Imaginary

I haven't tested it, but apparently Hami O's don't reduce the recharge of Mind Link. So before you dump those slots look at it fairly carefully. Even so, I would personally consider boosting the Def / Recharge IO's and the LoTG IO in there and stuffing Total Domination in there. I just like having an AOE hold, I guess, and in this case you could get +10% recharge out of it. I'd also prioritize Knockback Reduction over the slow / recharge resistances you've put into brawl / boxing.

You're way overcapped on positionals with Weave. You probably don't need that. Up to you, though. I generally try to proc out Follow Up more than Spin, because I spam it more. That's a 'personal preference and what I use' choice, though. I'd put a End / ToHitBuff into the Leadership power and boost it to +5, just because I'm like that. I'd also pull out Tele Blast and switch Swipe in for it, just because I don't end up in range a lot. Spin is good, but to burn down AV's I use follow up / dominate / lunge / swipe / strike. Lunge does the most base damage with a tiny cast time, Follow Up and Dominate are set up wtih the Decimation BU just for kicks. Here's my spreadsheet comparing the damages of the four when fully proc'd out. It's really just for flavor, honestly.

So I'm almost done with a build that slightly alters yours, and it feels a lot easier for me to run outside farming. I've got it set up to use Cardiac Radial instead of Agility Core, (As far as I know, Agi core reduces your proc rates) and several things are re-slotted. It has less recharge and slightly less HP, but seems to work fine so far. (although if you wanted to roll completely without a travel power you could trade out Super Jump for Grant Invisibility, slot a LoTG in that, and get all but 5% of it back) The only concern I have is that I'm running Stealth, but that doesn't seem to cause a lot of issues so far. So, yeah, thought I'd share and see what you thought. I've been running your map and quite enjoy it. (Edit Note: The advantage gained from running Cardiac is tiny; I had thought it gave a damage boost. I'm headed towards trying out Musculature Radial, it looks like I have the stats for it. Anyways, I'll let you know how that goes.) ElecRadTank.mbd

I've just thrown together a plant / sonic and it's quite fun. Curious what your builds look like. Not sure Sonic is as overtuned as you say, but it does seem strong.

Sentinels are just blasters for people who a) can't find teams, and b) can't find the buttons to create brutes or tanks.

It's 4/5 of a DEFENDER and 3/5 of a BLASTER. That's 7/5 of BOTH. Ergo good.

Actually, there are two other generalized things they could do to improve their times. I tried them on test with a slightly different build, but didn't succeed. 1) Wait 1:00 for the second and third spawns of Hell on Earth elementals. They all stick around until the end of the spell, so you can have 18 of them instead of the normal 6 from the burnout + cast. 2) Get Amy's Ward, the Coral Amulet, the Tsoo Sorcerer, the DE seedlings, and the other various available summons. I tried it, but didn't try it with your exact build. Having more mobs to stack procs faster might lower the defeat time. I also tried it with a burnout + gang war on the training dummy next door then tele'ing onto the pylon, but that....... Didn't work as well. My 25 second clear time was pretty good, I guess, but nothing like his result.

I mean....... If I were that serious about exemplared content I could modify the existing Brute inspiration convert-and-chew macro to make one key convert almost anything to end and then eat it. Not really that much of a problem. I ran a Citadel last night and the end problems I ran into were when I used both the big, long recharge AOE powers and the attacks at the same time. I just spammed insps and converted for end. But I see your point..... If I were planning on focusing on low level content I'd probably end up with a Night Widow build that could do that as well as tank more effectively at higher levels.

Err... Sorry to be rude. Look, I've been back for a couple months and had some annoying mud slung at me about the 'meta.' Some people are so attached to it they consider it the only way to play. When I left Live, VEAT's had pretty much just come out, and were mostly unplayed. I loved my crabbermind, but there wasn't really anything beyond what it could do at the time. Now that I've come back to the game 'late,' there are challenges I didn't have in Live, I'm having a hard time adjusting to the community being absolutely set in stone about the stuff they want around for hard content. I always thought highly organized teams would end up doing the comparatively rational thing and build around everyone having the leadership buffs, and the VEAT's having enhanced versions of those buffs where they could. That would end up with a much more inclusive and flexible metagame. Instead......... Kin + Tank'ish + 3xCold + 2x Dam. Which is fine, but extremely static. Builds like this allow the entire team to slot considerably less Acc / Dam HO's, which opens up quite a few slots for more proc's. Basically, I'm trying to figure out how to design builds that are extremely effective at what they do, so I can build teams around them for high-end non-4* content and then move into 4* content over time. Anyways. It's been a frustrating time hearing people say I didn't know what I was doing because the 'meta' follows a very set path as-is. To me, it looks like people took what they already knew and had from pubs, plonked random selections of it into hard content, and then looked at the numbers as to why the best working stuff managed to win. Which is fine, but excludes a ton of possibilities.

You're welcome to hang out dead on the floor over there all you like. This is really useful to, say, a mastermind. One of the aims of this build is to make MM's / crabberminds more viable in higher tier content. Because the defense and to hit buffs are so high, it might allow for migrations away from Barrier and into Rebirth for organized teams. That's one of the goals here; to design a character that shores up some of the things that are completely unworkable in the current metagame.

I've proc'd it out instead, and...... Yeah, it's nice. I like to have something that's up more than once every 25-40 seconds, though. When I need it to hit really hard, I tend to follow-up once or twice first or pop a red. The damage cap is pretty immutable, That's a decent idea, and I've moved it down to level 22. I don't actually need the bonuses from Foresight all that much. Yeah, switching it out for swipe is a far better choice, I think. I'm mostly in melee anyways. I've been hitting bosses with Total Domination + Dominate. Total Domination will always push out a 5 mag hold, and Dominate spams out as a 3 mag with 20%'ish chance to proc the +2 mag. I guess if I had another power slot handy I'd throw it in, but I don't know what I'd drop. It is fine at 50+. When I try to run everything at once and have long combat sessions, yes. But the low-level powers I'm spamming (follow up, lunge, strike, swipe) in melee end the fight pretty fast - and I don't even have PJ / Atlas Medallion yet. I guess I need to experiment more to find where I'm running out of end. I have real end issues when exemplaring. Something is......... Not right there. But turning off the assaults when unnecessary gives it a lot less troubles.

So, I've finally put this together and tested it a bit, and it plays quite nicely. I've put it together somewhat differently from the other builds I've seen, so I thought I'd share and ask for commentary. The build is designed to run perma mindlink along with all six team leadership / etc buffs, and have vengance, as well as having higher than soft-capped defenses and a melee attack chain. It's designed to be 'secret sauce' for pubs, where your team may or may not be.... Well prepared. In practice, the team buffs widows can give are ridiculous. +29% to all defenses, +38% to hit, and 30% damage at all times. Your venge gives an extra 34% def all, 43% to-hit and 35% damage on top of that. That means that ALONE, you put everyone else far above softcapped defenses if the tank goes down. Drawbacks: It does not, sadly, have all that much self mez defense OR a ranged AOE attack chain; I couldn't find room for that.... I'm even considering swapping Psychic Scream for Spin. Additionally, the health and resistances are kinda terrible, but it's obviously designed for team play so that's somewhat beside the point. Positionally, I tend to be behind the AV stabbing him instead of tanking. Tanking with this build is marginally possible but I'd want to reconfigure it for both that and 4* teamplay. Also, this is a no-budget build. I've stuffed purples and purple procs in everywhere, as well as the ATO's, PvP IO's and WO's. I've +5'd many of the EndRed IO's to keep Assault and Tactics more affordable. Even then, the build is a lot easier to run with a Cardiac Alpha. Musculature would help, certainly, but the primary focus of this build is team buffing; in extended fights with full teams Follow Up certainly gets my personal damage close to cap. Regardless, a few notes on things I've done a little weirdly: 1) I don't see people putting a Membrane Exposure in Vengeance. It's designed for it, so I did. 2) Mind Link can take +ToHit IO's, so I added some to it. It's not a HUGE bonus, but 2.5% to hit for your team is actually far more meaningful than it sounds. That's multiplicative, because that's how to-hit works. 3) Note for those who don't know how proc'ing a power works: I've proc'd out various powers and worked to completely ignore their slotted recharge. This is because there's a hidden feature in the way proc calculations work and your slotted recharge reduces proc chance where global recharge does not. Thus....... Frankenslotting in Follow-up looks very strange, but that's because I want it to proc a lot. I'm spamming it. 4) In Mid's, all my powers show as 100%+ total accuracy at Enemy Relative Level +7 even without slotting much accuracy. This is because the IO Bonus total of 63% stacks with the various To-Hit buffs multiplicatively. In practice, this saved me a bunch of precious slots. The only power I really slotted for accuracy was Follow Up, because that leads to more to-hit buffs. 5) I kept the holds because I wanted to be able to hold AV's whenever possible. 6) Lunge is a mega-high damage power that you want to spam as much as you can, and if your team doesn't cap out your +dmg, you want it to keep hitting hard. Thus I used it instead of brawl to hold my hecatomb. I'm interested in commentary, but more than anything I wanted to share a build that was focused on the teamwork aspect of widows. Build: WeooWeeScrikck - Hero Arachnos Widow Build plan made with Mids' Reborn v3.7.5 rev. 21 ────────────────────────────── Primary powerset: Fortunata Training Secondary powerset: Fortunata Teamwork Pool powerset (#1): Leadership Pool powerset (#2): Speed Pool powerset (#3): Teleportation Pool powerset (#4): Leaping Epic powerset: Soul Mastery ────────────────────────────── Powers taken: Level 1: Swipe A: Superior Blistering Cold: Accuracy/Damage 3: Superior Blistering Cold: Recharge/Chance for Hold 3: Superior Blistering Cold: Accuracy/Damage/Recharge 5: Superior Blistering Cold: Damage/Endurance/Accuracy/RechargeTime 5: Superior Blistering Cold: Accuracy/Damage/Endurance 7: Superior Blistering Cold: Damage/Endurance Level 1: Combat Training: Defensive A: Luck of the Gambler: Defense/Increased Global Recharge Speed 7: Luck of the Gambler: Defense Level 2: Fate Sealed Level 4: Strike A: Touch of Death: Chance of Damage(Negative) 9: Mako's Bite: Chance of Damage(Lethal) 9: Gladiator's Strike: Chance for Smashing Damage Level 6: Tactical Training: Maneuvers A: Luck of the Gambler: Defense/Increased Global Recharge Speed 11: Luck of the Gambler: Defense/Endurance 11: Luck of the Gambler: Defense/Recharge 13: Luck of the Gambler: Defense Level 8: Maneuvers A: Reactive Defenses: Defense 13: Reactive Defenses: Defense/Endurance 15: Reactive Defenses: Endurance/RechargeTime 15: Reactive Defenses: Defense/RechargeTime 17: Reactive Defenses: Scaling Resist Damage 17: Reactive Defenses: Defense/Endurance/RechargeTime Level 10: Follow Up A: Touch of Death: Chance of Damage(Negative) 19: Gladiator's Strike: Accuracy/Damage 19: Gladiator's Strike: Chance for Smashing Damage 21: Mako's Bite: Chance of Damage(Lethal) 50: Crushing Impact: Accuracy/Damage 50: Crushing Impact: Accuracy/Damage/Endurance Level 12: Super Speed A: Blessing of the Zephyr: Knockback Reduction (4 points) Level 14: Hasten A: Invention: Recharge Reduction Level 16: Psychic Scream A: Superior Dominion of Arachnos: Recharge/Chance for -Dmg and Terrorize 21: Superior Dominion of Arachnos: Accuracy/Damage 23: Annihilation: Chance for Res Debuff 23: Superior Dominion of Arachnos: Accuracy/Damage/Recharge 25: Superior Dominion of Arachnos: Damage/Endurance/Recharge 25: Superior Dominion of Arachnos: Accuracy/Damage/Endurance/Recharge Level 18: Lunge A: Hecatomb: Damage 27: Hecatomb: Damage/Recharge/Accuracy 27: Hecatomb: Chance of Damage(Negative) 29: Hecatomb: Damage/Endurance 29: Hecatomb: Damage/Recharge Level 20: Mask Presence A: Luck of the Gambler: Defense/Increased Global Recharge Speed 31: Luck of the Gambler: Defense/Endurance Level 22: Foresight A: Shield Wall: +Res (Teleportation), +5% Res (All) 31: Aegis: Psionic/Status Resistance 31: Steadfast Protection: Resistance/+Def 3% 33: Unbreakable Guard: +Max HP Level 24: Mind Link A: Luck of the Gambler: Defense/Increased Global Recharge Speed 33: Luck of the Gambler: Defense 33: Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control: To Hit Buff 34: Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control: To Hit Buff/Recharge 34: Luck of the Gambler: Defense/Recharge 34: Luck of the Gambler: Defense/Endurance/Recharge Level 26: Total Domination A: Unbreakable Constraint: Hold 36: Unbreakable Constraint: Hold/Recharge 36: Unbreakable Constraint: Hold/Endurance 36: Unbreakable Constraint: Chance for Smashing Damage 37: Lockdown: Chance for +2 Mag Hold 37: Unbreakable Constraint: Hold/Recharge/Accuracy Level 28: Tactical Training: Assault A: Invention: Endurance Reduction 37: Invention: Endurance Reduction Level 30: Tactical Training: Leadership A: Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control: To Hit Buff 39: Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control: To Hit Buff/Recharge 39: Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control: To Hit Buff/Recharge/Endurance 39: Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control: Chance for Build Up 40: Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control: Recharge/Endurance 40: Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control: To Hit Buff/Endurance Level 32: Psychic Wail A: Superior Spider's Bite: RechargeTime/Global Toxic 40: Eradication: Chance for Energy Damage 42: Fury of the Gladiator: Chance for Res Debuff 42: Armageddon: Chance for Fire Damage 42: Scirocco's Dervish: Chance of Damage(Lethal) Level 35: Teleport A: Blessing of the Zephyr: Run Speed, Jump, Flight Speed, Range 43: Blessing of the Zephyr: Knockback Reduction (4 points) Level 38: Aura of Confusion A: Coercive Persuasion : Confused/Recharge/Accuracy 43: Coercive Persuasion : Contagious Confusion 43: Coercive Persuasion : Confused 45: Coercive Persuasion : Confused/Endurance 45: Coercive Persuasion : Confused/Recharge Level 41: Tactics A: Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control: To Hit Buff 45: Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control: To Hit Buff/Endurance Level 44: Dominate A: Apocalypse: Damage 46: Apocalypse: Chance of Damage(Negative) 46: Apocalypse: Damage/Endurance 46: Apocalypse: Damage/Recharge/Accuracy 48: Apocalypse: Damage/Recharge 48: Lockdown: Chance for +2 Mag Hold Level 47: Assault A: 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This is strange, and only started happening today. My powers keep their 'activation' circle, even when they're not still activating. It's a little confusing because they end up in this state for long periods like they're going off, but they're not. It may be networking related. Additionally, I've had an 'Escape' icon flashing as if it were to expire in my power bar for around ten minutes. The buff isn't active, but it's showing as active.

I used to farm with my purpled out plant / psi on live. I'm rebuilding it soon, but in my recollection it's fine late game.

I mean, that build is suicide for even standard pub TF's. But it's exactly what I asked for. Obviously I was building for the completely wrong things. Fortunately, it's a lot cheaper to put together than what I've got and I can just add an alternate build and play around with these goals. Which Barrier is the one people use? I assume the core epiphany for the extra duration?