My First Warshade

That sounds like a toy.

Anyhow, I finally got around to rolling up a Warshade. I'm having a great time, but I thought I'd compare notes to you veterans and maybe get a little advice.

I'm closing in on level 25. I've been running the Kheldian story arcs, with a team of friends. We out-leveled one arc before I could start it, but otherwise that's working well.

I find myself spending most of my time in Nova form. The attacks recharge a little too slowly for me to make a smooth attack chain, but the damage is still impressive. I should experiment more with the order I fire attacks in; that might help.

When things get bad, like if the tank goes down or I get separated from the team, I'll drop into Dwarf form and just try to survive as much aggro as I can grab. Damage output in that form feels really weak to me.

I haven't gotten the hang of the double mire thing yet. Sometimes I'll follow the tank in while I'm in human form, hit the mire, switch to dwarf, hit the mire, switch to Nova and... nothing is left standing. I missed the whole fight.

I've been thinking of Human form as a Swiss army knife. Recall friend. Teleport foe. Mob stuck in a wall and we can't target it? I have a pbaoe toggle. Need to stack a hold? I can do that. Stacking disorients? I can help with that too.

Looking to the future, I'd like to make dwarf form as sturdy as possible, so I can survive my emergency tanking duties. I'd like to make Nova output as much damage as possible, because that's my primary contribution to the team. I'm not seeing a lot of use for Human form in my future, except for the occasional jack-of-all-trades bit.

I don't generally min/max or worry much about set bonuses, but I was playing around with mid's and it looked like I could soft-cap ranged defense with a bunch of Zephyr's and Mako's. Does that sound right? It seems like that would make the nova form sort of godlike.

So, how far off are my first impressions? Any advice for the next 25 levels?

Recharge,recharge and more recharge. Get hasten. After that work on whatever set bonuses you prefer, as with Eclipse you can have capped ressists (perma) that carries over to both forms i have never seen def based builds as the best way to go but then again I don't worry about taking damage much.

Double miring using human and dwarf is no longer efficient as the dwarf mire no longer lasts long enough to get good effect.

Use the respec bug (feature) to skip slotting the initial human attacks and go right for the squid and dwarf powers would be my advice. I heavily advocate for skipping slotting any human powers that are weaker versions of the powers you get in the forms.

Powers I either skip taking or do not slot include:

The first 2 human blasts
Orbiting debt
Gravitic snare
the shields (yes all of them)
port foe
dark detonation

Powers I always take and slot heavily:

The attacks in the forms as well as 2-4 slots into the form powers themselves
Sunless Mire
Quasar
Unchain Essence
Eclipse
Stygian Circle
hasten
Gravitic Emmination
Extract Essence
Gravity Well

Good advice... Definitely go for a recharge build. This can be accomplished just as easily without using a single purple IO. Naturally, you won't has *as much* recharge, but you'll still have enough to where the 4 nova attacks recharge fast enough (especially if you've popped hasten before going to nova form) to have a complete attack chain.

Here's what currently running on my tri-form shade. (recuires Mid's Hero Designer, located here.)

I realize that's a lot of purples, but if you click the "slots/enhancements" button at the top of the program, go down and highlight "slots," then click on "flip all to alternate," youll find a MUCH cheaper setted out version of the same exact build. It's pretty much got the same slotting as what both you and Obsidian were talking about--only using Human when it's needed, and sticking with the other two forms as much as possible.

Good luck, and let us know if you have any further questions!

"Alien"

Quote:

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

I like unchain essence on my human form warshade a lot. Usually some minion goes down in the early fight which you can follow up with the heavy damage of unchained essence, then pop into nova form to clean up. Of course, stygian circle makes you a god.

As the others have said, it's all about recharge. Recharge smooths out your attack chains and gets the incredibly powerful, slow recharging powers up sooner.

Level 25, while hardly gimped, is a mere shadow of a Warshade's potential in the higher levels.

Once you have Eclipse slotted and up at least most of the time you will have few survivability problems. I have a ton of recharge (perma-hasten, 197.5% global recharge) and my dwarf puts out serious damage, especially backed by 3 pets firing blasts. I can continuously chain my 2 melee attacks and fire my slotted-for-damage dwarf mire every 5 seconds. It's a sight to behold.

Your plan to use human as a "utility" form is spot-on. If you take all three forms you just don't have enough slots to make human's damage output worth the effort. Min-max your nova and dwarf, you will not be disappointed. Ever since finishing my purple build I find it hard to play anything else.

Warshades... So. Effing. Awesome.

EDIT: Added for reference:

| Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build |
|-------------------------------------------------------------------|
|MxDz;1569;762;1524;HEX;|
|78DA9D94594F135114C7EFB43314BA5246F6A5652D6DA14B5C010D418809CA16017|
|D51715A0699A40EA42D44A251A2C61805A24F2AC64FE1128D1F4AA38F2EF52C97D2|
|E89B4D7A7ED3FFFD9F73CFEDBD77A66F4D7885D81E158A7F3C67140A4B978D7C61D|
|558365DF359CBB4B3A6672C6FD8B6119ED9C8E55C4288D08161697665C5B40BD6A6|
|9958BC99C91BB9A5B350A0D8511E9F30FF1A1FDBC81BC1497BD5CC9B763171F0E09|
|E5B5BCB25E6D74D7339488F93F6A655B03256CE2A6E794999328D75CBBEC13FCE59|
|45DB2C144413341385EF7DE89F3F2521DA0169B1819222A52605E54DAF544052620|
|ABA1E80E4949273D181D243903429699D54AB0B16EDE25A8A2B4E521BE311986BA4|
|B92646D263903C8A1B25D5F3834A36FD64FC26B49418BF085B60F7C93E7DF5D4543|
|74C179052803B7802AE20CFA3064D928E64B8916542479661106E835D67BB431F60|
|3B23CCEBBE03867AFA334A6AFD0E35D2B0CB784E483F63EC117CD051A35C662337F|
|9142A34CB8E9A2F90AB738AD03DCD9861CC12FC50A1555668E50A3B5EDE2B90B4F6|
|A3E4EA3849E839C638CE3841887EA405EC4256486685BED348789CA7FFC61825F47|
|D617C25EC4156176739BB7853FA783722BC0DE93C55DF065FAF5245BEDE34B51909|
|012222D24B88C6490CC072FAE572FA79397721352E772D9EA26AF7404AF0BF2C123|
|D243540624ABA529CD8A6561CDE127CC454A5E2A4FEE6D48AB3CBA5C2E4C2FB582A|
|9DAFCCF052C682FACFD1F4ABE5A3AD6A2F04AEC7F19250FD8AE0DE27D4BD26F82AE|
|D0354D49126542708EE24A12E45A83DB46BDA5B9A507D47A87A4FF07EE02E78236B|
|B71C784803FF9555AD960FB8AA5FA791413EFA49BE1649BE0F49BE2B5595F63EEA7|
|620C2881206638C3841433B5F614D1FE6D33744888D304E33CE700D3E3BEAE1248A|
|2EB788E13A1C117AAB132567A5C4BBF3A9FCC6AAB988732F609883A05CC2A72B18A|
|EE2CF6BF864E0530643961AFD5C7E05064EE16118C2308C6104C30E9A5C1E081E0C|
|5E0C3E0C7E0C010CB518740C0D185A30BCC150FA031106CFA4|
|-------------------------------------------------------------------|

My warshade is slow going since i hate that i have to take a form to fly. He is just now at 30 and was stuck at 28 for over a year. I took both forms just to see how it is since my PB was all human and im not really using the forms except to fly in nova and lobster for last minute oh crap im dying kind of thing. It is getting more fun though the higher i get.

Playing a low level Warshade teamed is a lot different from trying to play it solo. It is so depressingly weak solo.

It gets FAR less depressing at 38+.

Scratch that. At 38+ it's a blast.