Smiling_Joe

No. The numbers I gave assumed a single burst of damage from once through on the attack chain, with Photon Seekers and Dawn Strike at the end. I went ahead and extrapolated for extended chains, but got lazy.

They DO, however, take the form change for inner light duration, since this is cast at the beginning.

See? See? It's this kind of thinking that got us nothing more than the current changes to light form, inner light and photon seekers for fear of overpowering us on IO builds that have the ability to make them perma. Warshades are balanced around SO's. Do not limit Peacebringers to IO builds simply because you're a power player with a crapton of influence.

See my remark above. The kind of recharge you're talking about is only available with heavily IO'd builds. IO's can pretty much make human form whatever in the hell you want it to be. IO's can turn defenders into tankers and blasters into scrappers.

The builds you're using are end-game builds that only see use after 80% of the character's life is in the past. Until you get to that point (and for those few of us who do get to that point), Nova edges out Human in AoE.


I'm assuming you used arcanatime in your calculations?

Kheldian Pets get their own special section on Red Tomax.

Photon Seekers will contribute 177.84 damage apiece when they explode, for a total of around 534 assuming they all explode.

So that's 2.244 seconds added to the chain (for arcanatime) and 534 damage. So that totals out to 1136.3/11.084=102.51 for human. Photon Seekers will be up about every 6th chain.

So [1136.3+(602.3*5)]/55.28=3011.5/55.28=54.47 final dps for human.

For nova, let's assume that you drop photon seekers at the end of the first chain, followed by shifting back into form for a total of 4.488 seconds of doing no damage. You're looking at 935.3/11.088=84.35 for one burst. Photon Seekers will be up every seven cycles of the attack chain.

SO [935.3+(401.3*6)/50.688=3,343/50.688=65.95 final dps for nova.

Huh. So the animation for Photon Seekers actually holds human's damage back in those equations.

BUT there's a disclaimer. Okay there's two disclaimers. First, my math might be wrong. I hate math. Second, it assumes that Nova is in melee range and therefore able to convince all seekers to actually explode. If you're using nova to range, You'll likely be S.O.L. for the full damage potential.


Discussions like these are exactly why I'd advocate taking the 45% damage buff away from nova and replacing it with a 45% increase to the base damage of Nova's attacks.

Nove is SUPPOSED to be the damage dealing form. It currently isn't doing its job.

An SO'd Black Dwarf with an attack chain of mire-strike-smite-drain-strike-smite will do (with sunless mire weighted in) 1,059 points of damage to those same three rwz dummies I used above for 114 AOE dps.

An SO'd White Dwarf with an attack chain of flare-strike-smite-strike-smite-strike (pauses excluded) will do (with inner light factored in) 942 points of damage for 92 AOE dps.

So not even close.

Nitpick: The Peacebringer's top AoE form is Nova, provided you drop to human form to unleash photon seekers occasionally.

With an attack chain of bolt-blast-scatter-bolt-blast-detonation, an SO'd Nova's AOE damage output, given slotted attacks and weighted for build up is
1,660 points of total damage per attack chain cycle against an average of three targets (let's use the rwz dummies in this example). If you were to translate that to total dps it would be 148 AOE dps. (I distinguish AOE dps here because calculating dps against multiple targets is a bit oversimplified when aoe and single target attacks are taken into account)

That same build's human form attack chain of IS-RS-GEye-GBlast-Flare-RS GEye-GBlast yields 1,906 points of damage for a higher burst but a lower AOE dps of 122.

Throw in Photon Seekers/Dawn Strike at the end and you're looking at 1,056 extra points of burst damage for each, provided the nova drops to human. Used over time, those two attacks add around 50 dps to the overall score (Assuming Dawn Strike's crash is mitigated with CS or blues).

So human form will always have 50 dps added for a total of 172 AOE dps, and Nova form has to close to melee range and drop to human every time DS and Seekers are recharged to get the same boost to 198 AOE dps.

Now the argument could be made that DS and Seekers are human form attacks, and shouldn't count when comparing human to nova damage, but then I'd have to point out that - like the mf'ing warshade - a triform peacebringer is properly played as ALL FORMS AT ONCE. What's good for the WS is good for the PB.

The problem with those idiotic bonuses is that human can hard cap resistance already, Nova can already cap its damage on teams and - on Peacebringers - Dwarf+essence boost ALREADY caps health.

It was just an example. Perhaps I should have said "downing rikti drones, runners and that teleporting coward Col. Durray."

And my teams tend to be filled with damage dealers. My 62 YO mother is quite bloodthirsty.

A global recharge bonus awarded by Dwarf form would also benefit human form powers (such as Light Form and Inner Light). Simply reducing the recharge in the dwarf powers as you suggest would not only possibly require rebalancing them (as I suspect the recharge/end/damage may well be codependent - then again it might not be) but more importantly would be such a minor boost that it's not worth asking for. A couple luck of the gamblers would give me the same boost we'd likely get in straight up recharge reduction.

I'd take the former any day.

No, Smiling Joe is being absolutely and utterly silly. Don't pay any attention to remarks like that whatsoever.

Again - Inky Aspect and Gravitic Emanation are controlling the spawn, not attracting aggro. The difference is that when those minions wake up (IF they wake up) they will still be aggro'd according to the same rules everyone but tankers, dwarves and brutes follow.

Provided, of course, they are still alive. You see, having said the above I will freely and quite happily concede that provoke gives human form JUST ENOUGH aggro control to XXXXX XXX XXXXXXX XXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XX XXXXXXXXX! XX XXXXXX XXX XXXXX.

Hmmm. For some reason every time I try to come right out and give specifics on how awesome warshades can be it posts as if it's some sort of CIA redacted document. It's almost as if my subconscious doesn't want me to put specifics like that where developer eyes can see them.

Let me just say this: Human form can do some awesome things that can protect teams and defeat spawns, but it does them through a mix of control, damage, and - if you invest in provoke - minor tanking.

Tanking is a role that can be played by multiple archetypes, including the human-form kheldian, but it is performed best with layers of aggro attracting effects, or taunt. Human form doesn't have that.


Oppressive Gloom and Cloak of Fear each carry a taunt effect in addition to their mez effect. A warshade's mez toggles and attacks do not.

So what? you say. Well, if someone - say a Peacebringer - knocks those mobs out of a warshade's mez radius, they're going to come out of the mez and attack the one that did the knocking back. You could get some - or maybe all - of that aggro back, but odds are good that one or more would land a hit or two (or four) on your team before you did.

Someone knocks mobs out of Dechs' aggro radius - odds are better than average that those mobs are still taunted to his tanker.



I'll dig up the horse. You get the nine iron.

Order™ builds?

As I said, how well dwarf does at tanking is a matter of some debate. One thing I would point out, however, is that your human form doesn't have punch-voke in any of his attacks.

Having said that, however, higher damage has a bad habit of trumping basic taunt effects in this game. But again - that's a separate debate relating to the fundamentals of how aggro works, and not one I'm qualified to enter. But the problem of high damage stripping aggro off of pure taunt effect isn't necessarily with dwarf so much as it is with the aggro formula.

There's more to the tanker role than tanking AV's, so I don't think your experiments are complete. In fact, I'm not terribly impressed that you'd be able to pull an AV - Boss class mobs and above tend to respond much more to damage than taunt, whereas the lt's and minions seem much more attracted to taunt and gauntlet. I'd be MUCH more interested to hear if you could pull more than a third of a spawn of lt's, minions and bosses off of his dwarf.

I'm not saying dwarf is a GREAT tank, or even a better tank than human form. I'm just saying you haven't collected enough data yet.

No, that makes you a superior controller. Mezzing the spawn is controlling the aggro, not focusing it on you. Otherwise you might just as well say that Nova is a much better tank because it shortens the aggro by killing mobs. Hell, by that definition an electric defender is a better tank because it can sap an entire room of their end.

Here's your cake. I'll keep the fork.



I feel your pain. I have the same problem on a number of characters, because let's face it - sometimes the APP's or PPP's ain't all they're cracked up to be, either.

EDIT - and there always seems to be an edit with me. If I recall correctly we can go villain and do the patron arcs, but even if we do we don't get access to those power pools. Given that SoA's can, THAT is something we ought to be jumping up and down about.

You activate attacks to deal damage and in so doing you influence the outcome of the battle. Taunt doesn't deal damage (unless you proc it), but it still influences the outcome of the battle by influencing your opponents to move where you want them to be, whether it's in a tighter group for a mire or flare or further away from another spawn. Either way taunt plays just as big a role in your impending victory as your attacks.

A controller might not deal any damage with radiation infection, or a defender might not deal damage with tar pit, but you would still credit them just as much as the scrapper for the victory.

The best scrapper I ever saw took and used confront to cut individual mobs out of a room full of x8 spawns. With little hops back and forward she solo'd the room in less time than it took for the rest of the team to wipe at the entrance. Confront didn't do any damage, but it allowed her to clean the floor with her enemies.

No, taunt deserves a place in your attack chain. It might not be a good idea for it to show up every single cycle of your attacks, but its lack of damage doesn't diminish its significance, regardless of whether or not you're tanking.

And - unless I read your guide wrong - if you've got a long enough gap in your dwarf attack chain that you're standing around, you shouldn't be staying in dwarf anyway. EDIT - unless you're tanking.

And don't forget that taunt comes with a HEFTY range debuff. You want those marksmen and snipers at least close to melee range, dammit, and that range debuff don't last forever.

As always, thanks, Dechs!

I'll take the silence as a no.

Dwarf is not the damage-dealing form. It's the tanking form. The fact that it is also capable of dealing damage is only secondary to its primary role of obtaining and keeping aggro, although its effectiveness at the latter is admittedly a matter of some debate.

EDIT - it should be noted that White Dwarf is a considerably better tank than Black Dwarf, due to its flare carrying a gauntlet effect in addition to the gauntlet of the single target attacks. But there again, Black Dwarf's self heal is also an attack, and so (with proper slotting) has a complete attack chain independent of taunt.

GEEZE there's a heckler in every crowd!

You're quite right. One of the problems with being so long-winded is that I miss little mistakes like that.

I should be clearer. And more concise.

SO Builds DID benefit, but not to the extent that IO builds did. Furthermore, 30 dps only brought SO builds about a third of the way towards even approaching Warshade damage output. Bringing damage potential up from abysmal to pretty good might take 30 dps, but that doesn't make the change a great buff. Just a significant one. I did say I didn't have nearly the heartburn with SO/IO build disparity. What bothers me about it (and just a little, mind you) is that the changes for IO builds were SO GOOD that it will preclude SO players from getting futher attention, which futher devalues that 30dps in my eyes.

I should rather have said that SO builds didn't see nearly as great a benefit as IO builds.

EDIT: In all fairness, however, what dps does it take to overcome an A/V's regeneration? 120? So being able to bring 130 dps to bear is actually pretty damned good, provided you can also overcome that A/V's resistance.

EDIT EDIT: Also, keep in mind that the dps figures I used were a measure of damage potential. Looking back, I should never have used the term dps, because those spreadsheets assume that you hit powers like mire/inner light and photon seekers the arcanasecond they were recharged. They also measured performance only for the 120 seconds that Hasten was running.

They were intended to compare the two archetype builds at the peak of their power, not set any sort of metric for actual performance. Is it possible to reach 130 DPS on an SO'd peacebringer? In ideal circumstances, probably. Is it something reasonable to expect? Look for something a little bit lower.

This I can agree with. Whole-heartedly. That set is crap, and whoever designed it needs to be forced to play Peacebringers exclusively for the next year. Followed by a year on a Warshade. And no, I wouldn't consider that a punishment.

Gonna have to disagree with a large part of this.

Nova does NOT have an incomplete attack chain. Bolt-Blast-Scatter-Bolt-Blast-Detonation requires minimal recharge investment to be seamless, and even with no recharge slotting whatsoever has only minor gaps. Hasten and good slotting will let you drop Bolt from the chain.

Dwarf likewise only requires minimal recharge slotting to have a nearly complete attack chain, provided you use taunt. And if you don't want to use taunt.... well, the conversation pretty much ends there.

And it's already been demonstrated that human form does more single-target damage than nova on a Peacebringer. The human form blasts might be anemic, but IS, RS and Photon Seekers more than make up for it. And on a warshade? Who cares when hasten alone can allow you to bring out two extracted essences to double your damage.

You're far better off to use Photon Seekers first as a toe-bomb, then following up with an immediate Solar Flare or Dawn Strike. Because the animation on the second attack starts while they're still in range (albeit in the air) the extra damage will still affect them after they land, resulting in a lot of scattered corpses.

Okay, I'll see how well I can articulate.

If you're doing things you could never do before it's because you're doing them on an IO'd high level build. If you're incarnate then you're also doing things that almost every other incarnate in the game can do. And if I were a betting man - I'm not - I'd bet you're playing a mostly human form build, too. Which is not to say triform is weak by any stretch - it just seems to be the popular way to build Peacebringers lately. But like I said. I'm not a betting man, so you may well be triform or even biform.


And here's the reason - painful though it might be for me to admit it - why you're doing so well: Arbiter Hawk really buffed Peacebringers. That's right, I said it. Peacebringers have been buffed to the extent that they're almost overpowered in some circumstances.

Plugging his changes in to the same spreadsheets I used to demonstrate the power vaccum between PB's and WS's a few months back, I measured a roughly 30 dps gain on the same attack chain on the SO build. Survivability went up exponentially to the point that it is now roughly on par with Eclipse (LF gives self-contained capped resistance to all but psionics, Eclipse needs enemies to cap -or function - but offers psionic resistance and has no mez protection.)

Warshades are still doing roughly 60 dps more damage with comparable attack chains due largely to the pets, but since they have to keep those pets alive I could learn to live with it.

The one place where warshades truly outshine Peacebringers is mezzing capability, and with their need for enemies (both dead and living) to be in close proximity, it's good that they do.

So what's my problem with the changes?

Purely and solely for purposes of discussion, my problem is twofold:

First, they did more harm than good to the forms. When human form has mez protection and capped resistance on a permanent basis, there's really not much need to take dwarf, especially given that you're taking a substantial hit to your damage potential. The Inner Light changes were great, but it still (like Build Up before) gives the majority of the damage buff to human form, which - with these changes - STILL out-damages nova against hard targets. Additionally, Nova gets the extra damage in its attacks in the form of a damage buff. This not only puts it that much closer to the damage cap than human, it also makes enhancements less effective in Nova's attacks than they are in Human's.

My second problem with the changes is that Single Origin players don't really see a great deal of benefit from them at all. The changes were clearly balanced around the ability to use IO's to make Light Form Perma. That's a problem IMHO when you're offering Kheldians up for sale to free players who have no access to the IO system. That being said, I don't have nearly the heartburn with the second point as I do the first.

But like I said, I'm stating all this for purposes of the discussion. I don't mind talking about Kheldians at all. In fact, it's obvious I like these discussions. But I'm through advocating with any real expectations. They are what they are, and the community is fine with them to a large degree. They're also selling well to free players, if the number of new Khelds I'm seeing is any indication.

BUT for my two cents, if pressed I would recommend that psionic resistance be given to white dwarf and replace the 45% damage buff in Nova's toggle with a 45% increase to the base damage of Nova's attacks.

Call it a day. The situations where the current changes might be overpowered might be circumstantial, but they can't be ignored, and it's too late to do anything about it at any rate.

Knockback reduction and toggle suppression are on my list of "nice-to-haves," not something I'd require.