Microcosm

Ya, power surge takes care of negative and toxic, so that would be the problem. It is one of the safest crashes, if that helps, generating an EMP that will hold most things around you when it wears off. Without that tier 9 you are just a sitting duck for toxic damage.

New Devouring Earth can tear up anything; your best bet is to drain them or simply kill them before they kill you.

IMO with the set bonuses to softcap s/l, electric and dark should be the best all-around. I can't figure out what kind of holes you are talking about with a s/l softcapped electric, unless you gimped recharge on energize. Add in musculature radial and powersink becomes able to completely sap anything short of EB or AV after their alpha strike, bosses included. Perhaps you didn't take power surge and decided to run against Hydra or Arachnids?

Ya on SOs that's probably not going to happen. I did that mission this weekend on my pb as well (getting him ready for the changes), and, while I took the other one out, I had to call in some help for honeree. I would almost have him and he would heal or pop a tier 9.

Well, I'd say from the IO perspective they are doing quite well, survival-wise. The damage difference is beyond pathetic, though. It runs into the same problem as Smiling Joe's SO builds: photon seekers just aren't performing. It's reasonable for an IO'd shade to keep 3 damage-ED capped fluffies out on their own, and while they don't last long against seriously hard targets, that gives the Warshade a ~130 dps lead over the pb's. This is even with Achilles procs slotted in the pb chain. If it weren't for reactive's interaction with Orbiting death, though, the pb would do a little better than the ws with one pet.

The warshade build I'm using is overperforming a bit on damage though , as in with 3.3 pets it theoretically does more damage than my db/elec scrapper (in the pylon thread). Don't have a pylon number yet as the stupid fluffies dive-bomb the pylons and die.

If pb's some how magically had a damage aura to use with reactive (*cough* change group fly into a gravity-reversing damage aura), the damage difference would be much less. Still, it's all photon seekers fault

1. WS's are more controllery, and more form-friendly; however, they are more difficult to play and only get really good later on.

2. No time limits, it's just the different forms offer different things. Controls? human. Need ranged damage? nova. Taking too much heat? dwarf. It can be tricky dancing around between the three, so you should check the binds thread stickied on this forum for some really helpful tools.

3. Yes; you need to be in the forms to use them. They will not initially show up in your powers tray, though. You will need to open up the Powers tab and drag them from your inherents onto your trays.

4. They do not give boosts to teammates, and this is a complaint of many people who like Veats. They are currently out of balance, but that's being somewhat worked on.

5. i21 will affect mostly pb's. Lightform, the tier 9, is being altered to be usable in forms and more frequent, like the warshade tier 9, Eclipse. Build Up is being turned in to Inner Light, which will extend a weakened version of its effects for an extra 20 seconds after the initial 10 second full-buff (helpful for form switching). Photon Seekers (pb "pet" which is really a mini-nuke) is having its recharge shortened, but it's still going to be too weak. Pb's will get a new fly-speed boosting power similar to the new one in the Flight pool, and Ws's will be getting a new zone-teleport power also similar to the one in the TP pool. Taunts of both Dwarves will be autohit. Shadow Cloak (Warshade) and Combat Flight (pb) are getting a bug fixed so that they offer typed defense as well as positional. The best AoE human pb's have, Solar Flare, will be usable from the air (used to be on the ground only, which was silly as you get an inherent version of hover). Some issues, like knockback in questionable places, are still not being fixed as the devs are afraid pb's will become overpowered (I'd lol, but it's more sad than funny).

6. Warshades can reach higher levels of power than Peacebringers, while Peacebringers are more consistent in their performance. That sounds nice and all, but the difference between power levels of the two is way too big. New Lightform makes Pb's much better on survival than they were (and I personally feel better than Ws's as a whole), but the damage difference between the two is horribly large in the Warshade's favor; this is entirely due to the pets, as warshades get pretty awesome pets (Dark Extraction) while Peacebringers get possibly the worst pets in the game.

Someone will be along shortly to point you to a certain "MFing Warshade" guide

So in the process of creating new builds for my pb for i21 changes, I decided to compare max sustained survival on maxed-out IO builds between pb's and ws's. We don't balance around IO's, so the following is in no way indicative of SO performance or standard play in anyway. In order not to inadvertently color anyone's opinions, I am not listing actual numbers, just the relationship between the two as per the absolute best builds I can muster. I will not be posting builds either The relationships will change build-by-build, this is just how they are with mine.

A few notes:
-This is not including Rebirth, as that is a major pain to calculate, but it definitely would favor the pb with much higher hit points. Spiritual boosting recharge and heal for both.
-This is in human form so the WS can make use of its shields and tough to help when Eclipse hits too few to cap itself. The PB caps with just Lightform, so it does not include shields.
-Both have the same defense %'s.
-The WS includes essence drain as part of its attack chain, so its heal is added in.
-Where Stygian Circle is listed, it's assumed that x number of minion-level corpse(s) will constantly be available.
-All these numbers are against s/l. Other damage types besides psi will favor the pb until Eclipse hits enough to cap. Psi will favor Eclipse always, obviously.
-Builds are perma-Eclipse and perma-Lightform.
-Lightform's crash is included.

Comparison:
ws w/one eclipse and shields/tough: pb can take nearly 4x as much s/l damage as the ws, even more against other damage types.
+1 stygian: pb more than 2x against s/l
+2 stygian: pb more than 1.5x against s/l
+3 stygian: pb 1.24x
+4 stygian: pb = ws
+5(max health everytime) stygain: pb 0.86x ws

ws w/2+ eclipse targets (cap s/l; e/n/f/c require 3+): pb 1.86x s/l
+1 stygian: pb 1.07x s/l
+2 stygian: pb .75x
+3 stygian: pb .58x
+4 stygian: pb .47x
+5(max health everytime) stygian: pb .40x

Max discrepancy shows the Pb doing nearly 4 times better when facing a single target with no corpses and the Ws doing theoretically 2.5 times better when Eclipse-capped and gaining full health everytime stygian circle is recharged. ("Theoretically" because that assumes the warshade hits 1 hp exactly when it hits stygian circle).

Interesting, no? What are you guys getting?

Just to add, from the extremely rough way I calculate the fluffies with reactive, damage-wise I get this for single target in human form:
No ws pets, pb greater by ~20dps
1 ws pets, ws greater by ~30dps
2 ws pets, ws greater by ~80dps
3 ws pets, ws greater by ~130dps
Max possible ws pets (recharge cap), ws greater by ~170dps

Regarding toggle suppression, why make the shields suppress but inky aspect or orbiting death just plain turnoff? That makes no sense, as the point of suppression is to avoid the annoyance of always having to turn these toggles back on when going back to human. Offensive toggles turn off during mez suppression as a detriment to your character; if toggles suppress because of something a player does, the offensive ones suppress too, not turn off (see Stalker Dark Armor). Really, activating the shields (with .924 arcancasttime) is not a big deal compared to activating orbiting death or inky aspect (2.244 cast and 1.32 cast respectively).