PrincessDarkstar

Without fully looking at the build I am not sure if I would slot Eclipse like that for farming. A farming build really wants to take no chances with downtime so if I only have 3 slots I would aim for 3 different Res/Rech IO's.

Doing so means you need to hit less targets, and gives more room for error. I would sacrifice the set bonus' for a better chance of capping.

But that is just preference I guess.

I would definately say that it is NOT worth taking the attacks in any of the primaries, they cause very little damage and take a lot of endurance compared to the attacks of other AT's.

Bots/FF is the combo where they would be most use, since after bubbling the bots you have very little to do, but even there they are useless outside of the first few levels.

If I was you I would just concentrate on the bubble powers, the pets, the upgrades, medicine pool and repair (To heal the pets), leadership pool, travel power, and the Mu epic pool for Electric Fences. The taunts from the presence pool are good if you plan on tankerminding.

On my bots/traps after the bubbles the only 3 powers I use are the 2 taunts and Electric Fences.

However I do have one comment to make about bots/ff in general, and that is that it is strong but boring to play. You literally have no useful contribution to make (Aside from passively standing with the big bubble and leadership pool) after you have bubbled your pets, you bubble every 4 minutes then stand about waiting to bubble again.

Jade Dragon said:

To try and answer your other questions:

Caltrops - I think it is such a useless power you may as well put the procs into it unless you are giving up large set bonus. Having 6 chances to hit a target every 10 seconds isn't shabby. And as far as I know is the only power that can take 6 damage procs.

Acid Mortar - No idea since I am not very high on my bots/traps yet (My experience comes mostly from Bots/FF).

Endurance - Yes it affects the bots when they use their powers, rather than summoning cost.

Level 47 - I wouldn't bother with anything from the patron. I would probably take something based on what (If any) set bonus I wanted.

The way I plan on slotting my bots is:

Battle Drones HO:Nucle(A), HO:Nucle(3), HO:Nucle(3), ExStrk-Dam%(5), EdctM'r-PetDef(5), SvgnRt-PetResDam(7)

Protector Bots HO:Nucle(A), HO:Nucle(13), HO:Nucle(13), ExStrk-Dam%(15), DefBuff-I(15), DefBuff-I(17)

Assault Bot HO:Nucle(A), HO:Nucle(27), HO:Nucle(27), ExStrk-Dam%(29), S'bndAl-Build%(29)

That way both Assault Bot and Battle Drones are Dam and Acc capped, you have procs and uniques and the extra defence in the Protector Bots.

You will notice that there are no heal IO's in the Protector Bots, and there is good reason. I am just making these numbers up to show the way the healing AI works, but lets say a robot has 500hps and the Protector Bots heal for 250. When a bot is on 1/2 health the Protector Bot will heal him, since it waits until it can get full benefit from its heal. If you slot for heal that 250 will become 350, and the Protector Bots often end up waiting too long to heal and by then it is too late.

Hope that makes sense and helps.

I haven't got time to look at the build yet, but Mu is the only patron pool with a -kb component to the immob, and -kb is the important thing to stop your robots from simply knocking the enemies out of your burn patches.

I would say all other considerations are secondary to this when looking at patron pools.

I see a problem with the human part of your build, assuming you plan on actually using it as any more than a 'drop to when needed' form.

Having only 2 powers of any use is going to mean you don't have much to do in human form (And thus be really bored!). Also with the cast time of Aid Other you can actually wait for Glowing Touch to recharge and cast it with time to spare, so you don't really need it.

To compensate I would remove 5 slots from Aid Other, 5 from Nova, 2 from Dwarf, 3 from Combat Flight and get some attack powers. That will at least give you something to do when nobody needs healing.

I know I am late to the topic but judging by what you want I would simply compare the Dwarf forms of both PB's and WS's and see which is best if you plan on playing in that form for a long time.

White Dwarf will usually hold up longer in a fight, but for a scranker build you can't get better than Black Dwarf and that is why I would pick a Warshade.

The main reason for this is that Black Dwarf Mire is much better for damage that White Dwarf Flare, and getting a good recharge build means you can spam it and have an almost permanent 230% damage bonus.

To truly get the most out of it however you need to build for recharge, movement speed (Since both Dwarf forms are slooooow) and building for defence will also help if you get the room (But you aren't likely too).

Just make sure Black Dwarf Mire is your best slotted power and you are good to go

As Smiling_Joe said however, PB's are easier to play than WS's, and require less dropping to human as White Dwarf is more self-sufficient than Black Dwarf. So aside from the Black Dwarf > White Dwarf thing I would look at budget, low budget = PB, higher budget = WS.

I did the same thing as Dechs, though not quite. I picked a Warshade because purple > white and then I did all the reading up So although I knew what I was getting into by level 2, I didn't right at the start.

If you are one of those that plays games on 'master' difficulty without playing through on 'normal' first then you can probably get away with reading up and jumping straight into tri-form Warshades, if not then as AlienOne says, getting into PB's is a good introduction to all the form shifting that a Warshade will require, without making it quite as important as it would be to a Warshade.

Ultimately however I think PB's work to the human only build better, and Warshades lend themselves to tri-form better, but there are many people that have jumped in the deep end with Warshades, not liked it and given up.

I have played Necro/Dark to 38 and Bots/Bubbles to 50 so although I do have experience of both primaries I am probably not the best source of info:

Robotics: The easiest of the sets to learn, since all the pets stay at range and therefore in range of buffs, heals and anything PBAoE. This means they pair well with Traps (Staying with FFG's bubble), Force Field (Staying within Dispersion Bubble), Pain Domination (For the heal aura), and Thermal (Again the heal aura). Though they can be made awesome with any combo I think these are the best/most natural.

The T3 pet is where it is at for bots, and the Assault Bot is going to cause ~70% of your damage if not more (Educated guesswork). His big hitter is a large swarm of missiles that leaves a burn patch on the ground and anything that stays in that patch long enough burns to death very quickly. The key to leveraging that damage is having an immob with -KB. This is where /traps works well, as does the Mu Mastery pool.

Bubbles and Traps go particularly well, since the T2 pets cast their own bubbles which can be enhanced to ~11% defence to all. They double bubble each other and single bubble you, so it is pretty easy to have all your bots softcapped using either secondary.

Necromancy: I found this much harder than bots because of the need for your pets to be in melee range, which is more dangerous than staying at range and kept them out of the range of Twighlight Grasp all too often (Or should I say they would seemingly deliberately run out of range whenever I tried to cast it!). The T2 pets are where you get your damage from, and these are the pets that need to be kept in melee, though they have a ranged attack that they like using too often meaning you often have to make them move into melee.

The T3 pet is a debuffer rather than a damage dealer, but will help keep your T2 pets safer. Sadly in my personal experience even him and Fluffy and /Dark debuffs didn't do enough to stop my pets dying and I have almost given up on this toon. So there may be more playstyle related advice needed for zombies.

The secondaries I think go well are /dark (Thematic and extra debuffs to compliment the T3 pet) and Thermal (Resistance shields for resistance based pets + heals). Though again all secondaries can probably be made to work.

Thats about it from me, I hope if I am wrong or have missed anything out I am corrected soon enough.

Procs in pets go off every time they fire a power, as long as that power can take the proc.

For example the achilles heel proc goes in -def attacks, so only the pet attacks with a -def component have a chance to trigger it. But there is no 10 second wait, it will always have a chance to proc on every -def attack.

Damage procs will have a chance to go off in any power that causes damage, hold procs in any power with a chance for hold etc.

You are right that most MM's don't need any slotting to be effective, especially considering the set bonus' apply to the MM and not the pets so they are generally less effective anyway than with other AT's.

In your case I would think +recharge is the most useful bonus you can get, as well as making sure you find room for all the pet uniques to make your pets more sturdy.

If you find that you do draw aggro onto yourself then +defence will help, but I don't think you will do with /Thermal or /Pain.

Actually only Black Dwarf Mire is as a result of recent changes, the rest was just what I would have done anyway.

Sometimes macro's get &nbsp stuck into them instead of spaces.

Hover over the macro with the mouse and see what it shows you, if you see an &nbsp edit the macro, delete the space and replace it. You might need to redo this several times until it works.

I think it is a general macro bug not related to /petsay.

It really depends on your secondary, but +defence is great if you tankermind, and +recharge helps get your buffs/debuffs/heals up faster.

There isn't much else I can think of that is of much use.

It is also apparently more complicated than the recolouring of standard powers. Behind the scenes the mechanics are very different.

Sadly both my fave AT's (MM's and Khelds) are very limited in customisation, and I expect them both to be resolved at the same time whenever that may be (After GR I suspect).

Annoyingly that data chunk won't work in my Mids. Anyone have a version that will? I don't really have time to remake the whole build.

I do have a few comments though:

Lose the individual purple IO's from Ebon Eye etc, if you are only going to 1 slot a power it really isn't worth a purple (IE: Really isn't worth using at all!).

Swap the slotting from Quasar to Black Dwarf Mire depending how much time you spend in Black Dwarf form now that Black Dwarf Mire is on a reduced recharge.

Unchain Essence/Dark Nova Emanation/Dark Nova Detonation - drop the Damage/Range for whichever one is left, the Damage/Range is mostly useless.

Dark Extraction - I prefer 4 of the Expedient Reinforcement set for the 7.5% recharge bonus, and also 2 of the Soulbound Allegience set. Cant remember which though but I will tell you if I can get the build into mids.

Black Dwarf Drain - The Mako-Dam%:50(50) is going to be less use than a standard damage IO, but I would put a single EndRdx instead because it is quite endurance heavy.

Black Dwarf Antagonise - You are 1 slot away from a recharge bonus, so try and find a slot from somewhere.

The biggest problem I see with the forms just being toggles and not effecting powers is teaming, and CoX is balanced around teaming.

Why would you want anything other than the damage 'form' when you have a team who can take care of your survivability?

I would still play a full Warshade too, not many of the PB powers would get in my build, even if I could mix and match individual powers.