Dechs Kaison

I went very form heavy on my slotting. My human existence is limited to summoning fluffy, refreshing eclipse and mire, the occasional nuke, and Stygian Circle as needed. Nova feels like a gunship to me, and Dwarf is heavy hitting. Mire does untold amounts of self buffed damage because I have it stacking on top of itself.

Some people will prefer to leverage human powers more than I do. Some people may even slot the forms more than I do. That's half the reason I won't include a build in my guide. There's so much versatility and so much of it is to taste. Posting a build as a reference would do more harm than good.

You really have to go by feel. Take advantage of the time spent leveling up; take note of which powers you use most often. Slot those attacks. Your perfect build will be different from mine, and neither will be better.

Here, this is what I run currently.

I'll tell you my slotting, but keep in mind, mine is level 50, so I have more slots to go around.

Dwarf Mire and Drain have six slots. The strong attack has five, the weak one has four. Taunt has two (got a +max end bonus).

Nova attacks: The two AoEs have six slots, the strong blast I think has six, and the weak blast has only the default slot. I don't use it much (ever), since there's enough recharge in my build at this point to chain the stronger three.

Personally, I think the momentum starts at level 6 with nova and builds at 19 like you said.

But 22, with any character, sees a paradigm shift. SOs make a world of difference. With Warshades, you have a slotted dwarf and Stygian Circle. Suddenly, you never have to stop.

It is my opinion that you have not tried anything until you get it at least level 22, where you slot SOs. In the case of warshades, 22 is certainly where the momentum really gets going.

I'm going to have to look into this slotting. Right now I have three and three of Nictus/Theft. Hadn't considered Hami's.

My current Dwarf slotting is four Imperviums and a Performance Shifter proc. I still don't call it a tanker unless I've got a fresh application of Eclipse on, but I'm a pretty survivable scrapper, that's for sure.

Thanks, you two. Seeing these kind of comments about my guide just makes my day. Thanks. Really.

You know, I had trouble soloing on my warshade too. Then I upped the difficulty to +0/x6, and things got much easier. I know it's not intuitive (raising the difficulty to make things easier), but it worked.

Just wait until you pick up Eclipse.

He only has to out DPS it for the 8 seconds, because the 15 spent waiting can be spent shooting.

Still, I doubt it possible that Time Bomb has a high enough DPA* to warrant a place in an attack chain, even if you could get it off without being interrupted.

*I mean damage per activation time here.

I was a tad off. Murky Cloud for scrappers will resist end drain at 69.2% at level 50. It's something that scales with level, though, not enhancement values.

Point of comparison, Tanker Dark Armor at level 50 resists 86.5% of endurance drain and recovery debuff.

Don't worry about that. By the time you fight carnies, you resist end drain by about 75%.

Have you tried going with color tintable and to make it less obscuring colors?

Ok, Reactive Armor gives me those bonuses in only four slots total, and it enhances the power using it in a meaningful way. I also don't care that it doesn't do squat for my F/C because I haven't built for that. Think back to any defense based characters you have made. When do you notice the defense? At ten or fifteen percent? I'm of the opinion that defense doesn't really help until you've made it to 25%, so unless you are building for a type, it's best to ignore the bonuses you could get for it.

In Grey Pilgrim's case, he was looking for slots so he could add the Theft of Essence proc Dark Regeneration, and Gaussian's is the best place to take that from. Rectified Reticle gives 1.88% defense to S/L, so it is in fact more than Gaussian's, and you get it in two slots, without having to waste four more of them on enhancement values that are not needed. Six slots of Gaussian's doesn't even ED cap the one attribute a build up power wants maxed (recharge). He would be much better off adding two slots to a power than five if you're not going to get full enhancement out of it.

That's another thing I'd like to mention. Don't think of it as a three slot power versus a six slot power, because that does not accurately portray your investment into the power. To three slot a power, you add only two slots. To six slot it, you add five, which is more than twice the investment. It's a subtle difference, but it is very important on slot tight builds. In the case of Gaussian's, you're adding far too many slots for far to small a benefit. Arguably, there isn't even a benefit if the goal is typed defense.

I've used Gaussian's before, but only when I'm building for positional defense.

This. Is. Genius! I love it. I think it'd be better suited for Frenzy, the +damage toggle. That way you don't turn off your taunt to get healed. If things are really ugly, you can toggle off your frenzy, as if to calm down a moment, and let your team heal you.

I'm thinking about 60% heal reduction, with no effect on +regen powers, so as not to harm the usefulness of the battle cry.

I will take this into consideration. It's just that I find giving a taunt aura to a stalker ... way out of line. Although, Dark Armor has its control auras, which now suppress while hidden.

I'm glad you like it. Thank you for the feedback.