Gulbasaur

Kind of to add on... After learning the hard way in GW2 and WoW, I actually quite often tend to say what kind of playthrough I'm looking for: "chilled out", "speedy", "newbies welcome" etc. If you haven't done it before, say so. If you are going for a badge, say so. Communicate. I play the game for the game, not the rewards, so I'm usually happy to take my time and look for players who are happy with that. When you get that one stalker who runs towards the mission objectives in stealth without saying a word in chat and the rest of you are having fun ploughing through goons, it can get a bit jarring. ITF is pretty bad for this as you do get people who literally start running to the objectives as soon as the mission opens, ATT in hand, which is antisocial if others are there because they want to get to 50 so need to do the combat parts. "Stealth or stomp?" in team chat is usually enough to get a consensus. So yeah - advertise for the player, not the role. You're much more likely to get a team that you enjoy if you're upfront about how you want to run it.

Best Experience There's a Ritki War Zone mission that puts you up against some Ritki AV and then Nemesis. I solo'd fricken Nemesis. He was, like, the ultimate enemy in the early game, so coming back and taking him out felt pretty good. He can shove his whole forcefield up his arse, though. I am sure I took out the last 10% of his health bar about nine times. I'm also pretty pleased I could take out Dr Vaz exemped down to L16, admittedly with a decently IO'd build. I'm pretty certain it's doable with just SOs if you can deal with his regen. Favorite Content First Ward into Night Ward - the story is just really well written and there's a good variety of mission types. I highly recommend it. Task Force Tips More a trial tip: The reactor trials throw a lot of bosses at you in quick succession, which means you need a huge amount of AoE near the end and a way of getting aggro off the reactor. I nearly solo'd the Ritki one, but the boss rush at the end got the better of me. Stock up on temporary powers before you go. Also, a couple of the task forces have AVs, no matter what. Positron 2 always has Dr Vaz turn up as an AV, even if it's set to spawn an elite boss. Keep those envenomed daggers going and watch out for adds. AV Challenges Envenomed Daggers and inspirations all the way. Most of them are more about endurance than anything else. Bang-for-Buck Arcs The Signature story arcs are really well done and reward you very well for the time spent. I highly recommend them. Merit-Making Side-Runs Signature arcs, easily. Soul Crushing Defeats Silver fricken Mantis. Even as an elite boss, she was harder than some AVs. She hits very hard, debuffs defence and is very sturdy. I had to come back with support and even then she one-shotted two of my teammates. Overall Tricks Stock up on temporary powers - the wedding ring from the Striga arc is almost too good to use, but it's there so you should crank it out when you need to. You can buy a summon at the P2W vendor for relatively little and it's a good complement to your damage output and really works well alongside Lore pets. Envenomed daggers are worth getting if you plan to go AV-hunting.

It's ridiculously flexible. You can almost always jump in with anything as long as there is a good mix. The game has a strong focus on buffs, debuffs and soft control, so DPS-tank-healer isn't really needed, although it is definitely viable. That said high DPS and high support task forces are both pretty powerful. Some of the best runs I've had have been tankless ones with a gaggle of controllers, dominators, defenders and corrutpors - they liquefy anything that stands in their way. Lots of the "squishy" archetypes can more than hold their own - several controller builds can tank better than a few tankers I've met in the game, before IOs and other boosts and radiation defenders have been soloing AVs since before City of Villains even existed. It's a very flexible system. Play what you think is fun. There will be a place for you.

I've actually got them all attuned - sorry if I missed it out on the planner. I did try to make it clear on the first post. I don't know why it's showing as 30 - it's a cheap and cheerful set generally, so use whatever works for you. Widows have defence coming out of practically every orifice, so it's not really an issue eking an extra 1% point out of it, in my opinion.

Get the accolades as you get an extra 10% endurance. I've got all four in a day a couple of times - it makes a difference. Otherwise it's IO bonuses with endurance discounts and a little more endurance here and there. The two health IOs and performance shifter are absolutely worth getting. Always slot your attacks for endurance reduction before your toggles - the VEATs have cheap toggles as well as extra endurance recovery that basically pays for the endurance cost of them. On almost any build, it's worth slotting your three or four most common attacks with endurance reduction before your toggles, just in terms of drain over time. Very, very few toggles use enough endurance to make it worth slotting them until you get into your 30s with slots to spare, whereas your basic attack chain needs it just in terms of how often you use those powers. Sorry - complete oversight of mine not to mention it.

I had a quick look - the knockback in tornado is basically knockdown anyway, so you don't need the sudden acceleration. I think it knocks them from floor level, so they go up more than out. I still think you're being over-cautious, but otherwise it looks good! Remember, it's a hybrid build so it's work hybridising. It's not a scrapper with range, it's a dominator with armour. This is the build I'm using at the moment if you want to see it. It's on the Best of Both thread as version 4. It has a few more attacks than yours and, notably, I haven't got Mind Link on perma because I've never felt like I need it. My resistances are lower, but my control is higher which counteracts that because things that aren't attacking me aren't attacking me. I also picked up Provoke at 50, mainly because I like running tip missions in Atlas park and I needed a taunt to keep lowbies alive.

Version 4 "The Final Version" is now posted on page 1. Anyway, yeah. My last, up-to-date build is up. It's the one I will be sticking with because it does all I want from it.

I agree, AoE is a problem early on. I originally had none until really late, but eventually I sorted that out on V3. You could always swap Total Domination and Psychic Tornado around so you've got it earlier. I've been doing flashbacks recently, so this is something I'm quite aware of but don't know how to solve, really. Basically, until you get wail on a short recharge or tornado, you rely quite a lot on procs in scream. The fear proc ATO is absolute solid gold because it turns, say, a mob of 6 enemies into 3 and 3 because half of them stand there shaking whole you melee the rest down. Dominate allows you to take out another one. Break groups down into stab-friendly chunks. When you get wail and tornado, your AoE skills sort of take over as you can hammer out a lot of control that also does damage. More if you add procs. So, yeah... That's my honest answer: while levelling use the fear proc and the hold to make groups smaller and easier to digest. If you can't afford the fear proc... Send me a tell in game and I'll send it to you - it's that good.

The sorcery pool has a click power that has +40% global resistances that's about as good as scrapper tier 9 powers (and better than some of them). Try that? It's called Rune of Protection and it's really, really strong. I put an example built in the box above. Fortunata have low health and low resists (well, scaling resists) and I know you kind of wanted to avoid control powers, but being able to throw around holds and confuse is really handy. On my fortunata, the build cuts it a bit fine with resistance only because I hammer enemies with holds, fear and confuse. Enemies who can't move won't attack me. The fear proc in an AoE means that a few enemies kind of get a delayed start to the fight. Like I said, I tank with my fortunata, but to do that I have to manage the battlefield with control effects and procs in AoEs. You can't treat it like a scrapper because it just doesn't have the hit points - think blaster and just go into murder overdrive.

@Erydanus are you doing /emote flypose1 etc? You need the emote part. I started a huntsman too and bopped along a bit. Fun enough... but then I started a warshade which is slightly more fun. I may go back to it!

Tell me about it. Seeing how easy it is to get 85% S&L resistance with Sorcery actually made me thing twice about my build which I am otherwise happy with. IDF can be a bit challenging if I'm in rampage mode and not really working with a team, but I'd rather keep my strong control element rather than try to tank any more gods. I mean... a second build would only bankrupt be a little bit. I've actually got a similarly tanky build on my stalker and I really do consider it overkill on low threat archetype because you hardly ever need it unless you're deliberately challenging yourself.

I know a few people outside of Homecoming are working on content to be put up on an "any server is welcome to use this" basis, rather than exclusive to one server cluster. It's definitely months away from anywhere near completion, though. There are a few people on Reddit working on planning some story arcs (I know of two in the works at varying stages of development), and I wouldn't be surprised if something similar was being organised on CoXG/Thunderspy as they've got a team of very dedicated people there.

I've definitely tanked the Imperious task force on my fortunata with lower defence than that. Otherwise, the threat modifier they use is low enough that aggro slides off them unless you're on a team of mostly support and blasters, in which case I still wouldn't really be worried because of debuffs and control. I ended up taking the AoE taunt from the power pool to help me keep hold of aggro more easily. But yes, if you explicitly want to speed run content you know yourself to be slightly weak against, that's going to be a challenge. In incarnate trials, the soft cap is effectively 59% because enemies get a ToHit bonus so I can see an argument for higher defence in those circumstances, but everyone pisses defence buffs all over the place in incarnate trials from my experience. I've pulled the AVs to the tennis courts in BAF with my fortunata without any hassle. There's being safe and there's wrapping yourself in bubble wrap... I get what you're saying, but from my experience it's above and beyond what's needed. If you take things out of context, yes, more is always better, but Maneuvers is a very common power choice in L50 content, as is Barrier, and I have only encountered cascading defence failure when soloing in the Shadow Shard. The above discussion has made me look really, really hard at Rune of Protection, though. Defence cap all the time and S/L/Psi resistance cap two thirds of the time does sound pretty snazzy. It looks like your positionals are 72 melee, 56 ranged, 55 AoE (and 38 psi, but you've got huge damage resistance to psi so don't worry about it) with Mind Link on perma. You've actually gained some smashing and lethal resistance, too. Using ITF as our example, all the -defence attacks are melee tagged so the chance to hit you is pretty low. Assuming the -DEF is 7.5% (going off the broadsword powerset), you'd need to be debuffed twice before it even made a difference to range or AoE and four times before it made a difference to melee defence. Widows have surprisingly low Threat, meaning they lose aggro very easily... the chances of you taking on four debuffs like that unless you're soloing ITF +4x8 is just so low that I wouldn't really worry about it - enemies would have a 5% chance to apply that buff for every attempt to hit you in melee range, and they'd need to get four in before you hit cascading defence failure territory. If you were looking to pick up one more attack, I'd grab psychic scream and put the fear proc ATO in it - it makes enemies freeze up so they don't hit you as often (I think one attempt every 5 seconds), which is good debuff insurance. It normally procs on 2-4 enemies in a group, so I think it's a pretty decent use of it and I quite often use it as a party starter. Or maybe move it over to tornado? You'd lose knockback protection, but you already have Mag 10 from Indominable Will. That proc is such a strong one - enemies just stop attacking you so you can take out the ones who are with your strong single target melee. I wish I put this much dedication into university work. Clearly I just have a fondness for helping people and cross-referencing...

Defence above 45% gets extreme diminishing returns. 55-60% is "I want to solo the most difficult content in the game outside of raids" territory. This build is at about 70% minimum. That's a lot of almost-useless defence and therefore quite wasteful. Even in tank builds designed exclusively for incarnate content, they rarely go above 60. Mathematically, 70% defence won't get you any advantage over 50% defence unless you're tanking incarnate content or something where enemies debuff defence or have a ToHit bonus. That's what I mean by overkill. The calculation the game uses to see if something hits will basically ignore anything above that - anything over a certain amount is literally ignored. You could drop Weave, CT: Defensive and Maneuvers (power pool version) and still be above 50% defence, which is more than most tankers aim for. 45% is the number most players consider the soft cap. If that's the case, then you probably want more resistance. I'd swap super jump for mystic flight, take a filler power from the sorcery pool (Mystic Ward can take a healing IO like Preventative Medicine) and pick up Rune of Protection at 41, pushing Assault to 49 as it's a one-slot wonder. That'd give you similar s/l resistance, positional defences starting at 55% (still more than you need) and a click power that gives you +40% global damage resistances with no crash for 90 seconds on a 159s timer. You'd gain survivability with very little net loss other than some travel speed. Suggested build in box: Taking spin instead of tornado is a pretty good idea in this build. If it works, it works. You could tank pretty much anything with just a couple of power changes. I mean, I can tank pretty much anything on my build too, but this is "I wish I was a tanker" tier.

That's 6pm GMT.

I hadn't even realised there's no dominate. That's a cornerstone of the powerset! In fact, the only ranged attacks are tornado and wail... A large part of a fortunata's survivability is murdering everything and locking the rest down. No ST ranged attacks. No confuse. The fear proc is in a single-target power. I wonder what it's like in actual play. Draugrok, I know it's a while since you put the build up, but how does it fare in actual play?

I really think this build is overkill for defence at 69% minimum for positional defence... there are almost no circumstances when you'd need it that high. 45% is generally considered the goal and 50 would be leaving some margin for debuffs... you're looking at 70-85% with this build, which is waaaaaay over that. I did a like-for-like DPS test on my Best of Both build and this one and mine comes out on top (slightly) with more control options. Taking weave is an odd choice as there's literally no reason to ever turn it on, the defence is so high. If you wanted a very, very support focussed build, yeah, I get it, but as it stands it's so far over the soft cap it's almost pointless. I'm not sure I'm a fan of the build above... I think it loses quite a lot to gain something it doesn't need.

Yeah, 90% of the groups I've played with have been pretty good. I do tend to start my own, though, making it super clear than even lowbies are welcome, which tends to put off people who only value efficiency. Setting your expectations early (not a speed run, not stealthing unless we have to, anyone is welcome who can get to the door) helps.

Plus, he has an army of psychics willing, able and completely happy to remove any problematic thoughts. Tired of working too hard and feel like it's time for a change? It's not. You're happy under Recluse. Arachnos is the best things for the city.

I want to create one with the no-head head part, robot arms and legs and just call it CRABPACK. I will exclusively run sideways.

You young powersets and your newfangled quality of life powers. Back in my day...

I mained a kinetics defender back in the day. An attitude like that is how you run out of endurance.

I keep giving spiders a long, hard side-glance. Part of me thinks I'd like them, but I also think I should play something that isn't an epic archetype for a bit. Which is silly, because they're the most epic... I like the idea of the crab backpack because it's so crunchy looking. You have to lean into the silliness. Maybe I should just get on with it, really... I'd be interested in seeing the build when it's ready for public viewing.

Thanks! To be specific, I think melee is best for single targets (or two or three that you can take out quickly), but you need the AoE to get down to single targets. Hammer everyone with everything you've got. Yes you can - I was messing around with it the other day. Might be a new addition? I ended up taking mystic flight because the teleport is mildly useful but I ninja run and sprint a lot of the time because who doesn't love some unnecessary freerunning? Also, your build sounds pretty fun. I really enjoy the epic archetypes I've played because they can do a bit of everything, so it seems almost foolish not to have a frankenmash of different attack types.

I've found that only to be true in tank-and-spank groups, but that's a problem with control sets generally. In those circumstances, I go into scrapperlock on my fortunata because there's very little they can't solo - "you seven take down this spawn, I'll get that one over there" is a valid fortunata playstyle. I'd actually argue that Night Widows are the weaker one... after the one opening crit, they're just budget scrappers.