The MFing Warshade
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Introduction
Maybe you've heard of me, but it's more likely that you haven't. I'm Dechs, and welcome to my guide on how to play The MFing Warshade. If you're somebody who wants to get into a tri-form warshade and isn't afraid to play aggressively, then this guide is right up your alley.
Let's clear some things up before we get too far along.
What I am Not Going to Do
- I am not going to list each power, describe what it does, and detail all the numbers. You're resourceful; you can find this stuff out on your own.
- I am not going to hand you an IO build. If you're just here for the mids export so you can run to the market and purple your 'shade, then GTFO. The MFing Warshade is not a build.
- I am not going to claim that mine is the only way or the best way to play a warshade. There are many ways to play a warshade and best is a very subjective term. For instance, AlienOne has done some pretty crazy things with his human only warshade.
Still reading? Good.
What I Am Going to Do
- I am going to advise good uses of the powers you get. I'll highlight the really good ones and briefly mention the ones I think you should avoid.
- I am going to guide you along the leveling path. Characters don't start at 50 with a full compliment of IOs.
- I am going to do my best to give you all the tools you need to get the most out of your tri-form experience. This is intended to be a comprehensive guide to creating a fun and highly effective tri-form warshade. This includes covering useful binds, clever tactics and helpful pool powers, as well as taking a look at the IO sets that can add the most to your warshade.
By the end of this guide, you will have everything you need to be The MFing Warshade.
So What Is The MFing Warshade Anyway?
I know that's what you're thinking. As mentioned earlier, The MFing Warshade is not a build or even a certain play style. It is a state of mind. It is one that embraces the jack-of-all-trades nature of the beast and makes the most of it. It is one that never stops and never fears. It is one that can fit any role and sometimes all of them. It is one that, in its prime, causes the team to pause for a moment of reverence and think to themselves, "Wow, that is one MFing warshade."
At its height, The MFing Warshade will have 300% damage bonus, 85% resist all, well over 50% tohit bonus, three damage dealing pets in tow, a ranged AoE attack chain, and the ability to refill both bars more often than I blink. It can also permanently stun ten targets, permanently hold one, and even stun bosses in a single shot. It has mez protection with an 80% hitpoints bonus on demand. It can even shrug off defeat twice every five minutes.
A Walk Through the Void
Have I captured your interest yet?
Then let's get started! Be sure to buckle up, because this is going to be one intense ride. While leveling up, you'll notice that your strategies evolve and diversify at a rapid pace. Almost every new power is game changing.
I'm going to do everything at once here. I'll explain powers as I walk you through the levels, as well as describe the tactics that these powers open up for you.
Phase One: Pre-Nova (Levels 1-5)
Assuming you've already logged in and created one badass costume, it's time to pick the first two powers before you start cutting a swath through the streets of Paragon City. Absorption doesn't really do much and is not optional, but that's alright because you need a place to put a Steadfast KB protection IO anyway. The real question here is do you go with Shadow Bolt or Ebon Eye? Pick either one you want, because five levels from now it won't matter anyway.
In fact, that's about how the rest of this phase goes. Pick whatever powers you want because these early ones really don't offer you anything. Whichever blast you didn't pick when you created the character would be a good idea. Gravimetric Snare might be nice if you had the slots to devote to it. As a tri-form, toggle powers in general are very limited in use. Personally, I ended up taking Orbiting Death simply because it's a cool as hell animation.
Right now would be a good time to set up a teleport bind. I suggest you get used to teleport. It's your inherent travel power and is, by far, the fastest mode of transport in the game. The bind I use makes teleport incredibly easy. All you have to do is have your cursor where you want to go, hold shift and then click.
- /bind shift+lbutton powexecname shadow step
Of course, you don't have to use teleport. You can easily fly around in nova or take super jump or speed to taste. It's just so convenient and speedy and has a unique animation. Nothing says "I'm The MFing Warshade" like stepping out of the void.
Most people join a sewer team and blow right through this phase before it even starts. That's an especially great idea for kheldians thanks to the inherent, which I'll cover now. The inherent, Dark Sustenance, is definitely something you're going to want to be aware of. Spend as much of your time as you possibly can in teams as you level up and you'll notice a very large difference. Join eight man TFs if you can.
Every offensive player on your team is going to give you 20% extra damage, this includes scrappers, blasters, brutes and stalkers. That's like adding a damage DO that doesn't get affected by ED to every attack just for inviting a scrapper to the team. Teams always have scrappers.
Defenders and tanks may not be as common, but corruptors and masterminds are. Each one of those adds to your resistances (including psionic). Unfortunately, to have enough resistance for this to be noticeable on its own, you have to already be in a support heavy team. Support heavy teams hardly worry about incoming damage.
Controllers and dominators give you status protection, which is very nice, but as with the resistance, you need a few of them before it actually makes a difference. At that point, none of the enemies are attacking to be able to mez you.
Finally, any epic archetype will give you slow resistance. This, my eager young warshades, is amazing. Slows are one of the few things that can cripple a warshade.
Phase Two: Pre-Dwarf (Levels 6-19)
With the level six ding you need to pick up Dark Nova. I say need because, really, your choices are to take one blast or four that come with flight as well as damage and tohit bonuses. Not to mention the fact that this is a tri-form guide. Dark Nova is a toggle with an endurance cost, but it also grants a recovery boost of equal magnitude. I don't feel any of its attributes are worth slotting, but the presence of a recovery buff grants us an opportunity. Go buy a Performance Shifter proc and throw it in here to essentially double the recovery bonus. Anyway, right now you should do two very important things.
First, you should set up a few binds and your trays to match. We're going to do these keeping in mind that you will be getting Black Dwarf before long. I use the Q key to get into and out of nova form because it's very easy to reach with my movement hand, but you can use any key you like. I keep my nova powers in tray 8, but likewise you can use any tray you prefer.
- /bind Q "powexectoggleon Dark Nova$$gototray 8"
- /bind alt+q "powexectoggleoff Dark Nova$$powexectoggleoff Black Dwarf$$gototray 1$$bind shift+lbutton powexecname shadow step"
The first bind hops into nova form. The second drops out of either form and rebinds the teleport click. It needs to rebind the teleport click because Black Dwarf has its own teleport power.
The next thing to do is a respec if you have one. Yes, I know you're only level six. Trust me, this is important. When you respec a Kheldian who uses forms, the powers that the forms use are technically inherent powers and can be slotted from level one up. Those precious four slots you had to waste in powers you wont use? Move them to nova blasts now and thank me later.
Somewhere in this phase you'll want to grab hasten. Put it on auto and never look back. Get used to the crash because it's never going to go away. Quite the opposite, it's only going to come up more often as you progress, so you might as well learn to deal with it now.
Other notably good powers here are Sunless Mire, Shadow Cloak and Gravity Well. Mire is a clone of the tier 8 power from dark melee, except you get it at level 12. It gives more damage bonus over time than build up with just one enemy. Saturated, it's like holding down the build up button for 30 seconds. Shadow Cloak is great for all the TFs you'll be doing since recall friend is an inherent power too. I picked up super speed so that I'd have full stealth on the cheap. Gravity Well is a medicine. At this point it treats quantumstomach, but later it will provide relief for sapperaches and surgeon inflammation.
The powers you want to avoid are the shields and the blasts. The blasts are terrible in comparison to your nova powers and the shields eventually get eclipsed (sorry, I couldn't help myself). Don't bother building towards stamina either. You don't need stamina and it won't help you shifted anyway.
In this phase of the game you are capable of a few cool tricks. The stealth will allow you to position yourself for optimal mires. Slot Gravity Well like an attack, not a hold, and with a full mire it can one shot minions and take huge chunks of HP from bosses/LTs. It's also nice to stack holds with the controller on the team for an immediate boss lockdown. Generally though, you'll be spending most of your time in the nova form hurling purple glowing doom at soon to be dead things.
Phase Three: The MFing Warshade is Born (Levels 20-31)
This is where things start to ramp up. Pick up Black Dwarf at 20 and set up a new bind. I use E and tray 9 when it comes to dwarf, but feel free to substitute your own into this bind.
- /bind E "powexectoggleon Black Dwarf$$gototray 9$$bind shift+lbutton powexecname black dwarf step"
So now you've got it all, right? If things get ugly you can become a lobster, but otherwise you hover back and blast. Well, isn't that just dandy? Stop! I have to break you of that bad habit before you even get it. You do not have forms. You do not shift into nova when your team needs a blaster or shift into dwarf when your team needs a tank. Never, no never, not ever think of yourself as a character who shifts into forms as the situation arises.
You are The MFing Warshade!
You are all forms at all times. Thinking anything else will cripple you without you even realizing it. You are never stuck in one form. Nova thrives on human and dwarf buffs. Dwarf protects human and nova. Human fuels dwarf and nova. Embrace this idea.
Regarding Black Dwarf, it gives you a hefty chunk of additional HP and very nice resistances to everything except psionic. It also gives you status protection and can be activated while mezzed like a break free. Just like Dark Nova, the recovery boost is enough to offset the cost of the toggle. Fully enhanced resistances are just shy of 60%. The Dwarf Mire is the real highlight here, as it mimics the human one. The damage and tohit bonuses are the same, but this one has a much larger area. It recharges much faster too, but it only lasts ten seconds. Enhanced for recharge and with hasten, you'll be able to stack it with itself.
This leads me into the double mire. Oftentimes, it's best to use the human mire first as it lasts longer, then use the dwarf mire for some really heavy hitting. Another option is to start with the dwarf mire that has the larger radius and allows for eating the alpha strike easier. The human mire can follow with the buffed tohit and all the enemies already pissed and moving into the smaller radius. Both of these can compound on the nova damage bonus for a few quick AoE blasts.
Having said that, the next step is getting Stygian Circle. With this power, you don't ever need to stop. With hasten and a recharge enhancement, this thing is ready almost all the time and, as long as you've been doing your job, it'll be able to fill both of your bars. Everyone else on the team will be sucking wind while you stomp all over enemies and shout "I'm The MFing Warshade!" Repeat the following mantra ad nauseum: "Must find more bodies, must find more bodies, must find more bodies..."
Back already? Good. I've got a few more powers to tell you about.
Gravitic Emanation is a power you'll want to have. If Gravity Well was medicine, this beastly tool is an ambulance. It's a fairly wide arc that can stun and knockback up to ten enemies. Enhance the stun and the recharge and this baby is permanent, but don't worry about that too much. Used right, you'll bunch the enemies up nicely for a few mires and they'll be dead before the stun ever wears off.
Unchain Essence is also a great power, but not many people are comfortable with it because you have to target a corpse and the power doesn't do that automatically. If you don't mind using it, it's a mini-nuke without a crash that has a fifty-fifty shot at stunning the things that survive. A nice trick with this power is to double mire, then one shot a minion with Gravity Well and blow him up. Follow up with emanation to stun if it looks ugly, but otherwise lay waste with nova blasts.
Outside of that, there's few powers in this phase worth mentioning. Inky Aspect provides little benefit since it's a toggle, although it can enable an instant boss stun when coupled with emanation or unchain. Nebulous Form would be great if you needed a travel power and the phase didn't kick in too late to work as an "oh crap" button.
This phase finishes at a point where powers are plentiful and slots are a premium. What you want to do is find powers that work well with only the default slot. Shadow Cloak, Starless Step, Inky Aspect, Combat Jumping are all good examples. Frankenslotting is highly recommended as it will ease the pain of the slot crunch by a great deal. Since almost every warshade attack has slow and -recharge components, the use of slow sets will let you grab a lot of accuracy, endurance, and recharge enhancement for an extremely cheap price.
Phase Four: The MFing Warshade Matures (Levels 32+)
At level 32 you're faced with the first difficult choice. "Do I go boom, or do I summon fluffy balls of swirling purple doom?" The nuke is nice. You can take it and tack a real nuke on the end of the double mire unchain trick. Eat one blue inspiration and use the circle, then keep on fighting like nothing happened. The pet is nice. It's easy to make permanent and eventually you'll have multiples following you around. The taunts from dwarf attacks allow them to continually eat souls without fear of reprisal. So which do you take?
The answer, of course, is both. I took Dark Extraction first and fit Quasar in at 41. Neither one is really mandatory, though. Many people don't like the crash and some people can't be bothered to continually summon pets. That's fine, these powers are just "nice to haves" in my book.
Few people seem to like self rez powers, but Stygian Return is one I love. It gives you ten seconds of untouchable status. If you thought "But it needs enemies to work!" just now, shut up. You are The MFing Warshade. Go back and repeat your mantra some more times. You should always be drowning in enemies. If you aren't using this power every time it's up, you haven't found enough bodies yet. As a bonus, it's also a power that only needs the default slot. Slap a recharge reduction in there and call it done.
Eclipse. Oh yeah, this is what we've been waiting for. Some people roll a warshade just for this power. Fully enhanced, it only takes 5 enemies in range to cap your resistance to everything. Notably, your resistance caps at 85%, just shy of the tanker cap. For comparison, a scrapper running unstoppable takes 66% more damage than you do, and he still has a psi hole. It lasts ninety seconds and carries across all forms, allowing you to buff and blast away with virtual impunity. It also refills your endurance bar. Be careful, this power does require a tohit check. Do what you can to slot for some accuracy and resistance, but don't skimp on recharge.
Kheldians don't get ancillary pools, so from here on out you'll be picking up the powers that looked good but you didn't have room for or some more one slot wonders. I already mentioned I took Quasar at 41, after that I took three concealment powers for somewhere to put Luck of the Gambler +recharge IOs.
Which brings me to set IOs in general. If you've already started slotting sets by the start of this phase, good for you. IO's don't start at level 50 and you don't have to wait for level 47 to slot them. The long term goal here is enough recharge bonuses to make Eclipse permanent. Recharge helps almost every aspect of the warshade, though. Heaps of recharge leads to having mire up more often than it's down, stacking dwarf mires, Stygian Circling more often, three pets at a time, a near seamless ranged AoE attack chain, unchaining every mob, and blowing Quasar every time you have a blue inspiration drop.
One great place to get recharge is Basilisk's Gaze in Gravity Well. I know I said to slot it like an attack earlier, and you will. Just put two common damage IOs in the last two slots and you're golden. Expedient Reinforcement can give you recharge in four slots as well. Another good one is Gravitic Emanation. The Absolute Amazement set is cheap as purples go, but there's also a 6.25% recharge bonus to be had from Stupefy, which is also cheap. Positron's Blast goes in a few places, but the set itself is light on recharge, so I try to set the sixth slot to have a common recharge IO. Luck of the Gamblers are not cheap, but they are worth the cost in my mind. You have plenty of powers with just one slot, and a few can take this IO. Here's the master list of options.
After that, defense is always a good option, but you likely won't get enough to make a noticeable difference. I like finding +HP or +max endurance, but that's not a priority. The recharge sets usually come with recovery and you have Stygian Circle, so I wouldn't bother looking for these. Likewise, damage bonuses are a bad idea because you have the mires already. With enough recharge, you'll be able to cap your own damage; one 3% bonus isn't going to matter. Keep frankenslotting in mind. A lot of powers only need three slots to do what they need to do. For instance, my Sunless Mire only has three slots and is just slotted for acc and recharge. I let its damage be done through nova blasts. One last suggestion is to get the buildup proc from the Soulbound Allegiance set and throw it in your Dark Extraction. Every target your pet attacks has a chance to trigger the proc.
That's it for the walk-through. You should now be equipped with all the knowledge you need to enjoy your experience as The MFing Warshade. From this point on, I'll be getting into more advanced and complicated things involving Warshades. I suggest you actually get your feet wet before reading on any further. If you're ready to move on, go right ahead. Otherwise: Go. Hunt. Be purple.
Advanced Stuff
I see you're ready to get tentacle deep in the more complex workings of The MFing Warshade. Be careful, any more steps into the void and you'll try to gobble up the soul of your boss. Maybe that's not such a bad thing.
First, I want to talk in depth about your trays and suggest how to set them up. Then I'm going to get into some of the binds I use and tell you how they help me. Finally, I'm going to teach you some of the neat tricks and tactics I've stumbled upon.
The MFing Trays
I don't know about you, but I'm astounded by the myriad of powers available to us. As such, power management becomes essential to the efficient eatinating of your enemies' essences (alliteration aside). I've already mentioned keeping your nova and dwarf powers in their own trays and letting binds swap them around for you. This keeps form powers from cluttering up your normal trays.
First, I recommend expanding to all three trays full time. Now take a moment to think about the powers you don't need to put in the trays. Your Teleport power doesn't need to be there since you already have a bind for it and it doesn't have a recharge time. Likewise, the form toggles don't need to be in the trays anywhere. The powers you got from levels 1-4 probably don't need somewhere to go because you likely haven't slotted them at all and thus won't use them. Hasten may need a spot, but if you never take it off auto it won't. If you're like me, you have three concealment powers that you'll never turn on.
Keep in mind that the top two trays will never change as you dance between forms. This is important because quite a few of your powers are on long timers and you want to use as soon as they're ready. To keep an eye on these powers, such as Dark Extraction or Eclipse, you should put them in the top trays. Even if they're grayed out while you're in a nova/dwarf, they will still flash when they finish recharging. Other good powers for up here are Sunless Mire, Unchain Essence, Quasar, and even Stygian Circle. I know circle recharges fast, but if you need to drop forms to use it, you better be sure it's ready.
That leaves the few attacks and some utility powers that can be put in the first tray. These powers are generally always up. Gravity Well should go here, as well as Gravitic Emanation. I also put my vet attacks in this tray. It makes sense to put Shadow Recall here as well as the situational powers like Inky Aspect or Starless Step if you took them.
One last tip: Put accolade powers like Geas and Eye of the Magus in your top trays. These can be used while shapeshifted. Also worth noting while we're on the subject is that accolade powers are affected by global recharge, of which you should have a lot.
The MFing Binds
What I'm going to do here is list the binds I use. In the best case, you find them all extremely useful and take to them like a squid to the sky. In the worst case, you find them mildly inspiring but contradictory to your style and develop your own adaptations. Some of my binds are simply for tray management purposes, while others are to enable faster reactions. There's also a pair of targeting binds.
You may notice I make use of a lot of key/alt+key combinations. This is because I find the alt button easy to hit with my thumb while I use my fingers on the other keys. You may also notice that the keys I use center around the WASD portion of the keyboard. This is because I keep my mouse hand on my mouse all the time. It may not be the best way to play, but it works for me.
- /bind T "powexectoggleoff walk$$powexectoggleon shadow cloak$$powexectoggleon super speed$$powexectoggleon combat jumping"
- /bind alt+T "powexectoggleoff shadow cloak$$powexectoggleoff combat jumping$$powexectoggleoff super speed"
This is my standard for travel/stealth powers. Pressing T once turns Combat Jumping on and walk off. The second and third presses activate Super Speed and Shadow Cloak, respectively. I never need just Super Speed and I won't use Shadow Cloak unless I've already got Super Speed's stealth to go invisible. Alt+T simply turns them all off. That's three powers I was able to take out of my trays.
- /bind alt+E "powexectoggleoff black dwarf$$powexectoggleoff dark nova$$powexecname sunless mire$$gototray 1$$bind shift+lbutton powexecname shadow step"
- /bind V "powexectoggleoff black dwarf$$powexectoggleoff dark nova$$powexecname stygian circle$$gototray 1$$bind shift+lbutton powexecname shadow step"
- /bind C "powexectoggleoff black dwarf$$powexectoggleoff dark nova$$powexecname eclipse$$gototray 1$$bind shift+lbutton powexecname shadow step"
Three binds here that all operate the same way: Drop out of whatever form I'm in to execute a critical power. These powers are reactionary and often used. I paired Sunless Mire with the E key because it's used so often with the dwarf mire. V is my standard heal button (e.g. Dark Regen, Reconstruction) and C is usually my godmode button. Consistency is nice when you have a lot of alts.
As a side note, the alt+E bind allowed me to take even Sunless Mire out of my tray. Mine has zero downtime, so I can usually look for it on my buffs bar and decide whether it's recharged based on whether I have the buff. The same would be true of Eclipse, except that I care a lot more whether that buff is allowed to wear off. I use it's recharge cycle to tell myself how much time I have left on the buff.
- /bind TAB "targetenemynext$$targetcustomnext enemy alive quantum$$targetcustomnext enemy alive void$$targetcustomnext enemy alive cyst"
- /bind CTRL+TAB "targetcustomnext enemy defeated"
These are two convenient targeting binds. The first one helps you spot quantums, voids, and cysts. Be careful, though, as you won't be able to target anything else with TAB until it's dead. The second one is to help with Unchain Essence and Dark Extraction targeting.
The MFing Tactics
No, this is not where I tell you how to lay waste to large numbers of easy foes until purple recipes rain from the sky. If you followed the first half of the guide, then you can do this already. This is where I go over tactics for dealing with things that are sometimes difficult.
Mezzers
If you read this heading and thought, "Easy, just go dwarf," then shame on you. You're bad and you should feel bad. Remember what you learned in Phase Three: you are all forms at all times. Thinking any other way limits your options; options are power. There are a hundred ways to deal with mezzing enemies, and dwarf only covers about six of them.
- Mez them first. You have Gravity Well, a heavy hitting hold, and the means to single out that mezzer through stealth or TP foe if you took those powers. You also have Gravitic Emanation, one hell of a ranged stun for when there are multiple mezzing enemies. You may also have inky aspect if most or all of the minions are mezzers. If it's a mezzing boss, a healthy stack of stuns from aspect and emanation will do the trick. Unchain Essence can stun too.
- Sacrifice Fluffy. You have pets that follow you. Either stealth or teleport past the enemy group and let fluffy take the mez. You might hurt his feelings, but that's fine because he's already a tortured ball of angst you ripped from a whimpering, delectable soul. How much worse can he really feel?
- Kill them first. You have some very heavy hitting attacks from nova, especially if you carry a mire from the last mob. In fact, I've even run ahead to the next mob to saturate a mire, only to run back in nova and feed the mezzer his teeth. Yet another option is to open up with a (mired) Quasar.
- Get inspired. Seriously, you have inspirations. You should be killing so many enemies that you will have trouble keeping an empty tray. Either a break free or a few purples should keep you mez free long enough to kill two full groups of enemies.
- Wait it out. Generally, this is a bad idea, but you can always just wait for the mez to wear off. Maybe you don't want to waste time shifting into dwarf and then back into nova. Maybe you simply want to cackle madly while the enemies feebly attack your stunned yet impervious body, all the while getting pelted by your three floating furious fluffy friends. Eclipse is not a toggle, so the resistance it grants will not suppress while you are mezzed.
Tough Bosses
Bosses can be a right pain if they're resistant to your negative energy damage. They will last a lot longer than the rest of the mob, leaving you without targets to buff off of, and a few of them might be more than you can handle. If you took the mantra to heart, I shouldn't have to explain what to do here.
- Find more bodies. That's right, if things start to look ugly, move to the next group of ugly, even though it has even more bosses. The old bosses will most likely follow you. Refresh Eclipse and a couple mires from the full crowd. Now spin around to face the half dead bosses from the last group and feast on their life force.
Unfortunately, sometimes there are no more bodies.
- Pace yourself and the group. If you know ahead of time that you've only got the food in front of you, then it's a good idea to lay off the nukes. Stick to your single target attacks and aim the cone to hit as few as you can. Focus on your bosses while killing off minions and LTs only when you need fuel for Stygian Circle, and only as much as you need. You can really stretch out a meal this way.
- Lock 'em down. When you're past the point of no return, then one solid option is to play a game of lockdown. Toggle on your Inky Aspect and line them up for Gravitic Emanations. You should be able to keep three or more bosses permanently stunned by doing this. It'll be a slow fight, and it will lock you in human for a while, but it'll be safe.
- Knuckle up and scrap it out. If stuns are not an option, or if you just want to do it faster, then you'll have to start playing smash smash stomp with the tiny people who are causing you trouble. Eclipse won't be enough to keep you alive with only a few bosses to fuel it, but it will carry into dwarf where you should still have capped resistance. Endurance management can be a problem here, so try to pace yourself and remember that eclipse will fill your bar every time you drop to refresh it. Hit the dwarf mire just before you drop for the extra tohit.
- Hover blast them. Never discount sneaky sky squid as a viable strategy against melee heavy foes in general, but this can become critical when you're left with those last few bosses that hit like trucks in melee. Usually their ranged attacks are weaker and recharge slower, so this might be all the survival you need to out last them.