I27p7 Night Widows are absurd(ly good)

[nihilii]

I'm enjoying this so much. Full crits on Slash + Placate now working reliably. It's so meaty. Level 54 lieutenants die or close enough. Level 54 bosses lose a large chunk of their life.

 

Then the maxHP and resistances. Anyone who's played SR on Scrappers + Brutes + Tankers likely knew what to expect here, and was not disappointed. Adding even a little bit of resistances to characters with scaling res has a much more profound effect than one might expect, because that +10% res from 10 to 20 becomes going from 70 to 80 at the times you really need it.

 

Having a bigger HP pool also increases the playable range where scaling resistances kick in. I used to feel the lack of healing. Now passive regen carries a Night Widow through many fights.

Those buffs are ace. It truly helps the NW find her niche apart from a melee Fortunata with less controls. Placate nudges further towards Build Up rather than Follow Up, as you can leverage the reliable crits for high burst damage. It all fits together.

The AT still "suffers" from lack of DDR. Or does it? Between Elude and buffed Placate, there's so much range for safety now.

Only real struggle remaining is the high endurance consumption. Which really, is a byproduct of powerful attacks animating extremely fast. First world problem. Once again smoothed over to an extent with Elude, or otherwise incarnates.

I guess the AOEs are kind of weak even with the Psychic Scream buff. Or, well, awkward to use (cone, low radius PBAoE). I'm happy picking epic Dark Obliteration instead and calling it a day. More time to claw stuff up.

 

Fun times. It almost makes you wonder if this isn't overbuffed compared to the Bane. But then I guess the Bane has his role as a force multiplier, a paper cannon with more -RES debuffs than a defender now that Venom Grenade, Surveillance, Shatter Armor all can fit seamlessly. While the Night Widow is a beefy stalker tank.
 

Lovely stuff.

[KaizenSoze]

Welcome to the Night Widows are pretty darn good club.

 

In my experience endurance issues are better now, because things die faster. The DDR is fine, I extremely doubt they will ever add more, as you said the scaling resists and extra HP helps a lot. Pretty avoids the 2-shot issue that Night Widows had before page 7. Psychic Scream with Build Up hits pretty hard. Taking provoke is useful to pull heat off teammates or help herd.

 

Now, Night Widows are off tanks providing 20% defense, +toHit, and +damage, that's before you even touch the regular Leadership pool. See Night Tank builds if you want super tanky versions that can solo ITFs and 801.3s.

 

My only complaint is Eviscerate. Spin with the placate change is vast out completing it. I wouldn't care, except that Eviscerate is the only other source of 100% crits.

 

Before the placate change, my Bane builds slightly edging out my Night Widows in single target DPS. Bane do much better AOE damage. Night Widows though are a ton more durable. Banes/Crabs get no DDR. It's the reason my Night Widow can handle 4x8 CoT most of the time and my Bane had to drop to 4x6.

 

Melee Forts are still the king of overall DPS.

Edited March 9 by KaizenSoze

[Glacier Peak]

Being able to swap builds on the fly - going from my Night Widow build to my Fortunata build - is why my Arachnos Widow is my second favorite character I've made. No other AT beside Kheldians can do that, but Widows can not just do it - they can do it well or even better than other ATs.

[lemming]

I redid my widow who wasn't that bad, but I hadn't really invested in sets before page 7.   So, the change has been very impressive.  The problem is now if I go to play my katana/nin scrapper that isn't fully invested...

[Snokle]

Yeah, I went through my bane and widow again after page 7 updates. The damage and survival is a big jump for them, and overall DPS they are pushing. I do not think my Widow is fully optimized, but it works wonders and melts groups. I found doing ageless for DDR addition helps out much more than barrier, as it is close to incarnate sot-caps with all buffs a going. Only a few times I felt like I could of went down, but a quick green helps.

 

Adding to this helping with the blue bar to keep it topped up which was fantastic. I will probably have to run a build as a fort sometime to see the ridiculousness of them.