Looking here, and on the US boards, fortunatas are rarely discussed. They're aren't really any outcries about underperforming like banes, but they're not being praised from the rooftops. So, fortunatas should be a nice, balanced set.
I just have to say, WOW at my fortunata really. I've not tried out all the powers, and am only 33 at the mo', but am really enjoying the playstyle. It's like Claws/Spines/Psi/Mind /SR/Leadership. With Stalker bonuses.
I just have to say this now, and reveal a modifier that may make my fortunata experience different to yours. I love the melee attacks and pick them over the fortunata attacks. I have tried a psi build and a claw build, and the claw one is better. I shall make a finer mix of the two later, but I'm happy with what I have.
WARNING: This post may turn into a guide at some point, but it is just because some people do not initially see the awesome of Fortunatas, and need to be guided towards the light 
So why make a fortunata you ask? Well there's a lot more to it than the psi attacks, which are a bit below, IMO, the widow ones. The control. Oh yes, the control. 3 single target controls on nice fast timers, and 3 long charging AoE controls (including the nuke!). At this moment in time, I have the three ST controls, Dominate, Confuse and Scramble Thoughts. Confuse is a lovely tool, and has only occasional in battle use, but is a valuable asset solo. Dominate is great, as it's a nice damage attack and a hold in one, able to lock down many enemies. A nice quick firing animation too. Scramble thoughts I am tending to use less now. Though Mag 4, it's not immensely useful. For solo boss fights, I can stack a quick couple of confuses and then not waste my opening lunge or spin crit. In battle, it has a dreadfully long animation.
As for the AoE controls, I only have the one, Psychic Wail at the moment. The animation is just awesome, and the damage is darn good (Don't even have aim yet!). The stun is probably overlooked by some, but I must say the duration is great. It's a good tool for when the spit hits the fan and you need a ticket out. What it doesn't kill, out of the mins and lieuts, is stunned, and you have no hideous end crash and so can either escape with your travel power of choice or continue turning the tide of the fight. I have not taken the other two yet, the AoE confuse is definitely going to be a part of the build. It has an awesome duration, and it doesn't aggro or break hidden state! Yes please! Aura of Confusion will be immediately slotted and loved, and used in conjunction with Confuse. Total Domination I couldn't fit into my first respec, though I think I will take scramble thoughts out for it. With Total Domination, one can get a locked down mob and some mag to stack up for holding bosses. It has the lowest duration of the AoE controls, but it's a good sacrifice, as it's the hardest control option available.
I advise taking those three powers. At least dominate out of the single target controls. I don't know yet if having all three AoE controls will let you lock down every mob you come across, but you'll always have a button to cope with the situation and turn the tide of your average PvE fight.
Going to take a closer look at the attacks now. Both Widow (Blood widow, not Night Widow.)and Fortunata. I look at both of them because they're both valid pools to pick from. For some people, it may be a simple case of "psi is cool, and I'm scared of melee," which is a good call. Fortunatas can be quite squishy. However, seeing as we have some good defence, especially to melee, I say scrapping and blapping is a valid option. As I'm not really educated enough in Fortunatas to write a complete guide, I'll keep it basic.
There are four level one powers to choose from: Poison Dart, Swipe, Mental Blast, Telekinetic Blast. Don't be fooled! TK Blast has been nerfed a looooad compared to the defender version! It is the same damage as Mental Blast and Swipe! It just has a little knock back... and increased end... and increased rech. Yes, I'm not a fan. The knockback will do very little to outweigh the cons here. Only take if you're looking for an attack chain filler in a pure psi build. Even in a pure ranged build, with help from poison dart and dart burst you'd be fine. One redeeming factor I see is that it has a nice fast activation time compared to the others. So if you're absolutely loaded on +rech, and you have a nice IO set bringing down end and rech, THEN it might be useful. I don't know. Anyway. Swipe is good for a melee attack. It's nice during leveling, and can serve as a chain filler later. My chain is just about complete enough, so I didn't take it. Mental Blast is the psi attack of choice to start out with, nothing special really, It's a ranged attack with decent damage. Poison Dart is my favourite of the level 1s. You get a fast animating attack that does the same damage as the other Tier 1s, PLUS a nice little DoT. Which does noticable damage, sometimes being the extra needed to finish of enemies. Also, -regen is there. Nice for AVs.
Moving on, Strike and Subdue. Subdue didn't do it for me when I played around with it. I think they both have the same animation times, but strike seems a bit quicker to me. Damage and rech is the same for both of them, except one is melee, the other is ranged. Oh, and strike has DoT on top as a bonus. DoTs, may I say, are nice when you get a few happening at once. Adds an extra bit of damage after a chain, which is cool. I took strike, but have ditched subdue atm. Strike is half the end, which is nice. Also, it can crit from hidden. Might try subdue again later.
Right, before tackling the AoEs, Follow up and Aim. Unlike NWs, us Fortunatas can take both of our damage buffing powers. I must say, follow up is AWESOME for the melee fortunata! It ups DPS considerably! Finishing off a foe with follow up, and killing the next minion with lunge and strike is a very good feeling indeed. With a couple of rech you can get off one of your attacks with a double buff, for a greater boost than aim can give. It won't really work well for a range build, but if you have, say, two other melee powers, it will work nicely. Aim has a nice advantage- you can use it before opening combat. So you get a buff on that first lunge or spin while still getting a crit. You can't hit follow up and THEN get a crit on another attack. Aim is also good if you want some OOMPH in one chain, for exmaple when you nuke and unleash your AoEs on a large mob, and you want to make them double-dead. Aim is your man. Aim and Follow Up can be mixed together for gratuitous amounts of awesome!
Lunge. Can only fit in one melee attack? This is your man. Though while not quite slash from the NW branch, it's still a considerably good ST attack, and nice for sneaking. If you have hidden state on, you get a guaranteed crit for an extra 50% of the lethal portion. Very nice. Use wisely, young padawan. Lunge is also an essential part of the melee Fortunata's chain. It's the highest damage attack available to us. Excluding the nuke.
And now, the big bad 5 AoEs available. I suppose one could make a pure AoE Fortunata build, mixing both Fortunata AoEs and Widow AoEs to make one massive Area of
Awesome. Psi Wail(Yes, I class it as an AoE attack. It's not in it's own category, as it has no crash, and needs less consideration than blaster nukes!), Psi Tornado, Psi Scream, Dart Burst and Spin. Now, this is a gratuitous amount of AoE, so it's possibly unwise to catch 'em all, as that would limit other power picks, and render you useless in another area perhaps. All have their pros and cons. General pros and cons. to consider. Psi v Lethal damage. Recharge. Area/Range. Amount of Damage. When I weighed these things up, I think that it's hard to order the powers, and it's better to pair them up. I advise a dosage of two AoEs plus the nuke. Nice pairs are:
Spin+Tornado(For easy to manage AoE)
Scream+Burst (For two cones in a row, slow a range in dart burst so it matches Psi Scream's range)
Scream+Tornado (For the psi users here with us)
Spin+Burst (For damage lovers, it has the best damage AND rech.)
I went with the last option, as I have my claws out a lot, and I am pretty good and jumping about (In for the PBAoE, out for the cone.) Spin is more of a herding or tight mob move though, as it has the smaller radius. It does, however, have a crit chance, AND it has decent damage, a little under that of strike/subdue. Dart burst I picked because of the neat -regen factor, which, paired with Dart Burst, is a handy addition to AV fights. Your mileage may vary on AoEs. Pick all of them if you want! I think one could get some wicked chains!
So that's the primary looked at. We've got some great options for dps if you build right/mix the high damage attacks. And there's the potential to be an AoE machine, with panic buttons to defend you. But AoE control isn't all you have to defend yourself with. Oh no. Because we have a secondary of lovely defence!
So, just skimming this really, 3 SOs in each def power (except Mind Link, as it's not perma,) nets you 35%/23%/23% in terms of positional defence. That's without any neato set bonii, not even the steadfast IO! You could also toss in CJ, or Weave to add onto that! Mind Link is special. You can't slot rech in it, BUT you can slot Def/Rech HOs or Set IOs. You can net yourself an extra 15% defence for 90 out of 150seconds! This soft caps your melee, and brings you close with the other two positions. Add in a steadfast res/def IO, and CJ, and you get a big bad 56/45/45 when mind link is up, which is some nice stuff in PvE! So do not, I repeat, DO NOT overlook Fortunata Defence! Easier to softcap than SR (Though not as easy to get it perma). Mind Link has a long animation, so I'd use it as another alpha breaker or panic button for when the AoE controls are down, or when they're useless, like against an AV. But don't skimp on use, it's a nice tool! Mask Presence, as well as a nice +def, also gives us "hidden", like stalkers, meaning that we can crit from hide. Only with melee widow attacks though. Prime candidates are lunge (for great ST stuff) and Spin (For crits on quite a few foes sometimes). I spin in teams mostly, unless they already have bags of AoE. Then I go for bosses.
Other powers in the secondary are the two confuses (already covered). We also get Indomitable Will. A pricey toggle, sure, but it's worth it! Get protection to pretty much everything in there, meaning we don't have to fork out for kb protection IOs, or squeeze in acro (Haha, take THAT spiders!)
We get our nice leadership stuff in the secondary. Maneuvers, already included in the defence section, will give 7% defence to your team. Great in SoA teams where everyone has that kind of thing! We also get assault, a nice 15% damage buff. It'd be nice with a whole team taking it. For me, It's overshadowed by Follow Up, also because I'm a real end sucker. The Tactics copy is quite good, actually with confuse and fear protection, and a pretty good tohit buff. I say it's a good pic but I don't personally have room until much later in the build. Vengeance is Vengeance- a nice power for when the brown has already hit the fan, but a fortunata should have enough tools to prevent that happening! So I'd say it's a free slot at 35! One last power left over, Combat Training: Offensive. 10% acc won't let you skip acc enhancements (Though maybe with tactics..). It's a nice boost, but with follow up, I don't find myself needing accuracy.
Phew. That's a whole lot of tools. Is this really just one AT?
Now for pool powers. If you can fit them in! I can barely squeeze in Fitness and one other pool pick in the builds I do, so I'm going to give this advise- get fitness. The others, well, if you find yourself lacking on somthing that can be gained from a pool, then go for it. Health insps are easy to come by, as are temp travels, rendering the travel and medicine pools a bit useless. Fighting, I think one could only fit in late, but it would be a nice addition, a good amount of defence. Concealment, well we have mask prescence for that. Does pool stuff make you hidden? I think not. Presence pool? What are we, tankers? And we dont need another AoE control, especially a rubbish one.
Patrons? Hah, again I say good luck. There are many good powers in the primary and secondary, and a couple of pools you might want, making Patrons a thing to forget. You can take whatever you want. Pets, as a mastermind option, aren't as worth it as on a crab. The attacks are sub-par. And don't you already have a load of AoEs? Though Mu could be good, as the AoEs are fast animating, and ball lighting does actually have a very nice radius.
Anyway, just some thoughts that turned into half a guide, but it's too messy to offer guidance. I just look at all the things a fortunata can do and go "oooh, nice!" and I hope others know how good fortunatas are and can be.
Who else loves their fortunata?
Seer Ed of the Arachno-Rangers for the win!
"Green Emo Arachno-Ranger GO!" - If anyone has seen us on onion, they'll recognise that!
