Does a Kheldian bring anything to a team?

Status resistance doesn't really work that way. It doesn't reduce the chance to be mezzed, it reduces the duration. During the times when being mezzed would really count, the duration being cut roughly in half isn't much of a benefit.

I'm familiar with how it works since the changes in the the mechanics of the PvP system etc awhile ago and looking at that piece pretty intensely. Pretty sure that has to do with the IOs I added since I used to get mezzed non stop, hence the "basically" immune to mezs with IOs comment. Took some testing and respecs, but I don't see mezs much these days when solo and not at all when TFing.

This would be the difference between actually playing a toon and testing out builds over time vs talking about hypothetical situations for pages.
Thanks for the input.

Well, you edited your post, I figured I could do the same. I really did want to be nice to you. I did. Here we go, though.

One, thanks for the thinly veiled insult. I appreciate it. Stop ending every post with something pithy and polite as though it excuses previous rudeness.

Two. Cosmic Balance only buffs you while you're within 300 feet of a given AT who's in your group. I don't think I need to tell you that touting that as mez resistance is foolish. Something I see you've removed from your post.

Three. My sticking point is this. You've put a lot of work into your PB. Speaking as someone who hates the lore concept of the Kheldians, I salute you. Zenyth has done the same or similar. However, this does not mean that Peacebringers are on par with other ATs. Other ATs with a similar amount of work and influence would be performing at a much higher level than yours or Zenyth's. Colloquial evidence of this being the many times he and I have done tip missions together.

I should mention that you need ten THOUSAND percent reduction to lower mez duration to .99% of the original duration, explaining your hyperbole.

Source: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Caps

There is a monumental diminishing return because of the PVP change thus the need for the massive cap. Sitting at 80-300 (depending on buffs/IOs) basically means that you're still sitting at 20-40% effective duration reduction, give or take some %s, due to the fact that the game rounds decimals down as well as the massive diminishing returns.

As a matter of fact, just looking in game I'm passively sitting at 81.10% hold resistance which translates to -19.86% duration. This is by absolutely no means even close to 50%, and diminishing returns exists for status resistances BECAUSE of PVP.

So basically, status resistance is WORSE because of the PVP change that you pointed out, effectively meaning you need substantially higher amounts of mez reduction to even equalize what you had before. This is why status resist toggles were changed to direct resists in PVP (and alot of them) and why the cap was removed.

That was the nicest "mean" post ever...thanks for being gentle with me

1) If you can pull up any posts where I was rude to someone, I will go back and repost a solid apology for each of those that you find. I wouldn't waste the time, but if you don't have anything else to do...I say go for it.

2) I put the same amout of work/time into all my toons since I enjoy playing around in Mids, looking at other ppls builds and trying to build somethng interesting. There is nothing that I have done to my PB that I haven't also done to my Ill/Cold Troller, Elec/Elec Scrapper, SS/Fire Brute, Huntsman, Sonic/Pain Corr, Mind/Fire Dom, Fire/Dev Blaster, WS etc etc.

3) I can't think of a situation where I have been more than 300ft away from anyone on the team during combat while running my PB like a Scrapper. When I say that I can not remember the last time the toon was mezzed, I'm not attempting to paint a pretty picture...I really don't remember the last time I was mezzed or died during a TF in the last two months. No BS.

4) I don't understand your sticking point since that wasn't the original point of this thread even though that's what it has devolved into nor is it a counter to any of the statements I've made. I never said PBs were superior, just stated what my build is capable of and highlighted how to overcome some of the glaring weaknesses. Again, if you can find a post even closely resembling me saying PBs are the best evar, then I will apologize to you.

5) If you think its fair that you have played with someone that runs a PB and then lump every other player/build into the same category, then I can deal with that.

No edits and no thinly veiled insults.

This is great info, but all I can say again is that I have not been mezzed while runnig a TF since my last respec a cpl months ago. You have to factor in Cosmic Balance plussing up Status Protections on top of the resistances I have built I suppose if that is what your trying to do now.

And here is where guesses and "experience" falls apart. For you to not be getting CCed, Cosmic Balance would have to be fueled by no less then three controllers/dominators (to effectively give you 3 hold/stun/etc protection). To your specific numbers, you have hold 2 passively, which means you run and are specced acrobatics, bringing that number up to one controller or dominator who needs to be in the group with you to make it so that one mez won't immediately CC you. Alternatively, you could have been grouping with a traps, a force field, or a sonic resonance that had their aura up, or one of the many support classes that tend to have this obsessive urge to throw their mez protect on people.

In all seriousness, this now comes down to context. Most high end groups, with a few exceptions, have repeatable, reliable AoEs simply due to their design. Carnies and Malta are among the worst, with Flash and Stun Grenades (as well as tazers) being prevalent and common. Arachnos, PPD, Rikti, and Longbow likewise have reliable control in their bosses, albeit not as extremely "oh god pain" as Malta and Carnies. Some have very little to no control, Council, Cims, Column, generally those groups that are regarded as the garbage tier (excepting Cims).

So here's where your analogy breaks down: If you're fighting things that have minimal CC, the odds of you getting CCed is zero because, well, they have no CC. If you're fighting the mid tier stuff, Arachnos/PPD/Rikti/Longbow, odds are that Wardens are chain CCing you to death or you're not pulling enough aggro on certain mobs (mentalists/mesmerists/queens) to be in remote danger of getting CCed. If you're not fighting Malta and Carnies and are somehow managing to not be chain CCed, then that means you definitely had someone with control breaking abilities on your team or you're lying.

Alternatively, the fact that this entire thing hinges on you having a controller/dominator in your group, I could very readily just state the fact that you not being CCed is because your team members are doing their job (cause, y'know, they have hard aoe control) uninhibited. Unsurprisingly, the more controllers/dominators the team has, the less all squishies in general get CCed.

So basically, I could say my (non existant) peacebringer didn't get CCed because I ran the ITF, the BSF, Khan TF, or even Apex/Tin Mage. The lack of controller on my team doesn't even remotely matter, since there's no hard CC anywhere to be seen in any of these places. Even then, if you're not taking the alpha strike, any half decent controller/tank/dominator will lock down the entire spawn, of which only one in almost any high end SF (LRSF) has consistent aoe mezzes (Longbow Warden), so yea.

Math and logic is fun, isn't it? Also, I'm calling that you ran the ITF a couple of months ago, or even the BSF/Khan TF, both of which are control light/nonexistant.

If you're teaming with 3 doms or controllers, as necessary to get enough mez protection from cosmic balance to block a single non-minion tier hold or stun power, then you're probably also fighting things that have been locked down by their control, debuffed by their secondaries, or with buffs from them - all of which make that cosmic balance buff redundant.

The only time the status prot cosmic balance is actually beneficial is when your team isn't competent, or when they aren't present... except you don't get cosmic balance if your team isn't present.

It's possible you aren't fighting many mez-heavy enemies. It's possible you're working with melees who are tanking effectively for you. It's possible you're getting ally buffs that are helping you out. It's likely you simply aren't noticing being mezzed alot of the time that you are, because many minor mezzes are very brief and you probably aren't directly dying as a result of it.

But it's very unlikely that either your mez resistance or cosmic balance are actually preventing you from getting mezzed on a regular basis.

It's awesome to play? What more do you want? My 50 WS had no issues fitting into teams. Throw in a control, grabs some pets off defeated foes, eclipse, etc... Make one, play it.

I am still not sure what you are getting with this kheld/AT thing. I don't see roles or requirements for teams, just players. I have been around long enough to know this is an easy game and AT doesn't matter.

Yes, yes they do. They're kinda like scrappers, in that they aren't power multipliers in the same way as Defenders or even SoA are, but they bring decent damage, protection via control and/or taking alphas and off-tanking and are pretty self-sufficent.

Warshades are one of my Plant/Emps top Fort and AB targets since I know how nice recharge and damage buffs are for them.

You're right, as another MMO I'm sure you're all familiar with said "bring the player not the class", and I like to think I know and play my class well enough that people will want to bring me along.

That doesn't mean there isn't anything wrong with the Peacebringer AT though. Just because you can still scoop up soup with it doesn't mean you should eat with a rusty spoon.

As for Warshades, I don't have one personally; but they seem to get by alright thanks to their gimmick. The more enemies they've got around to drain the more powerful and durable they are. Its simple, but effective, and something only they have. It helps them keep pace with the other AT's at least.

We're at one of those classic forum impasses; a few of you are saying how the toon "should" play or how it did play that last time you ran one and I'm saying how it "does" play for me. Another one of those agree to disagree moments from opposite perspectives. I'm going to wrap it up since my posts are started to be construed as rude/arrogant and some are putting words into my "virtual mouth".

What can I say, PUG TFs/SFs are great. I don't put them together, I just run with them and run whatever comes up on the chat channels. Math and logic are great and so are pages of hypothetical situations, issues and AT comparisons. All I can do is give you info from my experiences.

Again, I'm on Freedom if you feel strongly enough about your viewpoint to see anything you're saying happen in game versus discussing it on the forums. I invite you to run some TFs or fixed AE tests or both. It's the only way I can prove that I'm not trying to make a piece of crap AT look stellar. Same offer goes out to any of you in the PBs need major help/suck balls/only brings KB/stays mezzed all day/does Defender level damage etc camp.

Like I have said before, great discussion (not a thinly veiled attempt at rudeness).

@njcash.

WSs are actually monsters when built correctly. No gimmicks, bells or whistles...even though they perform like a boss when being fed AOE goodness.

Actually, warshades are about average when built correctly, played well, and fed enough enemies to drain for self-buffing. Warshades have a perceptional problem in the playerbase - there are a lot more bad and mediocre ones than good ones - but at least in theory their stats do hold up with other characters.

But the "average" performance for endgame characters in City is quite high. Players are very, very powerful relative to the content with a proper IO build and some incarnate powers... unless they've picked relatively well-known outlier sets and/or ATs. Like peacebringers. Which is unfortunate, but no amount of liking them will change the numbers, and the numbers are what need changing.

A tri-former adds lots of versatility. which can be nice on a trial. However, they also tend to bring AoE KB which can be frowned upon.

PBs tend to be the worst offenders of doing too much KB. Mine is retired until they change the KB to KD.

See, this is the really big, bad problem with a Peacebringer as it now stands: their whole "highly versatile" shtick has been completely thrown out the window with the introduction of classes like the Brute and IOs. Even without IOs, your average Super Strength/Willpower Brute will be able to survive just as well as a PB and deal considerably more damage in the process of doing so. The big thing is that they don't need to switch into a giant glowy crab form to do tanking if they need to, but they continue to deal really goofy damage even while tanking, whereas crab will do Defender-level DPS and have far fewer aggro-management tools than a Brute does.

Warshades still have a decent shtick with their ghost pets + tank-mage abilities when facing large groups. Peacebringers ain't got one. They've got Tanker-level DPS without the perks of actually being a Tanker (namely, mez resist and a taunt aura).

What they really need:

*Higher damage in Nova Form, since they don't have Mire like Warshades do to compensate for their innately low damage. Other potential options: give the Nova blasts useful secondary effects, such as some kind of AoE heal for allies on Detonation, as an example.

*Adjustment to damage/recharge times on some of the Human abilities. EvilGeko posted some good suggestions on the Peacebringer forums for this. Ideally, Nova should be the high damage/low survivability form, Human should be the middle-of-the-road utility/damage/survivability guy, and Dwarf should be the high survivability/low damage form.

*Make Pulsar a guaranteed Mag 3 stun, or up the chance for a Mag 3 to 75%/85% instead. It's a theoretically great ability, but it's way too random for something that's supposed to hold an entire group of weak things down. Right now, it's slightly better than Oppressive Gloom, and that's not saying much.

*Increase the range on Glowing Touch to 60 and up the healing to 20%-25% base.

*Make Dwarf Form have an automatic Taunt aura. Remove the Accuracy check on Antagonize.

*Move the KB down to .67 on Solar Flare. If people really want to knock things back, they can slot it with KB enhancements, or grab Luminous Detonation. I really cannot stress enough how detrimental this currently is to the gameplay of a Peacebringer in Human Form. It's a significant form of self and team mitigation, combined with one of your only good sources of AoE damage as a Human, but you simply cannot use it half of the time because it's incredibly disruptive to a team, since it scatters enemies far and wide (preventing effective AoEing and forcing melee targets to close to their targets again).

Basically, just higher damage and better utility on what they already have. I don't want them to have Brute-level damage, because that would be rather superfluous. What they need to have is competitive damage for the amount of utility they have. This is a difficult metric to hit, understandably, but, as it stands, they simply do not produce enough damage for the minor amount of utility they bring to a party. Your average melee Fortunata will pretty handily outdamage your average Peacebringer, but they also bring 31% Defense to the whole team (with the potential for Vengeance straight after), up to 30% increased damage, +ToHit increases, and very solid single-target controls. I'm not proposing Peacebringers need all of that to bring them up to the same level, because they have the ability to take on any form the group needs, but they need to actually be able to do that role at just mildly under the same level of efficiency as one of the "pure" classes, especially considering that they can only take on one of these roles at a time.

My big issue is how people say there is something wrong with Peacebringers, though. Your rusty spoon comment makes it sound like there is something dramatically wrong with them, when there isn't. Don't get me wrong, there are things that need adjusting for them, and I'll note them later. But the real difference between Peacebringers and other certain power combos (not even entire ATs) is more the difference between a Ferrari and NASCAR style racer. They both go really fast and are fun to drive, it's just that one goes a bit faster. You're at the point more where you should just pick what you want to drive and have fun with it: that's how any AT or power combo is in CoH now, and thank goodness.

As I said a couple pages earlier, no need to keep saying my AT is better than yours (or yours is better than mine, as someone added, heh). Just have fun, dangit.

Anyway, just to show I'm not blind to any issues that are out there, I'll throw out what I think are the main issues for Peacebringers. First off, a Kheld thing: the shapeshifting takes too long. Other games got this right with druids, etc.: keeping Khelds shifting for as long as they do is not needed.

Pulsar needs to be a guaranteed Mag 3 stun... Warshades get a guaranteed Mag 3 and it's a ranged cone, for crying out loud. Build up could also use some changes: the Kheld forums have had some good ideas. Lengthening the duration or making it similar to Fiery Embrace (with energy damage), either the old version or the new version, any of these would make things far better for PBs, especially if nothing is ever changed about the length of shapeshifting.

Last but not least, Photon Seekers have far too long of a recharge for what they do. It's a fun power, but it should have a much lower timer: Warshades can crank out two to three of their pets easily, upping their damage easily at a consistent rate.

To reiterate, though... none of those things make them subpar or not worth taking. They're a fun and different AT to play, and you should play them if their approach sounds or looks like something you would want to try.

My problem with PBs as they stand is that almost everything they can do can be replicated by another class fairly easily, and the PB doesn't bring anything along that compensates for this. I simply don't think an average heal (that can be easily outclassed by Aid Other in most circumstances) and a possibly-Mag 3 AoE Stun, combined with above-average survivability, is really worth the severe damage deficit they suffer, and their heavy reliance on outside buffing, Clarion, endless trays of Break Frees or Controllers/Dominators to not get held in most fights.