Vindicaire

Holy mother of...

Alright, I blasterlocked and GOD did it feel good. Dual Pistols/Energy Manipulation while SB'd and Hastened (courtesy of the SB, I had 25 seconds of non-haste, but I'm not too high level, what am I gonna do?) So anyway, we had two Kins (Kin/DP and AR/Kin Corr) a DS/Therm MM and a DP/Fire Blaster and we had a DM/DA Scrappah.

Now Shar kicks some serious butt, but it was a slow night, both of us were still burnt because we just ate at Perkins and the others were local friends who we party with occasionally. Oh, and sometimes we team. But basically this is what occurs over TS and RL since she was on the lappy behind me.

Sharilyn: (Vindicaire's real name here), can you not rush the spawns?
Me: You're snailing it.
Sharilyn: What the hell do you want me to do? There's too many.
Me: *proceeds to recite iBITE mantra*
Sharilyn: Are you friggin' serious?
Me: SHARRY, YOUR HESITATION IS COUNTERPRODUCTIVE TO YOUR -HP DEBUFF, GET ON THAT!

Sharilyn proceeds to dice the enemies to (try to) catch up with me. Meanwhile I'm already on Rommie. Damn near took him down. Now one of the defenders ports me the hell out, because I was hanging on by virtually nothing, Sharilyn is now finally engaged with Rommie screaming over the mic "I... AM... AWESOME!" Now, unfortunately, she's an iBITE novice, but damn it was her renewed enthusiasm (courtesy of the iBITE lecture and a Monster) able to restore vigor to the team. Now the endgame for the ITF is a clusterf@#! and I didn't feel like cloaking it when I can work on my EXP. So there's suddenly a lot of gunfire and chopping while we blitz our way to Sharilyn, now holding on by a sliver of health and a prayer.

Sharilyn: Down.
Our MM: Throwing Hell on Earth, Vindicaire, stealth up and lure Rommie away. You two hold the line.

Raise Sharilyn gun down mobs and just shoot like hell for 30 seconds, get owned, Sharilyn is now getting spammed with a bunch of stuff (my corpse landed next to her and I'm throwing Insps. We then proceed to kill Rommie, I get rezzed, we get mobbed, Rommie gets back up and proceeds to beat our punk ***** into the ground. Total team wipe and at that point I had to get ready to go to work, Shar needed sleep and everyone else was frustrated.

Okay, time to share a story that I dealt with... in Sharkshead. *cue mellow guitar*

A friend and I just got our hands on Demon Summoning, he did Thermal Radiation, I did Dark Miasma. We were duoing four man spawns on the mission with Protean right before the hardest mission ever.

Going to the bank and not robbing it. For those of you who have not witnessed stacking fire-shields from Demon Summoners, it is awesome. For those of you who have not played redside due to the sheer amount of demons, Demon Summoning's attacks make you a primarily close range MM, meaning you can actually kick butt with your pets/tank/both. Anyway, we ended up with the final confrontation, Protean at a +4 AV level and me and my friend were plotting something. One of his pets moved around mine, overshot and aggroed Protean.

My friend got owned, badly, and I'm about to crap myself. So I panic and start playing like a spazz. Set minions to protect me, Darkest Night, Shadow Fall, Tar Patch, hit the panic key. The literal panic key which replaced my tilde key, which had been bound to use Howling Twilight. My friend wasn't aware of the power I selected when I levelled immediately before Protean, so he went AFK in the meantime.

It was just me. My demonlings go down, I spawn three more. My demons go down, I spawn two more, upgrade them, Twilight Grasp, Twilight Grasp, Twilight Grasp, Corruption, Twilight Grasp, Twi-F@#! I crashed! My heart starts to race, I did the only thing I could. I slammed the keyboard. Apparently my friend left a parting gift. I realized this when I heard the telltale whoosh of my little warlock popping a Breather. Then I realized he stockpiled me with these. I start slamming them down, hasten and throw all my demons out, upgrade them and get hammered on. A sliver of HP left, enough end and enough time for one last daring act.

I refused to let Protean clock that kill. Howling Twilight, my buddy's is back up, his demons are summoned immediately before his demonlings, upgraded. Mine hold on a split second, they die, I self-destruct. Protean gets thrown against the wall, my buddy goes to town. I realized that my normal playstyle is too zen. I have to be twitchy.

I read that weapons were being proliferated between sets, much like the Valk blade went from Broadsword to Dual Blades as well, but I can't for the life of me find the link and I was wondering if anyone else read the same thing. I wanted to find out what new models were available to each set to help pick out the next toon I roll. Thanks.

I am primarily a villain player, I ended up making a hero once my villain made it to 50. I'm using a Broadsword / Willpower Scrapper (strangely enough, he's rather resilient... so I guess he's a Scranker?) and despite viciously mauling people with my Scranker in PvP, I get a lot of insults tossed my way about not playing a scrapper right, and a few about lifestyle and such. Now... this continues for a while, and eventually, I ignore him. Then some other guy my Scranker mauls in PvP starts the same thing... so I ignore him too.

What's the community deteriorating to when fun, honest competition becomes a reason to spew hate?

Can someone maybe suggest areas where the trolls don't usually hang out?

My recommendation, stick the thread in VG recruitment, recruit there.

Maybe... I don't know, coalition with an Arachnos VG. Go nuts.

Figured I'd say it before a Forum Warrior chews you out.

I've played a dual build, switching both off for the other at multiple times during the character's career before some bugs kicked in on the character and I deleted her in fear of losing my account for potentially exploiting them. I'll assess what I gathered from the Widows, bear in mind the Fortunata I built was not a hybrid like a few Forts I've seen.

Oh, and Gryndle, don't worry. You have to respec at 24, but it's free. So don't worry.

Night Widow
Pros:
-Quick attack cycle
-Mental Training and conditioning work well together, faster attack rate with higher base endurance and health regen.
-Comparatively fast movement (with Mental Training)
-Potential to one shot kill most minions, lieutenants and a few bosses
-Single target offensive juggernaut
-Smoke bomb spam when Placate isn't an option
Cons:
-With a quick attack cycle, if not IOed right she'll turn into an Endurance sink.
-Requires massive amounts of Infamy to fine tune to one's liking.
-Uses armor made of paper, comparatively fragile when put against burlier classes.
-Little ranged potential means that in PvP you'll get little respite.

Fortunata
Pros:
-Good Soft Control
-Good Hard Control
-Tons of Buffs
-Vengeance as a class feature
-Slow enemy recharge
-Decent AoE crowd control, their T9 offensive is a mass hold
Cons:
-Slower attack cycle than the widow
-Little melee potential, consider taking air superiority if you take flight to keep enemies on the ground and away from you.
-Expensive to IO out.
-Not very PvP oriented, but if you can build a fort for PvP, there's a bit of a fear factor there, like taking a Kheldian in and kicking much butt.

Universally though, a team of villains is a team of specialists working together in concert for the greater evil. A Widow, and a Soldier of Arachnos both have their place there. Paired with diverse skills and different builds you can use for each, you can utterly destroy the competition, and look damned stylish while you're doing it.

Post deleted by Dulmaire