Widow need damage resistance they are too fragile

[DrRocket]

I recently generated a widow and find the class reasonably enjoyable.

 

As I finally got her to 50, I began to play around with MIDS to find ways to make her more survivable. It was then to my horror that I learned that they have "Zero" resistance to all forms of attacks with the exception of Psionic.

 

While they quickly achieve high levels of defense, they are going to be hit, if anything the streak breaker rules will make sure the hit does occur. When the dreaded hit does occur, it reall hurts, more than half of the their hit points go poof, the second hit will likely be lights out; to make matters worse, there are the non-positional attacks whuich are auto-hit that makes the issue even worse.

 

Widows do not have like other classes a power that can click and get a boost of hitpoints or endurance, they do not even get accelerated regeneration either among their powers, ouch, that is harsh.

 

When I looked at the epic powers, the widow could not choose from other pools only the patron ones, and not one has a resistance protection ability. I would happily would have gone for fire and get that plasma shield which would give me and assortment of resistances. Tough cost a lot of endurance and gives trivial resistance to lethal and smash only.

 

I would suggest that one of the class inherent powers to provide resistance defense against all forms of damage, which can be slotted to at least give her a chance to achieve say 50% resistance to all forms of damage, this way she can take 4 hits before going down, and perhaps this added hit survivability give the class a chance to get out of the danger zone and heal up.

 

 

[Replacement]

One of their early Passives has the super reflexes trick, iirc, where they gain resistance as their health falls.

 

I didn't see it in the power descriptions but discovered it by monitoring Resist.

 

Not an overall disagreement that they need more, though.

[Saiyajinzoningen]

widows gets a really bad rap which is a shame cause they are really really nice characters when built well. You can easily cap all your positional defenses and get tons of buffs plus nigh irresistible psi damage make them an excellent jack of all trades. in fact a ranged/defense capped widow plays much like a psi/SR sentinel except they do WAY more damage and their buffs are really helpful teamwise. 

 

However i will agree that they require some endurance modification tweaking. the initial passive they get simply isn't enough to support all the toggles that become available to you without serious IO building

[siolfir]

Widows get scaling resistance from two of their powers (Combat Training: Defensive, and Foresight) that starts once you drop below 75% health, and you can slot the Reactive Defenses scaling resistance IO to boost those some more.

 

I also wouldn't say that a Widow is too fragile - if you want some more S/L resistance you can always dip into the Fighting pool, but I never needed to.

[aethereal]

Also streak breaker does not realistically mean that a high defense character gets hit.  The floor hit chance (5% for an even-level minion, and higher from there) certainly means that you will see significant numbers of hits to soft-capped characters, but streak breaker only cuts in after 100 consecutive misses from the same NPC.

Edited December 17, 2019 by aethereal

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

50% to all DMG RES? WTF! You think making them into super tanks wouldnt be OP? The fact you think them fragile tells me a lot about your build/play ability and its not complimentary. They are incredibly high DPS, good support, great levels of personal defense. I dont normally say this but seriously you need to learn how to COH rather then come here and try to suggest changes while clearly lacking even a modest understanding of the game.

 

These constant bad idea posts of yours are going to undermine anything you ever say on these forums should you stick around and actually become competent. Because right now the only reason Ive not ignored you is because your utterly laughable. Your basically a forum jester at this point because nothing you say has any resemblance to an actual fact.

[Replacement]

@Bentley Berkeley I mean I don't disagree that 50% is laughably high but maybe it's time to relax with a cup of tea?

 

I'd like to see them get some Tough levels of baseline Resists, but I've never played any of the EATs to a high enough level to be an authority on them.  From my position in the backseat, though, I wonder if adding some more Regen into their kit wouldn't be better.  A sort of Blaster sustain mindset.

Edited December 17, 2019 by Replacement

[HelenCarnate]

And yet I play a blaster with scorpion shield which is only defense and do not have the same issues and I am constantly in melee range. There are plenty of ways to get resists through IO sets and pool powers.  Nothing is needed for widows to make them even more unkillable. 

[Wild Claw]

I'll be honest, I'm a bit puzzled at the moment about this. I've been slowly working my widow up (currently level 34, turning off XP on a regular basis to go through all the mission storyarcs redside). So far she's only really squishy against a couple of the Hero/Archvillains like Back Alley Brawler (Alan Desslock's Longbow List), and Sea Witch (Lorenz Ansaldo's Carpe Diem). Which I expected, and I've needed to load up with purple inspirations to take them down solo. And I completely failed at trying to solo Bat'Zul in Virgil Tarikoss' Strike Force, but again it was more me being curious if I could and I'm obviously not up to that skill-wise yet. Is there a problem at higher levels that I just haven't reached yet?

[Crysta Clear]

Widows are far from the first archetype and powerset choice I've played that has all defense and little resistance. It's not as bad as the OP makes it out to be, even if there weren't any scaling resistance buffs to be had. With a 5% hit chance, the intent is that one out of every 20 attacks will hit you -- 5%. If an enemy misses you 19 times in a row for Streakbreaker to kick in on the 20th, and you haven't killed it already? That's on you.

 

Streakbreaker protects mathematical probability and estimation. Otherwise, you end up with the issue that spell failure chance has in D&D, where if you have a 5% spell failure chance, it's functionally a lot less, near-zero in practice, because of the sheer unlikeliness of actually rolling beneath a 5 on a d100.

Edited December 17, 2019 by Crysta Clear

[Lazarillo]

They really don't.  And I say that as someone who spends a lot of time playing a Widow...there's already very few things that they don't do extremely well, I don't need even more excuses to feel like "might as well be playing my Fortunata instead" when I jump onto other characters.

[Dragon Crush]

Again, streak breaker doesn't kick in 1 out of 20 times, that's just the normal probability of getting hit if you're softcapped. Streak breaker won't force a hit unless a single entity has tried, and failed, to hit you 100 times in a row, in which case that really is on you for letting it live that long. While a heal would help some for when you do get hit, popping green insps or teaming should be good enough.

[Haijinx]

3 hours ago, Lazarillo said:

They really don't.  And I say that as someone who spends a lot of time playing a Widow...there's already very few things that they don't do extremely well, I don't need even more excuses to feel like "might as well be playing my Fortunata instead" when I jump onto other characters.

I agree with this.

 

The only thing they need I think is damage cap bumped to 500%  like other damage classes.

 

Survival is fine considering all they have to offer.

[Haijinx]

9 hours ago, siolfir said:

Widows get scaling resistance from two of their powers (Combat Training: Defensive, and Foresight) that starts once you drop below 75% health, and you can slot the Reactive Defenses scaling resistance IO to boost those some more.

 

I also wouldn't say that a Widow is too fragile - if you want some more S/L resistance you can always dip into the Fighting pool, but I never needed to.

Yeah set bonus, uniques and tough and its easy to hit 50% S/L. Plus scaling resists.  

 

Then you also have smoke bomb and dart burst can slow them down.  Just have to know when to hit them to get a little distance when things get too hot.

 

Now I want to play my widow lol.  

[DrRocket]

23 hours ago, aethereal said:

Also streak breaker does not realistically mean that a high defense character gets hit.  The floor hit chance (5% for an even-level minion, and higher from there) certainly means that you will see significant numbers of hits to soft-capped characters, but streak breaker only cuts in after 100 consecutive misses from the same NPC.

Mmm, thought the streak breaker number was 9 misses and then bang in the tenth you get a hit. If it takes 99 misses to get the 1 hit, then you are right, streak breaker is not a threat.

[Replacement]

Reminder:

Quote

Final to-hit : misses allowed

>.9 : 1
.8-.9 : 2
.6-.8 : 3
.4-.6 : 4
.3-.4 : 6
.2-.3 : 8
0 -.2 : 100

I keep seeing people saying "Streakbreaker only kicks in one attack in 100" and just to be clear: it's only 1/100 if you already have very high (>30% in order to reach a final 20% hit chance against you, if I read that right) defense.

 

https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Attack_Mechanics#The_Streak_Breaker

Edited December 18, 2019 by Replacement

[aethereal]

Yes, streakbreaker is not the cause for softcapped or near-softcapped characters getting hit.  It is vanishingly unlikely that streakbreaker will ever kick in in such cases.  Streakbreaker may more realistically cause an auto-hit for characters no, small, or medium levels of defense.

 

And remember, it's not 1 attack in 100, it's the 101st attack after 100 consecutive misses from the same attacker.  The odds of a character with 95% chance to miss missing 100 times in a row are just about 0.5%.  So the expectation is that if you had 200 even-level minions continuously attacking you for 100 attacks each, we would expect streakbreaker to force one hit against you.  Meanwhile, we'd expect basic probability to cause 1,000 hits against you.

Edited December 18, 2019 by aethereal

[boggo2300]

It certainly hasn't been my experience that Widows are fragile, of the two VEAT's I would have said they were the all around well built one

[DrRocket]

To be sincere, my post was mainly as a reaction to what MIDs and clicking on the powers button in game is telling me, when I saw reasonably good defenses, I went good deal, but when I checked on resistances and saw Zero in just about all forms of damage but Psionic, alarms went off. For I view survivability being a combo between defense and reistance to damage.

 

When I play my widow, I find it to be an odd experience, at times I can jump in behind the brute, ensure all those wonderful buffs are covering him, and then I go about reducing the mobs about him (I do not use AOEs by the way, because I am making sure I steal aggroe away from the Brute or Tank). The attack sets are a very nicely balanced between ranged and melee that are a distinct pleasure to use. When it gets to status effects, I am up there with the tank, which are exceptionally good since I am not an aggroe magnet. But then at times something odd happens, and start getting hit, not a lot to be sincere (yet enough to go down very quickly if I don't react quickly), but my health bar significantly drops on a single hit. The class gives me no relief buttons to push for a quick heal, so it's inpiration time.  Once I get tagged, its inspiration time and trying to get the heck out of dodge, normally I do manage to leap and get around something out of sight as the pre-programmed attacks are pounding me; and barely survive, as I said most times. But it is the significant decrease of hit points at my health bar from a single hit, that has me concerned, usually my widow is a three hit death if I don't get out of harms way very quick and pop several green inspirations.  This is the reason for the suggestion, perhaps as a less than cordial commenter blurted, I need to learn how to play the class better, does has has some truth to it, but frankly I don't think my approach to the class is that much of a neophite.

 

This said, I am very open to advice on how to play the class, and even IO slotting it.

 

Thank you to those who have been constructive and have gifted me with knowledge

[siolfir]

4 hours ago, DrRocket said:

To be sincere, my post was mainly as a reaction to what MIDs and clicking on the powers button in game is telling me, when I saw reasonably good defenses, I went good deal, but when I checked on resistances and saw Zero in just about all forms of damage but Psionic, alarms went off. For I view survivability being a combo between defense and reistance to damage.

 

When I play my widow, I find it to be an odd experience, at times I can jump in behind the brute, ensure all those wonderful buffs are covering him, and then I go about reducing the mobs about him (I do not use AOEs by the way, because I am making sure I steal aggroe away from the Brute or Tank). The attack sets are a very nicely balanced between ranged and melee that are a distinct pleasure to use. When it gets to status effects, I am up there with the tank, which are exceptionally good since I am not an aggroe magnet. But then at times something odd happens, and start getting hit, not a lot to be sincere (yet enough to go down very quickly if I don't react quickly), but my health bar significantly drops on a single hit. The class gives me no relief buttons to push for a quick heal, so it's inpiration time.  Once I get tagged, its inspiration time and trying to get the heck out of dodge, normally I do manage to leap and get around something out of sight as the pre-programmed attacks are pounding me; and barely survive, as I said most times. But it is the significant decrease of hit points at my health bar from a single hit, that has me concerned, usually my widow is a three hit death if I don't get out of harms way very quick and pop several green inspirations.  This is the reason for the suggestion, perhaps as a less than cordial commenter blurted, I need to learn how to play the class better, does has has some truth to it, but frankly I don't think my approach to the class is that much of a neophite.

 

This said, I am very open to advice on how to play the class, and even IO slotting it.

 

Thank you to those who have been constructive and have gifted me with knowledge

A couple of things:

1. For the part highlighted in yellow, Widow's don't have an inherent taunt in their attacks, only Tankers and Brutes do (Tankers in an AoE). It is exceedingly unlikely you will be capable of stealing aggro from one of those ATs, especially given that your basic threat level is half of theirs: if they didn't Taunt, you would still have to do twice as much damage. So go ahead and use your AoEs, it's not going to drag anything your way that would otherwise be attacking the Brute or Tanker, and it might keep it off of a Defender, Corruptor, or Controller who is using their AoEs.
2. For the part highlighted in red, that is going to be the case until the scaling resistances kick in unless you build some resistance in through set bonuses or pop orange inspirations. I find that my Widow drops quickly to about half hit points, but as the resistances come up she's just that much harder to kill. Yes, it will look like you barely survive... but you were in control the whole time; an anecdote for you: running on a fire farm yesterday with the mobs at +3 to me to get some inf - so constant fighting - I would drop to about 20% health and then the damage slowed to a crawl that a Panacea proc was just keeping up with. In the team window, my health was hovering in the red, but from that point I could turn on melee hybrid (+resistance), pop an orange or two (+resistance), or hit Demonic Aura (+useless defense, +resistance), all of which sent me to the resistance cap (85%) at that level of hit points, and I would simply outregen the incoming damage and my health would increase. I could also hit Rebirth (heal, +regen) to top off my hit points and reset the cycle. But I never ran out of options too quickly to do anything about it, and that's not even accounting for the AoE Confuse I could have used as a "panic button" to get some breathing room while they attack each other, because I never needed to use it. Trust your defenses, and trust that when your resistances kick in that it will give you time to react.
3. For the part highlighed in green, check the VEAT section of the AT forums. There's a thread there where someone is having similar trouble with a Fortunata, and there was some advice (and I posted my build) there. There are also several threads where other have posted their builds.

 

[Haijinx]

Widows have the highest damage versions of Spin and Evis available .. And Dart Burst is fun.  I can't see avoiding AOE. 

[Omega-202]

This thread (as are a few of Dr Rocket's suggestions) is less about addressing an actual problem, and more about how Dr Rocket needs help learning to play the game we have.  

 

Doc, it is very apparent that you are not well versed in how the game works, or how to build your characters.  May I suggest that you take a break from making suggestions and spend more time learning to play the game as it is?  

[Fan Mail]

Tough crowd as a comedian may say.

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

On 12/20/2019 at 5:50 AM, DrRocket said:

To be sincere, my post was mainly as a reaction to what MIDs and clicking on the powers button in game is telling me, when I saw reasonably good defenses, I went good deal, but when I checked on resistances and saw Zero in just about all forms of damage but Psionic, alarms went off. For I view survivability being a combo between defense and reistance to damage.

 

When I play my widow, I find it to be an odd experience, at times I can jump in behind the brute, ensure all those wonderful buffs are covering him, and then I go about reducing the mobs about him (I do not use AOEs by the way, because I am making sure I steal aggroe away from the Brute or Tank). The attack sets are a very nicely balanced between ranged and melee that are a distinct pleasure to use. When it gets to status effects, I am up there with the tank, which are exceptionally good since I am not an aggroe magnet. But then at times something odd happens, and start getting hit, not a lot to be sincere (yet enough to go down very quickly if I don't react quickly), but my health bar significantly drops on a single hit. The class gives me no relief buttons to push for a quick heal, so it's inpiration time.  Once I get tagged, its inspiration time and trying to get the heck out of dodge, normally I do manage to leap and get around something out of sight as the pre-programmed attacks are pounding me; and barely survive, as I said most times. But it is the significant decrease of hit points at my health bar from a single hit, that has me concerned, usually my widow is a three hit death if I don't get out of harms way very quick and pop several green inspirations.  This is the reason for the suggestion, perhaps as a less than cordial commenter blurted, I need to learn how to play the class better, does has has some truth to it, but frankly I don't think my approach to the class is that much of a neophite.

 

This said, I am very open to advice on how to play the class, and even IO slotting it.

 

Thank you to those who have been constructive and have gifted me with knowledge

Uhm bud your very first post is in my book so rude because of your attitude of know it allness and for passing judgement as if you are in a position to about an AT and power set, suggesting I am less cordial is laughable.

 

You should be going to the specific AT forums first and asking for build advice not coming to general discussion and suggestion with click bait worthy topic titles.  Especially if your in need of being gifted with knowledge.

 

Yes if you forgo AOE attacks, because you lack an understanding of aggro in the game that is a YOU problem. The best defense is overwhelming offense every single time. The less time things live, the less time they can attack you, for def heavy classes, or classes without any inherent mitigation set that is an undeniable truth.

 

However because I am by nature a mentor and teacher, Ill try to take pity on you and offer a few ideas.

 

Stealth pool for phase shift, the ultimate oh shit button. If youve been hit hard but are still standing nothing better to give you breathing room and the option ro withdrawl or take in the situation and burn insps to get back into the fight asap.

 

If you team often, Leadership pool for vengeance. Veng turns entire teams into tanks if someone falls. Being a more sneaky AT if played right you wont be the first person dropping.

 

Heal Pool. If you are in need of healing, and again if you like to team the heal pool is especially handy.

 

Its pretty SOP for those with stealth powers to take heal pool for res allie, and recall friend to evac downed friends from harms way before getting them on their feet, and for ghosting to end rooms to bring the team when running TFs in a timely manner.

 

For your widow if teaming regularly, Id suggest heal pool up to res allie. Recall friend, likely the leadership pool for veng. As you have inherent stealth power wastinga  pool on stealth for phase shift would be wasteful.

 

Id suggest sorcery, rune of protection witha  heavy global recahrge build will be up often and is a great way to get hardy in a hurry if you have gotten too much attention.

 

In the future if you want a discussion, be more considerate in your thread titles, how you approach a topic, and keep your tone very humble and no nothing ish rather then act as if you have a finger on the pulse of an issue long time vets have someone not noticed.

[macskull]

On 12/21/2019 at 3:35 PM, Bentley Berkeley said:

However because I am by nature a mentor and teacher, Ill try to take pity on you and offer a few ideas.

 

Stealth pool for phase shift, the ultimate oh shit button. If youve been hit hard but are still standing nothing better to give you breathing room and the option ro withdrawl or take in the situation and burn insps to get back into the fight asap.

 

If you team often, Leadership pool for vengeance. Veng turns entire teams into tanks if someone falls. Being a more sneaky AT if played right you wont be the first person dropping.

 

Heal Pool. If you are in need of healing, and again if you like to team the heal pool is especially handy.

 

Its pretty SOP for those with stealth powers to take heal pool for res allie, and recall friend to evac downed friends from harms way before getting them on their feet, and for ghosting to end rooms to bring the team when running TFs in a timely manner.

 

For your widow if teaming regularly, Id suggest heal pool up to res allie. Recall friend, likely the leadership pool for veng. As you have inherent stealth power wastinga  pool on stealth for phase shift would be wasteful.

 

Id suggest sorcery, rune of protection witha  heavy global recahrge build will be up often and is a great way to get hardy in a hurry if you have gotten too much attention.

 

In the future if you want a discussion, be more considerate in your thread titles, how you approach a topic, and keep your tone very humble and no nothing ish rather then act as if you have a finger on the pulse of an issue long time vets have someone not noticed.

I'm a little confused here. Most of these suggestions are just plain bad.

1. The entire concealment pool is pretty much a wasted pick on a PvE build unless you have power picks to spare and need things for LotG mules, but a Widow should has so many powers that can slot LotGs it's not needed.
2. If you're going to dip into the leadership pool on a Widow you'd honestly only really need Assault and maybe Manuevers. You already get better versions of the entire leadership pool in your secondary, and Vengeance is available in-set at level 35.
3. I don't think it's "SOP" for anyone to take the medicine pool and recall friend unless you're a "healer" and those are pretty much useless on a halfway decent team anyways. A Widow is probably not going to have room to get three powers deep into the medicine pool when almost any other pool is a better choice.
4. Rune of Protection is a decent choice if you have power picks to spare. That being said, investing in the fighting pool (why wouldn't you, after all) gets you some solid S/L resistance, a good IO build will get you a modest amount of resistance to everything else except maybe E/N/toxic, and Foresight's scaling resistance bonus means you'll be doing pretty well for yourself once your health gets low.