Question for those new to Kheldians.

Is a rickrolling really the best you can do for an argument?

I'd like to see an actual discussion (thus my reading this thread), not petty gestures like that.

Looks like someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed today...

If you'd actually READ the thread (as you claim), you'd see that I A.G.R.E.E. with his proposed changes. Therefore, I have NO REASON WHATSOEVER to "argue." Period.

The only thing I wanted to point out was that it's not a "correct view" to try and compare Kheldians to other archetypes in a "are they as good" point of view, when in fact, they are not comparable.

Which Bill Z Bubba already noted.

Sooo.... Is there anything constructive you can add to this thread? At all?

"Constructive" can also include something that "lightens the mood" (so to speak), so that widens your options a bit.

Anything?

No?

kthnxbai.

"Alien"

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

Though I dissagree with your views, (I would prefer to leave Tri-Forming as the way to play most effectively) I do not find it surprising that people on this particular forum are willing to negative rep you for a different opinion than theirs.

I find it a sad truth that here, facts and figures as well as differences in opinion will be argued and dissmissed out of hand without any logical debate soley because some do not like what you have to say.

I believe you are correct about the discrepancy, I just prefer how things are now, but I see nothing wrong with your attempting to change things even if I do not support it, and find the negative rep hits particularly juvinile.

Well, any sort of change which may affect current playstyles will most assuredly upset some people just thinking about it, as that may be (as in my case) the main character they prefer to play on... So, anything majorly "gimping" it further would be most unwelcome--people would prefer to continue "as is" than *possibly* getting hit with the "nerf bat."

That said, forum rep is way, way, way, way, waaaaaaaay overrated. The ones who give negative/positive rep obviously think it has some bearing, or they wouldn't do it. But, for the most part, it shouldn't affect you at all. Hell, if you think your rep comments are bad, we should compare sometime. Some of the ones sent to me would be most unwelcome in any sort of civilized, mature adult setting... However, this is the "interwebz." People can say anything or be whoever they want to on here. Therefore, their opinion on me, my life, my viewpoints, my playstyle, or my spelling means jack %$#^ to me.

If they want to have a civilized debate on any in-game issue with me without resorting to verbally dissing my military service, my relatives, where I was born, my education, or anything else of that nature, I'll be more than willing to discuss it with them. In public. On the forums.

The rest of the cowards can hide behind the rep system if it makes them feel better about themselves.

"Alien"

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

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

And this as well.

Because I base my most important decisions on "what wouldn't AlienOne do....?"

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

Now you're jumping to the assumption that I'm incapable of being anything but negative. That said, I apologize for misreading your intentions, and for forgetting some of who had wrote what posts (I should try to remember names better instead of mostly going off avatars).

I didn't feel I had much to say on a thread about why people don't like Kheldians--I like playing my Triformer Warshade. Though on the face of it, Peacebringers do seem to me a little lackluster compared to Warshades. However, that's not just pure numbers at work--Warshades just seem to have more distinct things going for them than Peacebringers.

Peacebringers get the same Buildup-type power most of the ATs in the game get, a standard godmode armor, and so on. Mostly not much to stand out like the Warshade's Mire, Dark Extraction, Eclipse, etc. Warshades just seem more interesting to me aside from any questions about PB versus WS balance. That said, I can see people liking PBs for perfectly valid reasons--no ATs really put those powers together the PBs do. I just haven't felt the urge to roll one up.

What peeves I do have were already noted on this thread--the long shapeshifting delays and the keybind issues, mainly. I've had times when I've died because the Dwarf transformation just didn't take (I think someone said something about getting mezzed a second time while transforming).

But those aren't showshoppers for me. I love my Warshade.

As for the damage issue, I'm all for different playstyles being valid. That said, I have no real opinion on Bill's planned suggestion. I haven't seen it for one, and I don't know how his suggestion to nerf the innate in exchange for an increase in base damage would handle the other buffs given by the innate (I'm mainly thinking of the resistance buff). Would those get nerfed too (and part of the effects moved into the human powers/AT mods), or is he just thinking of offloading some of the innate's damage buff into the base mod and leaving the other effects unchanged like was done with Dominators' Domination?

Noted and understood.

I also have no desire to see human only builds become superior to or even on par to tri-formers.

My only desire is to make the human-only ride less annoying and to get its damage values to make sense for what it offers.

I am not pushing for mez-protection in the human form. That would step on dwarf form. I am not looking for a buff to human mitigation. That would also step on dwarf form. I am not looking for blaster level damage. That would step on nova form.

I am ONLY seeking to increase human form damage just enough that soloing human only khels don't have to deal with damage so anemic that the AT loses all sense of fun.

Edit: Alef, I have no desire to see the dam-res or mez protect side of the inherent to be altered in any way. (ok, maybe the mez protection, but that is NOT touched in my current proposal.) It is ONLY a decrease in the damage buff per teammate in order to increase the base human form damage modifiers.

I've finally got a RP concept I like so I'm hoping I can stick with my latest Peacebringer.

I haven't read the rest of the thread, but I'll answer the initial question regarding the half dozen other Khelds I've had that were either shelfed or deleted.

First, Quantum Gunners are horribly annoying and discouraging at low levels. Massive KB, Massive Damage, they always seem to be in the back of a mob. They're miserable to deal with. My highest previous Kheld was a 21 PB and even with the amount of powers at that level, Quantum Gunners were a pain. VEATs don't have to deal with "Spider Gunners" having cannons designed to take them out, and are better to solo with in my limited experience. Even in groups, VEATs help the whole team with their buffs, not just themselves.

Second I had two design issues; First was trying to figure out how to slot everything. Triforms in particular have so many extra powers begging for slots it seemed I had to either spread slots thin to the point of mininizing power effectiveness OR build a toon that had a couple of uber powers & the rest with nothing.

The long list of somewhat random primary and secondary powers made it hard to chose a good build also. There's a little bit of everything and I tended to end up with builds that were too unfocused. With all the other Archetypes, you know the couple of powers their sets have that are useless and which of the rest generally fit your personal playing style.

Third is minor but related; I HATE that Warshades can't take the flight power pool (especially since I despise the way the game handles teleportation, it's the ONLY thing Champions Online did right). Yeah I know squid form flies, but I wanted a pure humanform WS build for my last concept, one that could fly.

So yeah I'll admit it, it essentially comes down to needing to take more time to learn the builds and power sets. Warshades flow together easier than PBs for me by far, but Khelds are still overly complicated to me compared to the other Archetypes. Admittedly, I also have to have a hugely solid character concept that I'm hyped about to get into a character also (and therefore study those sets), and THAT has been hard with Khelds for me

I've been thinking about this thread again, and I had to think about what was difficult at first, even though I didn't just walk away from the Kheldians. Kheldians benefit greatly from the keybinds listed in posts on this board. But not everyone reads this board. Some people just play for fun, and don't want to do research.

Form shifting is really a pain without either keybinds or macros to swap trays out. Specialized targeting keybinds help a lot to pick out Voids, Quantums and Cysts from a mass of enemies. For a lot of new Kheldians, operating without those binds and/or macros would be a frustrating experience. Those who don't read these forums might have just given up.

I took a break from CoH this summer and played WoW for a few months. I noticed that the Druid form shifters there have it easier. When they change shape, their power trays, or WoW equivalent, were automatically swapped out with the form. Makes it easier to learn to play with the new abilities of the form. They didn't have to learn how to do make a keybind.

I also note that when City of Villains was introduced, specialized pet command macros were created for MasterMinds, and placed in the pet windows. These can be dragged down from the pet window, placed in the power tray, and customized. Nothing similar has ever been done to ease the learning curve for new Kheldians.

I wasn't going to mention that, because I'm pretty sure that will never happen here.

Just finished reading this whole thread. To answer this I'll give you my reasons why my Warshade and Peacebringer are both shelved indefinitely. The short version is that 80% of the design is based on taking things away, not giving them to me. This is totally unlike any other experience I have in City of Heroes. And it just feels bad. Everything is either harder than it needs to be, or something I had is now gone for no good reason. And either way, it takes my fun away with it. Here are the specifics (I appologize for the wall of text).

Supposeldy a team-based AT with a team-based inherent, but the devs define "team-based" in the inverted way that I do. This is a "Team-leaching AT" not a "team benefitting AT". Killed it for me right there. VEAT's get supercharged leadership toggles to benefit themselves AND BENEFIT THE TEAM. I get to benefit from my companions while offering them nothing in return. Honestly, I think the Kheldian inherent power is the only one as close to *****'d as the defender's "reward you for doing your job poorly, & give you no inherent power at all 99.9% of the time" inherent. Shouldn't our inherent either buff the team, or both ourselves AND the team? Are we leaches or contributors? This is where I think the Devs first went wrong. At the very foundation of the AT. Their definition of team-based means I benefit from the team, not the team benefitting from me.

The Dev's went too far down the "jack of all trades master of none" concept. Khelds are not flexible enough to be anything I want. I can't be "defender-sh with a touch of melee built in". Instead I just suck at two things. Everything I want to do and can do someone else does better. Even Blappers are more survivable AND more damaging in both melee and range. So why have me around? Unless you're farming and just need someone to pad the team. I'm great for that. Not great for anything else. I'm sub-par for anything else and I really don't feel like the flexibility makes up for it. Instead of feeling like I have the tools to adapt to any situation, I feel like I have the tools to fail in any situation. Which gets directly into the next issue:

I can't use forms. I understand their concept, and I know the value. The problem is that there is a difference between character ability and player ability that I am not sure the Dev's took into consideration. Consider the average First-Person Shooter. All the characters have the exact same abilities. But the players have different levels of agility, precision, timing, etc. Khelds appear to have been balanced around what top-end players can do. I, personally, have the reflexes and precision and timing of a jellyfish on a good day, and an eggplant most of the time. I've tried, really hard, but I can't do forms. The character has the power, it is slotted and enhanced as well as the recommended builds and guides say it should be. But I, the player, am not capable of using the character successfully. Part of this is the clunkiness factor mentioned in many other threads. Multi-second form shifting is an extremely bad idea. Making me start out in human form and not learn forms until after I think I know how to use my character, not a good idea. Making all my hotkeys stop working (I only use 1-6, nothing else because I can't get binds to work and I'm not agile enough to use any others on my keyboard without looking away from the screen) not a good idea. As soon as I form shift I can only fight with the mouse to click buttons until I shift back. Or I can click with the mouse in human form and use hotkeys in dwarf or nova. In the end, I just give up. I can't do it.

Forms are a take-away not a Give-New. When I go to Nova, I lose EVERYTHING else on my character. Everything. It is all just gone. In exchange for 10 to 20 powers, I have 4 that are almost identical to eachother. The WoW druid was brought up. The key difference between a kheld and a druid is that in forms (except for travel forms) Druids have the exact same number of powers as in their natural state. And those powers are nearly as potent as their counterparts from other characters. Unlike the kheld powers which are massively weaker. And taking away all the powers? Was it just because of animation issues? Hell, give me the power with just a sound effect and no animation if that's the issue. But the experience that I have as a player is that when I switch forms, I lose out. In WoW as a druid, I felt that I was gaining. As a Cat I could stealth. As a bear I could charge. In seal form I could breath underwater and travel really fast. In cheetah form I can run as fast as the horses. All of these are things I can't do at all in normal form. With a Kheld, in nova form I have the same ranged blasts as human, but only 4 of them, and they do more damage but I lost over a dozen other powers. Nothing new was given, but a lot was taken away for only a stat bonus. This FEELs like a loss. I know that strategically it isn't, but it feels like one. Between this and the difficulty to control them, it really feels like forms are a punishment not a power.

I can't solo. Other people can and great for you. I have been driven to the debt cap on level 18 scanner missions set at heroic. After 15 to 20 hospital trips and only getting through about half the mission, I put the character on the shelf. 8 to 12 attacks to kill a minion coupled with stamina problems on par with a tanker = no fun. I've managed to stubbornly stick it out and get my warshade to 36 and peacebringer to 29 but right now they are logging in every three days, dropping a mission, and logging out again and will eventually via this method reach level 50. This is as close to playing them as I get right now because it is more fun than actually trying to use them.

Targetting corpses on my warshade is next to impossible. I know binds supposedly exist that help with this. I have exactly one bind that almost works. My warshade can teleport if I hold down shift and mouse click. I get three purple error messages about "unknown power name". No other bind or macro I've tried has ever worked. So I'm left trying to manually click something that is physically under or behind a living enemy. I have to move the character around, then angle the camera and try to get in a fast click. Meanwhile the enemy is kicking my but. This is not fun. It also often means teh body I need goes away before I can use it. So I use powers right when an enemy dies and I still have their corpse selected before I move to the next enemy. Which means I either use the power when it isn't particularly needed, or I don't use it at all. Again, this is not fun.

Being locked out of the travel powers doesn't make any sense. I really don't know what the thought process was, but as an ignorant player just wanting to make my character the way I envision them, it is really weird. Why can't my warshade fly? Why can't my peacebringer teleport? He can teleport in dwarf form so it's not a genetic limitation. The devs being unable to do the animation can't be the issue because other human-shaped beings can teleport. So why can't I? In reality, I the player don't care what the real reason is, the only thing I care about is that it feels like something was taken away from me.

I never went into my Kheldians with the thought that epic meant more powerful. I actually hadn't even heard the term "epic" applied to them when I got access to them and had seen a few in Wentworths but had never teamed with one. And for the record it took me 9 months to get my first level 50 character. I honestly read these boards for two weeks before coming up with my two kheldians stories. I really never expected forms to be as difficult to control and play with as they are. I have put in over 100 hours of played time into my two khelds (combined, not each) at this point and they are both still at the low end of mid-level. This is how hard they are. My warshade is honestly incapable of completing missions solo at -1/x0 with me controlling her. I'm sure that any of you could use her and wonder how I can have trouble. But that's where I am. Combined with the fact that I know exactly two people in-game, and I see them online one day a week for about 3 hours means that my two khelds don't get used much.

I think this is partially true. Many tri-formers don't think this, but I believe this to be part right. If you switch to another form, you're immediately limited on what you can do.

The forms are (I think) attemps at "augmenting" the human form. They're sort of an "added bonus," so to speak. Those "young whippersnapper" gamers who can quickly pick up fluidly switching between all the forms (almost simultaneously it seems like with the really good players) seem to have no thought or care for the part of the playerbase who can't seem to pick that up very easily. It's an automatic "lrn2play" from their end.

There's actually been much discussion lately about the inherents for Kheldians... The devs (I'm sure) are hovering around every once in a while and listening, but that won't ever guarantee that anything will be done.

I can say, however, that quite a bit of the Kheld playerbase agrees with you. Personally, I love the fact that I get extra resists or that it means I have to hit fewer enemies with my Eclipse because I'm on a team, but I totally see where you're coming from.

Personally (and I get slammed for even suggesting things like this), I wish the inherents that benefitted Khelds were for more "useful" things, like (for example) if you teamed with a scrapper, instead of getting more resists, you got a bit of mez protection. That would make both human-formers and tri-formers happier, because they would be able to stay in human or nova form longer during an attack chain (if teamed) without having to bring a tray full of break frees or get stuck in Dwarf form for the entirety of the chain-mezzing enemies you find at lvl 50 content.

However, there's also been much talk about this lately as well, and it always comes down to "bring a tray full of break frees," "EVERYONE should take Dwarf form," or "lrn2play" (everyone's personal fav).

Agreed. But, one problem I have with what you're saying is that you are comparing HEATs with VEATs.

That's a no-no. VEATs, by design, are pretty much near-perfect. They have their own mez protection. They have control. They have "auto" team buffs. They have built-in stealth. They can deal "critical" hits, like scrappers.

So, why compare? All you'll do, if you compare the two, is get miserable. I've got both, and I love them both for different reasons.

Here, I have to interject that you're speaking from a low-level Kheld's perspective. They really do (both PB and WS) get MUCH more surviveable (and powerful on the WS end) in the upper-tier level of the game.

For anyone who's got a Kheld, I always say "hang in there, it'll get better."

It WILL get better. Post lvl 38, you'll suddenly feel like you hit "god mode" with Light Form for Peacebringers, and Eclipse for Warshades.

Exemped down, yeah... I can see how they would feel like a very, very weak blaster--especially when you factor in the "special" enemies you have in missions.

Upper levels, though... It's amazing what Khelds can do.

This is something I mentioned a while back in a discussion about having several different builds for a Kheldian. I, of course, got slammed for that as well, but in the end, I can honestly say that Kheldians (in my humble opinion) are MEANT from the begiinning to be flexible.

Meaning, if you want to avoid the forms, you can STILL make a good, viable human-form build, and it be good enough to where you know what you're missing out on (by not taking the forms), but you can live with it, because you're still "good enough."

Understandable. Some people like them, some people don't. It's the way the world works. Should the Devs completely change them around and revamp them, because you or I don't like the "clunkiness?"

No. They've allowed human-form play to be good enough to where if people don't want the forms, they don't *HAVE* to take them. It's a choice. Choose what you want.

You're getting very close to the "awesome" level. Stick it out, and keep researching these forums for a good build that might match up with the playstyle you want.

If you you don't like using a hundred and one different binds for your Kheldian (I'm the same way), what I do to target a corpse is click my "Dark Extraction" power, which auto-targets the nearest corpse. Presto! You have a corpse targeted without having to click a bind, find a bind, enter a bind, or find a specific button on your keyboard. It's done. If you double-click the power, you'll automatically use that corpse to get an essence, but if you single-clicked it, you'll just target it, and you can then use that corpse for any other power that uses corpses to work, such as Unchain Essence. It's what I do, and it works very well, without the need for a single bind.

Now, there is ONE bind that I use, and that is the teleportation bind, because it makes traveling with a Warshade a HECK of a lot easier.

Try entering:

/bind tab "powexec_name Shadow Step"

into your chatbar, and every time you tap your "tab" key, your targeting reticle will appear, signalling you to click with your mouse anywhere you want to teleport. Tab, click. Tab, click. Once you get used to it, it's actually pretty easy.

I've often wondered this myself. Both types of Khelds actually have the ability to fly and teleport, so why lock those particular pools away? Seems weird.

Hey, if you're on Freedom, send me a message @AlienOne any day, and I'll get together with you and team. I'll be happy to tell you everything I know about Kheldians or offer build advice. I also have a Ventrilo server, so if that'd make it easier for you to talk live, that's cool too. Just let me know.

I think you'll find that, even though the Kheldian community may have quite a few disagreements and viewpoints on how a Kheld should be played, we're also a pretty helpful part of the CoH community as well, and are more than willing to help you through the difficult mess that is learning Kheldian gameplay.

"Alien"

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