All-natural assassin Widow

[RufusTFirefly]

Could you build a Night Widow to only use the claw/dart powers and avoid any of the overtly Psionic powers to build a “natural” assassin type character? Would this be tenable or too gimped?

[Machariel]

I mean psychic scream is pretty bad so it sounds like what you're describing is a Night Widow.

 

I think Fortunatas with the claw attacks are a fair bit stronger (mostly because of psi wail but proc'd out Dominate + Subdue are also excellent), but I certainly wouldn't describe Night Widows as 'gimped.' 

[Gulbasaur]

Personal opinion: what you want is probably a stalker. Night Widows are, to some extent, weaker versions of stalkers. The primary is halfway between claws and spines and the secondary is sort of a mix of super reflexes and leadership. The psi powers are there to round it out. 

 

Stalkers have a considerably better inherent power, too.

 

I love my widow, but the power gap between fortunata and night widow is a mile wide; fortunatas have just enough melee to function and a good mix of control and ranged damage to back it up. Night Widows don't quite ever get the same level of power. 

 

Night Widows are fun, though. It's a good power set, but just feels like it never quite reaches full power. 

[Zinnar]

For what it's worth, I'm following the guide by @Stealthrider located here , to build my Night Widow, and it's working really well for me. Stealthrider also reports pretty good success with the build, and the important part for you is here, at the beginning:

 

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I chose Mental Blast and Psychic Scream for thematic purposes, but having some Psi damage and -recharge is pretty useful. That said, in nearly all cases Poison Dart and Dart Burst are strictly better, but especially when soloing AVs for their stacking -regen debuff. If your goal is to min-max your Widow rather than to be faithful to the NPCs, take the Darts and never look back.

 

Now, later builds in the thread very clearly have Psychic Scream and Mental Blast, but if you just switch them out with Poison Dart and Dart Burst (as I have) it still works pretty well. My Night Widow thematically has limited psychic powers, and instead became a test subject for Arachnos to increase the potency of her toxins, so I skip all the powers except for Mind Link, which you really can't avoid.

 

Try it out, or at least use this for a roadmap for your character, like I did!

[Shockacon]

I skipped the psionic powers on my NW like what you are suggesting and did it twice, once on the original game and again on HC. I did not miss them and enjoyed the character much more than I did stalkers. Actually, I tore through the content quicker with a non-psionic NW. Does it have weaknesses? Sure, my Electric/Shield stalker does make me recognize how much the AOE can be missed but my NW usually kills things fast enough. The toon's crazy resistance to holds and mezzes are sorely missed right now on other melee toons I use.

 

So, no, I don't think it would be gimped at all.

[Erydanus]

On ‎3‎/‎3‎/‎2020 at 12:27 AM, RufusTFirefly said:

Could you build a Night Widow to only use the claw/dart powers and avoid any of the overtly Psionic powers to build a “natural” assassin type character? Would this be tenable or too gimped?

The official origin type of Widows was natural actually. The psionic powers they have are considered normal human psychic potential forcibly enhanced to the point of being actual power attacks through the harshest of Arachnos training and probably some psychic surgery similar to what the Praetorian SEERs undergo. 

[Gulbasaur]

On 3/9/2020 at 1:36 PM, Erydanus said:

The official origin type of Widows was natural actually. The psionic powers they have are considered normal human psychic potential forcibly enhanced to the point of being actual power attacks through the harshest of Arachnos training and probably some psychic surgery similar to what the Praetorian SEERs undergo. 

Crab/bane soldiers are also psychic canonically - but they "turn their powers in on themselves" and self-brainwash. The lore says that psychic women are made into widows and psychic men are made into spiders, apart from the VEAT exceptions.

 

It's a minor lore point that psychic powers are sort of natural in-universe. In the Origin of Power story arc, Sister Psyche says:

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I believe that I am not, in fact, a mutant, but something else. I'm a psionic, not a mutant. The distinction is a semantic one, but I feel is fairly important to make. There are histories all the way back to ancient Rome that talk about the Sibyls and their ability to see the future. I believe these women were the first psionics our earth has seen. I'm not an expert, but it seems to make sense to me.

 

Edited March 11, 2020 by Gulbasaur

[Erydanus]

That's a really good point because there was a website lore article about Giovanna Scaldi and how she was born in medieval times with mind control powers and would be considered a mutant in today's standards.  (I don't want to say more but if you don't know who I'm talking about she's Vanessa DeVore's "ancestor"...). ANYway calling someone like that a mutant in cannon, on the website material, did kind of directly conflict the definition that later started getting used of mutants being born just since the first atom bomb was used. So good hand wave here in the Sister Psyche material.

[Gulbasaur]

Yeah. I mean, by its normal definition mutants are natural. A genetically modified hero would presumably fall under science whereas a hero with a natural mutation would be... natural? I mean, would you call someone with haemophilia a mutant? No, unless you're a horrible person.

 

I think part of the issue is the choice of the word "natural" - perhaps "trained" or "honed" would have been more appropriate for some heroes. I mean, peacebringers are natural but they're very different from Manticore.

 

I think the Origin system was part of the design of the game from very early on from something extremely important to basically flavour. I mean, it's literally the first thing you choose when creating a character. In hindsight, maybe more origins (like the titles system) might have been a better idea, but they're a relic of an earlier stage in the design process and we're stuck with them.