Novella

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I personally find going the perma Mind Link route to be pointless. Using just set bonuses with Foresight and Combat Training: Defense, I am at 42 to melee and ranged and with Mask and Manuevers im well over the cap.

There really is no expense involved in capping Night Widows sans Mind Link or Hasten for that matter.

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It should only take about 40% global recharge to hit perma ML, with Hasten cycling. And 20% of that comes from an auto power you already get anyway. It's not very expensive to perma ML.

And probably a better investment in the long run than slotting for defense bonuses with IOs. If you slot for +DEF bonuses, you can hit 45%. But if you slot for recharge, you can still hit 45%, plus have powers like Placate, Build Up, and your attacks all coming up more often. My widow is currently sitting on about 52% global recharge and loving it.

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On my Night Widow its not an issue. I don't even worry much about Mind Link because she capped without it. When I team on her I don't really worry too much about buffing other people because I am normally at the forefront of the group handing death with a sideorder of pain.

Until the other person made their comment I hadn't worried about it on my Fortunata either because again she is capped, but after reading their comment I actually decided to change slotting in one power to get more recharge so now Mind Link is only down for like 10 seconds meaning the team doesn't have to wait long for more defense.

I don't take Placate because I find it useless to be honest. I can understand taking it on a Stalker, but not a Night Widow and I don't do Build Up because I love Follow Up and its a more consistent damage buff.

Well this is excellent information to know. I have heard good things about Virtue from a couple friends that have characters there.

I have never RP'd, but all of my characters have backstories and personalities, but I don't play them 'in-character' like some people on my server do. It will take some getting used to being around RP'ers, but from what I have heard its no different other than how you respond to people and if it would make it more interesting for me I would be willing to try it out.

Thats awesome.

I pretty much knew Freedom was out of the question because I made a Blaster there a long time ago and the lag and annoyance of the people on the server made me move her to my home server.

I'm not too familiar with role playing since I never see them on my server, but I can deal with that if it means people team on a regular basis.

Very cool. thank you for the information.

Recently I have been looking at leaving my home server and moving my more playing characters to a server that does more than just AE farming/PL etc. I have heard that Virtue is a pretty good server with a nice population.

My question though is do people team on Virtue or is it just more AE farming, power-leveling with role-playing mixed in?

So yesterday I have a team running missions in the Rikti War Zone and we are moving along very nicely when suddenly a couple of the team members quit in the middle and say they are going to go make a new Epic Villian. I type 'um ok'. Since it was so random and before they leave I ask them why the sudden exit and both of them basically said they were impressed with how my Fortunata was killing with no downtime.

so down two team members and coming up on an AV I say what the hell I will give it a try and see what happens. Well something interesting occured.

There were 4 Guardians in the room with the AV so I run up to them and Confuse them, but I get lucky and land a Contagious Confuse from the proc. All the Guardian use AM so now I am running around with 4 AMs, ML, Hasten, 100%+ damage and lots of recovery.

I engage the General for a battle and I am just working him when suddenly I get the you have been forcibly removed box on my screen.

Complete sadness.

My Fortunata and Night Widow are going good all the way and my Psi/MM Blaster will be going bad.

I am still on the fence with some of my other heroes.

Wow. I never thought about that.

I'm so used to my Fortunata being the consumate teammate and my Night Widow being the assassin who really only cares about herself, I never thought about it like that.

When I am on my Fortunata I am constantly telling people to gather for Mind Link, but on my Night Widow I only use Mlnd Link when I need it to make up the difference on a defense debuff (fighting Positron, KoA, etc) so I don't really use it that much since she is capped without it.

I will have to take your thought into account and see about making it perma now.

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I'd rather be a real rogue and play both sides against the middle. That's what I'm hoping going rogue will be instead of the whole switching side stuff.

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Well you can stop hoping because it has been confirmed a long time ago that it is actual side-switching.

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Sigh, this is why I never bother to roleplay in MMOs. The roles are already set for you, all you have to do is let the storyline prod you alone. Well, I guess when the time comes, I'll just have to decide whether blue side farms and BM will be enough to entice me to switch sides. Well, definately not my SoAs, there's just something unnatural about that.

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Well you could always just stay in Praetoria and ride the line between black and white. From the way its been explained it sounds like you build up to either going good or bad, but there is a middle ground that only exsits in Praetoria.

I personally find going the perma Mind Link route to be pointless. Using just set bonuses with Foresight and Combat Training: Defense, I am at 42 to melee and ranged and with Mask and Manuevers im well over the cap.

There really is no expense involved in capping Night Widows sans Mind Link or Hasten for that matter.

This weekend I am looking forward to running that new SF with a group of Night Widows so it should be interesting to see. It will also be my first time doing the new content also so double the excitement.

The ONLY issue you will ever have as a Night Widow is endurance usage because you can some times just get into an attacking rythm and just go go go. I didn't find survival at the lower levels to be an issue, but it did get considerably easier once you hit level 22 and get another 7.5% defense from Foresight.

After you respec into either full Night Widow or Fortunata mode you are pretty much unkillable at that point depending on how you build your character.

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I'd rather be a real rogue and play both sides against the middle. That's what I'm hoping going rogue will be instead of the whole switching side stuff.

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Well you can stop hoping because it has been confirmed a long time ago that it is actual side-switching.

We did a Lady Grey the other night with my Fortunata and a Crab, but there were a couple Controllers that had Leadership so those bonuses were really nice for us.

On Justice I don't really see alot of SoA's running TFs like I used to.

I could really suggest a lot of ways to make your build better, but if it works for you thats really all that matters. If you can do all the things you want to do with your character then change nothing, but if you want to do more then I can give you some feedback.

Well if you need help send me your build in a short forum post and I will look it over and make suggestions to you.

Tough or Aid Self is a complete waste in my opinion for a Night Widow build.

Also you do not need to worry so much about area of effect defense as a Widow. Focus on melee or ranged defense. Look at the Obliteration set over Scirocco, or Eradication. Scirocco is a terrible set in my opinion because it only gives you about 88% damage and around 40-60% recharge in your powers where as other sets allow for greater %'s for damage, accuracy and recharge.

True you can get Mind Link, but its not necessary. My defense is capped on my Night Widow and Fortunata without using Mind Link. I haven't made any sacrifices on either character to get that level of power. Some would say that not taking a travel power is a sacrifice, but to me it isn't because I have a coulpe of heroes that don't have travel powers and I like it that way. I didn't take them on my NW or Fort because naturally those two don't have travel powers as NPCs and I kept them in line with NPC as far as power selection is concerned.

I wouldn't say that SoA's sacrifice a lot of personal defense because Widows are able to cap melee and ranged defense without the use of many toggles. My Night Widow is capped to ranged and melee using just one toggle and my Fortunata is capped to ranged defense without using any toggles.

I can see how some would have a shortage of slots with a Kheldian, but I personally think its easy to power Kheldians up also, but I play humany only Peacebringers and Warshades so I can only speak from that experience which is not starving for slots by any means.

On our team I know the defenses were capped to all because we kept staggering Mind Link. I'm not sure what our damage buff was, but I know I was getting just under 100% (47% from myself) and not sure what the to-hit was. I really wish I could have screen capped it and put it on Youtube because we were just cutting enemies down left and right.

You do realize that Scramble Thoughts is a disorient and not a hold right?

Scramble Thoughts has double the recharge time of Dominate, does 82% less damage each use and costs about 30% more endurance per use.

Taking that over Dominate is pointless and intentionally gimping your build, but if thats what you want then mission accompished.

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On test before SOA came out on live... picture an entire team of 8 widows and spiders. All with their leadership toggles. Half with the leadership pool as well.

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That would have been a sigh to see.

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SOA in any numbers are beastly.

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This.

I hope HEATS get buffed a bit more though. I'm loving my PB(my most played hero ATM) but my Spider just blows it away in almost everything(except for having a ally heal )

Never tried a WS though, it might rival it in damage/survivability, but does not even hold a candle to what SoA bring to teams.

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To be honest I feel that my Peacebringer is every bit as epic as my Night Widow and Fortunata. My Peacebringer build is IO'd out like my 2 villain epics and she is deadly. Epic AT is super in their own way. Soldiers of Arachnos get team buffs, where as Peacebringers and Warshades get buffed by their teams, so they are basically polar opposites.

As for Warshades, a perma-Eclipse Warshade is a one person team. Capped damage and resistance = death to anything it comes acrossed.

My Warshade was able to have nearly capped ranged defense (42%) which could have been capped really easily, and capped resistance to all from Eclipse.

In my opinion Warshades and Peacebringers are on the same level as SoA's.

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Welcome to the fold.

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Thanks. I've been part of the fold for quite some time, but I have never been able to assemble a team that was made of nothing but Night Widows or Fortunatas until today and it was awesome.

This afternoon I got my first taste of just how awesome Soldiers of Arachnos Widows are.

I was playing my Level 50 Fortunata who in her own right is an absolute night mare and nigh unkillable. I was getting bored because I couldn't get any teams forms when I got lucky and found a level 41 Night Widow whom I invited. The Night Widow and I ran a mission and breezed right through it with no problems at all against level 52/3 enemies.

For the 2nd kidnap mission I was able to invite a friend who was playing their level 50 Night Widow that only uses common IOs and they knew someone who was online with their Night Widow. In the end it was myself, 2 level 50 Night Widows and the level 41 Night Widow.

I was really curious to see how the team would do because this is my first time seeing this many Widow's together since I made either my Night Widow or Fortunata. On my Fort I have the AT Leadership toggles and the pool Leadership powers so I was providing a nice little buff to my team mates when combined with the toggles that Night Widows already have. The 2nd mission was an absolute blast and I don't think anyone health dropped below 75% at any point.

I was doing most of the agro taking because I love taking agro on my Fort since nothing hits her. We played up until the Kidnap Doctor Crowe mission and then I had to leave, but what happened prior to that was a thing of absolute beauty. Four people with capped melee, ranged and area of effect defense, over 100% damage buff and the to-hit buff that my toggles provided.

The "Stop scientists rescue" mission was super fun because at one point it was our team + the three rescued Night Widows that you get in the mission so as you can guess the damage was just pouring in from all areas. We were mowing down Longbow Officers, Nullifiers, etc and at one point I think we went through 6 or 7 mobs without anyone losing any health that I could notice. The only part that sucked is we had to stop a couple tiems because of the constant attacking and the Night Widows were eating up endurance and cabs like candy.

I thank the devs for making these character truly epic and anyone that hasn't played a Widow or Fort really needs to do so ASAP.