Smiling_Joe

Sorry - I thought you were talking about this:

Jumping in, hitting IP, using ToF on a boss and turning and using Intimidate on a Lt would waste too much time just in retargeting. If you're going to use IP at the start of a fight and follow it up with ToF, then you're best using it in the way Umbral described. Same target, in other words.

Usually, when you use ToF on a mezzer or sapper, you either interrupt their alpha attack, giving you time to two-shot them, or you move on to the boss and let someone else take them out. In either case, you'll never have to cycle through your attack chain more than once on them, and so no loss of dps.

A boss is a longer battle, though, requiring more than one attack chain cycles. When you insert ToF into your attack chain, it eats up animation time that could be used for attacks that do damage, thus bringing your dps down. Using ToF in boss fights is best done at the beginning and not again unless absolutely necessary.

Skippable and situational don't necessarily equate to useless. It's skippable if you can afford the IO's to compensate for /Fire's relative squishiness. Otherwise there will be times when you need to scatter a mob and recover from a damage spike.

You could, by the late twenties, have picked up Boxing, Tough and Weave. Boxing is meh. Tough will mitigate a steady 17-ish percent(fully slotted) of s/l damage and weave will net you about 7% damage mitigation in the form of defense to all positions when slotted out. Aid Self gives you just over two hundred hit points back (again, slotted for heal) after a four second cast time.

By contrast, Burn gives you a brief and very quick 100% melee mitigation that lasts just long enough for you to hit a couple of inspirations, Healing Flames, or - for that matter - Aid Self.

Moreover, it does it with just one slot, whereas the others I mentioned had to be fully slotted just to get those numbers. Furthermore, if you do start stacking defense bonuses to go with Weave, then you'll need to have your powers fully slotted to get those bonuses, something not possible until you've already respecc'ed into your end game build anyway.

See, though - that's what I"m talking about. Before it was an offensive power that snuck over into a mitigation powerset. Unlike Blazing Aura, which doubles as a taunt aura for tankers and as damage-based mitigation on Scrappers, it outdamaged most offensive attacks. Damage-based mitigation usually comes in small amounts. When it does come in more, it comes with an equivalent cost.

It didn't, before, and this IMHO has led to the misconception that it should be used offensively. It can be used offensively, but its primary function is mitigation, and I would still contend that it is a very effective mitigation tool despite its shortcomings. Its decrease in usefulness was mainly to its offensive uses.

Umbral pretty much nailed that one on the head, but I'll expand a bit on when you could use intimidate and/or Touch of Fear.

One of the best uses I found for intimidate on a DM/ scrapper is as a teammate's panic button. I team mostly with my wife, and when I was on my DM/Regen she was on her Emp/Elec Defender. Needless to say, there were times when she'd shout across the couch that she needed help.

I found it very handy to select her name in the team window, hit intimidate or provoke, and go back to killing. The mob attacking her would cower in fear just long enough to permit her to make an escape and for its aggro target to switch.

Touch of Fear is best used on annoying mobs like mezzers and sappers. Especially sappers. You can use it on a boss if you like, but it'll only bring your dps down.

However, ToF also carries a hefty 12% (unenhanced) ToHit debuff that lasts an obscene amount of time. If you're ever in trouble from a boss, elite boss, or some other single target, it is possible to temporarily insert ToF into your attack chain to almost floor their chances of hitting you, giving your regen enough time to recover from a damage spike.

Coordinating them with IP so that they stack in the way you described, while fun, isn't the best way to deal with a spawn. Let your friendly neighborhood Mind or Illusion Controller fear the spawn. All you're interested in doing with powers like that is breaking their rhythm.


Glimpse of the Abyss used to be expensive at one time. What's really expensive about it, though, is its salvage costs (unless you happen to have a couple mu vestements or soul trapped gems lying around). You could get around this by going down about ten levels on the more expensive ones, or you could always slot Unspeakable Terror, which gives a slightly smaller recharge bonus.

As far as getting the most out of your powers, I honestly think that with the exception of Siphon Life, you'll be just fine slotting generic IO's and whatever appealing recipes drop.

Speaking of Siphon Life, there was a discussion here not too long ago that covered the best ways to slot it. It's still around, but if your search fu is weak I did summarize it in my guide (with full credit to the posters, of course).

I beg to differ. Burn may not be all that and a bag of chips, and you're right to say it's not optimal for an end-game build, but the average player can't afford the kind of recharge and defense you're talking about until much later in the character's life, and until then burn is pretty handy to have as a damage mitigator for those times when Healing Flames isn't quite up yet and Siphon life didn't quite heal you for enough. The fact that it also does damage is something I consider a bonus.

Admittedly it's not something you'll need for an eight person team, but it's saved my life many times solo and on small teams.

And yes, Midnight Grasp+Burn does take down a boss rather quickly. And if it scatters the minions while you're doing that, so what? They're not attacking you, I'm pretty sure you'd want to hit Soul Drain before attacking the boss, so scatter's not an issue there. Besides, the minions will be more than happy to regather around you after the burn patch has dissipated.

Hell, early on before I had MG I actually used it for immobilize protection and took air superiority instead of combat jumping to flip the boss before dropping burn.

But there's a reason it's in your secondary. Trying to shoehorn it into a consistent offensive tool is why so many players hate it. Use it for the mitigation that it is, and consider the damage something that gives it flexibility, and the power is fine. Situational? Sure. Skippable? Yup. But not worthy of contempt by any stretch.

No no no - I meant the NPC khelds - you know: the dwarf/nova bosses you run into on the first couple of missions. The numbers/names helped me distinguish those from shifted players.

Didn't mean to imply that human form (non-shifted) Khelds were somehow not playing or contributing.

Not at all!

I actually liked the names/numbers over their heads; it helped me distinguish form-shifted player khelds from non-player khelds.

And I'm gonna need a few more Thursday Nights before I can even be ready for that!

I want to address something here, because I've been called down for this before (I believe the exact words were "Dude ur a scrapper build for dmg").

The person who wrote the guide Neg_Rogue was talking about here:

...was me. Those were my words, and Neg_Rogue I believe I've done you a bit of a disservice. When that guide was first written several issues ago, it was before the buffs to Dark Melee, and the set really was considered either a buzz-saw or a utility set. Not so much any more, but moreover I really need to address what I mean by utility in relation to a scrapper. And yes, I'll have to go back and clarify that in the guide. And unscramble and possibly update the builds. When I get some time.

All too often in the scrapper forums we like to talk (or in my case - read) about maxed-out, AV-killing end-game builds, and I think this leads to the impression that this is the only way to build a scrapper. Now don't misunderstand me: it's the only way to build a scrapper who can solo Archvillains, but soloing Archvillains is not the kind of help Neg_Rogue was asking for (and it's also not the kind of help my guide was meant to give).

Bearing that in mind, using the presence pool - or any "controllery" powers on a scrapper is not so much a means of making a scrapper into a pseudo controller, but as a "controllery" means of doing more damage. Some folks might be surprised to hear me say that a scrapper should focus on doing damage, but there it is.

There is, however, more than one way to be efficient at it. Combat in this game has a rhythm. It begins when a team of players (or a solo player) chooses a target and fires off that alpha strike. The individual ai's of the spawn respond by choosing their targets and doing the same. Players choose targets based on specific criteria, and mobs choose targets based on a programming formula incorporating the most recent damage done to them, taunt effects, threat level, etc.

From there it's a recharge/target/fire rhythm. A player's power will start recharging, he/she will select a target - whether the same one or a new one - and fire off another power. Same with the ai. This is the rhythm I'm talking about. From here it would be more or less mathematics that determines the outcome, except that there are also added elements that disrupt that rhythm. If your rhythm is disrupted enough, your damage output slows, and the mathematics work against you.

Now if you're rich and/or very experienced, you build for IO's that give speed and recharge, with a few damage bonuses thrown in with the hope that you can weigh the math so heavily in your favor that it won't matter if your rhythm gets interrupted. Throw in some defense bonuses and you're covered from even that.

If you - like me - are an average to slightly-above-average player, you don't have the influence to buy the expensive sets needed to accomplish the above. That's where utility comes in. By bringing more utility into your build in the forms of what few controls a scrapper can get, you're not looking to control the spawn or even the individual mob - you're looking to break their rhythm while at the same time preserving your own.

In the invoke panic example, the way it works is this: You jump into a spawn and hit Invoke Panic, and it fears roughly half to two-thirds of the minions. What you've just done is given up the small advantage of the first burst of damage in return for putting that initial burst off and cutting their responding damage by about a third (considering the bosses and lt's won't be feared and do more damage). This means that while those minions are feared you're heavily outweighing your opponents in the damage equation. If you can keep the spawn off balance by repeatedly interrupting their rhythm, you can virtually guarantee victory.

To a point.There's a fine line between using control to enable you to deal damage more effectively and giving up your position as a damage dealer for the sake of a couple of semi-fancy tricks repeated ad-nauseum in every spawn. Never forget your primary role as a damage dealer. While I'm sure no one creates a scrapper with that in mind - and no one in this thread has said anything resembling that - I feel like it needs to be emphasized because it's easy to slip into that habit without even knowing it.

The best rhythm-breaking powers scrappers get are passive, like Cloak of Fear. Turn it on, leave it on, let it do its thing. Click powers like Invoke panic, Intimidate, Provoke, Confront, and any of the holds/immobs in the epics have more of a learning curve, and knowing when and how often to use them is key.

But please don't anyone read my guide - or anything I post, for that matter - and think you can make your scrapper into a mini-controller by sacrificing damage, speed or defense for a few tricks. They're useful tricks, if used properly, but in the end you're still a damage dealer.

Bearing all of that in mind, Neg_Rogue, I'll have a look at your build in depth (if someone hasn't done so already while I"ve been typing this) but off the top of my head please don't frankenslot Invoke Panic. Put five Glimpse of the Abyss in there for the recharge bonus and call it a day. And don't bother slotting the other two at all. I'll look at the rest shortly.

I've always rather liked the Presence Pool, and took it on my DM/Regen and used it all the way to 50. Something just feels "scrappery" about using Intimidate to bellow your presence to your foe before you take him down, and Invoke Panic's animation just screams badass.

Having said that, notice I talked about the animations there and not the performance? Yeah - see what Umbral said about the presence pool and scrappers. If you take it for the fun of it then have a blast - it's a very fun pool to use. Don't expect a stellar performance. I wouldn't slot the first two powers in it at all, and I would at least slot two lv 50 Generic Accuracy IO's in Invoke Panic, or you might as well rename it to Throw Tantrum, because it'll miss nearly everyone in the spawn.

Even slotted for accuracy it'll only get about two-thirds of the spawn cowering, but man is it fun to do! It's very good for getting the li'l suckers to stand in place for multiple soul drains, if for nothing else.

Eventually, though, you'll look at your lv 50 DM/Regen and think "I wonder what else I can do with this one?" And then you'll respec out of the presence pool for something that will actualy improve your scrapper's performance. I did.

Until then, have a blast with it.

Fair enough. I had forgotten about the 45%, and since Socorro was talking about his human form PB I was thinking Light Form instead of Eclipse. Good points.

But since you brought up Warshades you might also remember that with just SO slotting and hasten it's nothing to have two extracted essences out perma, so the difference in time that it takes to wipe out a spawn nova vs. human is the difference of two seconds (quazar excluded), and if you're not already eclipsed you're also looking at two seconds nova animation time.

So while Nova will certainly give you more damage, the case can be made that it's a bit of overkill, at least on a Warshade.

Yeah. I left at the start of that mission to free up a sidekick slot. Tbh, I'm looking forward to supersidekicking more than anything else in I16. If not for the dearth of mentors you'd have had five screaming khelds backing you up, and things would have gone differently.

Controllers were a major learning curve for me, but I totally see what you mean. Mindbender Jones (Mind/Kin) is at 39, and I'm amazed at how laid back he is. I'm hoping some of that will bleed over into my Kheldian playstyle, but the Fyst in me keeps rearing its eye-patched, cigar-smoking head.

I'll look forward to seeing that in action! I personally have given up on purples. I played my fifties for several months almost exclusively and got ONE purple sleep recipe. Got like all of four million for it. And when it was all said and done I had made just enough influence from drops and defeats to....

....about halfway afford ONE purple melee recipe. Nope! Not worth it to me.

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I was actually thinking about getting rid of Dawn Strike because I dislike powers that come with a crash, and I couldn't afford any more slots for Dawn Strike, at least not right now.

I actually don't mind the crash in dawn strike quite as much. I always make sure to keep a blue handy - in fact it's as second nature to me now as hitting build up beforehand. Pop the blue, go to dwarf and let the performance shifter proc and the slower power recharge do its magic.

The Light Form crash, however, is the one I hate, and I don't blame you for not taking it. Like I said, I'm currently in love with the capped resistance it gives me, and I'm probably one of the few who actually like its graphics (one of the reasons I chose a PB first when I first dinged 50), but I could do with a little bit longer notice on the crash. Eh, that's just me seeing how far I can push the limit, but it seems like I only see its icon in the buff bar blink twice before I'm faceplanting. Over lunch I was munching on some Nemesis and jumped - even though I knew I'd been in light form for a looong time, so it's totally my fault - down onto a spawn of a Captain and a Hussar. IS'd the Hussar, saw the Light Form icon blink, ran off. The Captain fired after me while I was still in light form, and the shot followed me around the corner, where it insta-killed me. TOTALLY my own stupidity, but I KNOW I checked that buff bar before jumping in. Just five seconds. That's all I had. Oh well.

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The 2nd build has it, but it's totally empty at the moment without any enhancements. It may stay empty, because quite frankly, Ascendantia seems good enough as she is.

I agree. From what I've seen of your style, not only is light form not necessary, but IMHO it would actually take away from what you love about the archetype. My advice is to drop it and forget about it.

Whereas I'll probably keep it. I came from scrapper/tank roots, and so can't resist the direct, in-yo'-face fighting style it enables.

That, and I can't dance.

Really all you have to ask, Socorro, is this: If a Tri-Form really is head and shoulders above a human form build, then why did Castle feel that the simple addition of mez protection to human form completely obviate dwarf form?

If human form alone is powerful enough to do that to dwarf form, and Nova offers - at best - two single target attacks and two aoes at a higher damage scale (and lowered survivability) then human form builds are plenty powerful in and of themselves.

Here you go!

That was me -at least, the first time it was. Cybill wanted some playtime, too, so I had to take a back seat later on.

Zute's a pacifist.

The build is yummy. And surprisingly affordable. Only one slot to Dawn strike, though? And not taking Light Form is... playing perfectly to your playstyle. I'm still in a torrid affair with it, though. Even though she does leave me crashed and spent way sooner than I'd like.

If I had to condense the whole Tri-Form Khelds vs. Human Form Kheld dilema into one sentence it would be this:

Tri-Form Kheldians are harder to learn than Human Form Kheldians, but easier to master.

New Kheld drivers who begin with tri-form builds not only have to cope with learning new powers and being slot-starved right out of the gate, they have the added burden of learning what the forms do and all the tray-swapping, key-binding, macros and damage modifiers that go with them. They have to figure out which human form powers do best under which circumstances, when optimal times to shift form are, which forms to switch to under which situations, and which of the eighteen powers (by level 20) they have that are screaming for slots to put the two that they just got. It can be quite intimidating.

And I think that's why many new kheldians turn to human only builds - only to get discouraged by the lack of damage, mez protection and overall survivability in the early levels and end up either abandoning their kheld altogether or powerlevelling.

But here's the thing: if you can get to a decent level - however you do it - you can swap to a human only build and operate in relative security while you learn what the powers do without the added stress of swapping forms. I think everyone reading these forums would admit to at least some degree of disorientation when they were first getting their tentacles under them every time they switched forms and trays, and especially so when they dropped back to human form.

I died over and over when I first was levelling my warshade (and again after taking a several month-long real world break from CoH) by dropping form in the middle of battle and forgetting where the Stygian Circle button was! Devoting my second build to a human only build as an experiment was a surprising release from what had become shapeshifting anxiety, and I found myself actually doing better in human form than I had on my triform.

Now that demonstrates nothing but a lack of skill on my part - I'll freely admit that. But that's not the point. The point is that at time I had a choice: do I continue along this road or do I use what I've learned and go back to tri-form and get my issues with that worked out next. Yeah. I chose option C: Jump over on my Peacebringer and kick some tail for a while.

BUT had I chosen to stick with human form I would have only improved, learning new tricks and strategies that would never have occured to me on a tri-form Warshade. I would have done...... almost as well as I could have done had I chosen to go back to my tri-form build.

You see, eventually the persistent mez and heavy resists in the late game (Tempyst is only 38) would have eroded my new-found competence with human form and given me problems I'd not have seen on a tri-form build.

People can and do overcome that, but it takes alot more work than it does on a tri-form. Thus I say it's harder to master a human form build than it is a tri-form build.

Tri-form may have a steeper learning curve, but once you've got it, you've got it (provided you don't take breaks and forget, like me). And I think what Obsidian has been saying is that if someone wants to feel as though they're doing well with their kheldian, then tri-form is the easiest way to get there.

As far as the debate goes, I actually agree with both of you on different points. Yes, tri-form is - once you get help with the binds and shifting - the easiest to level and excel with, and it's notable that you're not denying that. Conversely, Human-form is also a very valid playing style that can be every bit as fun and rewarding.

What we could do with here, if you'll allow me to be frank, is Obsidian mashing your buttons a little less and you letting your buttons be mashed a little less. But, vitriol notwithstanding, I think it's overall been a useful and informative debate.

Now I routinely play triform builds, so I get where you're coming from, Obsidian. And before I start let me just say that I have nothing but respect for both you and Alien. But I have to ask this question: Who cares if a triform build is better on paper than a human only build? You'll freely acknowlege that skilled players will - on average - consistently outperform poor players regardless of the build, and I understand that the math comes out heavily in favor of triform builds outdamaging human only builds on players of equal skill, but - since I rarely see two players of equal skill in game (thursday nights on Infinity excepted, of course) - I'm not sure why that point is relevant in practice.

Or maybe you maintain that most kheld drivers in-game have similar levels of skill?

So are you saying that triform builds will lead to better players because they're easier overall to play well, are you saying that a triform build will so heavily outweigh the human form build in damage and survivability that it can somewhat compensate for a player's lack of skill, or are you just saying that one is better than the other on paper, and so a purist kheld player should always strive for the ideal?

Now please don't misunderstand me, here. I'm not calling you out, and I have no agenda one way or the other. But somewhere in the whole multi-thread debate you two have been waging I'm afraid I've lost the rationale for the point you're trying to make. That might not speak volumes about my reading comprehension, but there it is.

I get the point, I just don't understand the why.