Struggling with HOW to play my WS

So with double xp I've hit my WS really hard and got it to lvl 45 last night. As I played I found that I was struggling with exactly how to be the most effective member of the team. It seemed like every time I went to human form to hit mire I was hammered by anything around, even if I let the tank, brute or scrapper take the alphas, sending me racing into Dwarf to try and survive, which wasn't a given. Once I got eclipse, this race was not quite so bad, but right now my recharge isn't high enough to have it even close to perma so there are many fights I have to go without it.

Basically what I struggle with is how to use my forms. Just for survivability I found myself in Dwarf most of the time and going to Nova when eclipse was up and I could use mire to boost that damage.

I'm just struggling with how to play my tri-form. Strategy and tactic tips would really be appreciated. And before anyone points me to the MFing Warshade guide, I've read it 3 times now. Great guide for building a foundation and is the reason I made a WS, but isn't a be all, end all guide.

Thanks in advance for any help.

http://dechskaison.blogspot.com/2011...-warshade.html

Without Eclipse, you should be playing much more like a Dominator. Use your mez, you have a ton of it.

I think this has been fairly well addressed at this juncture, but I do want to add that one common thread I see often with newcomers to tri-form builds in general and to Warshades especially is an over-emphasis on playing in any one form.

When the OP asked if he/she should "play in human form when Eclipse is down" and the response given was "You are all forms at all times!", this is what was meant, but given how commonplace this paradigm problem appears to be it would seem that we have not done as well as we might have in explaining what is meant by this. Therefore, here goes:

A common pitfall I see players fall into when trying to play a tri-form or even a dual-form build is encapsulated in the question "which form should I play in"? The answer is, as noted earlier, "all of them". Often players are (understandably) used to the defined ATs from their prior experience in CoH and adopt similar approaches to what is a fundamentally different AT. They play Blaster and remain in Nova form for minutes or even missions at a time. They play Tanker and do the same in Dwarf. While this is not necessarily the "wrong" way to play, it is not the method of play advocated by a tri-former and if the player in question is trying to make a tri-form build work with that approach, frustration is all but inevitable.

The solution is to to be all things at all times, to shift forms multiple times within a single battle, always reacting to the demands of the situation. You might drop into Human form to hit Hasten, fire off Gravitic Emanation to stun the mobs, then Mire off of them and shift to Nova to lay down some quick damage, then shift to Dwarf to absorb any stuns from the surviving mobs (if any still standing have mez effects, since you would have targeted those first while in Nova). Then you might drop to Human again to fire off Circle or to use Unchain or Dark Extraction. By that time Eclispse is back up and you might lead with that and then go to town in Nova. So the answer to the earlier question would be "sometimes". You do not want to play in human form any more than you want to always be in Dwarf or in Nova, but you want to make use of the tools available in all three, changing forms whenever the situation calls for a tool available in another form.

Keep in mind that all of this shifting, kiting, mezzing and blasting is taking place in a very short amount of time. Bounce around. Ultimately the key to really being powerful in a tri-form build is mastering the timing and knowing when to shift to what - this means getting a feel for the durations of your powers and the cycles of your various attack and mez chains so that the engine of destruction that is the Tri-Form Warshade never actually needs to stop moving.