Justaris

Yes, it's a fact, you can earn three respecs per character from doing Respec Trials. The Trial doesn't award a respec recipe - it just gives you a respec. In fact, of all the methods of gaining a respec, only the Respec Recipe drop uses the recipe system at all - the rest grant you a respec directly - either an 'earned' respec or a 'free' respec. The difference being that you can only have one 'free' respec banked at any one time, while you can stack up 'earned' respecs.

The wiki page, of course, goes over all this.

It's not exactly a recent change, but it sounds like you're referring to the changes back in Issue 13.

Here's the relevant portion:

# Peacebringers damage adjusted

* Increased Melee Damage to 0.85 from 0.75
* Increased Range Damage to 0.8 from 0.625
* Increased Melee Dwarf Form Melee Damage to 1.0 from 0.85

Link

At a guess, I would say it's people's perception of them. Depending on when a given player last tried a Kheldian, there's any one of a number of (now) false impressions that might keep someone from playing one.

1) Quantum/Voids. They used to a Nictus damage and Negative Energy, the Nictus component of which was unresistable. It hurt. A lot. Now they just do Negative Energy, which Kheldians resist very nicely once you have your armor toggles / Dwarf Form. So these guys really aren't the threat they once were, but many people don't know that.

2) Shadow Cysts. These once spawned as AVs, which was a huge pain for any team unlucky enough to catch one. Again, these aren't the threat they used to be and now typically only present a problem for unwary teams who charge right into them headlong.

3) Inherent not woirking in the forms. Now it does.

4) Invention Set Bonuses not applying in the forms. They always have.

5) Unrealistic expectations. Some people expect the Kheldians, as an unlocked AT, to be some kind of broken godmode AT. It isn't and shouldn't be, but some people continue to have those expectations and to drop the AT when it, predictably enough, isn't an instant "I Win" button.

There's a second type of unrealstic expectations as well that attempts to shoehorn Kheldians into an existing role. For example, making a 'scrapper' PB, then complaning that he's not as good as _____ Scrapper. Well, that's because he's not a Scrapper. When you try to make a generalist into a specialist and then complain he's not as good as the specialist in that specialist's niche (i.e. not as good at scrapping as a Scrapper - well, yeah), you really have no one to blame but yourself.

6) Personal dislike of the powers/forms/backstory concept. Not much to do about this one - everyone has something they dislike. It's possible that power customization, if we get it for Khelds, will address some of this. I can't really blame someone who, in a game noted for its immense character customization options, doesn't really want to look just like everyone else (in forms, at any rate).



I should also point out that while the toggles remain up when mezzed they aren't doing you any good while the mez is active. They suppress. It wasn't clear from the OP whether or not that was understood. So you're still naked while mezzed, just prettier.


Edit: Bill said essentially the same thing I did, but typed it faster. Curse you, Bill!

Unfortunately you get a lot of people who highly rate arcs that they can farm and downrate any arc that they feel isn't giving them enough xp regardless of how good the arc itself is. This results in some pretty terrible farms being ranked highly and some pretty good stories being griefed out of deserved spots. It's an unfortunate but not unexpected consequence of the rating system.

On the flip side, as previously mentioned, you have some people who blindly 5-star everything they play.

Here's a few things I notice looking over this build:

1) Enervating Field is a huge endurance hog and right now you've got only the one slot in it. I'd recommend two Endurance Reduction here at a minimum (personally, I use three).

2) You have Electron Haze slotted for Defense Debuff. If you don't mind getting into melee, Irradiate is a far superior power for this purpose. The defense debuff you get in Irradiate, unslotted, is only slightly less than what you are getting in Haze fully slotted. Irradiate and Neutron Bomb are the two heavy-hitting defense debuff powers and if you are going to slot any of your blasts for defense debuff it should be these powers. If you keep Electron Haze I'd slot it as an attack rather than as a debuff.

3) Choking Cloud. I've found it very useful on my Rad/Rad since between Radiation Infection and your blasts you can drastically reduce enemy defense easily, which means you can make Choking Cloud hit reliably. This does require you to be in melee range, however, so if you don't like to play that way or if you're dead-set on this character fighting from range then leave Choking Cloud out.

4) Stealth. I'd agree with Meowzer that Stealth is pretty much a waste. It would be far more effective to just slot an Unbounded Leap: +Stealth into Sprint and they aren't all that expensive. Combine the IO'd Sprint with SS and you keep the full invis while still freeing up a power and two slots.

5) Tactics is underslotted. I would recommend trying to get at least four slots here as the to-hit buff will not only help out the team a lot but will also help you. By the late game most players can handle their own personal defense, but tohit buffs are always welcome and will make you a better Defender as you will help enable the team to reliably take down higher-con foes. Also, if you do end up taking Choking Cloud, it helps with that too.

6) I agree with Vengeance. In the setting of Power Build Up, both Vengeance and EM Pulse go from good powers to downright spectacular (EM Pulse gets even better if you have the Vanguard Medal accolade power). A quick PBU/Vengeance will make the rest of the team nearly unkillable and that move has allowed me to avert a teamwipe on more than one occasion when someone overaggros. A good Vanguard Medal/PBU/EM Pulse will basically stop all enemy action on the battlefield. It's impressive.

As for Mutation, it's an excellent combat rez and some people might be annoyed that you have Vengeance and not a rez, but nowadays it's skippable. Any player can easily make their own Awakens or ask for insps to do so and you could always get the Revive Ally power from Day Jobs if you really wanted a rez but didn't want to use up a power. If there's something you want more, I'd say you're fine to skip it.

7) There are several powers here that you've overslotted in order to gain IO Set bonuses - this is a tradeoff. On the one hand, some of these bonuses are very nice to have, but you've allowed many of your key powers to be underslotted as a result. This may take some fiddling and some playing around to find just the right balance for, but I'd at least consider dropping down to five slots on a few powers where the sixth Set bonus isn't all that great (such as Doctored Wounds, Analyze Weakness or Dark Watcher's Despair).

8) It's true that Rad/Rad tends to be endurance-heavy, so inasmuch as you can try to make sure your key attack powers and your toggles are well-slotted with endurance reduction. I see this most in the Leadership powers in your current build, as the IO sets in the Rad toggles are covering them reasonably well (except for EF).

The thing is, you're talking about fundamentally changing the way instances are done in this game. Right now, an instance resets if it gets depopulated (i.e. a mission will reset unless at least one player remains in the mission). In order for this 'problem' to be 'fixed', you would have to redesign instances so that progress was somehow saved either continuously or incrementally.

Leaving aside that 'fixing' a working system is asking for trouble of the bug variety, changing the way instances work also has a number of consequences beyond being a simple QoL improvement. As previously mentioned, this prevents players from intentionally replaying or farming missions. While the Devs may frown on farming, obviously they haven't considered it so great a problem as to warrant redesigning the way instances work - and that alone should tell you something. Furthermore, a change of this type would likely mean it would no longer be possible to reset missions - currently a common practice on teams to raise or lower difficulty as needed.

This could very easily be a negative quality of life change in a variety of ways to a large number of players, and that's without speculating on the kinds of bugs that attempts to change instances this late in the life of the game might cause. Let's not fix what isn't broken.

It's not going to be easy to improve on the Ranged Defense in this build and you've already managed to get a very respectable amount (with significant sacrifices to do so). I don't really have anything to add on that score, as the combination of the Resistance from your shields and this caliber of Defense should serve you well. You've overslotted some powers, but you've done so in order to get +Ranged Def bonuses, so I've tried not to touch those since doing away with those would run counter to the goal.

The key element that's underslotted here is the heals - Essence Boost is a Dull Pain clone and really ought to be slotted accordingly. Your survivability is going to be much less, especially when leveling up/exemplared and without your full arsenal to draw upon. The question, then, is where to find the slots to shore up Essence Boost and Reform Essence?

Personally, I'd drop the Status Resistance. I'm not a huge fan of mez resistance in IOs generally, since even if you manage to get 100% resistance you only cut the duration of the effect in half. While this can be worthwhile and I can see the allure of combining Defense to avoid status effects with Mez Resistance to minimize those that land, I do not think it outweighs the importance of slotting your critical heal powers in this build. Therefore, I'd recommend dropping the Impervious Skin:Status Resist slot from Shining Shield, Thermal Shield, Quantum Shield, Tough, and Light Form. That gives you five slots right there that can be reallocated to Essence Boost and Reform Essence.

Like most well-thought out Kheldian builds, this build is tight, and that's all I can see that doesn't detract from your primary purpose of building Ranged Defense. I'd rather have well-slotted self-heals than have the Mez Resistance, but YMMV.

That's really the reason I always advocate keeping a 50 around (though personally I don't understand people who delete 50s, but that's neither here nor there).

The Devs have said before that the intent is for the flag to get tripped and stay tripped by getting a 50, meaning it should be unlocked forever. However, that bug does crop up now and again, though for some reason it tends to strike redside more often in my experience.

Not only have the Devs made it quite clear that they aren't planning on raising the level cap anytime soon if ever, but most veteran players are against the idea for a variety of good reasons. Not the least of these is that several game systems, including the IO system and the HO system, are designed with a cap of 50. To change the cap would require retooling of IOs and would render all currently held HOs ineffective - both pretty serious negatives. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

I wouldn't worry about it. For a while now the Devs have had their focus on 'improving 50s' as an endgame focus rather than 'tacking on extra levels', and I don't see that focus changing.

Mids is correct. The Set Bonuses carry over into all forms, and therefore the Rule of Five applies in all forms (and not just to the form that is active). For example, while in Nova form you get all the benefit of Sets slotted in Nova powers, human powers and Dwarf powers. Since you get the benefit, of course the limitations also apply.

1) I understand that you're voicing the concerns of your SG and Coalition friends. I get that. I further understand that your SG, at least in your view, is a good SG that takes care to do right by its members. You need to understand that not all SGs are like this, and that many SGs that put priority on staying in the Top 100 (Top 50, Top 10, whatever) are not like this.

2) If we're going to talk about a change to the game, we have to talk about all the cases, not just the case of the person proposing it. It may well be that in your case, with your SG and Coalition, there would be no drama and no problems and that everyone would have a voice. That simply would not happen in every instance with every SG. The question is whether or not the development time and potential negatives are justified by the benefits. In this case I don't think they are.

3) "Cold hard fact" may be an overused phrase. In this case, what you have is cold hard perception, not fact. While it may be highly probable that many people took advantage of the free transfers to move to Freedom/Virtue, no player has factual numbers for server or subscriber populations. Personally I've actually noticed an upswing of activity on some of the "low population" servers on which I play, especially Triumph and Victory. That's a fact. No, wait, that's my perception.

The main issue with Lightning Clap, at least for me, is that it's AOE knockback which sends enemies flying away from me, and that can be annoying. As far as whether it's worthwhile, I'd say that depends on what your primary is and what Ancillary powers you have. If you've got a way to -KB the mobs (e.g. Stone Prison) and/or you have another stun to stack with Lightning Clap, then I'd say it's worthwhile (especially if you have both). If you have neither of the above, I'd skip it and go with Power Surge or start on Earth Mastery.

There has been no talk that I'm aware of about giving Kheldians either more powers or more slots. While there are always pipe dream fantasies about getting certain powers or types of powers, I don't think practically that there's a strong need for any more powers for Kheldians - in fact, more than a few people complain that Khelds have too many powers as-is. Giving Kheldians full access to all power pools would probably be enough to make a lot of people very happy - Warshades could fly in human form if they wished, Peacebringers could take Recall Friend, and Air Superiority goodness could be had by all.

As for more slots, the "slot-crunch" is the reason for build variants such as Human-Only, Tri-Form, Human/Dwarf, etc. These variants exist because there is a need to allocate slots in a careful and consistent manner to meet the unique challenges of designing a Kheldian build. Add too many more slots, and you destroy that variety. Everyone would just be tri-form with fully powers in all three forms, if they had the slots (to say nothing of the IO Set opportunities such a situation would present for a Kheld player). So, while I can understand this desire as a 'wish list' item, I'm against it.

Well there's definately some issues with the order of the powers, but since you specify that this build does not reflect the power order you plan to use on live I won't get too much into that, except to say that Stygian Circle and Sunless Mire ought to come earlier (way earlier in the case of Mire).

You've severely underslotted Unchain Essence. It can be a somewhat tricky power to use, but it is powerful. In my opinion, you should either give it at least four slots or else skip the power entirely.

I'd also recommend at least one more slot in Stygian Circle, preferably two or three. This is partly a playstyle preference so take it with a grain of salt, but I find having Circle up fast with reduced endurance cost and boosted recovery helps immensely, especially in a build without Dark Nova. You do have Set bonuses and Hasten running so that partly covers this, but I think if it were me I'd want at least a second slot.

If this build is going to tank then you willl be needing slots in Antagonize. I'm not sure if by 'tanktroller' you just meant a very survivable control-heavy build (which this would certainly be) or if you actually wanted to have some tanking role in the build. So if it's the former, disregard this bit.

Overall, looks like a strong (albeit expensive) build.

Yes, you are missing out in a huge way. If you add in some Single Origin enhancements in a logical fashion, you'll notice a huge difference in how your character plays. What server are you on?

Ultimately this seems like an overboard fix to a nonexistant problem. Kheldians certainly don't need to be made more like VEATs, any more than Defenders need to be more like Controllers or Tankers need to be more like Brutes. They are different ATs with different strengths and weaknesses. Making everything the same is never a good solution to anything.

I'm not opposed to some attention to Kheldians, especially PBs, and very cogent arguments have been made in the not too distant past for various improvements that may bring them more in line with Warshades without making them overpowered or destroying their current playstyle and function. However, the OP's changes would firstly be overpowered with the numbers given and secondly are targeted towards upper-tier powers. Since much of the misconception about the roles of Kheldians seems to come from people who haven't yet reached the upper 30s, changes to these powers are unlikely to effect the changes desired. It almost reads like the OP picked two powers at random or chose the only powers he could think of offhand. Adding extra debuff to Eclipse I find particularly baffling - are people really complaining that Eclipse isn't doing enough? Who are these people, and what are they smoking?

Kheldians are already perfectly capable of contributing to teams as they are now. They do not do so in the same way that a VEAT does, nor should they.

Also, to address the "played many other MMOs" comment, CoX has better graphics (and will soon have better graphics still) and thus takes more memory and higher specs to play than, say, a certain other popular MMO that uses a more stylized cartoonish graphics scheme. Wow.

Well, it really depends on how you plan to build/play your PB. To hit the broad strokes first: Are you going to take forms? Bright Nova? White Dwarf? Both? Neither? This has a huge impact on which powers you take, when you take them, and how you slot them.

Radiant Strike and Incandescent Strike are very good. Take both Essence Boost and Restore Essence. Don't take Group Energy Flight. Hasten is popular, as is Fitness if you plan to play at least a reasonable portion of the time in human form (and definately a good pick if you plan to go Human Only).

That's about all for the moment. I'd also strongly suggest you read over the guides, starting with Plasma's guide. Very little has changed for Kheldians in the last few issues aside from the inherent (Cosmic Balance/Dark Sustenance) now working in all forms.