What makes VEATs great?

[Argus_The_Risen]

Just as the title states, I want to know what you think makes VEATs great! Whether it be Huntsman, Crab, Bane, Widow, etc. You can get as detailed as you want, or be short, sweet and to the point. It is time for us of Arachnos to shine and tell the world how great we truly are!

[Gulbasaur]

Fortunata main...

 

I can scrap, blast, mez, stealth, survive and buff without dipping into the pools... and Presence makes me into a viable tank.

 

I had a mind controller back on Live. It's like that but with knives for hands and it's glorious.

[KaizenSoze]

As Gulbasaur said, they are a jack of trades, sometimes even a master of a few.

 

Also, a Fortunata main, but I have a fun pure mace Bane.

 

There is no other AT that can build so many different play styles out the same set of skills.

 

You'll actually want to use the three build slots.

[Hew]

I love me some VEATS though I dont play them often. I LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE being on a team with one or more. I REALLY like my friends all the spiders all the time crab build, and wish some times I did that.

 

Mind link is THE BOMB,

[Neiska]

My thoughts -

 

Peacebringer - I have never tried, so I have to bow out of this one.

 

Warshade - I struggled some as a warshade. It is a very stance-based AT. It can do many things which is nice, but I would rate it as near the bottom of any role you assume. But still having such fluid options can keep a character from being boring. But I have never seen a Warshade that was "above and beyond" or impressive.

 

Widow's - My widow was alright. She had pretty good dps and team buffs but was squishy no matter how durable I tried to make her. I compensated by using the old Rune of Protection because the way Widows resistances work - at full hitpoints you have low resists, and low to medium hitpoints you have higher resists. All well on paper. What can end up happening though is a large alpha hit can 1 shot you, due to low hitpoints and low resists. And even if you are at lower hitpoints and have higher resists, you can still get 1 shot by a hard alpha hit, because, well, you are low hitpoints. But Claws was pretty good single target DPS, and Psi Wail/Aura of confuse are quite good, and the team buffs are just the icing on the cake. I disliked having to rely on "iffy" survivability though, and it was aggravating to no end to having to deal with nonstop runners and no real tools to help prevent it.

 

Crabber -  While I adore the playstyle and "feel" of this AT, sadly I have more or less shelved my crabber though, due to trying to do anything on 4/8 to be quite a slog. They are great for team support, but for solo it can be a bit grueling. They have a very good AOE chain and debuffs, but their damage is pretty iffy, despite having a high pylon ranking due to them and their pets all piling on. Their pets are too squishy for higher difficulty though, and without barrier they can and will die. And if you take barrier, you wont have ageless or other things. And unlike Masterminds, Crabbers have no way to heal or support their pets aside from toggles, and unlike Controllers their pets aren't immortal either. Which makes their pets largely disposable dots with legs at best, instead of actual "pets." Again, they look good on paper, but they can be lackluster solo or later on. Personally if you don't mind soloing on 2/8 or 3/8 difficulty they can be fantastic, but if you like to play on 4/8 then you will have problems if you solo crabby. I do love its playstyle though, it does feel like you are playing a piece of mobile artillery, and you can have an endless AOE attack chain which is quite lovely. So while great on teams, the class lacks oomph for solo play. Honestly I wish they would turn their terrible T9 into even something like a taunt aura, to take advantage of their tankiness and help the pets actually last long enough to be useable on higher content without barrier.

 

Bane - I have never played one, but I have teamed with some. More or less it looks like a mace stalker with buffs added on. But I don't really have any experience to comment on them.

 

One thing about crabbers, they can be "quite" tough. Their resistance cap is 85%, higher than brutes. Not many people build them this way though, most crabber builds I have seen stop around 60% or so resistance. Which is a shame, if the AT had a taunt ability they could function just fine as another tank option.

 

My two cents on VEATS.

Edited April 27, 2021 by Neiska

[StriderIV]

3 hours ago, Neiska said:

 

One thing about crabbers, they can be "quite" tough. Their resistance cap is 85%, higher than brutes. Not many people build them this way though, most crabber builds I have seen stop around 60% or so resistance. Which is a shame, if the AT had a taunt ability they could function just fine as another tank option.

 

My two cents on VEATS.

One thing to note: I believe Brutes have the same resistance cap as Tankers, which is 90%. They have a tougher time getting to that number, however.

[tjknight]

My short answer.. stacking buffs make them great. VEATS are primarily force multipliers.. one on any team is good.. more than one is excellent.  My favorite toon by far is my Claws/Psychic Fortunata, with double leadership, and near-perma mindlink.  Stupidly high defense, decent  smashing/lethal resist from melee IO's, and superb passive team buffs. I know that any team I'm on will benefit from her being there.  I went with a suggestion from the boards to mix the widow claw attacks w/psychic attacks. So I guess you could say she's technically a Night Widow.  She can solo EB's and even farm a little (Council or Cimerorans are best). I don't find her squishy at all, especially with incarnates slotted.  But even exempted down for lower level task forces/strike forces she play well. No complaints at all... and to be honest she was decent even before max level, incarnates, and IO's.  Those things just put her over the top.  

Edited April 27, 2021 by tjknight

[Two Dollar Bill]

My favorite VEAT is my Crab Spider. I think the secret to what makes him fun is that he's tough without being boring. Great survivability and status protection without the need to chase down mobs and punch them. A Crab can jump in to melee along-side the Tanker or blast from long range as the situation demands. Although he can't taunt, his crowd control (mostly knockdown) is actually not too bad. A VEAT's Leadership buffs may not be fun, but they definitely contribute to what makes them great.

[Project129]

I will be honest, I have an extreme bias in this department.

 

I have tried many Peacebringers and Warshades, they aren't great in any capacity to me. They feel like a gimmick with no real substance (to me, I am sure there are more than a few who swear by them) that would be infinitely better if their alternate forms could have access to pool powers and the like to allow them to cover weaknesses and buff areas where they are weaker (Imagine a PB flying blaster with KB protections from acrobatics and the like) and overall don't really offer much to the team, feeling like a more 'solo act' kind of set. But this is just opinion, so take it with a mountain of salt.

 

My interest comes in with our Spider friends. Night Widows and Fortunatas serve very specific roles. Night Widow as a good scrapper-like play in my experience and does some nasty damage while being decently resilient. But Fortunatas...Those tend to have the most success as a nuke or a support player. Provide buffs for the team or do massive damage (One build I ran, no clue if it was a leveling glitch or what have you, allowed me to take follow up and build up. Pop both then hit your psychic wail...Enough said on what kind of wrecking that can do to most mobs).  However, these two classes are my less used compared to their Bane and Crab Counterparts.

 

The Crab Spider is a decent tank provided you build for it, but this isn't what many seem to run. Most I see run it for the back guns or as a spidermind, using overwhelming firepower from the back line as a support and damage addition. But this will be better for another to cover overall, I am sure. I just can share what I see before I move on to my main attraction.

 

The Bane Spider, at least from my experiences, come in really two 'Viable' or 'Useful' flavors. I see other variations, but they don't tend to be as successful or popular as the one I see many others run or the one I run. For the most popular they treat it as a stalker with big damage, good crowd control, and generally work to fight in melee. They isolate the largest threats and take them down if they can as a good Bane should...But it is hardly my play style as I run a support-based gun only build. And I know I am going to catch flak for that, after all what use is a gun...But that's where people seem to misunderstand the strength that one good Bane can bring to the team if they are a support build. To list the pros I bring to the team.

 

An additional 21.26% defenses for the entire team (Just by existing. 17.81 & 06.01 from Tactical Training: Maneuvers and Maneuvers respectively)

An additional 30% damage buff (just by existing. 15% from both Assault Trainings)

An additional 30% To-Hit (Just by existing. 15.03 from both version of Tactics)

-Res and -Defense on my attacks

Knockback to Knockdown Frag Grenades for disruption

Surveillance for AV/GM incidents (-20% res and -20% defenses)

 

That is just for the team alone. With the defenses being at lowest 31% (Psionic) and every other one being 43-55% I am hard to hit. With my resistances being at least moderate (24 & 26% being the lowest for toxic, energy, and negative with everything else being above 30%), a self-heal through Aid Self, and the play style being more ranged where I hang out just on the edge of the combat and fire into melee with debuffs while providing a buff to all it makes a good team support overall. It has allowed me and a few others run on 'harder' missions when I am one of the only ones built as the build overall allowed me to buff the ones who would normally complain on being able to survive enough so they don't face-plant at +4x8.

[tidge]

21 hours ago, Argus_The_Risen said:

Just as the title states, I want to know what you think makes VEATs great! Whether it be Huntsman, Crab, Bane, Widow, etc. You can get as detailed as you want, or be short, sweet and to the point. It is time for us of Arachnos to shine and tell the world how great we truly are!

 

 Other folks have covered the advantage that VEAT bring to teams (and themselves) which is a strong selling point.

 

I like both VEAT because (aside from rather gimpy alternate MM builds and certain HEAT choices) they are pretty much the only class that allows for truly alternate builds on the same character that can offer different, yet effective play styles. I leverage the alternate builds to explore the different paths and configure the VEATs to play differently, depending on my mood.

[KaizenSoze]

One follow up note. Soliders are more durable, depending on builds, but Widows are tougher than they appear.

 

Are you going to be able to solo GM or an 4x8 ITF w/o inspirations? No.

 

VEATs are great for almost all content, at any level, solo or team. Night Pixie, a blood widow build, has killed pretty much every AV is the game at an even level.

 

[Machariel]

There's a lot of variance across the VEATs but IMO the best thing about them is that they bring a lot to the table just by showing up, especially Soldiers.  Just standing around with stacked leadership and casting Venom Grenade on cooldown is an awful lot of very efficient buffing and debuffing.  -Res, +Damage, +Tohit, +Def is 80% of what I want out of support ATs so phooey that they can't also buff your team's recharge as well 🤪  Fortunatas lose the -res and have weaker leadership but their access to psi damage and psi wail, and a suite of control powers, makes them situationally better at hard carrying.  Cimeroran EBs for example, once they pop unstoppable the soldier can still debuff their resistance down from 90% to whatever, and that's great, whereas a Fortunata can go right through.

 

Most VEAT builds are also great at exemplaring because they can build their attack chain early and their core support powers (leadership) early, so they're great at low level content and especially good at shepherding low-level TFs.  Double leadership is a big deal for partially slotted (or unslotted) lowbies who might be fighting +3s or +4s on an XP run.  Crabberminds are quite late blooming though and often skip many of the early attacks, but in return their absolute high-end output is far and away the strongest.  6 pets do a ton of damage if you're able to keep them alive (I'm not).

 

My two VEATs are a melee Fortunata and a huntsman Bane.  Both are durable damage dealers (Fort is tougher) with strong AoE (the Bane has more).  The Fortunata is definitely more of a solo carry style and plays like a scrapper with Psi Wail and two SHTF emergency control powers.  As @Project129 alluded to, Fortunatas can take both Follow Up and Aim (Night Widows must choose between Follow Up and Build Up), Aim w/Gaussian Proc -> Follow Up (from hide!) -> Psi Wail is pretty great.  The huntsman I actually play exactly as they described - a rifle-toting fire support character.  This is the character I most often bring when I just want to chill as all I have to do is stand in the middle of my team and get huge value by lobbing AoEs into melee. 

[Arcalian]

Night Widow is the class I keep coming back to, over and over again.  Only ever played a Stalker once, mind you this was back in the early days of live.

[Voltak]

On 4/28/2021 at 8:55 AM, KaizenSoze said:

One follow up note. Soliders are more durable, depending on builds, but Widows are tougher than they appear.

 

Are you going to be able to solo GM or an 4x8 ITF w/o inspirations? No.

 

 

 

Yes, you VEATS, at least Fortunatas, are able to do this 
 

 

[KaizenSoze]

9 hours ago, Voltak said:

Yes, you VEATS, at least Fortunatas, are able to do this 
 

 

I saw that. Impressive. I was planning on trying soloing a plain 4x8 ITF.

 

I keep forgetting how powerful flying is. I was planning to try and do on the ground.

[Voltak]

14 minutes ago, KaizenSoze said:

I saw that. Impressive. I was planning on trying soloing a plain 4x8 ITF.

 

I keep forgetting how powerful flying is. I was planning to try and do on the ground.

The most powerful Fortunatas are those that fly. The pros are vastly in favor of flying. No defenses in the game beats range. 
On the ground you will find nothing but piranhas in the ITF 

Widows already have insane defenses, add flying to ice it. 

Edited October 21, 2021 by Voltak

[Redletter]

Impeccible style.

 

You see that CRAB PACK?

 

You see that WIDOW HAT?

 

Flawless. Lesser classes IMMITATE this style, they WISH they could look so fresh. They ENVY what you get just by being born. Those losers have merely ADOPTED the Bane Mace, but you're a big guy, you were MADE for it -- and it for you.

 

Can you imagine? Needing to WASTE a power slot by DIPPING into the LEADERSHIP pool? Couldnt be me -- Im a BORN leader.

 

Listen. If YOUR class DOESNT fire off massives volleys of lasers and carpet bombs scores of mobs with their backpack? Then you better be clad in glossy, form fitting, butt cape having arachnos branded spandex with knife arms or I dont want to KNOW you, I dont want you to know MY FRIENDS -- I just dont need someone so BASIC in my life, ya know?

 

Like. God. Can you PICTURE being like... a stalker, who can three hit anything in the entire game, ever, forever? What a sad, meaningless existence without the C R A B. Sure, you're damge numbers are the biggest, but when YOU walk into an icon store does YOUR costume fail to load? The GAME can't even HANDLE how STYLISH the VEATs are.

 

And at the end of the day? STYLE is not a numerical stat. No IO on EARTH will make you LOOK more fly, than the spiders.