WS or PB for DPS?

Unless you've picked up Provoke like I have...

:P

"The One"

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Originally Posted by Infernus_Hades The way you play changes your IO slotting..

I don't understand your discounting Black Dwarf Drain (a 200-300 point self heal every 6-10 seconds) as a decent self heal. Over time I believe it might actually be superior to the PB Dwarf heal.

Additionaly saying "without Eclipse" is like me saying I would be a better pitcher than the major league baseball pitchers if you took away their pitching arm. Your correct but...

Black Dwarf heal comes to around 379(that number stuck in my head) when slotted for it, which is a pretty tasty chunk of health. I originally slotted it like an attack first, with 5 crushing impacts and 1 heal IO, but after a while I realized that I have two perfectly good melee attacks in dwarf and one awesome AoE and so I switched the crushing impact out for touch of the nictus, except for neg damage proc, and a damage IO. Never looked back on that one, that heal is awesome, and with dual mires stacking up your to-hit and a few set accuracy bonuses it is always at a 95% chance to heal.

In odd or extream cases of high defence or extreamly bad luck sure. But for the most part I'll live with my 95% heal. I do not concider this enough of a limitation to put PB dwarf form any more than marginaly better than the black version.

I do however find it ammussing that you only point to numbers when it aids your causes and tend to ignore them when they do not.

It's more of "when" you choose to bring up numbers than if you like it or why that I find funny.

To my perspective (and I admit it's biased) you only bring up the stats when it supports your views and when the stats do not you claim the numbers do not match play experience and therefore cannot be fully trusted.

As kind of agree with both sides on this, Black Dwarf Drain is over time a better heal than White DWarf Sublimation (Assuming good slotting on both so a 95 chance to hit), but the way the RNG seems to work is that when you really need the heal it always misses.

The other problem is that in the type of conditions where you do really need that kind of healing there are so many debuffs on you that your chance to hit isn't quite as good as it should be.

So the numbers probably favour Black Dwarf in normal situations, but White Dwarf when the pressure is really on.

Also I don't know how much endurance White Dwarf Sublimation is, but Black Dwarf Drain is an end hog, and has ran me out of endurance a few times in the past.
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I didnt read those links AlienOne but I think I remember reading someone thinking that the RNG rolls once every few seconds and you either hit or miss everything until you make the next roll. I have seen the same thing where you just cannot hit for love nor money, even with a seemingly good chance (And hitting NOTHING with Eclipse is the biggest let down ever).

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Originally Posted by Aggelakis PrincessDarkstar: "RAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHH SOMEONE IS *WRONG* ON THE INTERNET!"

I don't doubt the RNG can hose you and maybe I just have abouve average luck but I do not remember a time where it caused me to miss so consecutively that I couldn't keep myself healed even on "most" AV's (there are some AV's that impose such a massive to hit debuff that yeah it's almost impossible, but this is a rare exception and not the rule) it simply recharges so fast that a miss while annoying is not a deal breaker for me.

I'm often infact able to battle back from 30-40% health to full by the end of the AV fight.

Reliability definantly goes to the PB while a better (over time) faster recharging heal goes to the WS. This simply to me follows the trend that hard targets are the PB forte while the WS deals better with multiple foes.

The more I think on it the more your probably right, on the average (meaning probably 8 out of 10 PB to WS comparisons not a so-so built character) build PB will probably provide a better consistant and reliable tanker.

Lets also not forget that the most extreme circumstances in which you'd even need a Kheldian to tank anything, will happen mostly — if not exclusively — in an All Kheldian team. In my All Kheldian teaming experience, I'd rather have the PB's tank and support the PB-tankers and the WS's do the DPS/stuns.

This isn't of course to say that my experience isn't skewed a certain way, since my TriFormPB is built to take advantage of having 3 heals and some very annoying power combinations (Fear stacking FTW) which together with my skill — there I said it — make her a reliable tanker in comparison to what happens when our Black Dwarves try to tank.

QR

Interestingly, -recharge debuffs hurt PBs more than WSes (imo). PBs only really have 3 quick recharge powers in dwarf, vs. all of the powers for a Black Dwarf are fairly quick recharging.

Obsidian will hate this, but...playstyle really impacts how well either performs a great deal. On my PB, I wait as long as possible before hitting the self heal in dwarf (typically at ~1/3 health). On my WS, I am hitting the heal much sooner, and more frequently (sometimes just to fill out an attack sequence). Both tank admirably, and both are vulnerable to certain debuffs more than others. I typically bring my PB if I KNOW I will be tanking, just for the reliability of the self heals, but when I've been "promoted" to tank as my WSes, they've never let me down (promoted as in main tank dies, or team has no other taunter for whatever reason). My Dark Armor tanker has similar vulnerabilities to a black dwarf (heal w/ tohit check), and is a beast, so I don't doubt a dwarf built to tank would do very well regardless of debuffs.

LOL, I don't hate it. It is true. The only time I hate the whole playstyle factor excuse is when it is used to refute numbers (theoreticly because there are too many possible combinations to acurately deduce results. Untrue btw because you "could" run data on every possible combination, it's just nobody is willing to spend THAT kinda time doing it, and the naysayers of the ebil maths like to capitalize on that fact.).

There are always factors and they do change results.

As to reliability of a ws tanking we do not run all Kheldian teams as a rule and our prefered tanker for ITF's are 3 seperate WS's all with slightly different builds and none have any problem smacking Romulous around normaly without buffs or heals needed. Not saying a PB might not be better or more reliable but all three of our WS's can tank well enough to where beating the TF is never in doubt, and with a very small number of deaths (damn squishy blasters and their over-agro).

Like I said, I've never had problems tanking with either of my WSes. I think it just comes down to Knockdown being visually a better team mitigation ability than -speed/-recharge. White Dwarf Flare LOOKS like it's protecting the team better than Black Dwarf Mire - it might actually BE better too, no idea, just justifying my preference ;D.

With I16 and the ability to scale encounters as if your an 8 man team solo and the ability to exclude bosses, I'm not sure the PB would be the easiest or best to solo up.

I'm not saying they wouldnt be but I would be interested in how things play out after I16.

To be fair, PBs do very well vs. large spawns of minions w/ Lt.'s as well. WSes just BENEFIT more from larger spawns (for mires and eclipse). Remember, they have almost identical AoEs, and KB makes an effective mitigation.

For what it's worth, I recognized my Peacebringer's aptitude for aiding the team early on and built it accordingly. After gulping down a heapin' helpin' of the Leadership and Medicine pools (yeah, you heard me right), what I'm left with is a combination of just about everything but Controller. With three ranged attacks, three melee attacks, three +Res shields, three self heals (Aid Self in there), ally buffs (heal, mez protection and rez in addition to Assault and Tactics), an "oh crap!" intangibility button and a godmode power, I really took the "jack of all trades" concept to another level and I absolutely love the result.

It's worth noting that I went human-only because re-toggling the shields and Assault/Tactics gets boring real quick. I was overjoyed in I13 when they made toggles stay on while mezzed. It also manages health and endurance just fine without the Fitness pool.

What did I find at the end of the day? It's not the strongest damage-dealer, though it CAN solo team missions on Invincible... or, as it were, +2 with bosses. So to answer the thread: Warshade is much better for outright DPS. Having said that, Build Up + Incandescent Strike is still nothing to sneeze at.

On the other side of that coin, I will pitch in my support for the Peacebringer having higher survivability, especially once Light Form is introduced. It may take over 8 minutes to recharge (since I didn't take Hasten), but I rarely wish I had it more often than that. I've never encountered anything that I couldn't tank with it up (including those Monsters in Tempest Quay), and normal team situations where you find three Death Mages surrounding the hostage aren't as big an issue when you can just activate Unstoppable and dive in with all your ranged attacks. (-:

After reading the plethora of info in this thread, I know what I'm going to do.........................make a PB and WS LOL!! I'm quickly approaching my first level 50 toon, and doing some research on these 2 ATs. All in all, lots of good info here, thanks to all that contributed!