Dechs Kaison

If you need any more convincing, please give this a read. I think it's pretty well written, of course, I may be slightly biased.

Yes, of course I knew that.

I was just making it unmistakably clear that "us existing diehard Tri-formers" will never be swayed from our opinion that a war-tankmage-shade is the best thing ever.

After reading the OP, I am willing to donate all the F*** NO!!! that I possess to shoot this suggestion down.

I trust the rest of you will do the same.

I would rather play this game fighting nothing but Malta Sappers and Master Illusionists from level 1 than to have my 50s auto-retire.

NEVER!

*ahem*

Well, it would definitely be more popular than Peacebringers. Given the popularity of "Rock the Toggle" VEATs, it might even be more popular than Warshades.

Nothing, however, will ever eclipse my TriFormShade. And by that I mean that it will always be my favorite.

I'm just going to chime in to say that I have a Tri-form with plenty of slots. I have eclipse perma. My human mire is accurate and recharges in just over 35 seconds. Hasten is all but perma. Gravity well is ED capped for hold and damage and recharge. Gravatic emanation is ED capped for stun and recharge. Extract Essence is six slotted, Unchain has five, Quasar has four.

Yes, I said I have a tri-form build. Yes, those are just human powers. Dwarf form itself is six slotted, and its attacks do enough damage to impress scrappers (Not surpass, mind you. Impress. The ability to stack dwarf mire on itself helps a lot). The nova attacks are all at least five slots, capped for damage and recharge.

My TriFormShade is already a bloody tankmage when played right. Granted, when I make a small mistake I typically faceplant, but that's what the self rez is for. If you give me any more slots, I'll have nothing to worry about. Ever.

TechBot, I see you as coming at this from the perspective of a peacebringer. What I've said does not touch at all on peacebringers, which we might all agree have gotten the shaft. The important thing here is that what you do for one will have to be done for the other, and will greatly tip the scales of balance.

Your suggestion has another problem with warshades. The human form PB has powers that match exact form, fit, and function of the form powers. Three melee attacks and a heal directly correlate with the dwarf form. There are two single target blasts, a cone, and a targetted AoE blast that are mimicked in nova form. The warshade has gravity well and drain essence, but the function of the two mires are completely different and there is no weaker melee strike. Looking at nova, shadow bolt and detonation are a match, but ebon eye is not quite and gravatic emanation is a control attack, not damage.

I also realize that this whole topic is almost pointless bickering. It's highly unlikely that anything will get changed, but if I had my way, I would change two things. Cut the shapeshift time in half, and and increase the damage of all PB attacks (more to the melee) to bring it up to par with the WS.

First, one develops scrapperlock.

This then progresses to furylock, sometimes called SMASH.

The final stages of the disease become permanent when the subject falls into a state of mirelock. This is the final and incurable stage. "Must find more bodies."

Bingo.

Catwhoorg is right on the money. You can't take anything away from the powersets. Sure serum and repair could go in favor of your idea, but the other sets would much rather lose an attack. How does having only two attacks play into your "the mastermind is really more powerful than the pets" strategy?

Even if you could add a tier nine and a half without taking anything away, much like kheldians get to chose either pets or a nova at level 32, it still doesn't work how you want it to.

"So, you've bested my robots, now see what power I possess! I have two single target blasts, a low damage AoE, all of which have heavy endurance costs because I'm a mastermind, but best of all... I picked up FLURRY!"

Ah, but we do have our secondaries, I'm sure you'll say. True. But outside of traps, which secondary even has the capability to do damage? No, dispersion bomb doesn't count. Ok, storm and trick arrow are a maybe. You'd still be like a defender with only the first three attacks. It can't work the way you want.

Further, to be a halfway decent mastermind, you need all your pets and most of your secondary. Most builds don't have room for the personal attacks to begin with. Now you want to pick an extra toggle and fit three attacks. If you didn't have stamina before, you need it now. That's seven powers. At this point, just drop the pet summons and the upgrades. Hey, better yet, make a corruptor.

There's your solution. You want to be a corruptor with pets. Not possible, outside of the gimmick'd crab build for perma pets. So here's my suggestion:

1. When creating your mastermind, in the costume creation screen, save the costume.
2. Finish creating the mastermind.
3. Log out, and create a new character. This time, make a corruptor with the same secondary as your mastermind.
4. At the costume creation screen, load the costume from step 1.
5. Name the character something very similar to your mastermind.

Come on, work with me here. I'm playing a game of what if. Sky's the limit. No holds barred. Go for the gold.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love customization. In fact, my topic kind of necessitates customization. You'd look pretty funny in light form popping a quasar.

You're missing my point. I'm not making a suggestion, I'm saying what if. There's no point to this topic other than to have fun. I don't expect or even want this to become part of the game.

I can completely understand this sentiment. On my WS, I find shapeshifting fun. On the PB... not so much. Without mire and eclipse I don't want to waste buildup time in a shapeshift. I also want the classic godmode that light form offers, without being stuck in an unslotted human form. As such, my PB is going to be a human only.

I do question this "known flakiness" of form shifting. I don't think I've experienced anything crippling on my WS. There one annoying thing I have noticed is getting the shift to dwarf canceled by a mez. Other than that... I'm just not sure what you could be referring to.

I plan on going with option three: Be powerful on a team having fun with SG mates. If I want to solo and farm, I'll pull out my MM.

Just goes to show that hard control and solid debuffs equate to a lot more survivability than half measures of resistance and heals.

And Bill Z pops in to be that wonderful light of hope we all know him to be.

I'm not going to argue with you. If you don't find it fun, there's nothing to argue against.

Not only that, I doubt anyone can deny the performance gap between WS and PB.

I, however, happen to like my new PB. Not as much as my WS, but I do like it. At this point, I feel like a blapper that doesn't do as much damage, but doesn't die as often. I play on teams pretty regularly, though, so I'm getting more out of the inherent.

Bill Z, if I remember correctly, you tend to judge based on solo performance. I agree that as a general rule, my PB is sub par to my other characters when taken solo. If I'm on a team, the line is a might fuzzier.

Well, with all the recharge that warshades pack into their builds, it is much less than 25 minutes. With my recharge, the calculation comes out to under ten minutes, but that's not counting the brief span of +100% recharge while the power is active.

And I do know accolade powers (well, at the very least, Geas) are (is) affected by recharge.

Don't forget that you can pop Geas before the Quasar.

Granted, you can only do this once every ten minutes or so, but it is an option.

O.O

I'll... be right back...

My character is set up exactly as you see here. This was my "inexpensive" build. Hasten is 8 seconds from perma, but Eclipse overlaps by 7 seconds. There's some funny math to figure out the exact time Eclipse recharges in, but suffice to say it's perma.

I'm going to get into some strategy advice, so be forewarned that this is all in my opinion and completely subjective. None of what I'm about to say is solid or proven, it's just how I like to play. I can't say it's the best. I won't even say it's good. I will say it's what I use, and that it's gotten me this far.

Sunless mire isn't used for the damage it does so it just needed recharge and a hint of accuracy. Again, even this is almost perma. I don't drop out of forms every thirty seconds though, so I'm not sure if it would make a difference to be perma.

I would like to echo that Gravatic Emanation is incredible. In fact, it is Absolutely Amazing. *hint hint* Open the fight with that power. Now everything is bunched in the corner for an Eclipse or Mire and only the bosses aren't stunned.

I spared some room for Gravity Well to do damage as well as get that amazing Basilisk's Gaze recharge bonus. Second only to Quasar in damage, Gravity Well allows you one shot most minions and then Unchain Essence (another good power for damage) the little bugger. Doing this right after my last paragraph puts the spawn on it's last leg. If anything's left, two shot them in Nova.

Now you've got some fluffies following you around, which can easily double your damage if they're slotted well. The Soulbound Allegiance set isn't that expensive, and I highly recommend the proc.

Back to the build: I have five level 25 LotGs, but aside from the salvage, I didn't spend a dime on them. 1000 merits was easy to come by, just time consuming. During Halloween I did a lot of GM hunting.

If you look closely, you'll notice a lot of the powers have "alternate slotting." The alternate slotting is pretty much the purple sets I plan to have. They don't make that much of a difference, because let's face it, perma is perma, but the important thing is how much they help with exemplaring. The Positron's blast from Nova Emanation ends up in Unchain Essence.

Oooooh the burn!

Maybe I should have said "powers through the Reichsman swarm" or "swamped by +4s." You get what I mean though. The well built WP brute can beat just about anything, but it can be killed. The same is true of the well built invulnerability brute, but nothing rivals the survivability of unstoppable.

EDIT: 1024 posts! A binary thousand.

Attention-"*****"

I'm pretty sure Posi made that statement after IOs were out, as well as before. Something to the effect of "IOs made us take a second look at the respec process, and we stand even firmer by our strict limit of 10 enhancements."

I may be wrong, but I think they even considered taking the 10 away because of IOs.

EDIT: I also agree with Adeon. We need more inf sinks, not less.

This times eleventy-billion.

The difference allows different characters to shine at different times. Nothing's better than watching someone with unstoppable power through a teamwipe and kill the computer on an ITF.