ok well, before I type this out. this is for MY widow, which is almost fully IO'd out, so keep that in mind that...not all Fortunata play like me.
My fortunata...is pretty much...well, Aside from when I do TF's, I'm usually more brick-house than the tank.
my holds hit hard, and hit with a wide range, I can confuse an entire 2 mobs due to the purple proc for confusion.
Usually, even purples can't hit me, with the odd hit here and there. my buffs bring the entire team's Defenses up to softcap when they're launched. I have a -recharge/regen debuff on most of my psi-based attacks, and I'm pretty balanced/amazing.
That being said, no....my DPS isn't the highest out there, More than a troller, less than a blaster, possibly less than a dominator's 2nd powerset.
But....I have yet to die aside from the apex taskforce.
if you go fortunata: Don't get psychic scream or psychic tornado unless you REALLY want to. the good thing is, you can run double maneuvers and double assault. 
Magisterum- 50+3 Fortunata--Virtue
Lukerion- 33 Emp/Rad Defender--Virtue
Noah Heartily- 34 SS/SD brute- Virtue
Mika Heartily- 50+1 Fire/MM blaster-Virtue
If you take the Night Widow branch, you're basically playing a Claws/SR Scrapper with some extra tricks borrowed from Stalkers, and some great team boosting buffs in Mindlink and the Tactical Training line.
Nightwidows have great ST damage, mediocre AoE damage, easily perma-able Mind Link, and other team buffs.
Fortunatas have decent ST damage, decent AoE damage, decent control, and other team buffs, takes more effort to perma mind link.
So is psyhic wail and tornado not that great? Im leaning more towards Fortunata.
Lyow-BS/Regen-50
Time Flawed-Grav/Eng-50
Malicious Despot-Crab Spider-50
Nictuz-WarShade
Quote:
Psychic Wail is an awesome attack - when you can use it. It does mini-nuke damage with no crash but its recharge is fairly typical for a nuke (360 seconds) so even at the recharge cap (400%) you are only going to be able to use it once every 72 seconds. |
Originally Posted by MindArc
So is psyhic wail and tornado not that great? Im leaning more towards Fortunata.
|
Psychic tornado is a decent AE - good area, nice range, good secondary effects (-30% recharge and knockup) but its got a long cast time and fairly high recharge/end cost for a targetted AoE attack (20s rech/21 end). Psychic Scream is actually slightly better - same damage, about the same activation but faster recharge and lower end cost and its cone is huge (60'). The best AE attack a fortunata gets is probably dart burst in the base widow line - fast casting and good damage when you include the DoT effect.
A fortunata's real strength is high damage single target attacks (mental blast, TK blast, subdue and domination), nice control options (domination, confuse and aura of confusion, which has only a 240 second recharge and can be up a lot more often than psychic wail) and group buffs in the secondary sets (leadership, mind link, etc).
While leveling up I would suggest going with dart burst and psychic scream for AE, then once you get into the high 40's take one of the patron pools with good AE - Mu mastery will get you a nice extra cone in static discharge and a good targetted AE with ball lighting, plus a nice ae immobilize. You can also go with soul mastery for another nice single target blast in gloom and some AE in dark obliteration. If you want to be a cone monster, go with leviathan mastery and pick up school of sharks, arctic breath and bile spray - all of them have slower animations (2.37s - 2.67s) by make up for it with HUGE cones - also, arctic breath does a resistance debuff (15%) while bile spray is toxic damage which is rarely resisted.
Globals: @Midnight Mystique/@Magik13
Thanks for the replies everyone, Im already having fun playin him
Lyow-BS/Regen-50
Time Flawed-Grav/Eng-50
Malicious Despot-Crab Spider-50
Nictuz-WarShade
Quote:
Wail is awesome. It's an excellent PBAOE attack coupled with an AOE stun. Think of it like a long recharging AOE mez with teeth. My Fort has it, Mass Confusion and the AOE Hold (all frankenslotted with at least 2 appropriate Acc/[Mez]/Recharge IOs) and can happily alternate between them (useful for when Mind Link isn't up and she's somewhat more vulnerable) . |
Originally Posted by MindArc
So is psyhic wail and tornado not that great? Im leaning more towards Fortunata.
|
I love Psi tornado. It is slow to cast but will hit a lot of enemies and the knock-up is very useful. It can also take a Forced Feedback PROC which will have a decent chance of triggering simply because you tend to hit a lot of enemies with Psi Tornado. My Fort has a nice AOE chain (Dark Oblit > Tornado > Scream) and a separate nice single target ranged chain so she can fire off the AOE chain boosted by Aim and still get Gloom and Dominate off before Aim wears off.
Quote:
A Fort's ST damage is only fractionally lower than a Widow's. (The full numbers and chains are here for those interested).|
Originally Posted by DreadShinobi
Nightwidows have great ST damage, mediocre AoE damage, easily perma-able Mind Link, and other team buffs.
Fortunatas have decent ST damage, decent AoE damage, decent control, and other team buffs, takes more effort to perma mind link. |
Basically, apart from quicker ML recharge, there's very little a Widow has over a Fort.
Quote:
However, to match NW damage the fort has to mostly eschew using their ranged attacks and/or be soul mastery for gloom. Even with gloom, an 'all-ranged' fort lags both the melee fort and NW considerably for ST dps. In short, to keep up with the NWs, the fort has to pretend to be an NW as much as they can. I actually think that stinks, cause I'd have liked forts to be more like crabs - very survivable, strongly damaging ranged-and-AOE types.|
Originally Posted by PhroX
A Fort's ST damage is only fractionally lower than a Widow's. (The full numbers and chains are here for those interested).
Basically, apart from quicker ML recharge, there's very little a Widow has over a Fort. |
I think forts and NWs are closer in aoe damage in the endgame than it might seem; they both have access to dart burst, psy scream, spin, and a patron AOE. That leaves the fort gaining wail and tornado over the NW, but nuking aside the NW can deliver quite significant 'sustained AOE' if you want to. Dart burst is key - it can practically be spammed, and it's the best DPA AOE available to either branch. Forts will come out ahead still, I'm just saying that while I haven't done any actual math, it seems like they might not come out so far ahead as a first look would make it appear.
In the non-shared powers, NWs get to be better melees because of slash, eviscerate, placate, and elude. Fortunatas get to have surprisingly strong control. In the 'modern endgame' I think NWs get a slight edge here because elude is a solid counter to defensive cascade failure, and thanks to IOs, focusing on being the best melee you can be beats being a hybrid melee/controller. If forts got more buffs/debuffs instead of more control, though, I'd be siding with them. Though either way, it's a slight edge.
"Experience is the mother of good judgement. Bad judgement is the father of experience."
Like the title says I want to start a widow, but I've never played as one. Ive a lvl 50 Crab which I love. So what I'm looking for is how are they like? And what is the fort and widow like? Also maybe what powers that arent as favorable as others or stuff like that.
Lyow-BS/Regen-50
Time Flawed-Grav/Eng-50
Malicious Despot-Crab Spider-50
Nictuz-WarShade