Dechs Kaison

It certainly would be interesting, but I recall reading a Castle post saying that this kind of mechanic is strictly outside the bounds of our current engine's capabilities.

It can't synergize for defenders. Therefor synergy is not taken into consideration when evaluating the combination.

It can synergyze on a controller. We're not playing football anymore, we're playing hockey. You need to figure out a good stick to use with the puck, you can't just use your hands.

Because Empathy can synergize BETTER with any other primary for controllers.

I was ignoring all debuffs in my added statement there. The point is, the RNG doesn't get around resistance.

Not only that, but even a ranged softcap blaster can get hit by a single melee attack that does -def and the whole thing comes crashing down.

EDIT TO ADD:

My take on the whole thing: Defense is easy to obtain because of its fickle nature. If you had 90% resistance, that resistance is always there. Every single hit will be reduced to almost nothing. With 45% defense, almost nothing will hit you, but the hits that do get through hurt a lot. Beyond that is the chance that two massive hits happen in short succession that kill you.

With resistance, there is a well defined line of what you can handle. With defense, the line is blurry, and the RNG is what kills you.

Are you serious?

Really serious?

Is it really this many? I can't believe my team killed that many Nazis in that short span of time. I just don't believe it.

Yes, I've done this once or twice.

My usual procedure is the stealth in, eclipse -> mire -> Dwarf Mire -> a few single target attacks on the boss -> One more mire -> Damage capped Quasar. This tactic really only pays off in x8 spawns so you have enough things feeding your mires. It kills off all the minions who are in range and bottoms out your endurance.

It's never going to clean out a whole spawn. Never. Even when damage capped by three saturated mires, some lieutenants survive the blast and most bosses do. Some enemies will be out of range. 5% or more will dodge. Quasar scatters the bodies so it's not as easy to find a great clump of corpses to Stygian Circle. It requires that you keep a blue inspiration handy. You still need to wait on Quasar to recharge.

I hate relying on inspirations, so I'll sometimes pop Geas beforehand. I never really saw it as a reliable strategy, and now I only use Quasar in "Oh crap, we need to kill a lot of little stuff quick" situations. I use different tactics.

Stealth in, Eclipse -> Mire -> Gravity Well a minion -> Unchain Essence -> Extract Essence -> Nova Form -> Clean up.

If there's mezzers, Gravatic Emanation -> Eclipse -> Mire -> Gravity Well a minion -> Unchain Essence -> Extract Essence -> Nova Form -> Clean up.

Or if there's mezzers, stealth in, Eclipse -> Mire -> Dwarf Form -> Scrap it out until the mezzers are dead and then go Nova to clean up.

Sometimes I just stealth in, Eclipse -> Mire -> Nova Form and fly around blasting stuff until Eclipse wears off and repeat.

My point is you will do much more damage with the two Nova AoEs than you ever will with Quasar.

It's not. That's what they have blasters for. They do the same thing you're trying to do, but better. The Quasar thing only works if it does the job in one blast reliably, or recharges in ten seconds. Ok, it's great that you can seamlessly recover from it, provided you bring extra blues, but you still have to clean up the mobs that are left, which are bosses. That means you need the rest of your powers to be slotted well.

I think I've answered this question already.

You are a warshade. You are a blastanktroller with fluffy balls of doom that follow you. Use the whole powerset. You'll do much more for a team and for yourself.

EDIT TO ADD:

I don't mean to dash hopes, even though that is a good card (kudos if you know what I'm talking about). I'm just saying you'd more than likely be better off enhancing all aspects of your warshade, not just sacrificing everywhere to gimmick around a Quasar combo that doesn't even work.

Thank you.

Impressive.

When I just did it Sunday night I got 30 merits.

The streak breaker works as follows:

What this means is that if you have at least a 20% chance to hit, it will kick in and force your hit to land after 8 misses. At 70% chance to hit, it kicks in after only three misses. Anything less than 20%, however, and the streakbreaker will allow 100 misses. That's a statistical improbability, and the Law of Averages will kick in first.

Each critter has its own streak counter. Each critter starts at 50% chance to hit you. If you had 15% defense, the final to hit is 35%. This means each critter can miss you six times before the streak breaker kicks in.

I'm not arguing that if you get swarmed by a huge group that you're going to get hit a lot. All I'm trying to say is that sheer probability is what's killing you, not the streakbreaker.

Actually, if you have anywhere over 30% defense, the streak breaker doesn't do anything.

EDIT: Even if you only have 15% defense, each mob attacking you would need to attack you 6 times before the code actually kicks in, since they have independent "streaks" running. If three hundred mobs attacked you once, the streak breaker could never kick in.

Good point. I really don't know how the code would handle things.

I think this is the best workaround suggested yet, though.

Yes, but the team level would still be locked in as long as the same mission was active, much like task forces.

This is a little bit what I was thinking, but mostly quicksand is a thematic addition. Get them clumped around me and don't let them get away. The -defense would only be good against high level opponents, but unfortunately, at that level they'd be highly resisting it anyway.

Thanks. The way I looked at it was: Energy damage is my hole, and it's relatively common. I can't get the resists any higher, so I need to shoot for defense. At this point my biggest worry is fire and cold damage that's not tagged with melee or ranged, which is uncommon and I've got moderate defense and resists to it. Also I considered that AoE attacks generally do less damage than single target attacks. All in all, I think I should be able to tank anything.

I slotted Dark Regen the way it is pretty specifically for two reasons.

I really like the set bonuses. The 1.8% max end may not seem all that great, but every bit of max end also increases recovery, as well as the effectiveness of every other recovery bonus I have. We all know Dark Armor is manageable for sure, but not easy on the endurance bar. I'd like to not have to worry. More importantly, though, was the accuracy bonus from Nictus. This tank is really survivable, and should be able to withstand +3s to +4s. The problem then becomes accuracy, and my attacks with Kinetic Combat aren't very accurate against high level foes. The three accuracy bonuses in the build are very important.

The reason I focus heavily on enhancing accuracy and heal is because I don't see myself having problems with crowds at all. I imagine my problem would be a single tough target that I don't have a lot of fuel for, namely an AV after his minions are killed off. In that case, I need the heal to be reliable and strong. Every time I need the heal, I want to be sure it's going to hit.

I certainly see why hasten could be better than quicksand. My reservation in taking hasten was due to it introducing more endurance problems.

Additionally, knockback protection. As I understand it, there's very few cases where 8 points will protect what 4 won't. Most of the time, if it is over 4 points of KB, you need 12 to stop it.

Thanks again for the compliment. And thanks for all the comments.

Sorry Bill, my sarcasm didn't show up in my post. I guess I needed a few of these: or perhaps a .

EDIT: Also, why on earth would I want to introduce redraw into my warshade? Or any epic pools at all, for that matter? He's bloody perfect as he is!

Don't mind me, I'm just jealous of everyone else's creative prowess.

Then simple logic would dictate that you take the forms to keep even an even more diverse and larger number of ways to get a task accomplished?

Heh. You do it your way, I'll do it mine. I keep all my options open from levels 1-50, thank you very much.