Warshade or Fortunata?

[lokiie1984]

I'm posting this in both the warshade and the widow forums to hopefully get a good well rounded answer. I tried googling it but nothing really compared the two directly.

 

So i'm not so much looking for builds but more looking for what one can do that the other cant. General break down on play style and stuff like that.

 

What i'm looking for in the archetype is something is fun and useful in a group but can also solo at a higher difficulty then 0x0 I don't need to go at +4x8 but higher then normal anyway. I also prefer it to be a ranged class as i just cant seem to get into melee lately. It would also be nice if they can do this without a super expensive build. But if needed that can come later as both my warshade and widow are 24. Mostly just looking for tips on which one to focus on.

I'm leaning warshade but figured i would see what people have to say before i commit.

 

I have been reading through this guide as i definitely want to stick with human form only if i go warshade.

 

 

Thanks

[Greycat]

My few widows ended up more melee than Fortunata. They're scary in that arena. But for general play, I lean Warshade and am *highly* biased in that direction. I will say that, to me, going human-only Warshade is missing out - if nothing else, for the second mire in Dwarf. But then I also like that I can h ave a non-expensive "naturally grown" build that can put out three fluffies for ranged damage while tanking in Dwarf, too.

 

You will, in any case, end up in melee in a Warshade, given one of the higher damaging attacks is your melee range hold, you want to be in melee for Mire (and Stygian) and the like. But that's more "you'll be in melee range" rather than "you'll be a melee build." Things will be blowing up all around you. That's just the Warshade way. Heck, you'll *want* to be higher than +0/0 anyway to get more enemies around once you're up a little ways.

 

As far as "useful to teams," eh. I tend to have a beef about that, since all it brings to mind is someone telling an emp/ or /emp "stop blasting/controlling, just heal" or screaming at other sets for shields and such. I tend to link "I think your AT is better for the team" with "I'm greedy." Just enough bad experiences that it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. That said, the VEATs bring built in leadership (and stacked, if you want to sacrifice other utility.) If you're going human only, you can, of course, dip into that leadership pool yourself.  As a warshade, you're bringing (a) a warshade, which everyone should appreciate. (b) individual teleports. You get it at low level, which I know isn't as big a thing now with all the *other* teleports we have but is still useful. (c) optional - enemy TP, for pulling, yanking minions out of walls, etc. (d) Stealth (plus your own teleport.) Scouting's still a thing.  (e) force multipliers that will work even if you're mezzed or killed in the form of the cotton candy of death (they do not despawn if you die, since their "cost" includes a defeated enemy.) Just off the top of my head.

[Action Sloth]

10 hours ago, lokiie1984 said:

What i'm looking for in the archetype is something is fun and useful in a group but can also solo at a higher difficulty then 0x0 I don't need to go at +4x8 but higher then normal anyway. I also prefer it to be a ranged class as i just cant seem to get into melee lately. It would also be nice if they can do this without a super expensive build. But if needed that can come later as both my warshade and widow are 24. Mostly just looking for tips on which one to focus on.

Hi! I'm glad to see you're interested in and enjoying your WS enough to consider making it your next project! I focused a lot on my VEATs before shifting primarily to my WS, so hopefully I can provide some objective and useful insight on the two, though it's obvious where my bias lies 🙂

 

I highlighted in the quote what I took to be the primary criteria that you're considering and will go through those points. Since you're looking at my human form builds, I'll be comparing my experiences with those and a ranged fort with similar investment (perma hasten/mind link, SC to all positions, etc):

• Fun: Obviously this is up to you and your own tastes, but even though I consider my Fort one of my top 10 most fun alts, the WS builds in my thread ended up being far and away the most fun of any AT or powerset combination for me.

• Useful In Groups: In terms of typical gameplay, it's pretty safe to say that the Fortunate will bring more support to a team than a WS, especially one running human form. As a WS, unless you take provoke, you have a nebulous role on teams. With provoke and a fully IOd build, you can tank very effectively while providing more damage and control than a normal tank. Otherwise, you have average consistent/reliable(read: without pets) damage, decent control, and incredible survivability, whereas the Fortunata brings maybe a bit better damage, comparable control, good (but magnitudes lower) survivability, as well as lots of +defense, +to hit, and some +damage for your team through Mind Link and their inherent leadership abilities. I will say though, if you invest fully in one of my non-provoke builds, you can very easily be an asset to teams, especially speedy content, by taking alphas and completing objectives on your own (like in the 2nd mission of the ITF), but those types of benefits are more abstract and dependent upon your teams, playstyle, and content choices.

• Solo Capability: The builds in my thread can solo any content at +4x8, and as Greycat said, you'll find that you'll always want to run at x8, as it will actually get easier the more enemies you have. Because the Fortunata has easily softcapped positional defenses, CC, and decent damage, it can pretty easily solo a lot of enemy groups at +0-2x8. However, since it lacks good resists and health recovery options to supplement their defense, they won't be able to reach near the solo capability of a MFn WS.

• Ranged Class: If this is a deal-breaker, then your search ends here. Between a Human Form MFn WS and a Fortunata, there's no question. Definitely the Fortunata, which plays at a (mid) range. Human Form WS is played in Melee, and any build not built around Nova form will tend to involve a good amount of Melee play.

• Cheap Build: Basically, as I see it, the Fortunata has a high, but lower-overall performance ceiling compared to the WS. It will be much quicker and cheaper to reach the upper limits of your Fortunata build than your Warshade, but I think you can ultimately squeeze more out of the WSs options.

There's my two cents, I hope you find some of it useful!

[lokiie1984]

42 minutes ago, Action Sloth said:

There's my two cents, I hope you find some of it useful!

It's 5am here and i need to sleep so hopefully i make sense.

I played pretty much all day on the warshade and in a group it was a blast. Doing high end ToT groups, being in melee didn't bother me. It's melee attacks i just cant get into, i suppose it's probably the lack of ranged so I'm trying to punch something that is a half inch out of range and there's so much going on that i don't notice.

So in a group it was pretty fun, i love self heal / end recovery off the corpses. As someone that almost always has end issues, that was neat. My issue came into when i was trying to solo, i know i'm only 35 but man i could hardly kill anything. From your post i recall you saying that you don't remember much of the pre 50 stuff but do you remember how hard leveling was? One of my issues is i tend to play alot at night when the servers are dead so i'm forced to solo missions.

I can normally get a couple task forces in though before it dies off for some fast exp. I did get myself to 35 today so at least i can farm ITF if people are still doing it with the Halloween event going. Hopefully i can just farm that to 50 fairly quickly. Shame i only have about 40 million across all my characters lol.

[Action Sloth]

As you noted, I don't remember much of my leveling experience on live, and I PLed my WS here. I'm wondering if I should go through and level on a fresh WS just to have better advice to give, since it seems to be a common issue. I should also mention that my builds are meant to be respec'd into at 50.

 

Disclaimers out of the way, it doesn't surprise me that you are having issues pumping out dps solo. Once you hit 38 and get eclipse, you'll have a lot more time to deal your damage and that should help. However, and at least imo, dps is the biggest weakness of WSs. An unIO'd HF WS is going to feel that pain pretty acutely. Working on some of your global recharge bonuses (LotGs, AT IOs) will also help until you can start getting things like purples slotted!

 

Additionally, once you get eclipse, and especially once it's perma, you can consider carrying more red inspirations (I suggest making conversion macros) as you won't need a good chunk of the other inspirations thanks to Stygian Circle and Eclipse.

 

Hope that helps!

[Machariel]

A little late to this, but in the past few weeks I leveled and IOd out both a Tri-Form Warshade and a Melee Fortunata (for the first time - I didn't get very far on live with either of them), so here's my impressions on specifically Warshade vs Fortunata:

 

AoE: They can both do a lot of AoE damage.  Warshade gets a LOT of AoE very early (nova gets 2 good AoEs, dwarf has mire, human mire at lvl 12).  Fortunata gets 4 good-ish AoE attacks (spin, dart burst, psi shockwave, psi tornado), each of which is serviceable, and Psi Wail which is insane... but at level 32.  The Warshade will have better AoE if you need to do AoE forever.  Quasar is great and I wish Unchain Essence recharged faster (it's slower than Quasar!).

 

Single Target: Fortunata / Widow all the way.  You get a very nasty ST attack chain very early in the core Blood Widow powers.  Warshades can run out of gas against a single target. 

A note about damage in general: Warshades do almost exclusively (outside of 2 dwarf attacks and Gravimetric Snare (lol)) Negative energy damage.  Widows can do Lethal and Psionic and some Toxic thrown in.  Averaged over all enemies in the game I'm not sure what is better, but do I know that Psionic has some niche applications.

 

Sustainability: A Fortunata can very readily softcap her own defenses (and her teammates'), but if you want resists and healing you'll have to build/slot for it.  The medicine pool is not mandatory, but it's popular and for good reason.  Meanwhile, the Warshade can readily hardcap his own resistances (thanks Eclipse!) and has insane self-heal (Stygian Circle!) AND has an actually great self-rez (Stygian Return!).  The Warshade is definitely more sustainable, but both of them are pretty tough to kill.

 

Crowd Control: Pretty much a wash, but both Warshades and Fortunatas can spit out a lot of stuns and holds if they're so inclined.  However, neither of them feel like they really need access to CC because they have so much AoE and sustainability.  Warshades lose a point here to the slot tax to convert their excessive KB to KD, which really sucks on a triform Warshade that is already starved for slots.  I think they both have a similar philosophy towards crowd control - they're not using it to keep an entire spawn locked down like a controller or dominator, but they're using just enough to protect themselves while they continue to dumpster everything around them.

 

Team Support / Utility: Fortunatas score a point here for their leadership powers + mind link, if you're not off nuking a different mob.  Neither of them bring significant heals, buffs, or debuffs.  Warshades get TP friend and 2 different travel powers for free, and my Tri-Form had so many extra power slots that I took Hover, Fly, and Afterburner anyway.  Fortunata was more like "I want to take 6 utility powers but I only have room for 4" - quite good enough by any rational standard.

 

 

 

Edited October 27, 2019 by Machariel