What is the Kheldian surprise?

Sigh... yes, him. That fella. Arbiter Falcon. I mean Ghost Hawk. HIM.

::mumbles incoherently to self::

Yeah, I get the whole "Jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none" shtick, and at one point I'd have probably said something sanctimonious about how our role par excellence was just that: generalists who can caulk any crack in a team.

The problem is that the cracks are already being caulked - caulked with damage dealt by other archetypes.

But there's a fundamental difference in perspective also at work. We - as veteran kheldian players - tend to look a the archetype through glasses that have been colored by the late game (to say nothing of incarnate content), and those testing and changing them have to look at the entire leveling experience - but quite often have experienced the lower levels much more recently than we.

Read that as: they just rolled one up and leveled it up or level bumped it.

For the first 25 levels, Kheldians are competitive. They're even impressive, blooming early with Nova and Dwarf able to substitute for the slotting crunch.

Warshades still have a place in the late game due to the aoe damage, stacking mezzes and pure resistance-capped survivability they bring. Peacebringers, on the other hand, don't have that. At 26 Warshades get Unchain Essence - a mini nuke that carries a stun. Peacebringers get Solar Flare - a power whose knockback has been outed as an intentional limiting factor on Peacebringer damage.

Over the next few levels before 32 Warshades get a toggle stun aura and a spawn-repositioning stun/knockback cone. Peacebringers get a phase shift and an aid other clone.

By the time each gets their pet power (and we all know the disparities between them) the gap between the two archetypes is yawning.

While other archetypes (not just warshades) are getting the powers that bring them to the fullness of power, Peacebringers are getting fillers.

The incarnate game is another story, though. Not just Peacebringers are getting left out in the cold, here. More and more it seems like the new incarnate powers are forcing people into a brute-like playstyle, and incarnate brutes and scrappers are beginning to assume the role formerly held by fire tanks and blasters in the before-time when there was no aggro or target cap and enhancements could be six-slotted.

But that's a topic for another thread.

(and yes, that was a Mad Max reference buried in that last sentence)

Status Resists? But dwarf form already gives that, to the tune of 155%. The problem with Dwarf Form is that its attacks are too damned slow for the damage they do, and the resulting damage levels are too damned low to justify the fiery aura resistance levels.

And (once again), this isn't as much of an issue with Black Dwarf, since it can mire all on its own. (something else that has always stuck in my craw)

And as far as psi resists, I don't understand white dwarf not having psi resists, quite frankly. Eclipse, Dark Sustenance and Cosmic Balance both give psi resistance, so there is at least precedent for some way to plug that hole, but Peacebringers - with their lower survivability and weaker damage - are forced to team with at least four damage dealers to get it an any meaningful amounts? And what good does it do when those four damage dealers can mitigate that psi damage through direct damage for you?

Actually, I see warshade and peacebringer forms performing different roles even from each other. Warshade human form plays much more like a controller to me, although I do agree with the dominator assessment of the Peacebringer human form.

Black Dwarf, in contrast to White Dwarf's tanker, plays much more like a heavy scrapper. Dark Nova.... well okay you've got me there. Nova=blaster, regardless of color tint.

My point is that Peacebringers and Warshades do get different things from comparable forms - and those differences ought to be hilighted IMHO.

Like I said, adding psi resistance to White Dwarf and transmuting Nova's 45% damage boost directly to the powers' base damage would be a magnificent complement to the current changes, and I don't see why that couldn't happen before I-21.

But I don't expect that it will happen before. (or ever happen, for that matter).

Agreed, with the caveat that warshade and peacebringer forms can - and should - compete with different archetypes (as I said above).

Quite honestly, I didn't understand the reasoning behind well over two-thirds of that post, but the one that really got under my skin was the crack about the inherent:

Bullcrap. Pure marketing drivel. Central to the AT?! Like Vigilance isn't. Like Assassination isn't. Hell, like every other inherent in the game isn't just as central to an archetype to the same degree.

Which is not to say that inherents are all that archetype-defining. If our inherent defines our archetype, then kill the damned thing! It's holding us back.

And it isn't like we're asking them to rewrite the thing! Did Defenders have to pay for their solo/small team buff? Hell no, they didn't! So what's wrong with giving Kheldians a similar buff WITHOUT CHANGING THE INHERENT?

The only risk is that we would actually become competitive.

Having ranted that, however, my personal preference would be the more elegant solution of trading some of the buffs given through the inherent for direct damage and resistance through our powers.

In other words, I would like to see Kheldians become more self-sufficient.

Because an inherent that requires us to team doesn't work well with an archetype that doesn't give anything proportional back to teams.

EDIT - beyond the inherent, however, I don't understand how Arbiter Hawk can look at Peacebringers and Warshades (which are under pretty much the same inherent) and turn around and say he's worried about overpowering Peacebringers!

Maybe a word or two about where he's finding all this so-called power might be in order?

Meh.

not *all*. I could give a **** if i looked up and all my fendurs suddenly didn't have vigilance, because it really doesn't do anything for the AT outside of the solo damage buff. the same could be said for conditioning with veats or gauntlet for tanks.

i think the problem here and what A. hawk is seeing is that CB and DS do *so* much more than some other inherents and can be so powerful that he's afraid of making it more. But, as you said, i'm for taking alot of the power out of the inherent, making the ATs more self sufficient, and making the inherent do a consistent, however smaller, buff.

defenders aren't as OP as khelds are. clearly.

>.>
<.<
*looks at force multipliers and runs*

And thats kinda our problem...they're just so deathly afraid that any tweaks are going to turn us into Scrutfendinator's...even the smallest ones.

My real question is, would making khelds even slightly "OP" really be THAT bad? Seriously, look at what brutes, and defenders, and controllers, and all these other AT's can MANAGE. Ive got a pair of friends, ones a DM/Invuln brute, the other plays a widow. They've both got billions invested into their builds, between the two of them they can all but DUO the lambda trial (They have trouble making the timer on Marauder). The brute's had me tag along for him soloing TF's, Ive even made a really funny thread about killing Praetorian Duray in the Sutter TF with a rock because he wanted to solo the thing and I got lucky enough to land the last 45 damage on him.

If its okay for them, why isn't it okay for me?

I'm not trying to demand I be THAT powerful...I'm just saying that there's a fairly large spectrum of power level to choose from up there. You don't have to worry about things being OP until PB's start soloing incarnate trials.

Technically they lost the ability for pets to contribute to the endurance discount. However, that's considered a bug fix since it would have interfered with the damage buff portion.

My Arcs
-----
Mission Architect Handyman

Which is why I started that thread back in the Kheldian Forums about looking at our inherent! I agree with the sentiment that a little overpowered wouldn't be such a bad thing, but if the inherent is what's holding us back, then by damn let's nerf it in favor of direct changes to the archetype!!

But, like you said, would overpowerint Kheldians just a little bit be such a bad thing?

Especially in the current post incarnate pwnage that has become the late game.

I saw this on Beta 01 just a few minutes ago ... and was flabbergasted.

And since the Devs haven't assigned any values to these parameters yet on Beta ... maybe we should help them figure out the RELATIVE strengths of Peacebringer vs Warshade for these metrics in the Character Creator. I'm not talking about Absolute Numbers here (from 1-10) ... I'm talking about PB > WS or the alternative of WS > PB.

I'll start with *MY* impressions of the disparities between PB and WS.

• Survivability: WS > PB
• Melee Damage: PB = WS
• Ranged Damage: WS > PB
• Crowd Control: WS > PB
• Support: PB > WS
• Pets: WS >>> PB

Reasonings and rationales:

Survivability: Crashless Eclipse is superior to (mini-)Crash Light Form. Stygian Circle crushes Reform Essence/Essence Boost for damage recovery in 99% of the game. Warshade Slow effects aid survival better than Defense Debuffs and (unreliable) Knockback.

Melee Damage: Peacebringer *can be* designed for melee combat, but prolific Knockback in melee range powers damages PB melee potential unnecessarily. Warshade has Orbiting Death, which combined with Mire, Inky Aspect and Gravimetric Emanation can deal a very *significant* portion of damage within (near) Melee Range with a high safety margin.

Ranged Damage: Warshade has superior options/synergies to Peacebringer powers, particularly with Warshade Control Potential (Stun stacking). Only advantage that Peacebringer has is the ability to slot Achilles' Heel Proc, which can't stack its Debuff. Slow Debuffs are more "useful" on ranged damage attacks than Defense Debuff.

Crowd Control: Warshade Mez stacks far more effective than anemic Peacebringer powers which don't synergize with each other. Warshades can Teleport Foe to break up enemy groups into manageable chunks, Peacebringers have no comparable counterpart power.

Support: Peacebringer can Heal Others and Group Fly. Warshade has no comparable "for the team" counterpart powers other than Debuffs to the enemy. Kheldian "support" is weak in absolute terms for both Peacebringers and Warshades due to lack of buffs for Teams/Leagues (other than Leadership Pool powers).

Pets: Extract Essence vs Photon Seekers? NO CONTEST.

It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...

I don't even really get how its holding us back!

I mean, once I21 goes live I'll cap my own resistances (sans Psi anyways), so the 10% I get from the inherent per offensive AT isn't really going to be doing anything for me; and Warshades have been enjoying Eclipse self-capped for years now.

My damage wont be capped, but Warshades are pretty consistently bumping their noggins against the damage cap from the way they talk, so for them that's another part of the inherent that they aren't really getting much out of.

Do we really need to talk about the mez prot? Really? To be honest, we do because its the exact opposite of the other two. In their cases they're piling more on top of whats already topped off, but in the mez prots case its just so little that it might as well not even be there. If you've got enough controllers/dominators to make the mez prot worth it, nothings attacking you anyway because its all locked down pretty hardcore.

For the resistance and damage portions of our inherent it looks like a lot, but in several cases we're already THERE...and its a hard cap, so its not like we're even getting reduced benefit out of it.

Lets be honest, most of what I'm pointing out here is probably more likely to get us NERFED...which should be fairly ridiculous on its own considering where we're at, but its kinda what we need. At least HALF of what we need anyways...We DO need to lose some of the resistance we've got, we need some of our +dmg% effects to be rolled into the powers naturally, we need some of what we DO have to be shuffled a bit with OTHER forms of effects. It can't just be straight cuts, and it can't just be ignoring yet more "wonk" in our powers.

I've stated several times in the past that all I really want is for my AT to make sense. I dont think we need a "back to the drawing board" overhaul, but I do believe its gonna take more than just lowering some cooldowns, and calling it a day. They're gonna have to directly play with some numbers, change some abilities focus, and skirt the cottage rule fairly hard (if not break it in some places). We need a fairly extensive tune-up, PB's more than WS's; but we both suffer from some of the same problems, even if they're coming from different sources.

/em speechless

It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...

like those tea party people say.. Take your hand off my resistance.. dont nerf it. just rework the inherant so we get benefit from it solo

Damn. Am I the only one here getting the impression that - in spite of even the current changes - the developers are all wishing HEAT's would just go away?

>.>

<.<


.......psst! YOU! Arbiter Ghost! Yes, you! Go tell that Falconhawk guy that I'll go away and you'll never hear from me again! I only have one price:

A Kheldian Sash.

Well, that's just it. I'm not wanting to "nerf" our resistance...not really anyways...I'm just wanting to turn the HUGE amount of excess we have into something else. Defense, Regen, SOMETHING...

It's been suggested before, turn our shields into defense rather than resists. At the lower levels it helps with the lack of mez prot because the mez's just aren't HITTING as often, at the higher levels it doesn't have us squished up against the resist cap from our Tier 9's, our inherent, our shields, and any buffer's in the party who happen to have taken a resistance buffing set. Shining for Ranged or Smash/Lethal. Thermal for AoE or Fire/Cold. Quantum for Melee or Energy/Negative. We lose 22.5% resistance (Unenhanced) gain 7-12% defense instead. Lightform's only getting us to 52.5% (Again unenhanced). If the idea someone else had went through to lower the resistance on lightform but gain Psi also went through...that'd be about 35% resists to all...unenhanced so that'd go up. 7-12% defense, with 35% resist, and gaining 10% resist from the offensives on our team is gonna give our resistance cap some breathing room to accomodate not only resist buffs from our inherent, but also from teammates. It makes the shields useful, keeps dwarf's "purpose" (resisty, high HP, tank) helps lower level kheldians, and doesnt really cost us anything because we didn't "lose" anything, it just shifted things around a bit, either gaining psi at a slight loss from other resistance types, or gaining defense instead. Overall, we're a stronger AT for it because we're layering our protection. Potentially OP? Yeah a bit, but not to such a degree that we're gonna start soloing Incarnate trials anytime soon.

Admittedly? Thats from a Peacebringer's perspective, I can't really judge what would be required out of Warshade's. Id say Eclipse should have to have a smaller target limit put in place, and I know WS's would have a hissy over such a suggestion, but sometimes you gotta give an inch to gain a mile. Besides, with the shields becoming defense that's three less LotG fillers you have to take from power pools...

Traitor!

I don't know though. On the one hand, Arachnos got rated, we really should get rated. On the other, I can understand the ?'s because we are intended to be a little more malleable than everyone else. They could at least fix the description to take out the implication that we don't get anything from teaming with other kheld's anymore.

And I'd say you're wrong. But don't listen to me. Look at the numbers I posted from my spreadsheets:

Peacebringer Analysis

Warshade Analysis

Check'em out yourself, if you like. They take the current changes into account. But here's the skinny on survivability:

Peacebringer:

Max Survivable DPS:
Human: 165
Dwarf: 331
Nova: 106

Fatal Burst:
Human: 5387
Dwarf: 10773
Nova: 3859


Warshade:

Max Survivable DPS:
Human: 1 Foe=99 10 Foes=876
Dwarf: 1 Foe=345 10 Foes=1506
Nova: 1 Foe=82 10 Foes=868

Fatal Burst:
Human: 1 Foe=1772 10 Foes=3981
Dwarf: 1 Foe=6476 10 Foes=9169
Nova: 1 Foe=1478 10 Foes=3941

Taking the average survivability of the 1 foe vs 10 foes figures on the warshade, you've got scores that are roughly four times higher than a Peacebringer's.

And don't try to convince anyone that eclipse is actually dangerous to use. You can stealth in, stun and reposition the spawn, grab an eclipse and mire all in complete saftety. AND eclipse gives resistance from psionic, which - by the time you're 38 - is rather prevalent among Arachnos, the carnies, Longbow, CoT, the Rikti, iTrials, etc.

But hey- feel free to prove the numbers wrong.

EDIT - And the point about melee damage is kind of moot when the ranged damage of a warshade so far outstrips it. Your point about support might have merit if we're talking about heals alone, but the secondary effects both stun and slow enemies to the point that heals are less necessary. Besides. You're talking about one heal other clone. One power does not make a support role.

How? If you're using Shadow Cloak+Superspeed and using Gravitic Emanation beforehand to re-position the spawn and have inky aspect running to stack the stuns I can't possibly see how lag and/or human error could be common enough to be a problem worth considering. I couldn't tell you the last time I was killed going in for an eclipse. Never mind the fact that you can teleport away if you take too much alpha before you get eclipse off.

About the only time Light Form is superior is when your facing things like cimerorans' collective defense buffs or massive tohit debuffs, and even then a dwarf mire will take care of the problem. Bind Eclipse to your human form bind and it goes off before you can take the alpha - EVEN IF YOU"RE MEZZED when you drop form.

This is the power of quoting out of context. The developers said nothing like this. The comment was that in a single PBAoE power, the damage potential would increase with KD instead of KB. PBAoEs have the effect of radial knockback, scattering enemies virtually regardless of how you handle it. Sure, you can stand to the side and fire them to the other, but they will still scatter.

Ranged knockbacks (yes even targeted AoEs for the few who are still in la-la land) don't cause radial knockback. The only way to get them to is, you guessed it, stand in PBAoE position, either with a Targeted or by jousting a cone.

Find a post where the developers said ranged knockbacks rein in damage, or for Pete's sake stop taking what they say so far out of context. You might as well flat out lie about what they said.

Just to expound, lest the ignorance has lent itself to lysis:

The devs didn't say knockback would rein in damage, one dev said turning a melee power's KB to KD would increase damage.

...and because dead horses deserver a good whooping

Ranged knockback when used even semiintelligently can add oodles of damage potential, specifically by mitigating incoming damage and keeping enemies against a wall or in a corner. Energy Blasters have known this to be true for years. I can't believe it's still debated after all this time. Enemies who are not mezzed in some manner will run around and run away. Knockback used inapproriately can slow things down, of course, but at least with PBs you've always been restricted and should have gotten some idea of how to play the game before you rolled out.

There. This is quoting out of context.

KB can be good or bad. In most of my experience, when something requires forethought and attention to be good, but requires no thought and button mashing to be bad, you assume it's bad.

I've had too many mobs knocked into walls - and thus unattackable, occasionally requiring a petition to finish missions - to be shown otherwise. If you assume other people you team with are idiots, you don't want them to have KB and you can be happy to be proven wrong.

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

Originally Posted by Brillig It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.

the breakneck pace of most of the game in teams has it so that clumped groups of enemies are the best as aoe damage is king in most scenarios.

think about it this way: in a team you don't spend time carefully positioning yourself on the edge of each enemy group, perfectly trying to get that ~golden angle~ where you knock them back into a corner for massive damage and clumping.

instead the general plan is very much bum rushing everything to death, just hopping into the next group one after the other. in the 10 seconds of positioning and 10 seconds of recharge for your next mega-special solar flare a competent team will have already have reamed the mob and moved on to the next one. well i guess maybe not since you probably slowed them down by knocking the enemies away and leaving them unsaturated for the pain train (read: not your character)

knockback can be useful, but if in the large majority of cases it's detrimental to your character's specifically designed playstyle (melee with significant knockback..?) or the team then it's kinda bad.

cmon dude the thread's been talking about melee/pbaoe knockback not ranged. nobody's been asking for the ranged knockback to be removed, or saying that it's a mitigating force in damage for those attacks. they're saying it's a mitigating force for melee, which is a given considering it forces the player to run after a dude to hit them again with the same power. kick-the-can style melee and whatnot.

you're ignoring the real part of contention in the quote and what everyone is taking a serious facepalm to:

No, they're not really all that close for damage for PBs. Energy Assualt's damage blows what PBs can do out of the water, and the comparison gets worse for Fiery Assault. Looking at straight damage numbers, Incandescent Strike is the closest thing to being competitive, but then it recharges and animates more slowly, as well as not being a ranged power (while Doms do have melee attacks, they do have mostly ranged attacks, and good ones at that, something that cannot be said for human form). And of course, PBs can't mez like any Dominator can easily do. Even if they got Pulsar at a guaranteed Mag 3 AND Solar Flare did KD, they wouldn't be in the same boat.

Warshades are in a better boat for mezzing, but I wouldn't say they're on par with a Dominator. I'll grant that they're probably good enough there, though. Damage... it's harder to say. Depends on what your settings are, etc. I'd say I would need a spreadsheet comparison of the two. Anyone know what some proven DPS numbers are for Dominators? We could compare those with Joe's Warshade numbers easily.

Of course, Cosmic Balance can muddy this comparison slightly for Peacebringers as well. The problem there is that I don't think there is any set damage level I can depend on as a Peacebringer, and I don't necessarily like the AT being balanced around that. As I have said before, it's better for us to have more guaranteed performance solo and on small teams, with lower buff numbers from Cosmic Balance. The inherent is nice and cool, but it's still designed with an 8 man team in mind (and we've all discussed whether it buffs as well as it could since then). To put it simply, Dominators work well solo or on a team of any size, whereas Kheldians are all over.

For the first part of your post, I do think the Jack of All Trades thing doesn't work well enough. Or really, that we're decent enough at all the trades to justify that moniker. Warshades, as always, are still closer, though. I'm okay with Warshades being decent at mez in comparison to Dominators, for instance. That's an okay target to shoot for. And they should keep adjusting for the two ATs to keep them adjusted how they work (rather than boosting them in similar ways in all things).

By status resists, I meant slows, end drains, etc. I thought those were thought of as status ailments, compared to mez. Dwarf really could use those. And as for Dwarf's damage... yeah. It takes forever to drop a boss, a problem I don't have on my Tanks at all. Not sure if this is a Cosmic Balance issue or what, but I feel like Dwarf should at least have the ST damage to keep up with a tank, it's not like it is that huge (and Dwarf is supposed to be on par with a Tank).

Last but not least, I saw the rating thing before looking at this thread, via Dev Digest. Question marks by our capabilities are not clear, nor do they show what we should be able to do. Other ATs vary a fair amount by powerset, and the Devs should be able to give a ballpark for those numbers.

I'm startled that they think the current question marks are clear to anyone. A new player would just be confused, and older ones would think it's a bug. I'm not going to go to "the devs do not know what Kheldians are capable of, but it certainly doesn't look good that they could even fix a rough amount (which is all those numbers mean, anyway).

Preaching to the choir.

I just am willing to concede that intelligently-used KB can be beneficial, despite the large majority of cases where I'd rather the person doorsit because it would waste less of the team's time than their insistence on using high KB powers that knock mobs in key groups or on defeat all missions out of the walls and prevent you from attacking them for long periods of time if someone doesn't happen to have Teleport Foe (or Starless Step, since this is a Kheld thread).

Edit: Also, the bolded, huge text in your quote about PBs having more AoE damage potential than Super Strength characters is true in the same manner that Stalkers do more damage than Brutes and Scrappers: if you cherry-pick the scenario and ignore all other possibilities. I can come up with a very poor Super Strength Tanker that only has Footstomp for AoE that will do less AoE damage than an average Nova form. >.>

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

Originally Posted by Brillig It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.

if anything i would say with the light form change they should have added def to that.. but im not a fan of def too squishy for me.. especially for us who already pvp with our kheldian .. def is a death trap if its not 40% or better.. and even then its still iffy..

nah keep my shields resistance....

ive tested the light form.. in many personal test in pvp and pve.. and its not that bad.. see the light blinking .. hit conserve.. and soon as you crash hit a heal.. its not that bad.. and 30 sec lata its back up.. so yeah factor in the new light form.. incarnate and io's pbs are not to snuff at.. but i say buff are always good..

imho whats left to look at is

inherent
dwarf
nova..

human form pb as it stands right now is golden....