Am I in over my head? VEAT PVP
By
Balefire_Djinn,
Posted on: 2010-02-20 14:45 in Everything about PvP
Short Version: Fighting tanks makes me wanna put my head through the wall.
Long Version: Rage will allow the tank to hit fairly reliably, if they have tactics also you may as well consider your defenses totally negated. Also tanks have really high hp and Fortunata damage is the lowest of all ATs (with the exception of mastermind personal attacks). Also taunt will lower the range of your blasts. Oh and invul/ isn't weak to psi in pvp anymore.
Scrappers are pretty tough for forts too. They do more damage then we do, have greater survivability, and have taunt to keep us from kiting. A lot of scrappers are just bad tho, they can be beaten.
Sadly forts are pretty useless in pvp nowadays 
don't bother with forts...slotted mine with pvp IOs for lulz..doesn't do shiiizzzz
untill they fixed IW and did something about horrid dmg i doubt there is a way to make it any decent :/
forts are situational disruption toons.
not dueling toons.
and not damage dealers.
funny thing is though... most of the GOOD pre-i13 ladder forts saw themselves as support and follow-up, much unlike a lot of these post-i13ers that think their forts should be blasters.
Kahlan_ - Forts are far from useless
Rei - You probably just need more practice on that toon. I've only seen you play it once and during that time you were just standing by the drones in RV complaining about how forts suck. Less preaching, more practice.
I had a brief exchange w/ Barrier on this topic before. A well built, well played fort without a doubt should have a spot on a team. Most of the community sees forts as useful only for stalker disruption. While this is the most obvious advantage for using a fort, there are other uses. In addition to revealing stalkers tabbing through and grounding the oppositions support or firing dominate on rads is fairly easy. Also having a fort jump in spikes is not a bad idea.
Example. Team is calling a spike. (Proc damage is averaged and resists are not taken into account)
A psi blaster fires off mental blast, psionic dart, and will domination. Between all those powers the blaster has 2 glad jav procs, an apoc, and the placate proc. On average that blaster will do 946 damage with those 3 attacks, it it'll take 4.356s for it to fire off.
The fort is hopping around firing web envelope on the support and breaks to get in the spike. He gets in melee range and fires off shatter armor and gets off mental blast before the target gets more then 80ft away. Assuming shatter armor has a full mako set and mental blast has a split glad jav/apoc set with procs... The fort will do 954 damage with those 2 attacks and it will also take 4.356s to fire off.
Granted the fort has to get into melee range to do this, but if stalkers can get off AS, a fort can get off SA with less hassle. Same amount of time to fire off, similar damage, a little more difficult to position. Potentially a fort could keep a stalker disrupted, web envelope when placated or after having lost track of the stalker (inevitably happens), and make good contributions to spikes. Admittedly I'm not skilled/practiced enough to complete all these roles at once, but having played solely on my fort in pvp the past 2 months or so, I believe it's possible.
Support wise. At the start of a match (assuming a fort has ml) the team gets an additional 30% psi resistance (pre-dr). Anyone in range of the fort should be at the perception cap w/ ~25% to-hit buff, have +15-30% damage from assault/double assault, and +12% defense (+25% or so with mind link).
As far as dueling goes a fort can do as well as most other archetypes. The only blasters that beat my fort consistently are rads (and they're uncommon). I haven't ever lost to a sonic or a fire in the arena, and only 1 psi has beaten me and he isn't consistent. Every archetype is a rock to their scissor, ours are therms, colds, tanks, and regens. Therms and colds can shut down defense/recharge/end and tanks/regens just have too much damage mitigation/hp, fort damage isn't enough to overcome it. I have beaten all of them before, but equally skilled players and builds will always trump a fort.
Is there any reason whatsoever that you're talking about forts and not NW's? I don't see a single reason why someone would even bother with a fort. NW's can be useful though, for all the reasons Steatoda mentioned.
Keep in mind, shatter armor is a permanent -20% res. Perma meaning it's very easy to keep it on someone all the time. That's kinda like a rad corr permanently having EF on someone....EF that can't be dropped. It does become very noticeable.
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Have no fear, I shall enlighten you.|
Originally Posted by Supermax
Is there any reason whatsoever that you're talking about forts and not NW's? I don't see a single reason why someone would even bother with a fort. NW's can be useful though, for all the reasons Steatoda mentioned.
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1. Forts do superior ranged damage. While NW's have access to mental blast and poison dart, which are both fast recharging range attacks, it is difficult to get them chained in pvp without a pause. Additionally Forts have access to dominate which is easily procced and will interrupt toggles such as hurricane and rad toggles. You could slot hold procs in those two attacks, but then you're losing out on potential damage procs or better slotting options. Dominate also ignores positional defenses so it is the best damage dealing option against other defense based toons. You 'could' grab shraks for the crit from hide with MP, but then you'd be losing out on the shatter armor goodness.
2. I concede that NWs do better melee damage thanks to the availability of slash and its crit from hide. However these are much less effective on a widow then on a stalker. Slash's damage isn't all that great even with a crit. Also, every widow melee attack (with the exception of followup, but I assume you're taking buildup on a pvp build) has a dot component. That means that if you fire a melee attack it's between 2.6s and 3.6s before you can use placate. If you do use it within that time it is wasted as you'll be targetable and the stealth you just got will probably be dropped before you get off your next melee attack. Best of luck getting off a Slash crit, shatter armor, placate and another crit from slash or lunge in any reasonable amount of time. It could work in a 1v1 situation, but in a team or arena setting the target would either be dead from a spike, or healed because it would take too long.
3. The other advantage NWs have is the availability of elude. The ability to be untouchable for 3 minutes is pretty nice to have. I can see the value of this in zones, as you can be tougher then a regin and just chill in the base when its down. In the arena however the standard is 10 minute matches, at best you can hope for 2 mins downtime (pre-dr probably more in the area of 2.5 mins). Basically up for 3 mins, down for 3 mins, up for 3 mins. Honestly from what I've experienced its unnecessary. Built for defense the additional of elude is just not needed. 55-60% pre-dr isn't difficult to obtain without sacrificing any slotting of hp, dam, acc. I sit around 59% ranged defense pre-dr and in kickballs and arena 8v8s I've died 1 time in the past 2 months. Not 1 time per match, 1 time total. Generally if your defenses are high enough you'll either be ignored or the spike will be called, if you don't go down in a few seconds the opposing team will usually move on to the next target. Elude is a good route if you have a cheap build or don't want to invest the inf into a lolpvpwidow, but otherwise its not the best route.
The only true functional advantage of going NW over fort is the -recharge resistance granted by mental training (and the +recharge to an extent). That would make colds slightly less of a pain.
Edit: I suppose you could use mind link during the elude downtime, granting additional defenses for 90s of the break... But that makes an already tight build even tighter. You need your defensive toggles, leadership (at least the 2 tactics), slash, sa and web env, mez protection, placate, travel powers, melee and ranged attacks, and possibly tough/weave or phase/elude. There simply isn't a way to get everything, something has to be sacrificed.
I probably understated the importance of Dominate. It alone is nearly reason enough to choose fort over NW.
It has potentially 6 damage procs that can be slotted in it
Gladiators Javelin: Chance for damage toxic (33% 71.8 dmg)
Gladiators Net: Chance for damage lethal (33% 71.8 dmg)
Unbreakable Constraint: Chance for smashing damage (33% 107.1 dmg)
Apocalypse: chance for negative damage (33% 107.1 dmg)
Ghost Widow's Embrace: Chance for psionic damage (20% 71.8 dmg)
Neuronic Shutdown: Chance for psionic damage (20% 71.8 dmg)
As stated early one of the most important functions of the widow/fort is the ability to reveal stalkers and prevent their significant shark/as damage. In an arena match (10 mins) if the stalkers are either /SR or /Nin they have access to t9 defenses. Potentially 6/10 minutes they could be under elude or retsu. In these conditions over half the match a widow chasing them would have 15-20% chance to hit them even with double tactics and %50 global accuracy. This widow would be ineffective in their duty to shutdown the stalker. Since neither retsu nor elude grant psionic defenses and dominate ignores positionals, the fort would still be effective in keeping the stalker out of hide.
You do have a point about dominate being "auto"hit. And yeah, I guess if you spend enough to get to elude levels without taking elude, you might as well be a fort.
But you gotta be the only fort left in the game that's spent that much on a fort 
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forst eld h did the same, but she has down syndrome.
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Originally Posted by Supermax
You do have a point about dominate being "auto"hit. And yeah, I guess if you spend enough to get to elude levels without taking elude, you might as well be a fort.
But you gotta be the only fort left in the game that's spent that much on a fort |
Yeah I saw her sitting next a drone couple days ago, desperatly hoping to drone anyone that got close enough. Leet skillz.
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Originally Posted by Supermax
Yeah I saw her sitting next a drone couple days ago, desperatly hoping to drone anyone that got close enough. Leet skillz.
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Why would people even do this?
I mean if you are outnumbered then you are outnumbered but I can imagine it would be more fun playing almost any other game than just sitting in this one, standing by a drone, complaining all night.
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I was working on a Fort just before I13 hit. At that point I just respec'd it into a Night Widow build, though one day I may try a Fort build. I think the one real advantage a Night Widow has is that the NW version of Mind Link has a faster recharge, which means you can still perma it in PvP (I don't think you can perma the Fort version unless you've got insane recharge, when you factor in DR). The good thing is that a post-I13 Fort build is fairly close to a pre-I13 build (except if you had a dueling/small team build you'd drop Gloom to pick up Shatter Armor/Webnades).
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Originally Posted by Supermax
You do have a point about dominate being "auto"hit. And yeah, I guess if you spend enough to get to elude levels without taking elude, you might as well be a fort.
But you gotta be the only fort left in the game that's spent that much on a fort |
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"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."
More responses then I expected! thank you, I appreciate this. My soon to be fort keeps on growing on her levels . Money is not to much of a concern, I dont have enough to optimally slot, but I should be able to have a decent frakenbuild up by the time I hit max, and after that its just a matter of time. Now, after reading this I have some decent ideas as far as what my role will be, and to avoid high life things at all costs. I AM a bit disappointed to hear that all sets have flat lined resistances, I thought it was an interesting aspect to have sets like invul with strengths and weakness's, but it is what it is. The concept of chasing stalkers around actually amuses me greatly, so looking forward to that. As for the reasons I want to play a fort, as most people dont seem to understand it, its more so that so far I find myself really enjoying the playstle PVE side, I like the character concept and the feel of it, and hope it would translate into moderate success in a pvp environment. No, I do not expect to be General Leetsauce that everyone fears, but if i can have a useful presence and hold my own a bit, I would be happy. Now, from what I understand Zone pvp is kind of a joke, and I tend to spend most of my time in virtue, is this an enviorment I want to be trying this in?
Thanks again for all the help and comments
Zone PvP is only considered a joke because it's almost never fair....not because it's really easy. There's nothing easy about fighting 1v10.
Virtue's zones would probably be a good starting point because there are zero good players left there. But soon after starting, you'll most likely want to transfer to Freedom, because chances are on Virtue, you'll rarely even have anybody to PvP with. Basically the entire PvP community has moved to Freedom at this point.
Lastly, you probably don't want to hear it, but playing something in PvP just because you enjoy it in PvE is not a good idea. Chances are your playstyle, and sometimes the entire AT, will be completely different than what you're used to. But it won't hurt to try.
At this time I wouldn't bother with a Fort in PvP,
in PvP 1.0 they weren't half bad, maybe not the greatest, but could still be ok to PvP with
When PvP 2.0 first appeared, for a breif time with Elusivity, forts were one of the better pvp builds out there, even though control powers were minimized in effectiveness. However Elusivity was rolled back, which combined with DR made defense even worse than it was in PvP 1.0. Unfortunately at the same time, their damage was seriously rolled back as well in PvP. They would've been fine if only their defense or damage was reduced, but not both. Now, they just can't get enough damage in
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Even if you choose not to play it, disruption is a viable role. And veats can do it extremely well. |
Originally Posted by Wooden_Replica
At this time I wouldn't bother with a Fort in PvP,
in PvP 1.0 they weren't half bad, maybe not the greatest, but could still be ok to PvP with When PvP 2.0 first appeared, for a breif time with Elusivity, forts were one of the better pvp builds out there, even though control powers were minimized in effectiveness. However Elusivity was rolled back, which combined with DR made defense even worse than it was in PvP 1.0. Unfortunately at the same time, their damage was seriously rolled back as well in PvP. They would've been fine if only their defense or damage was reduced, but not both. Now, they just can't get enough damage in |
And one day people will realize defense is not a joke.
Duel me.
I will work on my sig pic more when I have time.
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yup... the personal insistence of some players on being a pure damage toon is why most teams don't run forts or doms.|
Originally Posted by ConFlict
Even if you choose not to play it, disruption is a viable role. And veats can do it extremely well.
And one day people will realize defense is not a joke. |
good doms/good forts disrupt the crap out of the other team while joining in on a spike occasionally.
pew pew-ing is not everything.
I have no problem playing disruption, actualy I find a bit of spite in that regard to be pretty funny. My big concern was simply that I could play a viable and helpful role to a group, maybe able to survive fights with noobs should I feel the need
Thanks
So, I have a problem, I am a very fickle sort of person and I may find myself in a situation where I have to get around to PVPing. I have pre change PVP experience (( which I have been oh so subtly informed is useless now)) and am wondering just how bad off I am with a fortunata in this. My likely opponents will end up being a invul/ss tank and a indeterminate as of yet scrapper. Advice on this would be appreciated
Ps: on an unrelated topic I had fun with a Rad/Kenetics corr awhile back and am wondering what their prospects for pvp are as well
thanks