It's not unheard of, and can be quite effective. Cloaked Lunge as a burst opener, stacking Followup with Aim, etc. I suppose the only question is what you're giving up to take the melee attacks - there's a certain point where you may as well just go Night Widow instead.
You'll basically end up playing it like a Dominator with some actual defense, stealth, and good damage. It can be effective, although you shouldn't expect to be as effective as controlling as a Dominator, nor as damaging as a Night Widow.
The beautiful thing about SoA is that as long as you take your leaderships, you'll have a hard time gimping yourself unless you choose to do so.
I've seen some melee hybrid Fortunata.
You can be a Dominator:
Dominate (Fortunata's best power! Slot for some damage)
Lunge
Follow Up
Spin and/or Tornado for pbaoe.
I don't recommend Mask as you don't have build up/Slash for burst damage. You are probably gonna start the fight with holding something anyway. Save that Mask spot and take another Maneuver if you can afford sets.
SoA is highly worth it if you want to invest in them. Endurance cost can be really high if you don't plan on using sets/unique.
What's left is to normalize all Assassin Strikes and improve Stalker's old sets (Claw, MA and EM)! You don't need to bring back the missing PbAoE attack. You just need to make the existing ones better! For example, make Slice a WIDER and LONGER cone.
Hey all, after a ton of playing (over four years) I am starting to close in on my first 50 villain and really want to roll a widow. I was wondering if it is uheard of to go with the fortunata path but take a few claw attacks too. Personally, a mix of melee and ranged with a helluva lot of defense looks really cool to me. Seems to be pretty effective too. Can anyone share and opinion if they dont mind =]. Thanks a ton guys!
Rendezvous Fire/SR Scrapper 50 (Main), Sole Savior Kat/WP scrapper 50, Papillon Noir DM/SR Stalker 50
Cascavela NW 50