SpittingTrashcan

I enjoy my EM/DA. Take OG and love it - if your fury is low, you're not fighting enough guys.

A young Martial Artist hero must necessarily focus on attacks to the lower body.

I was just doing a little DPE math on Dark Blast, actually. It's a general rule of thumb that ST attacks do about .192 DS per point of endurance, and AoEs do about the same DPE against 2.5 targets. Against those measures, Dark Blast beats the average, with Gloom, Tenebrous Tentacles, and Night Fall all doing over .2 DS at the same target numbers. I think this slight bonus damage is meant to compensate for the fact that their damage is done over time rather than in a burst, which leaves enemies alive longer and gives you more opportunity to waste attacks against enemies that are already doomed by the DoTs on them.

I'm guessing one key to endurance efficiency is to let the DoTs cook instead of throwing them out continuously. Acid Mortar also offers good DoT and a nice bonus to effective DPE through -res, but only if the spawn lasts long enough to pay off the price of putting it down. The same can be said of the other traps - the faster you kill a group, the less efficient they become, since they won't be following you to the next group.

I think that once I have the cones and some reasonable levels of mitigation, I should be running against something like x3/+1 or +2, giving my slow-burn damage as long as possible to cook against lots of tough enemies.

I don't see a lot said about this combo. I'm considering rolling one, and at first glance it looks like there's some strong synergy to be had. Dark Blast has -Tohit and Traps has Defense; Traps has zones of debuff and damage, and Dark Blast has an AoE immobilize to keep enemies in them. Is there anything about this combo I've missed that is particularly notable, positive or negative?

Force Feedback has a 10% chance of activating per target.

1 target: 10% chance
3 targets: 27% chance
6 targets: 47% chance
12 targets: 72% chance

As an opener against a thick mob of enemies, it has a pretty darn good chance of activating. Not guaranteed, but worth considering.

I wouldn't put it in those terms - I think it makes some derogatory and unwarranted assumptions about the mentality of those who prefer VEATs to HEATs. But I do agree that the appropriate response to an archetype you don't enjoy playing is not to play it, rather than to ask for changes to the AT - unless you can actually demonstrate a structural problem that makes the AT objectively inferior, as was arguably the case for Doms, Stalkers, and Khelds before the recent buffs. I don't much care for the MM playstyle, for instance, but the AT is doing fine as is and doesn't need to bend to my whims. The tricky bit is drawing the line between "I don't like it" and "it has problems"; HEATs, designed as the challenge AT, are naturally going to encounter quite a bit of the former, which might mask the existence of the latter.

A while back I was making a character from the Shadow Shard and did a pretty thorough dig through the relevant lore. This is a summary of what I found:

Sometime in the 1960's, Rularuu, who eats dimensions, enters the CoX prime dimension with intent to eat it. Before he can get a proper start, he is banished by the Midnight Squad. The place they banish him to is the Shadow Shard, a "prison dimension". At this time, the Shadow Shard is not yet blown to pieces. Along with Rularuu, the Midnighters also send a number of hapless civilians to the Shadow Shard. These become the first Shard Natives. Everyone is surprisingly cool with this, possibly because the Midnighters kept it on the down-low.

(Incidentally, Sara Moore claims to be the granddaughter of two such people. She appeared to be in her late teens or early 20s in 2004, when the zone opened. The chronology for this is a little weird when you think about it.)

Rularuu divided into several aspects to administer his prison, because this is always a great plan. Most notable of these were Ruladak, the Natives' taskmaster; Faathim, who tended to their needs; and Lanaru, who was Rularuu's executioner. Both Faathim and Lanaru strayed away from Rularuu's control: Faathim created the impervious Chantry within which he was able to hide from Rularuu's will, while Lanaru created the Storm Palace and was driven insane by his servitude to Rularuu.

What happened next is somewhat ambiguous - either Faathim tried to convince Lanaru to be reasonable, or tricked him into shattering the Shadow Shard. Either way, Lanaru broke the Shadow Shard into the cloud of floating rocks it is now, and then retreated into the Storm Palace. After this, Faathim informed the Shard natives they were now free from Rularuu's control. Ruladak accused Faathim of engineering the catastrophe and attacked him. Faathim trapped Ruladak behind four magic seals, and was then in turn imprisoned within his own Chantry by a horde of Rularuu soldiers. This kind of sucked for the natives.

(Incidentally, Old Fred, encountered in the Sara Moore TF, says that these events happened "when he was just old enough to remember", but also perhaps 15 or 20 years ago. Since Old Fred appears to be in his late 60s or early 70s, something weird is going on here, too.)

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the Shard, Nemesis had discovered a way to gain entrance to the prison dimension. He used the Shard as a location for a secret base, where he prepared the deception that led to the Rikti War - which means that he has been in the Shard since well before the first Rikti invasion. Let me reemphasize: Nemesis discovered a way to enter the prison dimension of a godlike marauder who eats entire realities, and his first thought was "This will be the perfect place for me to hide a base from which I can start an interdimensional war." Let it never be forgotten: the man has giant brass balls. Possibly literally.

Fast forward to 2004:

- Portal Corporation discovers the Shadow Shard. Oddly, the Midnight Squad does not immediately send them a polite letter suggesting that they not touch that. Instead, Portal Corp consults with the UN, which puts together a scientific and military expedition into the Shadow Shard.
- Said expedition is quickly beset by weird and horrible creatures and withdraws to a shielded zone by the entrance portal and a few embattled forward bases, then asks heroes for help. Heroes respond with appropriate enthusiasm.
- Many Shard natives are evacuated to their long-lost homeland Paragon City, which they last saw lo these 40 or so years ago. Sara Moore stays behind to make sure the remaining natives get out safely and certainly not because Lt. Col. Flynn sets her heart aflutter.
- Nemesis sells Shadow Shard portal tech to Crey Corporation, because Crey wants to go to the Shard for... some... reason.
- Uuralur says "oo, new toys" and creates shadow duplicates of all of them.
- Lanaru sulks in the Storm Palace and is occasionally kicked around by heroes.
- Faathim hides in the Chantry and is occasionally harassed by CoT.
- Ruladak sulks behind his magic seals and is occasionally almost released by Nemesis generals in an astounding error of judgment, unless of course it's all a Nemesis you-know-what.
- Chularn, Kuularth, and Aloore are conspicuous in their absence.
- Darrin Wade plots to release Rularuu from his prison using knickknacks that villains steal from the Midnight Club by disguising themselves as hordes of Alistair McKnights.
- A mysterious man with a silly hairstyle warns heroes of a "Coming Storm". Many people expect Rularuu to be involved. Many more expect a Nemesis you-know-what. Very few expect the Roman Space Nazis.

As to your ideas, it's distinctly possible that the Shadow Shard did not exist before Rularuu's banishment, and may be entirely composed of Rularuu folded in on himself. Certainly its geography is strongly linked to the state of Rularuu's psyche, although whether that's because it's a reflection of his mind or because he's a powerful enough reality warper to make anyplace he's in become a reflection of his mind is not clear.

In fact, there's a lot about the Shadow Shard that's not clear. Some of the evidence seems to suggest that the Shard is thousands of years old - the stone monuments written in a mishmash of dead languages, for instance - and others suggest that the Shard is a very new creation, such as Sara Moore being a third-generation immigrant and Old Fred having actually witnessed the sundering of the world at the hands of Lanaru. I wouldn't mind seeing the Shard revitalized and made a bigger part of the game, but I think it'd need a considerable editing pass first.

Kora's an easy one though. It's a fruit that is massively nutritious, incorporating exactly the right balance of carbohydrates, proteins, and trace elements to sustain human beings. Why are they that way? Probably because Rularuu wills it - if he wants his human captives to worship and obey him, he needs them to eat to stay alive. Why are they guarded by vicious monsters? Probably because Rularuu is a jerk - he only wants those who worship and obey him to have it, and the human natives led by Sarah Moore definitely do not.

Incidentally, growing up in the Shard would do some funny things to you. For one thing, it's always day there, illuminated by immobile suns. Imagine what that would do to your perception of time, and how you'd feel about night on Primal Earth.

To reply, and also to rephrase my previous post in a much pithier version: it's meaningless to debate whether the HEATs were designed well or poorly when there's a good case to be made that they were hardly designed at all.

Here (as predicted) we go again.

As is often the case, EvilRyu has stated his case in an inflammatory and questionably factual manner. As is often the case, he has provoked a response that is likewise inflammatory and also makes some statements that I would consider questionably factual. Heat will be produced, but no light. Nothing of consequence will be determined, and all parties will walk away sore in the hindquarters.

Or we could stop pretending that Khelds are either fatally flawed or absolutely perfect, and recognize that their current design, both good and bad aspects, emerge from a simpler time when the devs had not the faintest clue what they were doing. VEATs are what they are by design; Khelds are what they are largely by accident.

You can even see the tool marks of design processes from a simpler time if you look closely.
Soft AoE mez with recharge in accordance with a pre-nerf Troller? Check!
Stackable pets with fixed lifetimes on enhanceable summon timers? Check!
Attacks with DPAs all over the map, as if the people who made them had no idea that DPA was important? Check!
Chance of knockback being treated as if it were a useful effect? Check!
Several powers that seem designed around the particular pairings of enhancement that HOs provide? Check!
An inherent that rewards joining teams, but provides no incentive (and several disincentives, however mild one might claim them to be) for anyone to invite you? Check!

HEATs are the product of Emmert's throw-in-whatever's-cool design philosophy just as surely as VEATs are the product of Posi/Castle/BAB's more deliberate, knowledgeable, and analytical approach. Which one you prefer will probably depend most on how much you like puzzles - but HEATs can't be considered a well designed puzzle because they were barely designed at all, and to the extent that they were, their current usage bears only the barest resemblance to the intended one.

Here we go again.

If I had freedom to fiddle with the HEATs, there are a few design decisions I would definitely reconsider. The first form unlocking at 6, the second unlocking at 20, and other key powers coming available relatively late makes the low level HEAT experience rather unrepresentative of the set's potential. As often as the complaint is made that the level 24 branching on the VEATs basically requires you to level a character entirely unlike what you will eventually become, I would say from my experience on my warshade that at several levels (notably 6, 20, 32, and 38) the powers that became available so thoroughly changed the potential of the character that a respec would have been welcome.

Once you get Nova, whatever human form attack powers you picked up and perhaps slotted to get you through the first 5 levels are obviated, and those slots would be better put into the Nova attacks. Then, once Dwarf form becomes available and mez starts to become common, a Dwarf focused build becomes attractive. Then Stygian Circle makes you regret picking up Fitness, and then Gravitic Emanation makes you regret dropping Nova as you now have an AoE mez to disable enemies before blasting them. Then you get Dark Extraction, and Dwarf-tanking with fluffies in tow starts looking hot again. But at 38, you get Eclipse, and tada, human or nova form becomes as tough as Dwarf (aside from the mez issue, of course).

Obviously this is an entertaining progression to some people, but the point is that while there's certainly a fair amount of build flexibility in a Warshade who has access to all their powers, that flexibility is not at all in evidence at the start, and the radical shifts in the AT's capability through the levels can be very confusing to anyone who has experience with any of the other ATs, whose sets tend to be directed along the same line from first to last tier. There's diversity, sure, but the first few powers in most sets tend to set the tone of what the character will be doing for their entire career, and are generally useful all the way to 50. Even VEATs with their level 24 branching tend to keep several key powers from their primary and secondary, or equivalent powers in their branched forms. After several key levels, however, a Warshade can happily discard the powers that have been key to their play up to that point, and continue on using powers that were completely irrelevant until that point.

I don't know how it goes for Peacebringers as I haven't played one to the level where I can speak on the point, but my experience with a Warshade made me glad that I had a pile of vet respecs to burn on rebuilding the character with each successive change, and I'm not done yet. This wouldn't be a design problem at all if the game were more generous with respecs, but the way they are awarded is consistent with the idea that they should be needed perhaps once or twice in a character's progression to 50, mainly to fix egregious mistakes. The position that Warshade power progression puts players into is whether they want to 1) use respecs, 2) have a build that looks like an egregious mistake until they get the key power that makes it work, or 3) have a build that looks like an egregious mistake after they get the key power that obviates everything that comes before it.

Of course, there is no obvious solution to this problem. The enormously effective, game-changing powers sprinkled through the Warshade sets are padded out with a wide variety of other powers which can be described as anything from situational to just plain sub-par, and frontloading the strong powers would result in a bizarre and unworkable power progression. Putting Nova and Dwarf as level 1 picks would not go amiss since the forms are so key to the overall AT strategy; allowing a respec into one or more form powers at 24 would let you rebuild your human form power selections around your form choice, although it's really not possible to evaluate the effectiveness of human form as a whole until the game changing powers at 26, 32, and 38 become available.

Now I'm just going on and on, though. TLDR: Warshades change a lot as they level, and their build flexibility isn't revealed until all their powers become available, before which building toward certain goals doesn't result in a functional character.