KaizenSoze

Melee widow leveling build to 23. You might not be able to run both Assault and Leadership full time. If you have end buffs. Let em rip. Leveling hybrid range-melee widow build to 23. You might not be able to run both Assault and Leadership full time. If you have end buffs. Let em rip. Full builds. Both Gulbasaur and Tidge have their builds in the thread. Tidge's ranged build is on the last page. Here is my Blood Widow build Pure Night Widow melee build

ATOs Dominion of Arachnos - Take it for the set bonuses. The -dmg and fear are not that great. Spider's Bite - Your first ATO piece should be the global toxic proc. The set bonuses are also nice. Patron Pools - VEATs only get access to four pools Leviathan Mastery - Mix of short and long cast, expensive AOEs Mace Mastery - Shatter armor and Web envelope. Mu Mastery - Decent AOE immobilize and damage. Energy damage which is good for robots which are resistant to lethal and psi. Soul Mastery - Gloom is a very good ranged negative energy attack. Dark Obliteration is a decent negative energy AOE Build Descriptions These are terms I like to use, they are not fixed categories, but preferences in how I think builds are designed. Night Widow - Claws melee - Night Widow Training/Widow Teamwork Night Tank - Night Widow build for very difficult content like soloing ITFs or hardmode PUG Tank - Night Widow build for team tank when a tank/brute is not available Blood Widow - Hybrid melee/ranged/controller - Fortunata Training/Fortunata Teamwork Fortunata - Controller/ranged - Fortunata Training/Fortunata Teamwork Fort Tank - Fortunata build for very difficult content like hard mode or soloing some TFs Build Guidelines Widows only get 26% Defense Debuff Resistance, so you need to have greater than 45% positional defense in the end. It’s not that hard to get there with IO sets and enough recharge to make Mind Link perma, but it can be expensive. Fortunatas are noticeably more expensive to build than Night Widows, because Mind Link has a higher recharge on Fortunatas. Purple sets are a must for Fortunatas if you want perma Mind Link. But perma Fortunata Mind Link is not required, if you play smart. For soloing 4x8, I go for a minimum of 50% positionals. Defense debuffs are becoming more common. Night widow must take placate. It allows you to get more critical hits and removes attackers for 10+ seconds. Combined with Pain Tolerance, you can be pretty tanky. I tend to use Build Up over Follow Up now to maximize critical hits. Build Up->Placate->Slash is your bread and butter single target attack chain. Blood Widow’s single target attack chains are the same as Night Widow. If Psychic Wail is up, then Follow Up->Aim->Wail ASAP. I will often use hide to get in the middle of groups and start with Aim->Wail. Fortunatas use Psychic Wail just like Blood Widows, but will back out to play at range. Fortunatas Scrambled Thoughts is great for knocking off mob toggles. If you slot for stun duration, you can perma stun two bosses. Leveling suggestions Keep toggles to the bare minimum until you get accolades, Incarnates, stamina, and health piece that help recovery Endurance issues are a normal pain of leveling. Plan for it, slot endurance and endurance reducers. SG or vendor endurance buffs if you can afford them. You are very squishy in the beginning, low/moderate hp and low defense, this lasts until better slotting and mind link is up most of the time. Use Super Group base buffs to help ease the pain. Once, you have endurance and defense slotted well. You can ex-emp down very well till level 15, then you lose your stealth.

Warning a lot of opinion below M = Mandatory O = Optional S = Skip Primaries Widow Training Poison Dart O - moderate damage full slotted. Only for pure ranged builds. Swipe O - fast melee attack - good spot for Spider's Bite ATOs Strike O/M - moderate melee attack - optional for some Fortunata, mandatory for Night Widows Dart Burst O - narrow ranged cone. Pure ranged builds only. Follow Up M/O - Damage, plus to hit and global damage buff, which can stack on itself self once Night Widows have to pick either Follow up or Build up, while Fortunata are not restricted Spin M - Good Melee PBAOE, but a bit endurance heavy. See placate power for more details. Lunge M - Strong melee attack Confront S - Single target provoke, one of the least taken powers in the whole game! If you really want a taunt take Presence: Provoke. Night Widow Training Mental Blast (page 7) O - Moderate damage. Good for finishing off psi weak mobs. Build Up M - Damage/To Hit buff. Must pick either this power or Follow Up. See placate power for more details. Smoke Grenade O - Useful only in rare situations, clicking items with dangerous mobs nearby Slash M - High damage melee attack. Lead from stealth with this attack for a 100% crit. Eviscerate S - 90 deg melee cone, longish animation. Hard to hit more than two mobs. But it’s your only other Night Widow AOE. Requires practice. From stealth, 50% chance to crit for 100% damage bonus against each target. Psychic Scream O - Moderate/High damage ranged cone. Somewhat works against Spin. Good on teams. See placate powers for more details Fortunata Training Mental Blast O - Fortunata’s have much better ranged attacks, but for a ranged Fortunata you might need it for an attack chain Telekinetic Blast O - Moderate ranged damage, knockback, possible Force Feedback recharge. Fated Sealed makes the knockback happen 100% of the time. Subdue M/S - High ranged damage, MAG 3 immobilize is just a bonus for ranged builds. Fated Sealed makes the immobilization happen 100% of the time. Aim M - Fortunatas get both Follow up and Aim. Take both. Psychic Scream S - Low damage ranged cone Dominate M - Mag 3 hold, but can be proc’ed into a high damage attack with a good chance to hold bosses Psionic Tornado O - Moderate Ranged AOE with knockup, not knockback. Long cast time, large radius, decent damage, does not procs well, but takes Force Feedback for recharge. Much better than Psychic Scream. Fated Sealed makes the knockup happen 100% of the time. It can be a good crowd control tool. Scramble Thoughts (page 7) O/M - Mag 4 stun with a psi damage dot. Very useful for controlling bosses. Excellent soloing power. Total Domination O - Mag 3 AOE hold, long recharge. Fated Sealed adds 50% to the duration. Psychic Wail M - Very high PBAOE damage. Follow->Aim->Psychic Wail massive damage plus a mag 3 stun. Must take otherwise why are you playing a Fortunta! Secondaries Teamwork Combat Training: Defensive M -Passive melee only defense Combat Training: Offensive O - Passive. Can only slot accuracy IOs, not to hit. Provides 33% toHit debuff resistance Tactical Training: Maneuvers M - Bread and butter defense toggle Indomitable Will M - Must have mez resist toggle plus some psi resists Tactical Training: Assault O - 15% group damage buff, nice to have if you have the room Tactical Training: Leadership O - Great group buff, 1 Hami/D-Sync, 2 slot or 6 slot with Guasian set Foresight M - Non-toggle mez protection, psi resists. Plus scaling resists that increase as your health drops. Widow Teamwork Pain Tolerance M/O - Provides up to 7.5% resistance to all. Up to 322 max health.. Greatly increases the durability of Night Widows. I think it’s mandatory, but if you’re happy with your current build you could skip it. Greatly helps with getting 2 shot, before your scaling resists kick in. Mask Presence M - Makes you a mini stalker. If you hit Slash or Eviscerate you get a 100% critical damage bonus. All other melee attacks only get a 66% bonus. Ranged attacks do not get any bonus damage. The stealth radius is greater than the Fortunata version, so Celerity IO in sprint is not required to hide from bosses. Mental Training M - Recharge, running, flying bonus. Large resistance to running, flying, recharge debuffs. Mind Link M - Large group defense bonus, nice to hit, plus psi resists. Not hard to perma on Night Widows, hard to perma on Fortunatas. Placate M - Fast recharging AOE placate. There is a 5 second window to get a melee attack off for critical damage, even if you are hit. This greatly improved the effectiveness of Spin and somewhat Eviscerate. I prefer Build Up over Follow now, to maximize critical hits. You must take this power, unless you are tanking for the team. Placating a mob will cause it to shift to the next teammate, so it works against tanking. Tactical Training: Vengeance O - Personally, I forget to use, by the time I remember I have it the player has rezed Elude O - 60% positional with defense debuff protection. Endurance crashes at the end. I have heard it’s useful in PvP Fortunata Teamwork Fated Sealed(Page 7) O/M - Increases the duration of all controls by 33%, mezz resistance by 35%, makes secondary control effects happen 100% of the time Mask Presence M - Makes you a mini stalker. Your first melee, not ranged, attack gets a 66% damage bonus, critical, stalkers get 100% bonus. Combined with the Celerity stealth IO in sprint makes you invisible to most mobs. Mind Link M - Large group defense bonus, nice to hit, plus psi resists. Not hard to perma on Night Widows, hard to perma on Fortunatas. Confuse O - Nice to have with Coercive Persuasion proc, but not used often Tactical Training: Vengeance O - Personally, I forget to use, by the time I remember I have it the player has rezed Aura of Confusion O - Nice to have with Coercive Persuasion proc, but not used often. Long recharge.

Version .2 updated for page 7 changes The format for this guide is taken from the Stalker Guide written by @Croax Strengths All Widows Easy to cap all three positional defense type Critical melee hits from stealth 85% Psi resists Scaling resists, as HP falls, all resists increase Versatile playstyle Excellent support via toggles for defense, toHit, and damage. Can double up on all toggles using the Leadership pool Melee damage scale 1.0 Ranged damage scale 1.0 Night Widow High melee damage with the smart use of placate 100% critical damage build when using Slash or Eviscerate Stalker like playstye while providing good support Moderate ranged AOE damage 1900+ Hit points using Pain Tolerance, max HP IOs, and other buffs High durability for a non tank/brute, can exceed tank/brute durability with smart play against certain enemies Solo: mobs running is a real problem. Stacking dots, debuff, and the fact they miss a lot, causes the mob AI to start running very early. Placate can help somewhat, but provoke is your best option. Fortunata Moderate ranged damage High melee damage Good controls with Fated Sealed High damage PBAOE Low hit points for a melee - Accolades + Unbreakable Guard 7.5% = 1283 hp Critical hits limited to only 66% Weaknesses Endurance issues due fast firing melee attacks Limited defense debuff resistance Hard to reach high resists, except psi Expensive for a max build - lots of purples and winter sets Most damage is lethal or psi. Can be very tedious when fighting robots solo These can be greatly improved with IOs and Incarnate, but leveling can be painful. ATO inherent power Conditioning provides a slight increase to regeneration and recovery. Honestly, it’s not a great power as one of the biggest pains to leveling is still endurance.

Right attitude, just apply it to defense. 🙂

Generally, folks skip Offensive, for the reasons you stated. Build w/o Defensive then see if you need more ranged def. It's a nice mule for LoTG recharge. Keep in mind you have no defense debuff resistance when thinking about defense. Nada, zlitch, zero.

Good resists, but I would have more buffer in the positional def. If you're going to solo at high diff. AOEs will chew you up if you get debuffed. Arachnos will drop -7.5 and -33 def on you. Not sure about the ITF debuffs. Weaponized surveillance is intriguing.

IMO of course. Good job on defs and resists. You should take Crowd Control ASAP. You'll need it when you do lower missions or TFs. I prefer Mace Beam Blast over Volley. Blast is an AOE, Volley is a cone. In melee, the AOE is more practical. Build up is awesome for stealth strikes. I would drop either leadership or tactics, you have too much accuracy IMO. Gaussian for Leadership/Tactics is pretty common for the random free build up. Two slots or six. Pummel is a nice power but redraw costs time. I would drop it, move the slots to leadership, the power slot for surveillance. Just my 2 cents.

Here is the Fort Tank version. Almost as tanky as the Widow, but with more damage. Mind link is almost perma, depending on force feedback procs. Being able to Follow Up->Aim->Psychic Wail is such a massive damage burst compared to anything Night Widows can do. The slight difference in resists is explained by Eviscerate vs Psychic wail, Armageddon vs Avalanche. And being able to slot Basilisk's Gaze which Widows cannot do. I suspect this would be a very busy build to play.

Beta server results. It lives! Rune and Mind link is enough for most groups. Heavy eng/neg damage requires Melee or Barrier to be comfortable. I causally took two groups of 4x8 Arachnos, just walked up and attacked. Rune and Mink Link kept my hp from plummeting. I turned melee on my hp quickly recovered to full. Even with -33 def from the debuffs. I updated the build in the OP. Cardiac Core with 20% to resists is enough and fixes any end issues. Tanking requires management, but 4x8 anything should be doable. I tried the Apex TF pylons with the hydra. I had to turn everything on, but I was able to survive and kill the pylon. Taunt effectiveness is still an open question when melee is down.

To be called insane by you is a high compliment. I have learned a lot about building chars from you, kiramon, and many other. I doubt I could out taunt a brute or tank, but I intend in running more all HEAT-VEAT TFs. During the ITF last night. The Warshade could not hold aggro well enough on AVs. In his defense, he was under leveled for 4x8. Also, I have ended up the only durable melee a few times in groups. This gave me the Night Tank idea. I swear SR tanks got a better taunt aura. I have an SR tank, but I cannot find anything to support that thought.

After all the work on bane builds. I am shifting back to my Widow. I am not very interested in running a Night Widow as a straight scrapper. If I could leverage 85% resist cap and high defense. How tanky could I make a widow? First draft, haven't tried it on the beta server yet. I went with Night Widows over Fortunatas because of the ease of perma Mind Link. Obviously, this build is a late bloomer and very expensive. Pros: All def soft capped, except psi def which is 42%. Lots of debuf buffer in positional. All resist 85%, except eng and neg at 75%. Not taking scaling resists into account Cons: Still has Widow hp after buffs, 1283 Getting 2-3 shot is possible, but with high defense very unlikely Notes: T4 Cardiac core for 20% resist buff and end reduction Overlapping Rune of Protection, Melee, and Barrier to maintain resists Melee Core and provoke for taunt Elude is there for last ditch defense.

We ran another ITF, 4 Arachnos, 1 WS, and 1 PB. It was fun at 4x8. Took an hour.

I found the General Discusson thread on Soliders. Just food for thought.

I tried kiramon's night widow build out. It's laughable how much easier it is to solo with it than my bane builds.

I think I finally did it. First what didn't work. I tried a pet bane aka Spider-Bane. The pets were useful, but they are so dumb that every other fight they would aggro another group chasing runners. I tried provoke to stop the runners, didn't work well enough. Being stealthy and having uncontrollable pets didn't work for me. The build is posted at the bottom just in case anyone was curious. So, I was pondering kiramon's Night Widow build and though. How high can I get my defense. With T4 Agility Core Paragon and some slot tweaking I was able to 55+% positional def and everything else 45+%. That is enough to carefully handle 4x8 arachnos. In fights did I have to use barrier, pop a few insps. But my defense didn't collapse like a wet bag. The Tarantula Mistress, not the queens, are the dangerous non-obvious mob. They have a -33% def debuff with high accuracy. I would target them first, so they couldn't keep the debuff up. Crab slicers have a -12.5 def debuff. My closest fight was 2 Mu Guardian bosses and a mistress, damn Mu must have high accuracy. That required barrier and some insps. I might try and work Shatter Armor back in, if I can keep my defense. Pros: 55+% positional def 45+% everything else +20% def to everyone in range +30% damage to everyone in range End stable, doesn't required ageless even in long fights Here is the pet-bane aka Spider Bane build:

I will look into putting the pets in, maybe that the extra I need to handle arachnos. This is the joy of the beta server. Web cocoon is useful for tagging runners and psi damage, but I am not in love with it. It was a tough choice to drop it, but I have proc'ed out my mace volley to provide some -resist. If I put pets in, then shatter will come back.

Here's a guide for those that haven't done it.

So, I have been tinkering. I made some improvements that allow me to solo 4x4 Arachnos and several other groups 4x8. IMO Bane lack AOE, has has been pointed out. To fix that, I dropped the Mace epic and slotted up Mace Blast and Volley. It's makes a significant difference in damage mitigation and getting rid of minions and lts. The knockdown is helpful in group for crowd control. I am learning the, Bane Boogle. AOE, two steps back, cone, two steps forward, crowd control. Putting assault back in had the nice side effect of limited the bane spider placate duration. Current build, not a leveling build as I swapped the mace attacks directly out for the Mace Epic. I can come up with a leveling build if someone wants it.

Inspired by this topic: Here is my best current attempt at making a all mace bane. No gun, that means no venom grenade Pros: Capped m/r/aoe def. Really good def in most types by accident. High damage mace attack chain, decent crit rate with placate Decent s/l/psi resists Good debuffing with surveillance and shatter armor End stable w/o ageless Cons: Very expensive, purples and winters Low aoe, especially pbaoe Cannot solo 4x8 arachnos or carnies Notes: Single target attack chain: Surveillance->Shatter(crit)->Shatter Armor->Pulverize->Placate->BU->Shatter(crit) AOE: BU->Crowd Control->Disruptor Blaster->Single till CC is up->Placate->CC Great team character Crowd Control is a monster if you get the mobs grouped up properly, but that is the biggest problem.

So, I tried to make the best mace only bane I could on the beta server. Def, resists, damage, very expensive. I'll post the build in a separate thread. There is always room for improvement. I cannot solo 4x8 carnies or arachnos, period. Also, struggled against 3x8 arachnos. Comparing to my Blood Widow, it's all about the PBAOE. My bane cannot delete the minions and lts quickly enough. She loses too much time lining up for crowd control. My widow just aim->wail->spin or tornado. Disruptor Blast isn't bad for CC and damge, but the recharge is to long. Options would be to load up Mace Beam Blast and use that to keep mobs down. If I can get the mobs grouped up nicely, the bane does really deals out damage.

Just when I think I am getting good at making builds, Kiramon makes one. 🙂 Her version is much better than the one I was trying on beta. Both have issues with single target damage and are end hogs even with all the accolades. My hover version is unkillable at least.

First, thanks to everyone's excellent feedback. I finally respec'ed. OMG. A noticeable improvement over an already great build. I can leap frog from 4x8 group to the next with aim->wail->ion->confuse->aoe confuse Add Barracuda (bank), Bobcat, and Neuron to the AV list. I am soloing the Jenkins arc. Has anyone tried soloing the ITF?

Honestly, I find all mace animations, War Mace included, janky. There is weird pause and the beginning and end of most attacks.

I have been flipping between bane/huntsmen and pure bane on the beta server. Builds tried: Pure ranged huntsman Ranged/melee huntsman, no mace 2nd best, only surveillance causes redraw Mixed mace and ranged huntsman attacks Worst option, so much redraw Pure mace bane with mace epic, no nades What I decided was best for me with placate to get more crits Fixing the redraw would help a lot, but I think the bane needs a more defined role. Stalker lite with team buffs, is fine, but doesn't not do enough damage. Except pure bane is ok. In the end, on the beta server, where I can have any build I want. My pure bane only comes somewhat close to my Blood Widow in the ability to clear missions quickly. There is something janky about the mace animations which really bothers me. I think that banes should get a more defined role, like melee de-buffer. Or Stalker level crits, stalker ATOs are what make the crits, so powerful. I don't think it would overpower banes.