Vauluur

That's the thing though, forms are never going to be good if you just sit in them and expect to perform as well as a complete character. Each form is just a part of your overall performance. The point of the slotting I'm suggesting is to do something like this:

1.) Open up the fight in Nova form by firing off your two AoEs.
2.) Shift to Dwarf and close to melee using the teleport. Fire off Dwarf Flare/Dwarf Mire.
3.) Drop to Human to fire off Solar Flare/Sunless Mire and mop up.
4.) Repeat at next spawn.

Since you never use the Dwarf or Nova ST attacks with this sort of playstyle, there is no reason to slot them as anything other than set mules. If you get into trouble and see your hp start to go down, you can use any number of tools available to you. That includes shifting to Dwarf form and using Sublimation/Dwarf Drain. IMO, this is the way that a tri-form is designed to be played. All three forms are supposed to be used each fight. And if you are in Nova or Dwarf for longer than it takes to use the powers they have, something is wrong. Therefore, the single biggest buff to Kheldians would be reduced animation times for forms which are supposedly in the pipeline.

Your proposal would mean that a tri-form build would have to sacrifice either set bonuses or enhancement values in exchange for some extra slots that aren't really quite that high in demand anyway. Kheldian utility powers look seriously underslotted at first, but most of Human form's tools are fairly effective on a small number of slots. All that needs fully slotted in Human is the attacks that aren't replaced by form attacks - mostly the single target attacks and the pet. Eclipse and Light Form both only require about 4 total slots (including the default slot) to be effective. Stygian Circle and, to a lesser extent, Reform Essence are good with 1 or 2 slots. Conserve Energy is good with, again, 1 or 2 slots.

Really I think the animation times are the only thing holding tri-form back in comparison to Human only. Lack of defense is something I would consider a trade off for access to the versatility in a tri-form build.

While I agree Human form would gain more from this change than tri-forms, I won't go so far to say that tri-forms don't gain anything. The 10-15% from team members would go a long way toward augmenting set bonuses. It might not make it easy to softcap, but it would make it much easier to get the next best thing: 32.5%. I suppose it might negatively impact the early game though, so what if rather than replace the Resistance bonus it was just added to the Resistance bonus? That way each nearby Tanker, for example, would give a WS 10% Resistance and 5% Defense. That would help survival in the early game (where Khelds are noticeably squishy) and help the broader playerbase while still benefiting high end builds. I'm not sure whether or not it would be too strong a buff to the inherent though.

oreso, I really think you're thinking of the forms the wrong way. There's no reason to slot all the powers in either form. Only the ones you want to use. For Nova, slot the AoEs and use them in place of the Human AoEs. Leave the ST Nova attacks with only the default slot and don't use them. With Dwarf, use the attacks as set mules or give them the same treatment as Nova's ST blasts. The heal from White Dwarf or the mire from Black Dwarf is worth slotting and using. My PB will be slotting and using White Dwarf's PBAoE as well. The best part? White Dwarf's heal doesn't even require that many slots to be powerful as it is. With two slots (the default and one added), my build has it recharging in less than 20 seconds and healing 80+%.

After spending time yesterday to make a build for my PB I really do think that having the forms be slotted the way you are suggesting would be more of a debuff than a buff.

I have far less math to support my statement, but I'll add what I know about Brute DPS.

From everything I've heard Kinetic Melee is not very good on a Brute. I'd avoid it.

Stone Melee is certainly a contender, but it lacks a -Res debuff.

I think Street Justice, with it's debuffs and combo mechanic, would provide the highest DPS. However, I'm not really sure how the combo bonus damage works. That means I have no idea how Fury mechanically interacts with the bonus damage. IIRC that damage is not enhanceable. That being the case, I would expect it to be a flat amount of damage that is added to the attack and would bypass the occasional problem of being up against the damage cap (not terribly common, but with inspirations, Combat Readiness, and full Fury certainly possible).

I'm pretty sure Dark Melee has a surprisingly effective ST attack chain as well on high end builds but for the life of me I can't remember what it is.

Super Strength without Gloom, I expect, would need a huge amount of global recharge to be the best ST DPS. The combination of SS/Fire/Soul is insanely powerful mainly for AoE damage and can probably be surpassed in the ST department. A SJ/Fire/Soul, for example, would sacrifice some AoE damage potential for more powerful ST damage.

I don't have access to Mids atm, but assuming you use the standard choices from your powersets I have some thoughts.

Alpha: Cardiac is almost certainly the best, unless you have some issues with your recharge. I don't know much about the new ones though, one of those might be good for you as well. I'm pretty sure one of them boosts resistance as it's primary value. That might be good for /Fire but I'm not sure how much of a return you'd see from that.

Judgement: Void. Ion has a better target cap but at the rate you'll be putting out AoE damage that shouldn't matter. Void gives you -Dmg on your enemies which will stack nicely with the high resistance values of /Fire.

Destiny: You could go Barrier. The +resist part won't help much but +def sure will. It will also stack with the -ToHit from Soul's toggle if you use that. You could maybe look at Clarion or Incandescant to help the league out. I haven't seen Incandescant used much, so I'm not sure if it's really good and people don't know that yet, or if it is just too situational. Clarion would help in the escape phase of BAF and the fight against the Avatar of Hamidon since confuse effects are rarely resisted by things that aren't Clarion and usually there aren't enough Leadership toggles on the league to negate the confusion entirely. Clarion would also help you against the UG trial's Olympian Guards, which have a very high mag stun. I've seen that stun take out a lot of melee toons that got too far from the league.

Interface: I would take Spectral or Preemptive in all honesty. So many people have Reactive that some non-Reactive DoT would help out. The DoT caps at 8 applications from the same interface. Spectral has the benefit of thematically matching Void and Soul Mastery. Preemptive doesn't make a lot of thematic sense but it does have an arguably more useful secondary effect than Spectral.

Lore: Numerically, Cimeorans or Warworks are the best for single target damage. Seers have the best support pet, which might be more useful on your character anyway. Longbow have a ton of -regen from the Cataphract, and I've heard that Storm Elementals are great at AoE damage but I haven't really seen that personally so YMMV. Really, you can't go wrong with Lore pets anyway.

I would just leave the slot empty and not put them on your power tray. Though, you could put the Force Feedback proc in Kick so that you have a small chance of saving your recharge with it. Assuming that you are worried about your recharge being debuffed to the point that you won't have any other attacks up.

From what I've been seeing, a lot of threads on the boards come up with fairly complex ways to "fix" Kheldians. Particularly tri-formers. I got to thinking about it last night while I was busy not getting enough sleep, and came up with a seemingly simple answer. What if the Kheldian inherent buffed Defense instead of Resistance? This would allow tri-form builds to more reasonably acquire Defense despite lack of access to toggles and would remove the redundancy between the inherent and Light Form/Eclipse.

If I'm simply suggesting something that's come up before, then I apologize. I am fairly new to the Kheldian boards since prior to i21 I rarely played either Kheldian AT.

I know you don't want an SoA, but have you considered a human-only Peacebringer?

With the changes in i21 you could essentially be a lower damage energy/energy blaster that has mag 3 mez protection and 85% resist to all but psi with minimal investment. More expensive builds stack a healthy amount of defense on top of that, with some sitting at the softcap. You could also take the forms while leveling up for some additional options.

First of all, I would say pets are only useless on trials when you still have the low tier Interface and Destiny powers and don't have the level shifts. I don't personally have an MM at 50, but I've been on trials with a lot of successful MMs.

Second of all, don't forget that i22 is bringing the solo/small team version of Incarnate content. So even if trials don't pan out for your MM, you'll have something else to do.

I'm on my iPad atm, but I'll give what advice I can from just looking at the build summary.

First, let's talk about your set bonuses. +20% Damage might seem impressive, and is actually pretty decent. However, you don't seem to have much in the way of Defense bonuses. I'm not sure if you know about the Defense softcap, but I'll assume you do not since you said you have little experience with IOs. There are better guides elsewhere to the softcap and why it works the way it does, but what you need to know is that 45% Defense will reduce your chance of getting hit to 5%. Therefore, what you want to do is get yourself some good defense bonuses to go along with your pool power toggles. Since price isn't an issue, you should be able to softcap at least S/L and possibly E/N. Those are the most beneficial types to softcap since they will work against most attacks in the game.

You've selected some odd sets as well. You used a lot of PvP IOs which are really not needed. Replace them with the normal high level sets. The unique from Gladiator's Armor that gives +Def is useful, but that's the only PvP IO I would keep. Slot some more Kinetic Combats, put a few Luck of the Gambler +Recharge IOs in there, and add a Kismet +Accuracy (which actually buffs ToHit and is significantly more useful than a lot of people recognize).

Next, let's look at slotting. Some powers are greatly overslotted while a lot of others need some love. Weave and Shin Breaker are good examples. Weave needs some endurance reduction and could do with an extra defense IO. Shin Breaker is just slotted wrong in general. It is an attack that happens to have a debuff, not a debuff that deals damage. You should slot it as an attack. It is one of the heavy hitters in SJ. Heavy Blow is underslotted too. Make sure to keep an eye on your enhancement values. Set bonuses don't do any good if you can't use the power.

That brings me to power selection. Leaving aside the order you choose them in, you could get rid of some. Initial Strike is a good example of one you won't need. It does next to nothing and you have three other combo builders with Heavy Blow, Rib Cracker, and Shin Breaker. Therefore Initial Strike should either be a set mule and not be on your tray or just not be selected.

After you finish making changes click view totals and make sure all of your Resistance and Defense toggles are on. If your Resistance numbers aren't close to 75% and/or your S/L/E/N Defense numbers aren't all at least 32.5% you aren't done.

I hope none of this comes off as patronizing, I certainly don't mean for it to. I'm just trying to give you an idea of what changes to make while I can't actually load up Mids and show you. That's a difficult thing to do.

Fight off Rikti Invasions to get Elusive Mind, buy a Vanguard Psi Shield temp power, and/or get Eye of the Magus. Even use the Wedding Band if you have to. All of those are significantly more effective at closing the psi hole than any set bonuses will be and can be activated reactively when you start taking hits. I have all 4 options on my /Invuln but really only ever have to use EotM since it typically recharges by the next time I need it.

You may or may not know this already, but you can actually break components down into shards as well. I used Vanguard Merits for several Grai Matters when I was getting my Alpha slot abilities and broke them down into shards for crafting other components.

What has your problem been getting on Incarnate Trials? If it's your personal schedule, then i22 will be a huge benefit to you with the solo Incarnate path being created in the revamped Dark Astoria. If you haven't seen any being formed, you may need to update your global channels since the main ones might be different for your server now. You might also consider trying out another server, now that we get free transfers each month. I personally play on Guardian, and there are typically trials running every time I log on. They are easy enough to start too by broadcasting in the appropriate channels. You'll usually get at least one person who is willing to take the lead from you if you get a league formed up.

In a more general sense, I find myself wondering why you are trying to get perma Hasten on a Kat/Electric at all. I'm sure it could have some attack chain benefits, but I really don't see a need for it. With a decent amount of global recharge and Lightning Reflexes your attacks should come back pretty quick.

I would put way more emphasis on getting defense to increase your survival. Positional defense is the way to go since Divine Avalanche gives you a ton of melee defense. Set bonuses can top it off and take care of the Ranged. AoE should be your lowest priority, since enemies most often use Melee (PBAoE are flagged as Melee) or ST Ranged attacks.

Recharge isn't as useful for your build, IMO, as defense. Were I building a Kat/Electric, I probably wouldn't even have Hasten.

I wouldn't bother using Spectral for stopping runners. The immob has a fairly low chance to fire even at T4. You're probably better off just picking up Provoke from the Presence pool or Confront from your primary. Or just hitting them with a ranged power since runners are almost dead most of the time anyway.

If you want something to help tank for teams when there isn't a real tank (or when they suck) then you want the one that does -ToHit (Diamagnetic?) since that will help you and everyone else avoid getting hit. Void Judgement's -Dmg tree is also pretty useful for teaming and AV soloing. However, Vorpal's +Def tree is interesting if you don't have DDR since you could avoid cascading defense failure by kicking everything in the face. At the same time.