some burn patches. Each one lays down right at my feet, just like always.

If I move and drop another Burn, the new patch goes down at the new location. It seems to be working as it always has. I dunno what Anarchicgorilla was seeing, but there doesn't appear to be any change to Burn at all.

I can't really tell any difference in the animation delay, personally. I do notice the slightly new animation effects, though.

Edit: Oops, maybe it's a Brute thing. I was testing with a Fire/ tanker.

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...Now some of you might be saying it cant be this bad. Well, please try it yourself and good luck. : P Most people gave up before level 28 before I5 anyhow. Now????? I wouldn’t even suggest anyone actually even attempt DA/DM. Your better off as a Tank actually. : P

I would actually have to classify DA/DM as the worst class within the game currently with no solution in sight other than a major edit.

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I disagree with this poster's observations.

I have a level 27 DM/DA and I love the guy. He was level 24 when I5 went live, and he's been a blast to play ever since.
I've temporarily retired my tankers since I5 to concentrate on my DM/DA scrapper.

I've found that the combination of increased scrapper damage and reduced endurance cost has made my hero stronger after I5 than he was before. Though I never had any experience with the Cloak of Darkness and Cloak of Fear powers before (or after) the patch, so I can't address that. However, I'm doing fine without either.

My only problem is that there are so many good powers in both sets that it's hard to fit them all in.

To the original poster: nice guide, and I appreciate the slotting advice. There's a new update to Joe Chott's Hero Planner at http://joechott.com/coh which has the current resistance number for DA in I5, helpful for people planning their shield slotting.

Just refreshing the thread in case CuppaJo's magical powers don't work in keeping it from being purged by the inactivity timer.

ALSO, Ishmael once posted that there was going to be some coverage of the Cimarron fund in a printed gaming magazine of some sort. Any updates on that, Ishmael?

Signed,

*a contributor*