KaizenSoze

I'll have to go back and check. Pretty sure my scrapper has higher toggle end usage. If nothing else, because she runs Focus Accuracy which is .78 all by itself.

Or take Hover. I have heard of Crabberminds using hover to keep the AOE off their pets.

I have all the health recovery pieces, stamina endurance recovery pieces, and accolades. I have 3.39% end recovery per sec. The SG recovery buffs only raised it to 3.65%. My Bane has 3.3 end/sec and I cannot remember the last time he ran out of end. Widows, Fortunata also have this issue just slightly less, are end hogs. Yes, buffing end for VEAT would help Banes and Crabs that kinda don't need it. But who cares. I am not asking for something that would cause VEATs to become overpowered. VEATs are still 400% damage cap, low-no DDR, tied with Keldians for the lowest HPs of any melee ATs I did some quick tests against the training dummies using my single target chain. Claws/SR scrapper with physical perfection with a recovery rate of 3.23% e/s. Time to end failure with continuous attacks. 1:15 Night Widow recovery rate 3.65% 44 seconds to end failure with strike instead of eviscerate 51 second with eviscerate. I think this is because evisceration's animation slows the DPS Honestly people need to actually try running a Night Widow. And if I am wrong and you can post your build to show me. I would be very happy to be proven wrong. My build.

I was just about to report the same issue in Port Oaks. It seems restricted to the area around Fort Hades.

At 50. You are correct about Banes not having endurance issues. It is possible to have issues, but you have to heavily proc every attack. Fortunatas are generally stable, but they can have issues. I think it's because their attack chain is slower. Night Widows are just end hogs, claw attack are so quick. They just drink end. Leveling Forts and NW is incredibly painful because of endurance and for other reasons mentioned in my OP. I was thinking about putting together some videos of mean time to end failure against the training dummies.

So, what are Night Widows to do? I read through your endurance cheat sheet. Obviously, you have put a lot of thought into endurance management. In my personal recent experience, it is very obvious that endurance is major weakness. What thoughts do you have to mitigate these issues? Are there tweaks or improvements you would agree some VEATs need? Besides the obvious redraw and weapon customization.

My Fortunata main followed closely by my Bane and Night Widow. VEATs for me are the perfect combination of melee, range attacks, and support. They are not perfect, Banes and Night Widows need a little buffing. But damn they are fun.

This is a great idea. Would solve do many issues w/o causing any balance issues. Would work nice with accolades. I mean really who is going to say, I am not playing this non-VEAT AT any more because VEATs got an end buff.

One of my hopes when they do another ATs usage report. Is that they break out the Night Widows, Fortunata, Banes, and Crabs. I suspect that Crabs are a huge percentage of Arachnos Soliders in comparison to Banes at 50. No idea, what the break down between Night Widows vs Fortunatas.

I had been running Oro missions for badges in Sharkhead a lot. This mission in particular, Breaking The Streak. The final mission ends up being difficult to find, because it's a door inside a building. The map marker is very misleading as it points at the door location. Not the building that contains the door. I had to run around for several minutes trying various building door before I found the right one. This happened quite often with the final mission in this arc. The funny thing if you go in the wrong building the mission correctly shows that it's the wrong building and you need to exit. But at the street level it's hard to find the correct building. Here are some example locations in Sharkhead to help: Open buildings [-3320.5 -29.0 -440.0] [-3122.3 0.0 132.6] One Actual mission [-3162.8 -354.0 206.5]

Thank you for that bit of history. I wish that was more obvious in the AT description. The wiki has the numbers, but the description implies more. As I said in the OP, that inherit is why I tried Widows out in the first place. I still think in the current game meta the inherit could use a boost. My recent leveling experience was very enlightening about the weakness of Night Widows.

I believe you that someone said that, but it's the first time I have heard it. I would to love hear the reasoning behind it. To me, it doesn't make any sense. Why have an weak inherit? It's not like VEAT ATOs are stalker/scapper level good to make up for it. The ATOs are definitely good, but not game changing. A better inherit for VEATs would fix one of the design constraints. Right now you have to consider, recharge, endurance, resists, and maximize damage for a offensive AT with a 400% damage cap. While having the lowest melee hit point by 200-300. Peacebringers and Warshades have the same issues. Fortunatas and Crabberminds can mostly can pull this off, just very expensive. I want Night Widows and Banes to get enough buffing to close the gap.

Are you having endurance issues? It looks like you're under slotted. Take follow up over build up. Follow up can stack with itself once, so 60% damage boost. Available a lot more often than build up. CT: Defense only boosts melee def, so you can take slots from there for Follow up. Here is my current build as only a suggestion. Folks here have varying options about Aid Self and Rune of Protection. Don't take this build as gospel. 🙂

To be clear, I love Night Widows, but I am not blind to their problems. I ran a Night Widow from 1-50 on just IO and SOs. To see what it's like. A little history, a Night Widow was I think my 3rd or 4th character I made on HC. I picked it because supposedly had an inherit that helped with regen/recovery. I was pretty new and didn't understand a lot about the current game, because I quit Live shortly after COV came out. Leveling that NW was was a frustrating experience. So, much that I stopped playing VEATs for a year until folks showed how awesome Fortunatas were. I wanted to see what it was like to level a NW from scratch with my much better understanding of the game. Notes: Leveling is a painful mix of not enough end, recharge, and squishy-ness Endurance The inherit is under powered for the end needs of a Night Widow I delayed Haste till 30 because I knew it would just run me out end I had stamina three slotted with 25 IOs, later 50+ IOs I put 1-2 end reducers in every attack By 50 I had both end accolades Tried to keep the SG recovery active With all this I was constantly running close to empty in sustained combat unless there was end buffing Even at 50 fully slotted, all accolades. I still need Ageless in sustained solo combat. Suggestion: Massive increase to the recovery portion of the inherit Recharge Mental Training is great, auto 20% recharge Pre Mental Training I have hit this even con Boss mob with all my 4-6 attacks including P2W attacks, now I need to wait 2-3 sec before something recharges Meantime the boss is crushing my HP, because my defense is not high enough on just IOs and SOs Wait should I get Tough, wait I now have more end issues Post Mental Training and/or Hasten Now, I always have an attack, now where did my end go Suggestion: Massive increase to the recovery portion of the inherit Durability Night Widows for a melee character are very squishy VEATs need weaknesses, so I understand the low HP and low DDR Scaling resists are awesome.. once you have set bonuses to take the sting out initial hit Getting dropped from 100% to 5% in one +3 boss hit On one Tin Mage I got 2 shot at level 51 by two 54 bosses. So, fast I didn't even have time to look at my inspiration bar Maybe I should have taken tough.. well that causes more end issues Suggestion: Add some minor un-enhanceable s/l resists, 5-10% to an existing power like Foresight or Indomitable Will Specific powers Mental Blast is weak, especially compared to Poison Dart Both have fairly useless minor secondary effects MB DPA 59 PD DPA 72 Trying to killing an Unstoppable Cyclops on an ITF with MB. *pink* *pink* *pink*... Suggestion: Make the DPA equal with PD Dart Burst could use a damage buff Provide some low level AOE to allow more hit and run tactics against tough mobs The -regen is useless, it's 25% Suggestion: Buff the damage a little, widen the cone from 30 to 50, shorten the distance to compensate Psychic Scream Ah, this power. Instead of Shockwave, Night Widows get this mediocre power as their T9 DPA 67, 30 arc, a cast time of 2.67 seconds! At least the recharge is only 16 seconds Compare to, Fortunata's Psychic Wail DPA 222, PBAOE, cast 1.97 seconds, 145 sec recharge Slotting can reduce the recharge to ~35 secs Scrapper's Shockwave, DPA 131, 90 arc, 1 sec cast time, 12 sec recharge I still end up taking this power because it procs better and hits harder than Mental Blast The diary of my experience: Our previous fine discussions

Nice to have it verified by another player.

According to the wiki the max bud spawn is 16. And that has played out in my repeated runs of LGTF. Never more than 16. Buddy Badge

After grinding this out on now three characters. I though I might post some observations. Buddy Badge: Wiki Page The wiki needs to be updated. Besides the Hamidon raid you can also get the buds during the Lady Grey Task Force mission: Stop Rikti Hamidon Raid. The best time to run the TF is when it is the Weeky Strike Target. The problem in either case is that a max of 16 buds will drop. That is 7 Hamidon raids minimal. But in Lady Grey you'll usually only have eight players. That means 13 runs if you're unlucky enough to only get 8 per run. And since you can run the TF with less than 8, it could be even lower. I think there is a way to consistent get more buds that players. This part is speculation, but this seemed to work for me. I think that pets and Rikti left at the end battle can count as "players" when buds drop. Here is what I tried. Kill the pylons, but leave as many Rikti alive as possible. This useful in general, because the Rikti will attack Hamidon and the mitos. This proves to be a useful distraction. Before Hamidon dies. Summon my lore pets. I even use the P2W buff pet. Might not help, but it's an easy thing to do. Once, I started doing this I was consistently getting greater than 10 buds per run.

Elude is definitely not bad. As you said just kind of useless at the moment. Time Bomb... it's not the bottom of the T9 barrel.. it's what you find under the barrel.

You might be right, but it's still more useful than Web Cocoon. 🙂

I am sure this will be an fun opinionated topic. What do you think are the best and worse T9s for a given AT. I will start with VEATs. Primary T9 rating: Psychic Wail - Who doesn't love a nuke that stuns Crowd Control - High damage 180 arc melee with knockdown Omega Maneuver - Some people like it Psychic Scream - this really should number 10. A 30 arc cone with a 2.6 cast time that only does moderate damage 😞 Secondary T9 rating Summon spiderlings - can't be a crabbermind w/o it Aura of confusion - More situational, but still very good Elude - useful in PvP, good place for unique enhancements, but very optional Web Cocoon - Slow firing, no inherit damage, only barely useful with procs

I put off Hasten until 30 due to the endurance concern. I got the 5% endurance accolade as soon as possible. Now, I have all four accolades. Still can burn my end. Now, I have T3 Ageless, so things are much better at 50. If you're running on IOs and SO, you need to the P2W attacks. Otherwise, you sit around a lot waiting for attacks to recharge. I definitely made build mistakes, should have taken ranged attacks vs melee. Poison Dart recharges as quick as swipe, but gives you hit and run ability. It's a nasty trade off, if you put a lot of recharge into attacks then you burn your end quickly sub incarnates. I am squishy as hell because scaling resists aren't enough at lower levels. You need those set resists to take the sting out. Once, you have the scaling resist piece, plus the max hp piece, then the scaling really holds up. Even at 50 I am very squishy w/o sets. I'll be going along fine in a 54 misson or TF. Then boom, one hit from an EB or bosses and my hp plummets into deep red. All of this is fixed with sets, but until then Night Widows aren't that impressive. Would be nice if the inherit fixed the end issue at least.

Very interesting builds. I would love to see what you can do with Banes.

Level 43-50 Finished with the experiment. Endurance is back to being an issue due to new toggles. I cannot run both Leadership: Maneuvers and TT: Assault at the same time. That is even with base buff and double end reducers in most attacks. Obviously the VEAT inherit is not cutting it and needs a buff. I will update the FAQ with what I have learned.

Level 33-43 I got most of my levels through a kill most ITF, 37-43. I stuck to taking out the surgeons. Every time I would try and get into the scrum some AOE would crash my hp into the deep red zone. Pretty typical experience on an ITF when everything is +5. Only two deaths, one to the EB version of the Envoy of Shadows. One on the ITF. Good news is that endurance is manageable with end reducers in attacks, two in the heavy hitters. Plus, SG recovery one hour buff. The buff is required though, end reducers will not cut it alone. Recharge could still be better, I can burn through all my attacks and have a tiny gap. This is including Gloom now. Now, that I am in my 40s, carnies missions are available. And Widows eat carnies for lunch. Illusionist get three shot from stealth with just level 25 damage IO, my AOE defense is good enough to avoid most of the end drain. Psi resists take the sting out of many attacks. Opened up Tina Mac's arc. Settling in for the home stretch.

Now, that it is cleared up. Any thoughts on my suggestion?