Silas

I'd recommend taking Fitness, Fly, Speed and Leadership.

Leadership for double Assault and Maneuvers, Speed for Hasten.

You can actually quite easily softcap all positions, or just melee/ranged if you want. Double Maneuvers, Foresight and a Steadfast +3% in Indomitable Will will get you a huge chunk of defense.

I've got a Fort guide in my sig if you want to take a look. It's got slotting recommendations as well as my own build for you to take a look at.

Um, I'm not entirely sure what defense you were building for since you've only got Maneuvers/CJ or Hover for yourself.

If you want defense I'd recommend you go with Mace Mastery so you can take Scorpion Shield. Slot for s/l defense sets.

Arctic Fog is getting fixed with GR so it'll give s/l defense as intended. With 5-6% from Arctic Fog, 20% from Scorpion Shield, 6% from Weave and 3% from a Steadfast Protection in Tough you're at 34%ish already. Add in CJ and you're at 36%.

The last 9-10% is really easy to get. Slot 1 or 2 sets of Kinetic Combats (Boxing/Brawl). Another option is Obliterations in Blackstar.

Regardless, I'd recommend you do a big retool of the build. It's very possible to softcap your defenses while getting good recharge and recovery. Pricey, but that doesn't seem to be a deterrent

You've way overslotted several of your powers and skipped one of the best reasons to go with Dark Blast, namely Life Drain. The damage isn't amazing but with HOs/IOs you can get really great values for acc/dam/heal/end/rech turning it into a great all round attack.

Your slotting in Sleet and Heat Loss is um, really not good. You want maxed out recharge in those powers, which you're not getting.

I've got a guide for Cold Dom in my sig if you want to take a look. It covers a lot of slotting ideas/suggestions as well as more general Cold stuff.

Hope that helps

So you agree that everything can be improved, but that your way of playing your NW is optimal? Your way of playing your Widow where you regularly skimp on your best self and team buff?

Okay.

I'm sure your Widow is able to clear missions solo or teamed just fine. That doesn't mean ML isn't a fantastic buff whose conditions of use are so minimal that it boggles me how obstinate you're being about not using it.

Unless your entire team is already at 50% defense to all positions, it's still a huge buff to their defense.

What I'm saying is ML is a fantastic power and there is almost no reason to not use it. If you're solo, softcapped to all positions and your chance to hit is capped and not fighting psy damage dealing foes, fine, don't use it. You're still depriving yourself of valuable debuff wiggle room, since NWs don't have a lot of defense debuff resistance, but otherwise its of limited benefit.

If you're on a team, the benefit of ML goes through the roof. As I've said above, unless your entire team is already softcapped by themselves regardless of where they're standing, ML is an awesome buff and should be used.

It doesn't animate slowly. It doesn't have a short duration. It doesn't have a small radius. It has a duration rather than being a toggle so anything hit by it has its protection regardless of where they go. It has 2 small but nice benefits in addition to the big chunk of defense it provides.

I see no reason to not use it other than being willfully obtuse. Especially teamed.

I am not saying Widows need to use Mind Link or [insert hyperbole here] but that you should.

Damn dude, brutal.

Hopefully it was sold to someone who reads these forums and would be willing to give you the cash back.

Don't put a FFB +rech proc in anything but Footstomp. It doesn't stack and has a self-imposed suppression period, so that coupled with the low likelihood of it going off in a ST attack means its a waste.

Using Footstomp in a reasonable spawn will ensure you'll get the buff almost every time, whereas in Haymaker and KO Blow you're better off using the slot for something else or elsewhere.

Something not being broken doesn't mean it cannot be improved.

Using Mind Link (especially if you've got enough recharge for it to be perma) would be a big improvement.

The main culprit is Rain of Fire. It uses a tonne of endurance.

You do want to be using your AoEs though, since it'll be end efficient to wipe huge spawns at once with only needing your ST attacks for lts/bosses. Just make sure to get good end rdx in Fireball, Breath and Rain.

Pull with DN, run round a corner, drop Tar Patch under them when they're all bunched up. Drop Fearsome Stare, RoF, Fireball, Fire Breath. Then just clean up. Fight big spawns of weak enemies. Your AoEs are best used against as many enemies as possible to make them most efficient.

1: very true. But since the fix to the inf earning power of a 50, I'd recommend someone farms something that gives full rewards.

2: Yeah, the difference is quite pronounced though. The RWZ mission has 3 spawns, the BS Nerva one has way more, (enough that I don't know the number )

3: That is true, good point.

4:

all a 30+ page appendix on fake MTs

Well, Family wouldn't be that efficient since their rewards are nerfed, but maybe the Nemesis Search map?

The one from Black Scorpion. Do a big herd, go nuts. No bosses except for the one Fake on the upper level so for the most part you're only spamming AoEs anyway so you'd be leveraging Fences.

Even if you can utilise Burn because of immob'd enemies, it's still not really worth it because its pure DoT and only hits 5 enemies.

Now, if Burn were to be changed in an upcoming expansion, I would have already been planning to swap it back into my build

Uh, that picture is from the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett. He parodies the Hindu mytheme of the world resting atop the back of a elephant on the back of a turtle or tortoise. The discworld turtle is called Great A'Tuin.

The difference is the number of elephants and the source material, really.

I'll go be a pedant somewhere else now.

My name is Silas and I approve of this ^ message.

As above, /therm and /pain are both very team-supporty sets, so they're not great for soloing.

From what you've mentioned though, I'd go Fire/Pain. Pain helps you solo better than /Therm does.

*shrug* oversight. Devs been busy with GR.

holy **** and Ash just Bel-Air'd the thread for the coup de grâce

Feel the shaaaame!

Wait, what? You can still delete posts. Edit -> Delete -> check Delete this message -> click Delete this message -> profit

Edit: ah, that makes more sense.

I'd put Hasten on auto and bind Mind Link to a key that's easily accessible and/or put it somewhere easily accessible on your tray.

For example, my Fort has it bound to q so its right next to my movement keys and its kept right above my attacks so I can see when it recharges.

As an aside, don't skip ML even if you don't need it to softcap melee/ranged defense. It's still a fantastic team buff, will give you def defbuff wiggle room as well as the +tohit and psy res.

Scrapper melee damage scale is 1.125, Brute is .750, Tanker is .800 and Stalkers have 1.0.

If you want to make a SD character, I'd recommend you go with a Scrapper as you're thinking about. AAO buffs base damage, so it provides the most benefit to Scrappers since they have the highest base damage.

Yup, Fury is great. Best way to keep going is never, never stop. Move fast, turn on your travel power between spawns, get hurdle/cj for unsuppressed movement.

Get into the good habit of eating inspirations. They drop like candy, eat 'em as such. Combine ones you don't need (like reds) into purples/blues/greens, depending what you need most.

While you could take TP so that you can port right into mobs, honestly the minor Fury decay you'll get moving between spawns is regained trivially. I'd stick with SS/SJ for your travel power. SS especially since it's easier for indoor missions and you can take Hasten as a prereq which is fantastic for SS/FA. Well, fantastic in general but you get my drift

The stealth in SS is largely a non-issue for Brutes due to how Fury works (alerts the mobs around you), so don't worry about it.

What you can also do is put Brawl on auto until your build is more fleshed out. It costs no endurance and will ensure you're constantly attacking to generate Fury.