When to be human?

Hi!

I'm about to hit level 20 on my Warshade and plan on getting the Dwarf form. So far, I've been staying in Nova form most of the time and dropping only to use Hasten and try to use the Mire successfully, which is harder than it sounds being as squishy as I am. Changing to Nova takes a couple of seconds where I'm open to all attacks and can't retaliate or move. This has meant a couple of deaths in teams without a controller or tank.

Now I have Gravity Well, which seems like an amazing power, but I can't get myself to use it because I spend so much time shapeshifted. With the advent of Dwarf and the second Mire my question is: which form should I start fights in? I've heard about "the Warshade dance", but could someone teach me the steps?

Thanks a lot in advance!

There are literaly dozens, if not more "dances".

The one I most often do is this.

1) Approach the spawn with stealth/invisibility to line up a shot with gravitic emmination attempting to catch as many of the spawn as possible in the cone aoe. I try to KB them all into a pile against a wall or other structure.

2) Quickly move up and into the center of the pile while running the pbaoe stun aura (yes I have been gone so long I cannot remember the powers name) to keep them stunned.

3) Immediatly fire off Eclipse first if you have it, followed directly with Sunless Mire (if you need the added fire power you can shift to dwarf form for a second mire, then shift back to human)

4) Hit one target with Gravity Well to kill it (add a second attack if needed to kill that mob) then without changing targets (you still have the dead one targeted) unleash Unchain Essence

5) While hopping backwards begin shifting to squid. Stop when your far enough back to catch all of the remaining mobs (if any) or the next spawn in your squid AOE's.

6) When all mobs are dead return to human form to sponge up their life with Stygian Circle (I always suggest sponging up life even if you do not need it as it develops a pattern and habit so you do not forget to do it when needed.), and summon a fresh pet. It is important to get back to human quickly to get off the Stygian Circle and the pet summons before the corpses begin to fade.

This is not the only dance nor is it probably the "most effective" for everyone, but this is the one that allows me to get past most spawns solo or even in a team, I like to race the scrappers and tanks to the spawns.

You will learn your own favorite methods and come up with other combos like nuking and sponging essence before shifting to squid, but I think this is a good pattern to get into the habit of.

Good luck.

Two points I left out.

If you do not have some of the powers listed simply skip that step and move on.

The key points are stun them from range,keep them stunned while you mire, then squid AOE them from a range that lets you hit the max number of the enemies, and always remember to eat what you killed.

The last point I left out is this is ohh so much easier if you have a keybind for human a keybind for squid and a keybind for dwarf. Without the binds you spend alot of uneeded time searching for the powers to click manualy.

The three seconds of animation on form switching plus two seconds of key hunting pretty much eats up most of the stun time you have to operate unhindered, so keeping the form switching process streamlined saves you more incoming damage than your human shields would imho.

Stunned enemies do not hit you.
Ever.

Yeah, that's the problem. There's not just one way to do things, there's many. While it makes things complicated sometimes, it's also one of the things that makes warshades so much fun.

Although these won't be complete until some of the later powers roll around, some of the general opening maneuvers I use are:

Open with gravitic emanation, jump in, mire/eclipse, (grav well + unchain essence optional), nova, kill. Basically what Obsidian said.

Run in with nebulous form on, let them waste their alpha, drop phase, eclipse/mire, see above.

Teleport into the middle of the spawn in dwarf form, soak the alpha while miring, drop to human for an eclipse/mire, see above.

I also took hasten/super speed since I had the extra power choices. Hasten is very useful for all your long recharging stuff, and shadow cloak + SS = invisibility. This allows me to ghost missions (and I can recall people when I get there, too), or to stealth into the middle of a spawn to begin the mire/eclipse/etc cycle above. For hasten, I just usually leave it on auto, as with so much other stuff going on I have a tendency to forget about it otherwise.

Of course, in all situations once the fight's over you'll want to top off with stygan circle and raise a pet with dark extraction (if it's up). In the first and second patterns, you can alternatively jump to dwarf, mire again, and scrank things out if you like, or just jump to dwarf, mire, and then drop to human and nuke. You could also nuke out of the third pattern too. You also can get away with being less fancy and just run in with dwarf and beat stuff up. It won't be as flashy as the more complicated dances, but it still works, especially when you only have a few foes to beat up.

In a very small room that was full of purple, orange, and red Carnies I ran in while in stealth mode (SS+SC):

eclipse->human mire->dwarf->dwarf mire->back to human->gravimetric snare (which immediately killed the minion)->Unchain Essence->Quasar->blue insp->stygian circle

It was AWESOME and the only time I had enough time to do all of that as the team I was on was really steamrolling through the missions.