City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

What are the basics of Blood Widow?

Daemodand

By Daemodand,
Posted on: 2010-03-13 15:28 in Soldiers of Arachnos

 

Posted

I'm not very good at designing builds in this game, and as I reach level 24 for my Blood Widow, I'm fairly lost.

What skills are absolutely necessary for a Blood Widow? Which are a waste of time? Is there a resource online where people share their builds?

Thanks!

 

Posted

Night Widow. Sorry, got the terms mixed up. ^_^;;

 

Posted

Well, a night widow is basically a claws/DEF stalker who uses a mix of leadership powers, personal def powers and mindlink for defense and a mix of attacks similar to the scrapper claw attacks and some oddball stuff (ranged dart attacks and some mental blasts) for offense.

You want to take combat training: defensive, tactical training: manuevers, foresight, mask presence and mind link as your defensive suite. Slot up CT: defensive, foresight and mind link as soon as possible - you get the best def from those powers. You want to slot mind link up with def/rech IO's to cap both def and recharge (since it doesn't take plain recharge enhancements) and get enough global recharge to make mind link permanent (or as close as possible) since that provides 15% of your global defense.

Offensively you want to take either follow up or build up depending on whether you want burst damage (from build up) or the constant boost from follow up - I think most nightwidows go with follow up. Then you finish building a single target attack chain from the following powers:

Mental Blast
Poison dart
Swipe
Strike
Lunge
Slash

Then pick and choose your AE atttacks from Dart Burst (cone), spin, eviscerate and psychic scream.

I have a nightwidow build on my one widow character but I primarily play her fortunata build as the nightwidow is to much like the claws stalker I already played to about 40, plus I have a claws brute I can play if I want claws. So I haven't touched the NW build since the late 20's so I am not sure I can advise you on a specific build. I know that the ranged dart attacks are not considered all that great although I took dart burst on my fortunata as a finisher AE attack. I think some of the claw attacks have bonus damage from hide like the mace bane but I don't know which ones - for a nightwidow those would be the ones to take for your single target attack chain.

Globals: @Midnight Mystique/@Magik13