Vauluur

Taking a detailed look at it, I think forms are pretty effective as they are. They only have two major problems: animation time and detoggling.

The Nova forms are essentially identical and both have the same reason to take them: higher AoE damage. Currently, many people choose to skip them since the gain is fairly small and requires you to either avoid defensive toggles or turn them back on every time you shift. This is seen as too great a price for using the form. Thus, the jury is out on whether or not to take Nova.

The Dwarf forms function somewhat differently, and are taken for different reasons:

Black Dwarf form is still used by a lot of players because it allows for stacking Sunless Mire and Black Dwarf Mire. This gives Warshades a substantial boost to offensive power. While the form does feature a heal in Black Dwarf Drain and a taunt, those are not the main attractions since most Warshades aren't KBing mobs all over the place and have Stygian Circle for all their healing needs.

White Dwarf form has been called obsolete in light (see what I did there?) of the recent changes to Peacebringers. However, there are still reasons to take and use the form. The biggest reason is White Dwarf Sublimation. That power is an enormous self heal that has an obvious use. It does, however, require some planning to use effectively in combat since you have to shift to trigger it. White Dwarf offers two additional benefits in the form of a taunt (which allows you to gather mobs back together if you goof on reigning in your KB) and White Dwarf Flare - a lower damage Solar Flare that does KD instead of KB. That makes it very useful when PBAoE KB would be a bad idea and as a 1-2 punch with Solar Flare since Dwarf Flare won't knock foes out of Solar Flare's radius.

I think that a lot of people think of forms the wrong way. The usefulness of the forms isn't to sit in one and be a fake blaster or a crappy tanker. It's to leverage the additional powers they give you to create additional offensive or defensive strength. That's what everything I posted above attempts to say.

So what changes need to be made to buff forms? The animation times need to be drastically reduced. I don't understand why they are so long. That alone would make me happy. However, to make Tri-Forms exist on a level similar to Human-only builds toggle suppression must be introduced into the forms. That way, you could leave defense toggles like Weave and Maneuvers running (for free and at no effect) while you were shapeshifted and would not have to turn them back on when you returned to Human form. IIRC, the animation times at the very least have already been cited as a problem by the devs. They wanted to fix them in the i21 changes but had no time for the new animations. I can't claim to know when the shifting animations will be reduced or what led the devs to reduce them, but I would wager it will happen "Soon" and will be for the reasons I've outlined here.

To say that Nova and Dwarf are obsolete with perma-Light Form is an understandable, but I believe incorrect statement. To say they offer marginal mechanical benefit, especially with Dwarf, would be accurate. However, used effectively both forms still offer benefits worth consideration. While it is not feasible to softcap a post 50 Tri-Form build because of toggles being more or less useless, defense is just one survival tool. With Dwarf form, you get a self heal that with only minimal slotting provides a heal in excess of 80%. Dwarf also brings a taunt to gather back foes that your powers sometimes scatter and a version of Solar Flare that trades slightly lower damage for having knockdown rather than knockback. Nova has higher AoE damage than human form, which can be leveraged as an opener against enemy spawns. The long form animations don't come into play with a Nova opener, and can be mitigated with careful planning for the Dwarf uses. With the recent changes, an MFing Peacebringer could theoretically be created that is somewhat less powerful than an MFing Warshade against large numbers of enemies but maintains the same level of power against any number of opponents, including a single hard target like an AV. This was not feasible before since Light Form was not nearly as similar to Eclipse.

Is that type of build optimal? No. But neither are the vast majority of builds in use on the live servers. It would certainly be cheaper than the optimized human only builds that have dominated the boards since the changes took place. It also meshes more closely with what many people first expect a Peacebringer to be when they play it for the first time - a weaker but more stable Warshade.

I really think the benefits the changes brought to Tri-Form builds have been very much understated so far. Of course, there is some merit to what you are trying to do with this thread - but it is the same for any build on any AT. The goals of an exemplar build would always be better suited by an alternate build as the incarnate abilities available at level 50 have exaggerated the gap that already existed (and is intended to exist) between power functionality and performance in the early and late game.

Well, if we want more slots we will have to wait. As others have said, adding more slots in any way currently breaks the game. We know that because the devs were going to give everyone 3 additional enhancement slots during the level up process recently, but discovered in testing that it caused a variety of issues - presumably of the "wow, what was Cryptic trying to do here" sort that has prevented other changes (like fixing bases).

The idea of changing the forms to be slotted like pet powers is something I have a split opinion on. It would certainly be a powerful change for both Kheldian ATs, but it almost reverses the overall issue. By removing the oppurtunities the form powers give to slot set bonuses, it almost invalidates playing a human only Kheld. That's not good. I want to see Kheldians be effective no matter how someone chooses to play them. That means there should be a reason to avoid the forms as well as a reason to take them. The problem right now is that there are 2 reasons to avoid using them (less slot crunch, human is more effective) and only 1 reason to use them (being on SOs or lower than level 50).

Well, that depends largely on what you do with your Crab. If you are a non-melee AoE death machine type of Crab then you'll be fine with no Serum. If you like to be in melee, you're better off keeping it. It's also worth noting that you can theoretically replace it functionally with a Rebirth Destiny power in the end game. For a non-incarnate replacement power you could get Aid Self. You'd need to squeeze one of the prereqs in though, and Aid Self is just a heal with no +HP component.

I don't really think it'll be too bad not having it in any case though, you'll just need more green inspirations on average than you would while having Serum.

I think you may be confusing the general complaints of non melee ATs that there have been 3 new melee sets since Freedom launched (Street Justice, Titan Weapons, Staff Fighting) with there being 3 new sets coming in i22.

Titan Weapons has a confirmed December 6th release.

Staff Fighting, from my understanding, is tied to i22. However, that may not be true in the least bit as it is - again - just my understanding.

I'm not sure, but I think trying to fight spawns that large on a KM/? would take a pretty long time compared to other sets. That could be part of your problem. Fighting large spawns is not the only measure of strength in that game. That said, with the resistances from Electric and the -Dmg from KM a moderate level of defense should be enough to survive a +0/x8 spawn. IIRC, 32% would allow you to softcap using a small purple. I didn't load up your build, but it should have at least that much S/L defense. I doubt you'll have a problem.

Well, this is what I came up with in terms of a "budget build". I put that in quotes because if you were buying everything in the market it still wouldn't be cheap. The most expensive pieces will be the uniques. I suggest using your A-Merits to buy those. Defense is generally considered critical for builds because if you hit the softcap (45% for most content, 59% for incarnate stuff IIRC) then you reduce the chance an enemy has to hit you to the minimum 5% allowed by the game's code. That means you are taking only 5% of the damage that comes your way. Willpower uses a mix of Regeneration, Resistance, and Defense to survive. The budget build I made focuses on getting Regeneration and more HP (which makes Regen more effective, since it's based on percentages of your max HP) to a good level while also increasing Defense and giving you a good way of keeping recharge high. I stayed true to your goals where I could, but some things I had difficulty achieving. The most notable problem this build has is low Defense, but most sets that give you Defense are pretty expensive. A good long term goal would be to get Kinetic Combats in where those Smashing Haymakers are. That would greatly improve your S/L Defense. Here's the Data Chunk:

Well, I would say that 250 mil is more than enough to get some pretty good defense numbers. Your current numbers are simply not going to be enough to survive if you are ever fighting larger spawns. That will happen a lot on trials and TFs. Honestly, you want to shoot for at least low 30s for S/L/E/N defense. Your resistance is, of course, harder to improve with IO bonuses. If you could post your build, that would help with trying to give you what you're looking for. If you are soloing a lot, you should run some tip missions and get A-merits. That will allow you to get IOs pretty easily since 2 A-merits can buy either what you need or something that sells high. I will try to spend a few minutes cobbling together an example for you of something I might try to build for a KM/WP.

Well, before I begin even looking at the build I think it's worth discussing your goals for it in a bit more detail. As you may or may not have discovered, PvP is more or less dead on most servers. It is still possible to find a group of friends to PvP with, but I certainly wouldn't focus a build around it. Many builds that are effective in PvE are able to perform at a decent level in PvP as well in the modern game.

It is also worth noting that the idea of being a "boss killer" is pretty much the opposite of being able to farm purples. The CoX rewards system makes it much more lucrative to take out large numbers of minions than to take out bosses. With that in mind, you'll want to increase your AoE damage (you'll take out bosses easily enough as a BS character anyway). The entire idea of farming purples is actually more a thing that happens while you are farming alignment merits through tip missions these days.

With this information in mind, do your goals for the build change?

Hmm, hadn't even thought of Electrical. That's actually brilliant.

After the recent discussions of Regen, I'm considering trying out Regen again on one of my many, many, alts. When I played the set before IH was a toggle. That's how long it's been. I have a TW/Regen character on the Beta server, which isn't as problematic as forum discussions suggest it would be. However, I'm not sold on TW as a set yet because it seems like it takes forever to kill things. I'm not sure if that would be better at higher levels or not, but I imagine it would be. Especially since Defensive Sweep is still in my attack chain on that character for it's damage not just for the Defense bonus. At any rate, I'm considering other primaries for the character.

The obvious first suggestion is Broadsword or Katana, but my main is a Broadsword Scrapper so I'm not sure I want that.

Looking for mitigation in sets, Kinetic Melee and Dark Melee are both options with the -Damage and -ToHit. I was wondering which of them is better offensively. -ToHit seems more desirable defensively than -Damage and Dark Melee comes with an extra heal. However, does Power Siphon outperform Soul Drain in typical gameplay situations? If so, is it by enough that I'll be able to live using the "kill them before they kill me" approach?

Street Justice has a lot of mitigation as well, in the form of stuns and knockdown/up. So that's a possible option. I have a SJ/Regen Brute at level 10 that I can't decide if I like or not already though.

Spines doesn't seem to have much mitigation, but it works well conceptually (total control over the body) and I could see the AoE damage being enough to take out minions before they overwhelm my Regen and ability to click heals quickly.

I'd prefer to avoid being a clone of a certain popular comics character....so no Claws

Just a few points to make:

1.) You don't need or want to softcap positionals on a set that offers typed defense.

2.) How many enemies do you want to be softcapped against? The way Invincibility works means it'll be easier and less expensive to softcap yourself with 4 foes in melee range than with 1 for example.

3.) There's not much reason to softcap Fire or Cold defense because almost all sources of Fire or Cold damage deal Smashing or Lethal damage as well (and are therefore taken care of by S/L defense).

4.) Psi defense will not be softcapped with everything else unless you are a Tanker. It's much harder to softcap (with 1 foe in melee range) a Scrapper or Brute than a Tanker and that means all of your extra set bonuses go into standard typed defense. However, there are builds that get you some decent Psi defense alongside S/L/E softcap.

I like it, but I think they would probably capitalize on the existing animations for whip attacks to just use those. Even though a boomerang would be cooler.