Gulbasaur

The broker system punishes people who want to run story arcs by forcing five generic missions before unlocking a contact - rework it to one or two, please! It's a shame, but many of the good story arcs are behind grind-gates like that. Null the Gull is cheating. Being able to play any archetype on any side from the start is... eh. It sort of breaks down the differences between them.

Support sets: Radiation is quite a hands-on set at the start of combat as you have to set everything up for each fight, so I found it a bit repetitive. Radiation is a jack of all trades, having a bit of every debuff put there, meaning it has something for every occasion. Because of the way debuffs and aggro works, you can expect to get aggro more often than Sonic. Very solo capable. Sonic is the opposite as most buffs are only applied every two minutes and you've got a toggle you can set up on a melee teammate and then just let it do its job. It's all about raising or lowering damage resistance. Limited solo capacity. Blast sets: Radiation is quite run of the mill, but that doesn't mean it's bad. It's quite proc friendly so you'll be contributing damage. Sonic does big fat resistance debuffs, meaning enemies you hit take more damage. It's also extremely proc-unfriendly, limiting your personal DPS but raising your team's via the debuffs.

You don't need them. Really, you don't. My "can literally tank anything despite not being a tanking archetype" main has maybe two purple enhancements? Unless you are going for a build that sacrifices everything for recharge... you really don't need them. I get that it's a little bit annoying, but honestly it's less of an impact than you think it is. Unless you plan to solo incarnate trials and raids, a run-of-the-mill endgame build is already a bit overpowered for 95% of the content out there.

I know next to nothing about Crab spider builds, but I do like that proc - fears slow down the rate of attack dramatically, which is important for (primarily) defence-based sets. From memory, the proc rate lasts 10 seconds, so you're denying them about three attacks in that time. It works for me because I probably play about half the time scaled down in flashbacks or task forces so I can't rely on other forms of damage mitigation - having the ability to shut down a third of a spawn from the low teens is really very useful. Spiders are a bit tankier than widows out of the box I think, so it might be less pressing and if you're got knockdown lowering the attack rate then you should be fine.

I have no love for the "holy trinity" in MMOs. Even my tanks take sets that can either heal allies or mez enemies. Doing one thing gets old quickly. I like the epics because they have a very broad toolkit so can turn their hand to anything. Back on Live I mained a Peacebringer once I'd gotten my defender to 50 (this was before even City of Villains came out). Believe it or not, there was once a time when they were considered pretty strong (and they were the first casualty of the Balance Wars when set bonuses came around). Nowaways, it's Fortunata all the way. They literally do a bit of everything (meleeblastcontrolsneakybuffertanks) so are just really good fun. It's like a dominator and a scrapper were smashed together and given a load of discounted team buffs to apologise for the mediocre inherent power.

I've got three standouts: Tanking Mot with my fortunata at the end of the Dark Astoria arc. I was running round in circles, TPing allies out of the way so they could rez and kiting it back to the other end of the room. Tanking the whole ITF with my fortunata, although part of that was because 6 out of 7 of my teammates were running extremely complementary support sets so we just liquefied everything in our path. Duoing Praetor Sinclair with a brute who kept getting one or two shot... I had to go downstairs and answer the door at one point and came back to find my fortunata still standing strong, autoattacking away. Luckily, the brute thought it was funny. Tanking on low HP archetypes always feels awesome. While I enjoy my tanker, I've had defenders and controllers who can do the same thing and more. Fortunatas tick every box for me. #Fortunata4life

I think the secret to fortunata survivability is relentless pressure. It's a very, very active playstyle. Are you using your confuses and holds? You can't facetank as well as a scrapper but you can lock enemies out of attacking you entirely. Fortunatas are part controller/dominator and are balanced as such. Psi wail has an awesome stun on it and the ATO has a decent rate of proccing fear on enemies. Open with psi wail to get the stuns out, follow with psi scream to add some fear into the mix with the proc, confuse one lieutenant and hold another. You can dramatically lower the rate at which enemies attack you using your basic ranged rotation, which makes an enormous difference to survival. If you don't want to use your control powers, you might get on better with a sentinel or sticking with lower difficulty content.

Oh, you're fine then. Use your mezzes liberally and you can tank the moon.

What's your down time on Mind Link? If you can get that permament or nearly permanent, you'll be fine. I tank on my fortunata with about 30 seconds downtime on Mind Link. If not, try to reclaim some of the slots in Health and Stamina to put into other powers for incremental defence boosts. Remember that top-level teams often give you another 5-10% defence and you can run TT:Vengeance if you're happy to recycle your allies into Defence bonuses from time to time. You also get sliding resistances based on health so your 16% smashing resistance goes up to about 40% at half health. Also, remember that hit points, defence and resistance are only one way of preventing damage: use your holds and confuses. Controllers have been tanking for longer than brutes have and fortunatas take can little from both schools of tanking to be very, very sturdy.

Hello and welcome to Arachnos! Looks pretty good to me. What are your resistances like? You might want to push CT:Offensive until a bit later as widows chomp through a lot of endurance. The Gaussian's +Build Up proc is really good in Leadership because it has a chance to trigger separately based every member of your team - on a full team of eight with pets out, it triggers very frequently and more if pets are out. I'd recommend grabbing Confuse early on as it's a surprisingly useful power when used correctly and doesn't need any slots to be effective - using it on support enemies like Ritki Guardians means they will start buffing you and it can be used to switch off annoying enemy effects like Tsoo Sorceror hurricanes. It also passes on to the confuse effect to any pets, meaning if you confuse a portal than anything that comes out of it will be on your side.

Fortunata - honestly, I don't understand why they're so unpopular as I think they're up there as one of the best builds in the game at any level. There's no "well, it becomes viable at level 32" - it was awesome from the very start, even if you did have to pretend to be a scrapper for a few levels. Well-balanced powersets with a little bit of everything and the damage to back it up. The massive, low endurance cost passive toggles mean every team you play with is better, which makes levelling a strangely serene experience. They're a strange midpoint between a dominator and a scrapper and they take the best of both. I can merrily chip away at +4 AVs on my fortunata. Peacebringer - I really like peacebringers, but I am slowly coming to terms with the fact that they're a somewhat mediocre base class and they were the first casualties of the IO set war. In the pre-IO game, being a blaster that could tank was something special and it legitimately felt powerful. Now, everyone is rocking scrapper-level defences peacebringers peak and plateau much too early. They were just outpaced by the wild, chaotic swinging of the game balance planning. Broad Sword/Shield Stalker - it's just really solid. Stalkers started off as quite a poorly designed AT, but since they're revamp they're basically more powerful scrappers but at a cost of a slightly different rotation and about 150 hit points. The ATOs are one of the few that add mechanics to an AT and push them even further. Storm/Water Defender - normally, I'm against breaking builds with recharge because I think it trivialises a lot of the game by turning a Sometimes power into an Always power, but this was my experiment with seeing how much I could break storm with recharge procs and the answer is a lot. Water is possibly the most flexible blast set, having a lot of soft control and a heal built in. Whirlpool and Freezing Rain come in within 2 levels of each other and work in synergy. You do end up filling the entire screen with particle effects, though. Dark/Dark/Soul Tanker - Cloak of Fear is such a glorious power and I really don't get why people don't like it. A fear is just below a hold in terms of utility as it basically lowers attack rate to once every 5 seconds. Lots of protection, endurance is manageable with IOs, a decent damage aura and it's quite proc-friendly.

Urgh... she is the one AV in normal content where I know I'll have to ask for help. She's two-shot me often enough for me to know better.

Water is a very good set for procs - it's a good set all round, actually. One or two damage procs in most powers can get you a long way. Put a +recharge proc in any power with knockdown. You'll end up with very, very quickly recharging powers, which will eat all your endurance if you're not careful. To counter this, Dehydrate can take a Theft of Essence +endurance proc, as well as several damage procs, making is a very valuable power as it heals you, does damage and recharges your endurance. Water jet has a quirk that if you fire it off with 3 Tidal Power it recharges instantly, meaning it's great to shove as many procs in as possible as instant recharge like that doesn't change the proc rate.

Incarnate level stuff! I'd love to see a conclusion of the Nemesis-focussed Signature Story Arc - those enemies were challenging and had lore links. I get the impression that existing lore has been quite hands-off, but please can we see some of the mechanics that appeared in late game content showcased? Send in Nemesis. Only he can bring it to glory.

The "soft cap or don't bother" theory works better on paper than it does in practice. All defence helps you survive and you're right, everyone and their cow runs maneuvers at top levels. If you were trying to tank AVs or something, it'd be different, but for general day-to-day blasting you'll be fine. There's a really good breakdown of it on Paragon Wiki here.

It's such a mess of particle effects, leaves, pets, writing bodies, green numbers and nonspecific glowing lights that honestly you're not missing too much visually.

And "gay" just means happy. Only we all know it doesn't because language changes. I was super pleased with Corona Borealis - named after the star and with a backstory I was proud of. Alas.

Getting the variant sprints from the P2W vendor is actually worth doing for this reason - you can have a stealth sprint and a speedy sprint if you want to, as well as several of the Universal Travel unique enhancements at a cost of zero slots. A couple of the sprints have a side effect of making you much easier to visually track while moving making teaming with a stealthed player less frustrating as you no longer have to look for a floating nametag (as I discovered playing with my increasingly frustrated brother yesterday).

I did/am doing that, actually. I ran through every blueside arc and am now going back through red. Eventually I'll do gold, although I don't get on quite as well with Praetoria for some reason. I think it suffers a bit from Large Empty Map Syndrome, especially in the tunnels/sewers. My advice is to work through a zone at a time as many of them tell a complete story shared over three or four contacts, so do all the Atlas Park, then Hollows, Faultline, Croatoa, Striga, First Ward, Night Ward etc and mop up at about level 35 before moving on to the 35+ content. I actually wrote a suggested levelling guide here at the end of my blueside flashback extravaganza. The at-launch zones, apart from the Hollows for some reason, didn't have anything really resembling a storyline and are more a collection of vignettes. It's a shame, because several of the aesthetically more interesting zones (Crey's Folly, Terra Volta) are basically just scenery for task forces and trials. I'd love to see the HC team add to them in the way that Faultline was rescued and given a very strong storyline. Redside is annoying because levelling organically is quite broken up by the tedious, repetitive, grindy broker system so it almost makes more sense to go back over it via flashbacks if you want to follow the storlines, but you can do something similar by looking at character portraits and who gives what missions and then following the story arc chain using paragonwiki. A lot of the story arcs fit into themes that link to one of the patrons or the Destined One storyline. That's what I'm going for, anyway.

My pleasure! I keep an eye on this thread from time to time. VEATs are much, much tankier than people assume so don't be afraid to go into melee. Fortunatas have scaling resists that kick in at 75% health so the hero planner doesn't really show how tough they are. I've tanked ITF and a lot of incarnate content as well as soloing a few AVs. I went for Arachnos for thematic reasons, although they're probably not the most efficient.

It's the Issue (game release) that it went live, followed by an ID number. City of Villains was Issue 6, so 6.01 would be the first mission put into Issue 6. Anything starting with 18 indicates a Going Rogue mission. You can, so some extent, use these as an indicator of theme and sort of how interesting they are in terms of game mechanics as later ones tend to use more cutscenes and in-mission storytelling.

Interestingly, Thunderspy did it by creating enemies that filled in the gaps. I'm not saying that's best way to do it, but it's what they did and it has effectively delevelled all content. Personally, I'd prefer if we could walk up to contacts and they scaled us down accordingly and the ability to invite people to join you would be great.

Oh, I get that and I'm not under any illusions that supercharging -res wouldn't make things easier, however this game is not what I would call exactingly balanced. Even if -res and +dmg enhancements weren't possible, the ability to slot more exciting things than endurance reduction in Assault or giving Sonic some proc opportunities would broaden build viability a bit. All I'm suggesting is flexibility for some of the more constricted support sets. I did sort of assume it was a spaghetti code issue more than a balance ons, which someone above confirmed. The meta, as it currently is, also allows for a lot of picking X power because of Y proc or Z set bonus. It would just be cool if that could be opened up a bit.

Hello! Please don't think you have to copy it for it to work - fortunatas are such a solid base to work with that they're quite flexible. @tidge gives a lot of consistently good advice about widows so check out his/her builds too. But yeah - I stumbled onto something fairly awesome with my fortunado build if I do say so myself. Erk. Planning isn't really my strong suit. My rotation is more or less Spin if it's up, then the four ST melee attacks on in a moderately coherent rotation and then psi wail and tornado as and when I feel like it. Ranged damage is primarily AoE and utility, with a hold, a knockdown and a fear. It does good enough damage, though. I fully admit this build has slightly too many attacks, but on the other hand it has separate ranged and melee attack chains so can be entirely one or the other as needed. Fortunata support is almost entirely passive - by being on the team, you are making everyone more efficient. Mind Link is really, really powerful so toss it out when it pops up but don't worry too much if you miss anyone. Don't overlook that - you're keeping people alive and helping them hit better just by standing near them looking glorious. With task/strike forces, it mostly depends on three things: Level: Generally, keep up any toggles you've got and use Mind Link when it comes up. I tend to open with Psi Scream for the fear proc then go into melee range and start stabbing away, throwing around range and using the hold when I need to. If I'm at a level where I can use confuse, I try to get it on support-types first and then lieutenants. Ritki guardians can give you some decent buffs and I'd rather they be on me than other ritki. At higher levels, I try to keep the nukes in rotation, so I'll psi wail at one group, confuse the next and then use the incarnate AoE on the third, although if things get too spicy you can absolutely just use whatever to help you win. Psi-usefulness: Going up against robots? You've got a variable (20-60?%) psi resistance to go up against so get stabbing (but chuck some ranged AoEs around as well). In ITF the opposite is true as Kheldians in dwarf form have significant resistances to everything but psi. Dominate is not tagged a a ranged attack and does pure psi damage meaning it can bypass positional defences, so it's handy for things like MoGged Paragon Protectors. Am I tanking? If so, I try to be as noisy as possible using the taunt a lot and the double-debuff on most melee attacks usually generates enough threat to hold aggro unless I'm teamed with tankers or brutes. A lot of a fortunata's tanking ability come from being part blaster - if in doubt, AoE with luxurious abandon. That doesn't seem very helpful, reading back. I'm sure you're doing better than you think you are. I find on fortunata a very, very active playstyle works best. Spam Mind Link and attackattackattack!

Thank you! I'm working on it off and on at the moment after a break from the game. Redside has a bit of a problem in that most at-launch story arcs are locked behind brokers, which means you have to to three to five throwaway missions before you get a new contact. The broker system is, in my opinion, a load of poo, although I get it from a narrative perspective of working your way up and showing your worth. Later ones don't have that limitation, but they don't tie in so much to the (pretty decent) story progression leading up to the patrons. My current plan is to divide it up by patron so you'd pick one or two near the start and focus on their lore for a bit, but it'll be a while.