Soldier and Widow question.

[ceto555]

Hello,

 

I'm looking to make one of each and was wondering which is better for strictly solo, should I go Crab for soldier? What about Widow?

 

Thanks!

[Redlynne]

For Soldier, it really depends on whether you want to be a Huntsman, Bane or Crab.  Ultimately this comes down to a question of whether or not you want to Blast (ranged only) or Blap (ranged and melee).

 

If you want to optimize for ranged only combat, you want either Huntsman or Crab ... and of the two my personal feeling is that Huntsman is superior to Crab.

 

If you want to optimize for ranged and melee combat, you want to go Bane for a Stalker-ish style of play, or Crab for a more "tanky" Blapper style of play.

 

 

 

Me?

I prefer Huntsman with an alternate build as a ranged only Crab ... but that's just me.

[KittyEmpress]

Crab spiders are often considered 'blasters who can tank'. They have some of the best aoe damage in the game, and their leadership buffs (that all soldiers get) are some of the best non defender aura toggles. They also get good pet benefits and can mini-mastermind. Probably the best choice for solo.

 

Bane spider spent a long time as 'strictly better stalker', but stalker got buffed in i23, and is very powerful nowadays. They nowadays are slightly worse at single target damage than stalkers, and slight worse at aoe than crabs. And again. Amazing buffs.

 

Fortunas have one of the best buffs in the game in mind link (17% defense, psychic damage resist, mez resist, can be made near permanent with IOs)

 

Blood widows are considered a little disappointing nowadays, they are worse than bane spiders in a lot of ways. They still have a lot of damage, and can work fine. But a spider is generally better.

[Stealthrider]

For the record, Night Widows' Mind Link is strictly superior to Fortunatas' and is much easier to make actually permament.

[Flux Vector]

Out of the 4 VEAT branches, my opinion:

NWs are probably the best solo character for doing the widest range of content on an inexpensive build.

 

Fortunata is probably the best solo character for doing the widest range of content on a fully-stacked build with no budgetary concerns.

 

Crab spider is probably the best solo character for anything involving mass AOE.

 

Bane spiders are that cousin we don't talk about anymore.

 

Wolf spiders are a fun concept character that's effective enough to play but is a worse version of the crab spider for people who don't like having enough arms to game, knit, and juggle all at the same time.

[Adeon Hawkwood]

Crab Spiders are also an excellent choice for a fully stacked build. A perma-haste Crab Spider basically has the AoE damage of a Blaster, the toughness of a Scrapper and the pets of a Mastermind.

[You]

Any suggested build for a crab?

 

I am thinking of getting a third pet from Mace too. Would that be one pet too many (having to take at least two powers from Mace)?

 

Thanks!

[Adeon Hawkwood]

I posted my old Crab Spider build in another thread: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/index.php/topic,1339.msg7943.html#msg7943

 

Keep in mind this was my high-cost late game build so it's not cheap but it gives an idea of what you can do (there's probably also room for improvement with some of the newer IO sets and you might want to replace the HOs). In regards to your second question, you don't need to take the Arachnos Blaster but you should since it lets you pretend that you're a mastermind, they have six pets so you should as well. In all seriousness, both Web Envelope and Shatter Armor are actually quite useful for a Crabbermind anyway so taking them as prerequisites for the Blaster isn't a bad thing.

[Sovera]

For something with the AoE of a blaster, pets of mastermind and toughness of a scrapper there is a big fat zero of Crabs being mentioned whenever someone talks of their favorite/strongest builds.

[Adeon Hawkwood]

The VEATs in general suffered a lot from a role-play perspective, and I think Crab spiders have it the worst of all. With Widows and Bane Spiders you can come up with some other explanation for their powerset that doesn't involve Arachnos but with Crab spiders you're stuck lugging around that giant backpack which basically just screams Arachnos. So while Crab spiders were excellent from a pure power perspective they lost a lot of popularity due to the fact that it was hard to make a genuinely interesting character out of them.

 

I had a crab spider and while I loved playing him and he was one of my strongest characters he was also one of my least interesting characters.

[Flux Vector]

Agreed with the above to an extent - the biggest problem with the crab spider is the backpack.  On a lot of characters it looks visually clunky and unappealing, to the point that I actually would personally see more wolf spider builds ingame than crab spiders.

 

To a different extent - pets in general ended up being less attractive in the extreme high end in my experience.  Even masterminds would not be played, or even would just skip using some or all of their pets, depending on build, when in teams because teams moved faster than pets could keep up with, bypassed spawns that pets would aggro, and pet HP pools meant they couldn't be kept alive anyway.  Summoning animations were long and so were upgrading animations.  So basically... pets aren't very team-friendly in a lot of endgame teams.  Or maybe I should say, endgame teams aren't very pet-friendly.

 

Crab spiders are less damaged by this than actual masterminds (or controllers), but aren't quite as good without their pets as permadom dominators.  Or say, brutes.

[Sovera]

I'm personally fine with the backpack. Was turned off by the character creation lack of customization, but it turns out all other tailor slots don't have those limitations while still getting to sport that sweet backpack. There are so many concepts of son/daughter of villain using dad's tech to do good that it is easy to go with.

 

Everything is a slog compared to a Brute though. I need to push to 24 so I can get started with the build and stop whittling away with my little rifle.