If you are an old-hand at warshades stick around. Same deal if you are a new person to the archetype, because playing a Kheldian on rebirth is a significantly new experience compared to live or any other server. The Kheldian archetypes received significant reworks in Ri4 and this guide will help give you a rundown and some basic Warshade tactics.
For those wanting a peacebringer, standby, I'll get to that eventually. I got a higher level warshade though and more experience there, so warshade comes first. Some of the notes though on the Kheldian changes will give you some insight on what you got to look forward too.
Warshades in a Nutshell
Kheldian archetypes in general focus on 3 different forms with 3 different power options and characteristics.
Human form has the access to the greatest set of powers, including some defensive toggles.
The Dwarf form (often referred to as the lobster) is a big bulky thing that has built in heavy resistances, buffs to maximum hp, and a focus on melee attacks and taunting, allowing it to act as a tank.
The Nova form (often referred to as the squid) is a free flying tentacled terror of ranged attacks with boosted damage and not much in the way of defense.
The human form differs the most between Peacebringer and Warshade. Warshade human forms have a variety of ranged blasts that debuff recharge and speed with some knockback. The only heavy hitting melee attack that warshades have is "Gravity well" which does double duty as control and damage. The archetype has powers that act on fallen enemies in numerous ways. They can absorb health and endurance from bodies, turn them into summons, and even cause explosions from bodies. Warshades also have several ways to pull buffs out of enemies as well. Sunless mire boosts damage, eclipse refills endurance and boosts resistances.
Slotting is problematic because the archetype tends to saddle you with more powers then other archetypes, forcing you to make choices on where you want to focus those slots. The Ri4 changes try to alleviate that.
Ri4 Changes
The changes of Ri4 focus on a couple facets of the archetype. They try to ease some of the inconvenience with changing, while making it easier to manage the large array of powers you get from all the forms combined.
One of the biggest changes you might notice off the bat is if you have your defensive human toggles on and you change form, your toggles will not turn off. The effects of the toggles are suppressed, however, and you get an endurance rebate equal to the cost of the toggles. This lets you pop in and out of your human form without having to juggle a ton of toggles each time. Two toggles will work in nova and dwarf form however: Orbiting Death and Inky Aspects. The former greatly helps with tanking since it adds some extra attention-grabbing power to your dwarf form in the form of a damage aura.
Dwarf and Nova form no longer have unique powers associated with them that require independent slotting. Instead the forms take powers that you have and cause them to change into the form-specific version of the power. This allows you to spread the benefit of a slotted power across multiple forms. Its important to note that while the powers change, their cooldown does not reset. They may have different cooldowns in the different variations, but if the power is in cooldown, both varieties of it are not useful. Tri-form enthusiasts are hit the hardest by this change. Example: In classic COH, a warshade has a move called Sunless Mire which produced a nice fair duration buff to damage for every enemy it hit with a small PBAoE. It had a long cooldown. Dwarf, however, also had its own version o Sunless mire that lasted shorter, but had a quicker cooldown. So tri-form warshades would often use Human mire and change to dwarf form to immediately mire again for a larger damage boost then either power individually. This is no longer possible since using either mire puts both on recharge, though doing so in dwarf form puts both in recharge for a shorter time.
To make up for this Sunless mire has had its buff increased, and some of the increased buff will fade away after a short while and then a while later the rest of the buff fades, to emulate the sort of boost characteristic you'd get from a double-mire.
Dark Detonation and Gravimetric emanation are now given to you as part of snagging Dark Nova. Sunless mire and Essence drain come part of the Black Dwarf Package, so you still will have more powers then an average hero, so slotting still will be spread thinner if you want to work all those powers with enhancements, but it's a little less strained then before.
Finally, in a later update rebirth added an attractor mechanic to the game engine. This was applied to several Warshade powers. Gravimetric emanation now stuns hit enemies and drags them to you for several beats. Gravity Snare and Gravity well will cause naerby enemies to be pulled towards the primary target for a few beats. These powers give you some powerful tools for controlling enemy grouping, but be careful as they'll make bosses more in erratic fashions which can be a problem in incarnate raids.
You may use your teleport powers while in any form, but doing so changes you back to human.
Forms
As noted before you may get access to up to 3 forms with their own associated powers and abilities.
Dark Nova
Dark nova is your tentacled floating offensive form. The change has opened up its repertoire of moves.
Shadow Bolt becomes Dark Nova bolt, Shadow Blast becomes dark nova blast. Gravimetric Emanation becomes dark nova emination and loses all attractor and stun features. Dark Detonation becomes dark nova detonation while in dark nova form. Essence drain becomes shadow essence drain and gains range
The following powers remain useable in dark nova form, dark nova applies a universal damage buff, so all these powers hit harder while in Dark Nova form: Ebon Eye, Sunless mire, Orbiting Death, Quasar.
All other toggles can be activated and remain activated when in Dark Nova form, but their effects are suppressed.
THe nova form has the same HP as human form, but without any defensive toggles it's pretty squishy. This can be offset by using eclipse in another form and changing back to Nova, which carries the buff even after you change forms. Dark sustenance resistance boosts from having tanker/corruptor/mastermind/defender teammates do carry into nova form, so a defense heavy form can produce surprisingly tanky novas.
Because you have more attacks to play with, the basic nova attacks have been slowed down with their power increased proportionately, for easier attack cycling.
The fast fly speed combined with ranged blasts generally encourage you to pelt the enemy from afar safely away from the cluster nugget that is the melee pit. However with the ability to run orbiting death and having Pulsar available to you, you will be encouraged to be in closer. Orbiting death particularly is damage without any animation time tied to it beyond the initial activation.
Black Dwarf
While the nova is offense, the Dwarf is defense. The dwarf form has resistances to most damage types. They got access to all the survivability moves. They got a taunt, they can tank.
Gravimetric Snare becomes black dwarf strike, a melee strike. Gravity well becomes black dwarf smite, a hard hitting strike. Sunless Mire becomes black dwarf Mire.
Shadow bolt and Ebon Eye can be used in black dwarf form, as well as Orbiting Death, Inky Aspect, Stygian Cycle, and Eclipse all are available to dwarves. Orbiting death picks up a taunt effect while it's active on a black dwarf, which makes it a great tanking tool, you can now use your dwarf the way you use most tanks, letting the aura power snag attention of nearby enemies and focusing on using taunt to pull in the outliers.
Human
Human form focuses on survivable utility. You have 3 toggled defense buffs, (Gravity shield, penumbral shield, twilight shield) which buff your ability to take damage. Shadow Cloak gives you a perception buff (Always welcome when smoke grenades come out).
You have a set of blasts, shadow bolt, ebon eye, and shadow blast, as well as the AoE Dark Detonation. However since dark nova gets a damage boost, if you are firing blasts you are better off switching to Nova mode. Gravity well hits hard as it controls, making it a move always worth dropping out of Nova for, but using it in Dwarf mode robs you of an attack in your cycle.
Originally Stygian circle was a common reason to drop to human form to recover. But with the change it's useable in dwarf form now. Dark Extraction though remains a human-specific power. This is a VERY useful move. Each extracted essence only sticks around for a set amount of time, but with hasten and a pile of recharge you can get 3 of these death balls in play. They are uncontrolled pets so they'll just open fire on any thing that gets in range. You always want to drop to human form to use dark extraction whenever it's an option.
Gravimetric Emanation is very useful power in that it reels things in towards you as it stuns them. This synergizes well with the knock back effect of Quasar, allowing you to unload without scattering your enemies to the four winds for long.
While its tempting to use Quasar in Human form, there's a couple benefits to using it in Nova Form. First off, the damage bonus for nova form is applied. Secondly you can position yourself more above the enemy when exploding. This causes the knock to be more angled towards the floor, which mutes its effect a little. Always avoid standing in the middle of a group of enemies when using Nova when possible. That scatters them. Instead aim to use it in a way that pushes them all in roughly the same direction, stand to the side of groups, or even better, float above and to the side. Or, get the knockback->knockdown enhancement from summer blockbuster.
Unchain essence is also a human-specific move that hits like a truck with a huge AOE and stuns. It requires a body as your AOE origin. It makes a great followup to a judgement power or pulsar, allowing you to convert one of the bodies you just made into a followup whammy that usually finishes off the cluster. If anything survived the unchain it might be worthwhile to whack'em with another stun if you got it, the stacked stun can easily lead to heavier things being thrown for a loop.
Any pool powers you snag will be limited to human form. Hasten is incredibly useful for making a lot of those long-recharge powers more readily available so it works real well with Warshade and I'd strongly suggest it.
The Juggle
With this in mind the multi-form Warshade play changes up a little.
While previously it was beneficial to bounce between three forms constantly, the gameplay leans a little more towards an offense or defense routine depending on your needs. Constantly dancing between all 3 forms though is a bit diminished in favor of favoring combos towards offense or defense. Though when defending you always got the oppertunity to pop the nova-head out now and then to unload some nukes.
Offense
Nova and sunless mire are your friends in offense mode. You want to nova as much as possible. Drop into human form as needed to get hasten up and extract essence at every opportunity. Nova can't use eclipse so you'll want to use that at every chance so you got heavier defenses vs any retaliation. The extra resistance also lets you get in close with that orbiting death more safely where it's easier to mire as you please.
You'll want to be using most of your attacks in Nova form but Gravity well and Unchain essence require Human form and are fierce enough attacks that you'll want to pop human form on whenever they are ready.
A thing to be aware of with extract essence is if the enemy body despawns midway through the animation you'll be robbed of a murder fluff ball. So always work with the freshest bodies you can get your hands on.
Defense
Defense means staying in Dwarf form as much as possible, letting the orbiting death agro things up close while your taunt pulls in the long range things, as a tank would. You can use Stygian circle in this mode which means you got two avenues of self healing: the life steal and the circle. Eclipse is useable in dwarf mode so all your defenses and recovery is at your finger tips. So the key reason for leaving dwarf form is to squeeze a little more damage out.
This turns into a game of figuring out how much you can get away with without endangering yoruself. Using human form to squeeze off a extraction is usually my biggest risk, those those add up as well as making sure I swap to human as necessary to refresh hasten (something I sadly forget to do). The biggest pitfall is the fact that any controls you had on you unnoticed in dwarf form will immediately assert themselves the instant you go human, utterly killing your momentum, forcing you to duck back to dwarf form, and forcing you to spend some time to re-toggle orbiting death.
Be aware that while it's easy to cap human resistance with eclipse, your HP will still be higher in dwarf form, so every hit in dwarf form will still gnaw off less of your health bar. But it is still far easier with capped resistances to get those essence extractions and unchained essence hits off quicker.
If you are really feisty you might try quick hops to nova form to pop off a pulsar or some AoE blasts. This is best done after an eclipse, it's not uncommon for nova to hit resistance cap in a team when you get a good eclipse hit off, at which point it becomes no less squishy then human form.
Unlike the blasts, there's no bonus you miss out on when you don't do eclipse in dwarf mode, so don't feel obligated to swap to it.
