Dechs Kaison

I started playing CoX shortly after launch and took a few breaks. I've tried every "normal" AT at least once, but only recently decided to try a warshade. I just hit level 38, and let me tell you, this has been the absolute most interesting journey a character has ever been for me. I can't say I've ever had this much fun for this much of the progression of a character. One of the biggest reasons is that every new power seemed to revolutionize the way I play.

The closest thing I can compare this to is how a controller gets a pet at level 32. At that point, everything changes. You're able to do things you never could before. But this happens with a warshade for almost every new power! Beyond that even, there were so many time were I thought "If I only had a few more slots!"

Before even creating the character, though, I was sure to read Plasma's and the other Kheldian guides. I made up my mind early on about becoming a "dancing" warshade.

Now, just about everyone does a sewer run. I, however, did two. One got me to level 6 for nova. Then I joined a second team, exemplar'd down to level 2 and ran through the sewers again, but this time AS a nova. I heard several comments about how that was the quickest sewer run any of them had been on.

Level twelve came and I first learned the two-step. This was my first real taste of the "warshade dance." I was already dropping out of nova to occasionally fire hasten, but now I had purpose!

I tried to team as much as I could to make the most out of the inherent, especially now since it is active in the forms. Things were going alright, but somewhere in there I messed some things up, so I used one of my vetspecs. Lo and behold! I could slot up the nova form without "throwing away" any slots!

So now I had superspeed, nebulous form, and recall friend... It's time to run a Positron TF. I had developed a simple strategy by the end of the TF: run into the tightly packed group completely invisible to saturate a mire before going nova. We ghosted what we were able to, and had a great time. So much fun, in fact, that I organized a second one, but this time I brought some new toys with me.

Gravity Well, amazing little drug used to treat quantumstomach and voidaches. Side effects include loss of fear. Not only that, I had finished the "dance" by adding dwarf form to my repertoire. Have I mentioned how much I love the new exemplar settings? I'm running Positron with dwarf form! Granted, nothing is slotted well, but the mire is accurate. That simple strategy from before now had so many more options. Go Dwarf, teleport into the middle and soak the alpha, dwarf mire, drop for sunless mire, gravity well the boss who was now on the last leg of his life, go nova and maybe get one AoE off with both mires still active if i was quick enough. Or I could sunless mire first, go dwarf and scrap it out with good damage. Better yet, I could sunless mire, dwarf mire, and go nova with time to fire three blasts with double mire goodness. What's more, when sunless was still recharging, I could do a dwarf mire for two quick AoEs from nova. I had never seen so many big orange numbers at such a low level in my life.

Ahhhhh, Stygian Circle. I never imagined how often this would be ready out of the box. Use it after every battle to race ahead of the silly normal ATs who are still sucking wind. I used to occasionally stop firing to recoup endurance, but not anymore! Not necessarily strategy altering, but I loved what it did for my abilities.

What's this new toy? Gravatic Emanation? So, you're telling me I can stun the whole group and bunch them into a corner for mires? I actually started to solo a bit at this point. Great opener, love the knockback, adore the stun. At this point, I felt I had everything I wanted. Except of course, more slots. I knew there were some other cool powers to come, but ... meh. I got what I need. Gimmie more slots!

Nevermind what I just said. Having a fluffy ball of doom following me around all the time... That's awesome. Wait, I add some recharge and now there's often two of them? Rock on.

Self rez? I almost never use these, but strangely, this one had a different effect on me. I wanted the chance to use it, but more than that, it was a challenge to me. Do everything right, just like always, but race the team. Get there first. Take more on. More aggro. Meaner aggro. Find out what kills you. Then get back up and make them regret it!

Last night on a KHTF (the first one I'd ever done), just before the last mission, I hit level 38. I had heard so much about Eclipse. I didn't think I needed it, but I was still excited. We zoned into that last mission.

"Hey, you guys wait here, I want to try something."
"Famous last words..."
"S'ok, I got a self rez."

You all know what happened. Invis my way into the middle of an 8 man spawn of red caps and fire off an un-enhanced Eclipse. Mire, nova... destroy. Wow. I love my warshade.

So what's the point of this thread anyway? I guess I don't know. Maybe someone on the fence will read this and try a warshade. Maybe someone will be inspired. Maybe someone will think I'm an idiot for wasting all this time. Either way, I really enjoyed this character and wanted to share my experience. I hope it was at least an entertaining read.

Have any of you ever felt like this about your warshade?

Maybe this is why I like playing redside so much... I can much more easily not care what happens to the people I'm fighting. He's a family goon... whether he ends up in the morgue or jail or hospital, he still made the wrong choice of waking up this morning.

Arachnos is the survival of the fittest thing. Not my fault I'm more fit than them.

And don't get me started on Longbow. With all their nasty tricks I'm happy to put a few of them down.

I think I'll be done when I can RP them as "dead."

I often re-use the same character as a different character... How can I word this in a way that makes sense?

As an example: I have a SS/WP brute who is a character I love. He's a thuggish and somewhat stupid crony who works for my main villain, a technology mastermind. He's RPed as always smoking a cigar, and when he's "done" it'll be due to lung cancer. My main will save him from the lung cancer with tech that weaponizes the cancerous byproducts, but can't restore the brute's strength. He rises again as a thugs/poison mastermind so I can start the journey all over with the same "character."

A blaster afraid of melee is like a tank afraid to take alphas.

In my experience, HEATs are FREAKING AMAZING!

I've only played a warshade, though, so I can't really say anything about PBs.

I haven't had any characters blueside since I took a break after i4. I came back to the game shortly after CoV was released, rolled a mastermind and hadn't looked back until very recently.

Anyway, I started playing my warshade after reading Plasma's guide to Kheldians. (I'm too tired to link it right now) Getting to nova form was very fast, and once I had Sunless Mire I felt unstoppable. I was even better on teams, as someone else would grab aggro and I'd mire/nova everything to death faster than ... well, faster than a lot of things could.

Getting dwarf form wasn't amazing at first, but once I learned how to use the dwarf mire for a couple quick nova AoEs while the normal mire was still recharging, I loved it. I'd felt powerful the whole time, but Stygian Circle meant I never needed to rest, and from then on I've felt immensely not like fail.

I've done all the TFs up to Manticore now (even with the lvl 40 PP elites) and I haven't liked an AT as much as I like this warshade. It may be notable that I haven't done much solo, because of the inherent team bonuses. I have to be cautious on my own (I don't have eclipse yet, one level to go...), but on a team I feel greatly overpowered.

Granted, I've still been taken down. It's not an easy AT, I have to stay on my toes the whole time. As long as I'm careful, watch my health in nova, drop for stygian circle in time, and go dwarf when I'm stunned, I don't faceplant. Good keybinds help in this pursuit.

If you don't like the reordering, the only way to avoid it is to have the leader do his missions and his missions only.

As was said before in this thread, when you pick a different players mission, that player's name goes to the top for the mission, but then reverts to the team leader afterwords.

Try a villain!

Fire, cold, smashing, etc. are done in separate "ticks" of damage. i.e. When you get hit with an attack from Energy Blast, you will see two numbers pop up. One is energy damage and the other is smashing.

If you have energy resistance, but no smashing resistance, the energy portion will have your resistance applied, but the smashing portion will not be resisted at all.

I'm finally going to chime into this to say that I've never had a problem with mezzing opponents. I play mainly controllers, defenders, masterminds and corruptors. I've never had a problem with mezzing opponents... until I messed with the new difficulty settings.

I think the problem stems from people wanting to be able to solo x6-x8 missions, but the increased number of mobs means having more mezzing enemies than are possible to deal with. Even then, the right squishy builds can floor enemy accuracy in groups or even control the large groups well enough.

Playing the game solo on the intended difficulty with only SOs, everyone has the tools necessary to deal with mezzers. Defenders/corruptors can use debuffs and snipes, controllers can control and debuff, dominators can control and snipe, blasters can still kill things while mezzed, and masterminds just can't die. PBs have dwarf form, WS have that and controls.