Person34

Man that IS epic! Makes me want to try it.

I'm gonna miss this game...

My widow was pretty much my "main" toon since they went live in i12. It was the perfect character: a sort of stalker/brute hybrid that could not only dish out the pain but also buff my team members. I kept the toon as a villain this whole time just to keep in character.

I was really stoked about i24. Psy wail was getting its recharge cut in half and its damamge bumped 25%. New costumes, new IOs, new arcs. I ran the widow on the St. Martial arc on beta not knowing one of the misions would have 7 AVs waiting outside a door for me, and although I died a few times I was able to take them all on at once and come out on top! (thank you slightly OPed talons of vengeance lore pets for allowing me to do this lol).

It's been a lot of fun, hopefully some other entity is able to take over the game and let us continue on. I've already run my widow over to GV and have him standing beside Lord Recluse for the server shut down, as I am no longer interested in playing a game that has been pretty much abandoned by it's parent company.

Its been a blast guys, a farewell /salute to what was IMO the best all around AT in the game.

I don't know if there's a "next best", as ppl are pointing out CoX is sort of unique in that there isn't gear you have to acquire. Well, I suppose IOs are gear, but they can be traded/sold/gotten through other means than critter defeat, which IMO is one of the GREAT things about this game: you can outfit your toons with the best stuff without really worrying about farming or raiding (outside of incarnates anyways).

This is my first post since thier announcement and I'm pretty upset about the whole ordeal. This is the only game I've played where I could just log on and spend 15-20 minutes online and get something accomplished. Other games I have accounts with (EQ1, STO, secret world) it sometimes takes that long just to set up and get to your zone, etc. I had -just- finnished tweaking my main last week on beta was really excited about all the new power tweaks, IO sets and costumes (I was going to use all three when i24 went live).

Anyway, secret world is a lot of fun IMO. It has some of the best arcs and NPC dialog I've seen, and you can unlock all the powers available and just swap around abilities on the fly for different roles. It's a bit on the dark side though, so if you have kids that play it may not be a suitable option...

Any idea if the two VEAT nukes (omega maneuver and psy wail) will be affected? I'd love to see a 45ish sec nuke on my fort, would change its whole playstyle.

I'm guessing they will be tweaked, since their recharge is at 360 seconds, but haven't found any references to it. Any ideas?

Everyone has to do the arcs to unlock them, part of the lore of going redside. Just run through black scorpions, it's the fastest IIRC. Usually takes me around 60-90 minutes to unlock it this way if I just keep to the mission goals.

Yeah, water/storm corr looks wild. Also, since it is so easy to color the efftects look like lava, a water/fire blaster might be in the works as well.

I didn't read through all the pages, but here's my opinion of bonfire with the new proc: it's an absolute "I win" power to the extreme.

If you are a blaster, don't fret about having no defense or status protection if you have bonfire and this proc, as there is only one critter I have seen that can avoid its effects (boss malta zeus titans), and when that's your only concern out of a pull containing 10-12 critters then you have no worries at all. Everything else just helplessly and repeatedly flops around in the patch for 45 seconds: they don't get a chance to return fire/ TP away (gunslingers)/or really do much at all. It's one of those things you see and think "how the eff did this make it through beta???".

And this is just on a blaster, who can perma it with high enough recharge, where doms and trollers can have -two- of these out permanently. IMO when one single IO can allow a vanilla level 50 blaster to blaze through a x8 malta map without being mezzed or taking damage (this is not an exaggeration, my blaster waltzed unscathed through a malta map with this power as his only "defense") it should, for that application anyways, prob be looked at.

For those who have seen this power+proc in action, even if you don't agree it should be looked at, you have to agree that it is broken powerful in its current state.

EDIT: it's pretty wicked in RotP too, but at least for that you have to die for it to work =D

For a NW I'd go core muscular and ageless for the +recovery/+rech, and I use reactive and degenerative interfaces (one for soloing, one for trials). The great thing about ageless is when it's active you can completely abandon all endurance slotting and build for procs and HPs while still maintaining permahasten.

Relying on ageless for endurance sucks if you level down and lose your ncarnate abilities, but a second build for lower level content solves that issue.

My personal view on elude is it isn't necessary at all. Before destiny was available I had it for the endurance recovery on AV fights, but it hasn't been on my build in a while and I don't miss it.

Also I never understood the melee fort: why do folks like them so much? All it does is encourage redraw and it doesn't perform on the melee front like a NW does. I'm gonna guess psy wail has something to do with player's decisions?

Thoran - There's alot of ways to slot followup, I ended up frankenslotting with mako's bite x3/ ToD x3 (with procs from both) and using enhancement boosters to get the required dmg/acc/rech. I mainly did this for the hit points bonuses (+32 all together). I used to use 5x crushing impacts and the guassian BU proc, but the proc's chance of firing is only 5% and I didn't get much milage out of it.

Droid76a - IMO widows can never have enough defense, which is why I always use weave and would urge every widow to do the same. My NW is currently running 70% melee defense and 55% ranged/AE with MP supressed. That -sounds- like overkill, until you meet opponents with defense debuffs --- yes the softcap outside of incarnate content is 45%, but running those numbers and that defense is basically useless after you get hit even once with a defense debuff. Go run a x8 PI bank map solo (or even a roman map) and see how long the base 45% defense keeps you alive.

Since widows only have about 27% DDR (and raw defense is the only thing they have) it makes sense to me to have as large a buffer as possible. With my numbers I can withstand 2 -defense hits before ranged defenses are compromised and 4 hits for melee. And sometimes that isn't even enough.

I'm not an "expert", but I'm currently running a 1698 hp NW that is hovering around the 330 DPS mark (3:11 was my last pylon time, I expect this to dip quite a bit lower with hybrid assault and the new global ATIO proc coming out), your build looks similiar to the one I used before my last big overhaul... so in my eyes you're on the right track. Also I like how you took tough, it's a hugely underestimated power on ATs with scaling resists.

There's a few tweaks I'd make off the bat to your build:

-- drop the extra slots in CT: D and just plug in a kismet + accuracy unique in that spot, you'll still be pushing just over 62% melee def with MP toggled on.

-- use those two extra spots for two new LotG rech IOs (on weave/ MP, etc)

-- free up a slot by switching around the spin and slash slottings, with 5 CUs now going into slash, and consolidate those spin ATIOs into 5 for the bonuses instead of having a loose 6th ATIO floating around---> drop that second slot from TT:assault as well. Now you have two free slots to play with.

-- now drop placate (or SS, as I think ninja run can easily replace it) and grab hasten. Add these two slots to that for 3 lvl 50 rech IOs.

-- swap the ToD procs for makos, they fire more often (or for gladiator strike procs, same 20% fire rate but smashing instead of lethal dmg).

--Save up for a pvp +3 def unique (there's a few ways to get them now) and drop maneuvers for combat jumping. Then just plug in one LotG rech IO in there and leave it be, you will have the equivelent def between the IO and CJing as you did with your 5 slot maneuvers. Now you have 4 extra slots floating around for...

-- dropping BU and replacing with followup. Your build should be now running about 5 seconds off of perma-hasten and you'll have almost all the tools for 250-260 dps. The only real problem now is end use, but elude is great for a fast burn (again you cold drop placate or SS for this, but by this time if you've followed my advice both will have be already replaced), or you could go either cardiac (go muscular instead IMO) or ageless (my personal choice).

-- get catalysts and purplize those 5 ATIOs.

-- place a LotG rech IO in ML

-- get your other passive +hp/+end accolades knocked out ASAP

There's a -ton- of other stuff I would do, but would involve lots of purples/PVPs/hami-o's. If you can stomach ageless destiny instead of rebirth you could drop a lot of the end slots in your toggles and powers and pave the road for a whole new killer dps build (TY ageless for letting me see this). These are the changes I would make, there exists probably 100 ways to build an effective NW so even if you decide my approach is garbage you might find one or two pieces of useful info. GL!


EDIT: here's the data chunk of my changes, I ended up replacing my crushing impacts in slash with makos bites to avoid the rule of 5 for 5% recharges.

http://www.cohplanner.com/mids/downl...589F021064E6D0

Yeah the highest hps I could ever manage on my NW was 1620, but I needed to make some big sacrifices for those additional +80 hps. I'm currently at what I consider a good "balance" at 1544 hps, 69% melee def, 59% ranged/AE, 177.5% rech (w/ hasten running), 71% psi resist, 31% S/L resists and 4.05% end/sec recovery. Just simply pushing for another 10-12 hps will affect a good portion of the stats I just listed in some way or another.

What's funny though is even at a lowly 1544 hps that widow can survive just about any faction at +4/x8 setting (outside of the crazy stuff like things that are autohit, etc).

Been testing ageless and watching DDR shoot to 95% for 30 seconds is nice. Still testing, but it is a lot more handy then I imagined it would be... esp with the game changing new AS strike that's on the horizon. Bosses just get ripped apart now. I'm gonna do a run in RWZ later on beta and see how the DPS is on a +3 DB/Nin. I'm going to guess it'll be around 230-240 mark... the new AS rocks but the rest of DB's attacks are middle of the road.

Thanks for the responses everyone - ageless huh? I have a 50 DB/Nin and DM/Nin on beta ATM so will build a T4 and see how it performs. That's an interesting suggestion, I've been spoiled by my NW's crazy high defenses and have panic attacks when I do anything that involves PDD or incarnate critters with other toons... yet the only thing in the revamped DA that is giving me a rough time is the constant endurance draining. Off to beta I go!

Trying to decide what the best path for my /ninjitsu stalkers will be for survivability, the t4 regen rebirth or the t4 barrier.

- On one hand having rebirth's heal + massive regen has spoiled me on other melees, but /nin has a great heal available at lvl 20 in Kuji-In Sha. Sha is nice, but I've seen that when fighting critters with high tohit or defense debuffs it only buys you seconds before your defenses begins to falter. Rebirth would allow for a little more reckless play but it probably wouldn't allow me to "up my game" as much as barrier.

- /Nin lacks any resistances outside of psi (I usually add about 15-20% S/L at with tough and bonuses), so barrier would also be a nice choice for burst survival - my nin builds usually hover around only around 46-48% defenses. Yes, demoralize adds -7.5% tohit for 8 seconds, blinding power adds another -7.5% for 15 seconds and there is also caltrops but the concern here is the resistances and preventing cascading failures mainly.

Ninjitsu is so well rounded that it has become a really tough choice, is there a clear winner here and I am just overlooking something? Or would it just balance out in the end between the two? Any opinions appreciated!

Ahhhh, so that's why those arachnos bank maps keep stomping me. I knew the lts had a killer power, didn't realize that was it. Thanks for the info.