PrincessDarkstar

Although the advice above was for a dual build it was for one concentrating on both the forms rather than human form. Human forms has some great utility powers that you don't want to skip so I would NEVER ignore all the human powers, but that doesn't mean you need to fight in human.

Have a look at what I wrote above regarding starting the build with the key powers and working backwards and try following it in mids, you should be able to come up with something good, and it is easier to point out build problems than create builds for people (Especially with different budget concerns etc). Even if you get half a build.

However outside of Eclipse you will always be squishy in Nova form, and Dwarf isn't really designed for a great deal of damage (It is ok, but you won't rival a scrapper), it is more about survivability. That said it is capable of some good damage due to Black Dwarf Mire and really benefits from global recharge if you are throwing inf around.

Warshades have lots of powers and not many slots. I find things like flight speed a luxury that can be easily lived without, and prefer to use my slots on things to help me in battles etc. The endurance reductions give very little benefit also because the forms have a build in endurance recovery designed to offset the cost of running them (They are essentially free from enurance cost) meaning endurance reduction could save you so little endurance it isn't going to make much difference.

I just have the one flight speed enhancement in it, and have never really felt slow. Also like I say you have plenty of room for other powers and I actually have both super speed and super jump

But having said all that, if moving so fast is important to you then keep the slots by all means, there is no point having a powerful character if by the time you get to the enemies you are so fed up you want to quit!

Dwarf/Nova is the way I have gone and the way I think brings out the greatest power from Warshades (But not the only way to play one of course).

Unfortunately I haven't got mids here at work but from the top of my head I will say this to you:

Nova form doesn't need any slots above the default slot, you can use some, but I feel they would be best spent elsewhere. However the attacks really need 5 slots each, this is the form you use to cause damage and you want to make the most of it, so 1 endrdx/2 damage/1 accuracy/1 rchrdx is probably a good way to slot all the attacks. The endurance reduction isn't strictly needed, but will help you stay in Nova for longer, if you want you can swap it for another recharge reduction or damage, and will still only feel the pinch against AV's when there are no corpses to stygian circle from.

Dwarf form needs 3 slots, but I wouldn't give it any more personally. All 3 should have a damage resistance IO/SO to maximise that. The powers themselves can be slotted depending how you want to use the form, and there are really 2 ways you can go. The first is using it as a tank form only, you would slot the self heal, the mire (You should 6 slot this regardless of how you intend to use Dwarf as it is just wonderful) and the taunt, but you can leave the attacks with just some accuracy and maybe some recharge. The other way is to heavily slot everything. In which case I would 5 slot all the powers aside from the taunt (Which can get away with just an accuracy and a recharge reduction). I would slot the attacks 1 endrdx/1 damage/1 accuracy/1 rechrdx and 1 whichever of those you like, to taste . The heal should be 2 heals/2 acc/2 rechrdx ideally, and the mire 1 acc/1 dam/2 endrdx/2 rechrdx. Of course those slottings can be altered to taste, but I think they are probably the best starting point in order for you to get the best out of the forms, which is what you seem to want.

Because so many slots are dedicated to the forms you won't have too many left for human, so have to be careful with your decisions here. Since you wont use human form for fighting in this build you don't need to take and attacks or shields unless forced to, and this means even in the early levels you can start picking pool powers. Powers like stamina don't work in the forms - and since you won't spend long periods of time in human can be ruled out. Hasten is a must because your signature power (Eclipse) is on a long timer, so the faster it recharges the better. So when you level up and look at the powers you can pick think "Does that power provide good utility for my forms" if yes then you can select it, if not have a look towards the pools and take something that wont need slotting. As I said in my build I have travel powers and the medicine pool. I never use them (Apart from the rez) but then again I would never use any human alternatives either, haven't wasted any slot and have that slight bit of utility when it is needed (For example I can give status protection on the STF, rez and grant invis to the whole team - powers not often used, but good to have).

The human powers you shouldn't skip however include: Stygian Circle, Gravity Well (The melee hold), Gravatic Emination, Sunless Mire, Eclipse, Shadow Cloak, Dark Extraction.

I would devote all my remaining slots to these powers (I don't think I have missed any out, but might have) and fill all the other power slots with pool powers that don't need slots.

This leaves you with not many human powers, but those you have will get used, and will work properly because you have enough slots in them. So human becomes a form that can stun, stealth and self buff, before changing to whichever form you like.

If I had mids here I would give you a quick build, but hopefully that helps.

Finally, using IO sets to frankenslot the powers gives you a lot of extra benefit as a warshade. For example instead of using 2 acc/2 dam you could probably slot 3 acc/dam's from 3 diffent sets for the same bonus %, but freeing a slot up. Doing it this way gets lots of benefit without the expense of buying the good sets. It is probably more expensive than SO's, but cheaper than normal IO's because a lot of the ones you will use can be from the sets that are really cheap.

Thanks Tyger, sounds fairly reasonable to me. I will have a look into it tonight

I am thinking about making my own small SG purely so I can have somewhere to store my salvage, as the vault +inventory is pityfully small and the market fluctuates up and down daily, which annoys me.

So, how much prestige am I looking at needing to be able to make a base that can hold say 500 salvage and 100 enhancement? Or is that asking too much from a base?

QR

Which build are you looking for advice on particularly? Sticking 3 builds up seems pretty random to me, are you just looking for advice on a particular tri-form strategy of not taking the human powers? And is there a reason you don't want human form powers?

Personally I can understand not taking the human attack powers (I didn't) but for things like health/endurance recovery Stygian Circle is one of the best powers in the game, so stamina/aid self are really not needed (I have aid self, but with no slots and only because I wanted the rez).

The way I built my warshade when starting out was to pick the powers that were going to be key to me (Forms, Eclipse, Stygian Circle, Fluffies etc) and slot them as I wanted. Then I took the powers I thought would be nice to have and slotted them, finally I looked at how many spare power choices I had and picked a bunch of powers that didn't need slotting at all. Those powers really are your friend, and include the stealth pool (Good for holding LoTG +rech IO's if you are rich), travel powers (Yes you have fly and TP but SS/SJ are good too), the medicine pool (Again mainly for the rez, and I took clarity instead of aid other for the STF mainly).

The one thing you want to avoid is having any power that you don't use taking up slots, and having any powers that you do use underslotted.

A good example is Ebon Eye in the first build (I haven't looked at the others to be honest) - it has 3 slots which means it is still a pointless attack, but using 2 slots that could be better served elsewhere. On my build I took the immob early and gave it the first 5 slots because immob sets are cheap and provide good bonus' - and because I wasn't going to use any of those early human attacks after level 6 no matter how I slotted them.

Be ruthless, if the power isn't serving its purpose as well as another power - bin it and save the slots.

I am not really going to bother getting any to be honest, I am one of those people that needs things capped or perma to even be worth bothering with. The only way I could cap the DEF was to really hurt the percentages on the attack powers, and I don't think its worth it so have stopped looking

This wasn't a noobs question by the way just something I was curious about because I currently have the whole perma-eclipse thing and when i heard someone getting capped DEF on top of that I wondered how much of a sacrifice it had to be.

And actually I don't agree on the double mire thing (Especially dwarf mire now only lasts 10s), I find the 4-5 seconds it takes to double mire and get back to nova can be used to cause about 600 damage to every mob in the spawn (3 AoE's from Nova) and that to be better than the +dam you get from the mires, because most of that bonus will be wasted from moving between mobs (If there was no moving needed then I can see it being better though as you get the full 30s bonus, but only getting part of that time won't let you make up the lost damage - imho). I will only do the mire combo when I need eclipse, so once every 90s. I guess on lower recharge builds it still works out best, but once the AoE's are chain castable you are just better off blasting.

However I spend most of my time in dwarf form now with mire down to 5 seconds and almost perma 200ish% dam bonus

On my bots/ff I went the tough/weave route along with maneuvers to give me capped defenses, and I use taunt to play tankermind. I also grabbed aid self.

You can easily def cap the bots but the actual attack powers you get as a bots/ff are so useless I found it incredibly boring, so picked up taunt to make me feel useful.

My personal opinion regarding the build is to pick the pets and upgrades when they are available together with the 3 main shields and get them slotted up as well as you can using frankenslotting rather than looking for bonus'. Those powers are what keep you alive and cause the damage for you and are critical. Then once you have done that pick whatever powers you can in order to increase your defenses, there is no real need for attack powers.

I also took aid other and repair to keep the bots alive. I know a lot of people hate repair but it can save you having to get the assbot out again if he gets hit with a rogue AoE, and is much cheaper end wise than resummoning and upgrading him.

The alternate route I found was to just leave the bots too it. With the protector bots + your 3 shields they are pretty much def capped. Add into that the +Def IO's and they will be pretty safe. However like I said I found that incredibly boring

102 views and no replied lol.

Anyway I made a quick build and capped the ranged defense fairly easily (15% from just 5 slots with the BoTZ set is a good start) but had to sacrifice too much to get there I think.

The ranged defense would be nice, but once you have perma-eclpse I think it is more advisable to make sure your powers are slotted as well as possible rather than 70% of what they could be in exchange for that defence.

Now if it was possible to cap every positional ...

I was reading the US forums and came across someone talking about his perma-eclipse build that also had capped ranged defenses and thought it might be worth taking a look at, but the post he was linking to doesn't exist anymore.

I am wondering if anyone has such a build so I can see what sacrifices are being made for all that defense since I am really good at finding recharge, but not so good at building for defence.

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I14 did major damage to playerbase, do not try to deny that (except if you haven't visit Atlas for the last week or you don't want to compute how that affect us all in the quest of finding teams, MA or no MA).

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I haven't actually been on since the day i14 launched and it looked busy enough then (Although there was a big lull prior to that), but last night it really did look fairly quiet.

I know a few people have left the game due to the perceived forcing us into pvp (Which I can understand and will drive me away if it gets and worse) and not liking the MA (Which I can't because people will be back on normal missions soon enough I think once the novelty wears off).

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Also, people dedicated to CoH and competitions, hardly could miss a sticky thread during new issue launch, even at holidays...

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I think it was aimed at more than the dedicated few though, and it seems the regulars did find it - the others seem to need more time to get over the MA'ness.

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PrincessDarkstar, my stupid dad had bought 6 months subscription for me (despite me telling him not to bother and just to pay for 1 month at a time) and thats why my account doesn't run out for ages. But I'm only going on the game now and then when there's nothing to do, and tend to log off after about 5 minutes

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Ah the joy of parents listening to what you tell them

Finally - I just want to apologise Mr.Wuffles if I offended you earlier on, thats not how I meant it although it doesn't really read the friendliest, so I am sorry.

In the previous post sorry for the [Re: Capt_Starblayde] part, not sure how that happened.

You gave a competition 10 days for entries over a bank holiday week? There are probably a few people who enter every competition almost compulsively but I would say a fair few people hardly ever check this page (For example I just found it). Also since you mentioned prizes in October I am sure people thought there was plenty of time to enter.

And also you decided to quit the game in 4 months time due to something you don't like right now? I know you can't cancel your subs but don't most people who hate something stop straight away?

Both those sound quite strange to me.

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I wouldn't sniff at an extra 50% global recharge, even with Hasten...
I'm always happy to see another Kin on the team and there's always a slight chance they'll speed boost me too ;-D

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Re-reading that it does look like I was being down on Kin/ but I wasn't as I did love them, they just didn't make me squee like Cold/, I would still rather have one than quite a few other AT's/sets.

I just always missed out on the glory of Fulcrum Shift

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I'll also squee for Cold defenders.

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What a great term for a Warshade expressing happiness! And its exactly how I feel on mine

As for the kin: pre-i13 I wasn't a great fan as I was never in Fulcrum Shift range and SB doesn't make much difference once you have perma-hasten, but the new Black Dwarf Mire becomes incredible with a kin in the team so I now just stay in Dwarf and melt through things.

I know a few people who play with SS on and I have tried it on my fire/kin but the movement supression is just too extreme.

I think that may change in i14 with the supressed speed raised so I may get back into it.

Still as a blaster I don't think I would bother.

I haven't done any testing but have mine slotted with 3 from this set and 3 from the recharge intensives but have noticed a massive drop in performance over the last few weeks/month or so and wouldn't be surprised at all if this was happening.

I just hope that the i14 recharge patch fixes all these issues and they become great again.

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I've not gotten that far yet on my peacebringer, but I'll hazard a guess that since the cysts in the ITF are 'inactive' aswell that this is WAI.

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The ones on the ITF which are the mish objectives are but the extras that spawn next to them give a nice little surprise to the rest of the team especially as you don't know which is which.

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Yeah you gotta love that, I had that mission spawned one real cyst next to the target cyst, then the ambush spawned another cyst right on top of us

I just want the option for metal spines rather than the current ugly ones, so

/signed.

While I do agree it would be a good touch for some people (Me included) the majority of people probably don't even read it when they are team leader, nevermind having 8 people forced to skip it each mission.

The key to MA is going to be how you can tell your story within the missions rather than via the contact.

Isn't that mission 'defeat requiem and x number of cysts'? In which case they are there as destructable objects rather than real cysts.

I can't say I have every noticed any other non-spawning cysts aside from that mission.

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About the Nova form and End Mod. 2 slotted with +3 SOs youll be getting 0.2 more end per second, 12 end per minute. Thats less than one use of Nova Detonation. Youre better off slotting end redux in attacks because you will save end every time you use them, even if you drop to Human after just one blast of Nova AoE.

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Excellent advice.

The inbuilt mini-stamina in either of the forms is purely to cover the toggle cost and IMHO is not worth enhancing as it just isn't good enough. One EndRdx is detonation will likely save you 5 times as much end per minute.

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I'm going to disagree with PD and Crick regarding the necessity for Acc to be slotted in Eclipse and Quasar. I fire these off after a Mire and so rely on the huge to-hit bonus from that.

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That is a very brave thing to do. Regardless of mez the one thing I do not want to risk is aggroing an entire mob and taking the alpha before I get eclipsed up.

I stealth in, Eclipse and then mire. It also gives me more of mires durations to blast with.

Having said that I actually don't have any accuracy in my Eclipse either, but then I do have massive +global accuracy bonus' (90% +).

I think I would need to open this in mids to get a proper view (And can't since I am at work) but the one thing that strikes me in the Winter Gift IO in SuperSpeed, unless you plan on running SS in combat there is little point in the endrdx, you would be better with 2 run speeds or using that slot elsewhere.