PrincessDarkstar

I know a few people who aim for softcapped ranged defence but on a Warshade +recharge is your friend (As is hasten).

At 28 you haven't yet seen the glory that is Eclipse, but that one power alone, unslotted and cast in the middle of 10 mobs will hardcap your resistance (At 85%) to ALL damage, including psi. The need for ranged defence on top of that is very low.

Eclipse can be made perma with a fairly middle of the road budget (It's not cheap, but it won't take forever to get) and from that point you are really unlucky to die or have done something wrong (I still die, but every time I hit the floor I know I could have avoided it easily).

If you were to take the forms (And regardless if you take Nova I would always take Dwarf because that is your only mez protection) then I would drop as many toggles as you can. I have made room for Shadow Cloak and a few travel powers, but those are really out of combat toggles, so they are ok.

Additionally Shadow Cloak is the key power to not faceplanting before you get your Eclipse off, either run in (Or teleport in) to a mob and hit Eclipse, you will be softcapped before most things hit you, I typically get one hit full in the face and the rest bouce off.

Any time you don't have Eclipse up and running then you can either use human form; and even a tri-form can use Gravatic Emination > Gravity Well > Unchain Essence to control a whole mob. Or you could just stay in Nova and avoid as much aggro as you can, dropping to Dwarf if you do get too much.

As to how I would set up human form the way I do mine is I completely ignore any power that is a duplicate of what the forms have (IE: No blasts) and you do have to be careful on your choices because you can only spare enough slots to make 5 or 6 human powers truly effective (More if you lightly slot Dwarf). The key powers to slot in human form are:

Sunless Mire - Slot for recharge rather than damage because as a tri-former you use it to increase the damage of Nova form, the damage from the power itself can be impressive, but is dwarfed by Nova's damage.

Stygian Circle - This means you never have any downtime again for either health or endurance

Eclipse - Slot for recharge and then resistance/accuracy. Getting this perma or close to perma is such a joy.

Gravatic Emination - One of the best control powers in the game, a fast activating cone stun.

Gravity Well - A melee attack that also holds, but if you slot it like a melee attack it causes sick damage, and can be used to 1 shot a minion prior to Unchain Essence.

Unchain Essence - A power I recently realised I misunderstood, I thought it was a low damage long recharge AoE, but it is actually a mag3 AoE sun power and therefore is great!

Dark Extraction - I have read these pets are second only to fire imps for damage (And I don't know if that was counting just one of them or not), and you can get 2 or 3 out at once with enough recharge (I have exactly perma-hasten on my build and if I was quick on the button am .1 second away from having 3 perma)

Not all those powers need 5 or 6 slotting, but if you get them slotted (I don't think I have left anything out) then you get the full utility from human form, plus the mass damage from Nova.

PS: You can add Quasar to the list of human power, it is a great nuke when you consider Sunless Mire and Black Dwarf mire get you very close to the damage cap. But some people hate nukes so I left it off. Still Black Dwarf Mire > Sunless Mire > Quasar > Pop a blue > Stygian Circle and you are back to full health/endurance so as far as nukes go it is a good one and you can recover instantly.

Annoyingly you argue your case rather well (Like a lot of others here, and I can't quite get my head around liking you and telling you that you are wrong at the same time) so I do see where you are coming from, I just think that any AoE heal you get probably won't be enough to save anyone life if it is seriously under threat so trying to use that kind of power would mean wasting the potential to use something else.

I know I am mainly a Warshade player but if I was going to give PB's a buff I would be looking towards buffing the powers that a lot of PB's are already taking rather than changing the other powers (The -def and -res idea is a good one, as is the stun addition to Photon Seekers), but I guess that is just a point of view thing, I just don't want to see PB's stopping their damage causing to keep teammates alive, the inherant is a self buff given from nearby teammates, but I don't remember a requirement for them to be alive to buff you, so I think Kheldians should benefit from having a team, but like Warshades, PB's should give back to the team via an increased kill speed, not defender like support.

I think in this case the advice about Nova being able to bring greater damage was well within the limits of the question.

Human form builds can be ok (And AlienOne is a good person to speak to if that is your thing), but if damage is your goal over playstyle then I would always go for mostly Nova.

The great thing about Warshades that tips the hand towards tri-form builds is that the attack powers from human form are replicated in Nova, but Nova causes more damage with them, the control powers in human form last long enough to switch to Nova and blast, the self buffing powers (Sunless Mire/Eclipse) last long enough to carry into the forms, and the pets are on a timer so last through form switches too.

In general everything you can do in human form you can also do with a tri-form build, plus you have the benefit of extra damage in Nova. You just have to enjoy the playstyle where you do a bit of shapeshifting, but I fully think it is worth it.

As Obsidian said the only thing you are going to get now to improve damage (Aside from the nuke; Quasar) is Dark Extraction, but that technically isn't your damage since it is pet damage. You will however get more survivable once you hit 38 and get Eclipse, allowing you to be braver in your pursuit of damage.

If you still decide you want to be human mostly I am happy to have a look at a build for you, but as discussed in another thread a few minutes back, there is a drawback to starting a fight in human then going to Nova because you end up with downtime between fights are you ready your human form again.

In conclusion: I would stick with human only (+dwarf for mez) - less damage but maybe more your thing style wise, or go tri-form - all out on the damage front without necessarily giving up too much from the human form.

That is some very good advice from Rainbow_Avenger and AlienOne and well worth taking note of.

As AlienOne identified, the best two playstyles involve either being human only (Or mostly at least) and continuing to fight in human form after the opening attacks, or fight mostly in Nova/Dwarf, only stopping to Eclipse/Mire/Pets then straight back into Nova/Dwarf again.

You have hit on the key problem with the true tri-form playstlye, and might be better off changing your playstlye slightly to aviod the downtime.

Alternatively since Unchain Essence is on a long recharge you could just use that attack chain when it is up, then stay in Nova until it is up again, so you only get that downtime once every however long.

One last word: I drop for Stygian Circle when there are 1 or 2 mobs still left rather than waiting right until the end, you are most useful opening up on a full pack of mobs than helping clear the last few, and this should help cut into your downtime.

Oh AlienOne I forgot to mention that I only fought 2 or 3 mobs in your arc, being solo with small spawns bores to to tears - cannot wait for i16!

You are finding why tri-form Warshades are more common than tri-form PB's.

The clickies from the PB human form like build up don't last very long when you switch to the forms, unlike the good clickies from Warshade human form.

So it is really a compromise if you want to make the use of the human melee attacks. If you ignore then you can dedicate more slots to the other forms, but do have to relegate human to a pretty much non-combat form. Yet if you slot them you lose out on some of the power of the forms.

That said as a tri-form Warshade player myself I have 6 well slotted human powers and still have most of the Nova/Dwarf powers with at least 5 slots, so you can balance both. But I am not a PB player so don't really know the PB powers worth slotting and will leave any real advice to those who know

I have actually watched parts of those video's now (I couldn't before since I was at work, and also because I didn't really see the need as video's don't prove much) and the first one clearly says "City of Heroes (Warshade), Code Name: VestigeOne" which proves AlienOne is correct saying that it is him.

The 2nd one also spends a LOT of time shapeshifting and missing out on DPS - but that is because he is facing Malta and most people would go slowly against those ******s as they are the only group in the game that can reliably hit you once and render you useless.

Also AlienOne has 3 fluffies out a lot of the time which contributes a shedload of DPS, something my build can do but I don't keep track of the recharge time enough to actually do it in practice.

Still I would be interested to give that mission a go.

Obsidian is right, the numbers shown by Redlynne were correct, but they aren't as good as Redlynne made them sound through the use of adjectives (I doubt there was anything underhand about what Redlynne wrote though).

He was just making the point (More for the benefit of a newbie than a vet) that they shouldn't over-estimate Orbiting Death and the overall benefit it will give to your damage output.

On the binds topic there is a thread near the top of this section of the forum where I have hopefully explained the bind files I use and how to work them.

I have however heard of people using g15's, so they should work.