On Fortunatas/Widows

I've just returned from a fairly long hiatus from the game (close to 3+ years) and i was going through my lists of characters and came across my fortunata. When I last played ages ago I mostly specced for ranged damage, and I recall back then it felt very very weak. Mind you back then I had this character still trucking about in SO's as I hadn't learned anything really about the IO system, still rather clueless about it to be honest, though I digress. After reading through the forums here, I'm seeing people who do like their fortunatas whether they are ranged or melee hybrids who i hear are doing well. Now my issue is that these accounts are all only after the characters reach 50 and are heavily decked out in IOs.

I do love the idea behind the class but is it really that lackluster all the way until the end of the game? Being away for so long, I'm afraid I don't have billions of inf at my disposal. I guess this isn't just about my fortunata but my other characters as well who i recall being quite potent before I left, but now suddenly find myself running away from 3 +1 minions. In any event I have plenty of respec vet rewards so I left my fortunata as a bit of a blank slate, she is 32 if I recall. Is there a suggested mode of progression perhaps to work into that could help her stand on her own 2 feet until I can afford the expensive sets at 50? I'm open to melee or ranged really. I've tried looking up a few ideas but they are always respec based builds and of course are aimed at the 50 game, which is all well and good, but enjoying the ride to 50 is also as important. Mostly looking to be a good team player, contributing decent damage and not feeling like I'm hitting with a wet noodle.

I don't have a lot of time, and there are kinda some complicated issues to address here, so I'm going to be quick but try and hit the important details too.

Fortunata psi/ranged attacks are simply statistically weaker than the widow claw attacks. Overall in the game, melee attacks have a moderate to large advantage statistically over ranged attacks, depending on what sets you're comparing. This is especially true for some reason with psionic damage type attacks, which tend to do less damage by design, perhaps as some kind of balancing factor for their debuffing or the control extras in most psi powersets, or perhaps for their damage type, which in the original design of the game was supposed to be less-resisted.

However, psi damage is not really less-resisted, especially in the end-game. Instead, numerous enemies basically 'shut down' psi damage, such as robots and zombies, and carnies. A few enemies are resistant to physical damages but not psi damage, but other than ghosts and non-praetorian clockwork, nothing is especially vulnerable to it. Generally enemies that resist 'everything' like armored Rikti, Malta or Longbow, also resist Psi, and to the same degree.

Finally, widow melee attacks have been specially designed for us, whereas the psi attacks were lifted from other sets. Our melee attacks have extremely fast animations to go with their higher damage, resulting in much-improved performance over the psi attacks. I think an all-psi fortunata would struggle to reach 70% of the damage output of a melee one, just going off the fact that most of the psi attacks seem to do 70% of the DPA (Damage Per Animation Speed) of the melee ones.

Bottom line: unless you really like being ranged or really like the psi powers, or really don't care about your performance, don't be a psi fort.

Fortunatas do have other issues - the lack of mental training for a recharge boost, and the fact their mind link power has a full minute longer to recycle than night widows, does tend to make them seem and feel worse off until the end-game. Getting mind link to perma is a huge benefit to a widow, but fortunatas almost require expensive IOs to make that happen. Nightwidows can do it much more easily, much earlier, and much cheaper. This makes them far more potent characters in the mid-game and for people without large build budgets.

If you do have the budget, the fortunata's superior breadth of powers - controls and AOEs - are favored by some players. You can still be an effective fortunata without that budget, but you won't be a top tier build, whereas a nightwidow on a modest budget will be a lot closer to the top.

Hope this helps. Good luck and don't give up!

The Night Widow is by far the strongest VEAT of them all. Crazy damage output meets crazy survivability. I do wonder how they got through testing in such a state, but they did.

The Fortunata by contrast feels a lot like a Tanker. Great survivability combined with a comparatively low damage output. They won't die on you very often, but it takes a long time to kill things, especially compared to the Night Widow.

If you go Fort, have fun in the iTrials, which are mostly populated by robots.

WARNING: I bold names.

I agree with Flux.
But besides if you don't care about io's you can use your 2nd build and have it both ways.

Actually, as far as I can tell the praetorian robots don't have special psi resistance the way that other robots do. At least, when I've used psy attacks on them, they seemed to take 'normal' damage from it.

Also note that I never said VEATs weren't potent. I did say that the psi attacks had weaker stats than the claw attacks available to the same VEAT character, and that the fortunata branch would generally be weaker than the night widow branch without an expensive IO build because of their longer recycle time on Mindlink, which is a key defensive and team buff power for widows. These things are verifiable facts you can research for yourself if you're so inclined. If you find statistical errors with my analysis I'm more than happy to be corrected on facts.

I don't think nightwidows are overpowered at base, on SO's. They are very good with them, but unless you use IOs or HOs you still can't reach perma-mindlink, which it's clear neither widow branch was balanced around, in keeping with the design philosophy that dictates IOs and HOs as 'optional' to AT balance issues. Like many other powersets, and especially like defense powersets, widows do grow exceptionally well in power when IOs are added to the equation. In addition to the benefit of softcapping easily, recharge bonuses serve double-duty with helping to make mindlink permanent on widows, allowing for some very high-offense, high-defense builds.

I can't really agree with you flux. It's easy to just about perma mindlink with a fort, and have def in ranged and melee soft-capped without even using ML, and without the use of any purps. Not to mention superior aoe dmg and Crowd control and ranged attack chain.

Villain Plan by Mids' Villain Designer 1.91
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Fortune: Level 50 Natural Arachnos Widow
Primary Power Set: Fortunata Training
Secondary Power Set: Fortunata Teamwork
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Flight
Power Pool: Speed

Villain Profile:
Level 1: Mental Blast -- Dev'n-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(3), Dev'n-Dmg/Rchg(3), Dev'n-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(5), Dev'n-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(5), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(37)
Level 1: Combat Training: Defensive -- LkGmblr-Def(A)
Level 2: Subdue -- Dev'n-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(A), Dev'n-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(7), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(7), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(9), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(9), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(27)
Level 4: Tactical Training: Maneuvers -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def(13), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(13), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(15)
Level 6: Combat Jumping -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 8: Follow Up -- Mako-Acc/Dmg(A), Mako-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(11), Mako-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(11), Mako-Dmg/EndRdx(15), Mako-Dmg/Rchg(17), Mako-Dam%(40)
Level 10: Indomitable Will -- Aegis-ResDam/EndRdx(A)
Level 12: Lunge -- Mako-Acc/Dmg(A), Mako-Dmg/EndRdx(19), Mako-Dmg/Rchg(19), Mako-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(25), Mako-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(25), Mako-Dam%(27)
Level 14: Super Jump -- Winter-RunSpd/Jump/Fly/Rng(A)
Level 16: Spin -- Oblit-%Dam(A), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(17), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(29), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(31), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(31), Oblit-Dmg(31)
Level 18: Dominate -- Lock-Acc/Hold(A), Lock-Rchg/Hold(33), Lock-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(33), Lock-Acc/Rchg(34), Lock-EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(34), Lock-%Hold(34)
Level 20: Mask Presence -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 22: Foresight -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def(29), S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(43)
Level 24: Mind Link -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(36), LkGmblr-Def(36), LkGmblr-Def/Rchg(37), AdjTgt-ToHit/Rchg(37), AdjTgt-Rchg(50)
Level 26: Hover -- Winter-RunSpd/Jump/Fly/Rng(A)
Level 28: Psionic Tornado -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(33), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(39), Posi-Dam%(39), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(40), Posi-Dmg/Rng(40)
Level 30: Confuse -- Pplx-Acc/Conf/Rchg(A)
Level 32: Psychic Wail -- Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(A), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(36), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(42), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(42), Sciroc-Acc/Rchg(42), Sciroc-Dmg/Rchg(43)
Level 35: Tactical Training: Leadership -- AdjTgt-ToHit/EndRdx/Rchg(A), AdjTgt-ToHit/EndRdx(43), AdjTgt-ToHit(45), AdjTgt-EndRdx/Rchg(45)
Level 38: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(39), RechRdx-I(45)
Level 41: Aura of Confusion -- Pplx-Rchg/Conf(A), Pplx-Acc/Conf/Rchg(46), Pplx-Acc/Rchg(46), Mlais-Acc/Conf/Rchg(48), Mlais-Acc/Rchg(50)
Level 44: Total Domination -- Lock-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(A), Lock-Acc/Hold(46), Lock-EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(48), Lock-Rchg/Hold(48), Lock-Acc/Rchg(50)
Level 47: Tactical Training: Assault -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 49: Combat Training: Offensive -- Acc-I(A)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Dmg-I(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Run-I(A)
Level 2: Rest -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 1: Conditioning
Level 4: Ninja Run
Level 2: Swift -- Run-I(A)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 2: Health -- Numna-Regen/Rcvry+(A), Numna-Heal(21), Heal-I(21)
Level 2: Stamina -- EndMod-I(A), EndMod-I(23), EndMod-I(23)
------------

Nobody is giving a fort any awards for dps, however a stalker with confuse and dominate? Three mobs, np. Confuse the first, backstab the second, follow up (since confuse doesn't break stealth) dominate third. Spin, subdue, theres two down, the third is down life, and still confused, since it has such a great duration, dominate, and finish it off.

It's also worth noting that Forts have access to a wide selection of the same Claw attacks as Widows do (mine has Dart Burst and Lunge, mostly for dealing with Carnies). There's redraw involved but as still works well (nothing better than locking down a nasty Carnie boss with Dominate, Glooming it and then skewering it with Lunge and sending it flying with TK Thrust).


Things like Gloom and Dark Oblit also fit into the ranged attack chains very well and add a different damage type into the mix.


Both are excellent and great fun to play. Especially considering they're not mutually exclusive and you can in essence level two characters at once with Dual Builds. How different they are to play really depends on you and how you like to build each one (I skipped the cone attacks on my Widow and she's a single target melee blender with a nice pseudo PBAOE chain in Spin, Fences and Ball Lightning, I took two cones on my Fort along with Psi Tornado and Dark Oblit and a strong mixed-type single target ranged chain with Dominate, Subdue, TK Blast and Gloom).


So I can log in and decide if I want to play Ms Scrapper/Stalker who eats Carnies for breakfast or the mez-proof Domi with stupid defenses who helps mow down tonnes of minions on teams.

There is certainly a good argument for going with a dual build. I started with 2, I lost interst in NW though. Quite simply, I want to play a thief illusionist. The fortunata is the first toon I've found in any mmo that has given me that option. (I wish I could pickpockets and such, however this is close, esp as rogue)

What I want in a class, is stealth, backstab, charm, stunlock, ranged attacks, aoe's and good defenses, so that I can go toe to toe with my opponents, and have a bunch of tricks to throw in. No other game, or class has answered these questions in the way the fort has.

Is it an elite class? Depends on how you play it. Its not like a fort is really good at anything. They are not as good at control as a dom or controller, they can't out dps a scrapper/blaster/stlk/ect, they don't have the protection skills of a defender, or the defenses of a tank. However, they will certainly out control a stalker, out protect a scrapper, out tank a defender, and out damage a controller.

A NW is much more straight forward. That doesn't make it better, just easier to muscle through things. A Fort is more of a situational finesse class. Knowing how, and when to use an ability will directly impact the overall capability of the toon, far more than most other melee classes.

Actually, attack chain testing showed me that a melee fort is very competitive with a night widow for single-target damage output. With a reactive interface incarnate power the gap actually seemed to close between them, too.

I tend to call a build that falls in between 500m and 1b inf in IOs as 'expensive' on the forums, the way the one posted a up-stream probably would Granted, I'm one of those players who has billions of inf and has purpled out builds I never even play anymore now, and so it's fairly cheap to me, but I am still in touch with the common man. He brings me my tea and serves as my footrest after I polish my monocle on his tie

That build is, by the by, IMO full of flaws but it isn't really being presented for critique here so I'm not going to. I will however advise a reader either to go all-ranged or all-claw and not to mix them. Extensive pylon testing showed me that redrawing your claws during your attack chain will hurt your DPS, and fort psi attacks put the claws away. So, claws in or claws out, but don't mix 'em.

The AOE advantage forts have is actually hard for me to quantify. In practice I think psychic wail is a much bigger boon than psionic tornado; the strongest non-nuke AOEs in the widow AT are available to both the NW and the Fort - spin and dart burst. Psionic tornado's slow cast speed and travel delay (the power doesn't take effect immediately, it travels and then takes effect after a delay, like subdue) badly hurt its practical performance whenever I've tried to use it. The knockup is great and if you use it as a PBAOE you can minimize its speed issues, though. Psychic scream, sadly, has pretty awful stats for both NWs and Forts. I'd give serious thought to grabbing a patron pool AOE instead of scream, at least.

And Incarnate powers open a whole new bag of worms for the discussion; I've found that my NW build benefits a lot more from having Aidself in it because that lets me run a Barrier Destiny and thus improve my survivability even further, especially against incarnate-tier content. My fort build didn't have room for aidself and suffers, relatively speaking, by having to use a Rebirth regen Destiny instead. Judgements are also deprecating the value of being an 'aoe character' in my experience. High end teams can average a judgement every 11.25 seconds, meaning that on a team of 8 who all had judgements and coordinated 2 judgements per spawn, you'd have to clear survivors and travel to the next spawn in under 25 seconds each to ever run out of Judgement throughput. And if your team needs more AOE than two judgements per spawn, I hope they're herding AVs or something.

I've mixed and matched claws and psi attacks and was relatively happy with the performance. That said, I built two different chains - melee and ranged, and used one or the other.

In theory. In actual practice, with teams moving so fast and actual encounters where sustained DPS feels* useful also involving heavy damage from the enemies (more often than not AVs), I've found staying at range and using the psi attacks to be more efficient in most situations.

*I suspect part of the problem is perception, you're looking at a big but not enormous difference between a ranged attack chain involving Gloom and a melee attack chain, especially as the melee attack chain is partly DoT.

Another issue is with the sheer number of hotkeys. Dominate, Subdue, Gloom and TK Blast + Swipe, Strike, Lunge and Follow Up, that's already 8 attacks. Throw in Confuse, and eventual AoEs, click buffs, Aid Self, incarnate powers... It's starting to be a bit much to handle efficiently, unless you have pianist levels of finger dexterity.

Ironically, I agree with much of what Flux is saying... But I think his opinion is a bit too theoretical, at least compared to my own experience. For example, melee attacks do more DPS, but having to jump from mob to mob on normal groups (or even worse, while solo, having to run after mobs, as they will run) as opposed to just stand in one spot and blast stuff with ranged attacks without losing even a millisecond moving makes the ranged DPS higher against anything but tough static targets. Judgement attacks can be synced up to throw 2 judgements every spawn, but on the teams I play people aren't nearly as efficient as that, and on the rare occasions that everything goes well spawns die a lot faster than 10-15 seconds. Psi damage is sometimes heavily resisted, but just as often it's the only damage type that deals significant damage against the targets that matter - mostly AVs (ab)using Unstoppable.

actually, a melee fortunata can outperform a night widow in terms of damage.

the ONLY advantage a NW has is that its mindlink recharges faster and it has that...mental training.

My fortunata is...amazing, I wouldn't trade it for anything, I'll all ranged psi attacks, never had an issue.

the good thing also, AVs never resist Psionic damage.

and the enemies that do resist it, I don't notice.

yes, you have to be heavily IO'd out to be like...a god, but the build I found has cheaper alternatives to the heavier sets.

I'm rambling DD

anyways, with patron powers you can easily get over the fact that some enemies resist psi, and the new incarnate abilities aren't too bad either.

Fortunata does not have better ST DPS than NW. The numbers on a high recharge build are close, but NW wins by at least a small margin. On anything other than high recharge, the advantage goes further into the NW's side of the court.

NW (220-260) dps > Melee Fortunata (190 - 230) dps > Ranged Fortunata (130-180) dps for ST DPS

My Fortunata is running 205 to 260 in-game. The average NW I've seen is running 10% to 15% higher. I gladly give up that 10% for the additional utility, but I also understand that is my choice, and not everyones.

The four power cyclic all melee chain and four power+gap all melee chain and five power melee+dominate chain worked out essentially identical dps for me.

Dominate giving the advantage of not letting my current victim run.

Dominate the advantage that if it does run, I don't have to chase it down to finish it off.

E-fences also worked out well with Spin. E-Fences the advantage of keeping the pack in spin range and not letting them run.

I will not say adamantly to stick to either ranged or melee, and never mix them. However, I do agree you should stick to predominatly one or the other. If you mix, mix carefully and with due consideration to what you wish to accomplish. I've tried many combinations of Fortunata attacks, each has it's advantages, and disadvantages. I started with a hybrid chain, changed to ranged/control, and now I'm back to a mostly melee. The Primarily melee fits me best, and gives good (but not the best) pure damage when I want pure damage.

I found I was losing 20% damage to runners. I still do lose that with AV runners that dominate can't hold. Subdue would have been the better choice for AVs, however, non-av targets happen much more often, and I prefer the hold to the immobilize for all those targets, and do not wish to give up another power slot in order to have both Dominate and Subdue. The Melee+Dominate+Subdue chain bit too far into my DPS for me to be happy, so then I'd only be using Subdue on runners that required two shots, or AVs. That just didn't calculate out well enough for me to give up another power, like say e-fences. E-fences, while cutting into my dps too much for me to want to use it in the AV chain, works great on the larger packs. So, I chose and kept e-fences over subdue. In hindsight, I should have made and kept that choice from the beginning.

Well my point all along has been that the DPS is close but the reason to go fort over NW is the bag of tricks, while the reason to go NW over fort is that you're statistically stronger with a less-expensive build. I've played NW and ranged fort extensively, and melee fort moderately, myself. My opinions and advice are based on experience that have some numbers and a few controlled test results to back it up.

For example at least on my builds, the melee fort attack chain took down a pylon in 8 minutes with no incarnate powers (for about 208 DPS); the NW attack chain took it down in about 6:45 (for about 223 DPS). So there's about a 15 DPS difference in my testing on a high-recharge build, before incarnate powers apply. In practice, I think the major 'real' ST combat advantages for NWs at high build levels are that target switching and movement is going to favor Slash because your attack chain will reset more often than it runs through a complete cycle, and that Slash is a better 'oneshot something out of hide' power - but in terms of raw DPS a slash crit isn't better than any other crit and placate is damage-neutral, so that second bit is more of a 'tactical assassination' power (say, to nail sappers with) and not something that's going to really matter vs hard targets.

Forts get other methods for dealing with targets like Sappers, so I consider that 'NWs are better nasty target assassins' thing a wash.

At lower build levels/less recharge the NW (such as on SOs) the NW is going to see a bigger advantage from having Slash as part of their regular attack chain.

I personally badly felt the difference between ranged and melee performance when I was playing ranged fort as one build and melee NW as the other. The ranged fort's better AOE - and she had psy scream, psy tornado, psy wail and dark obliteration - didn't really impress me that much in play because tornado and scream are so slow I only got to throw down a full cycle if I was with a weak team. This was pre-judgement, too: teaming with a fire corr or archer or assault rifle or crab spider pretty much made my AOE contribution redundant. I was ranged fort first, actually; this experience with my psy tornado swirling in around a corpse (because someone else had already killed it) or missing a bunch of the spawn because its target moved before it finished animating and travelling was the reason I made an NW dual build when that was released. I was also very unhappy with my ranged fort's ST damage using dominate, subdue, TK blast, and gloom. It might be good for bosses/EBs/AVs after they pop unstoppable but it makes getting them to pop it in the first place a bit slower and less sure.

Plus I wasn't using followup, since I was all-ranged, so my damage was suffering more in comparison. And if you're going to use FU, you're closing in to melee, and would have to lose time backing off to fire your ranged cones. At which point I was happier using spin than any of the other AOEs and staying in melee to keep FU stacked.

That all said, I guess it wasn't clear what I mean about claws vs ranged - I'm not saying only take one set of powers, I'm saying 'minimize your redraw' and especially try to avoid having an attack chain that requires redraw either way. The 'hybrid' attack chain that's part ranged and part melee generally has the drawbacks of both and then some. You still have to close in for attacks, your attack chain being slower hurts followup stacking, and your redraw hurts your performance both ways. Really the key here is FU in my opinion and experience. If you keep it stacked it's a 60% damage buff but you're not going to get constant stacking from it if you're playing with a mostly-ranged or hybrid chain.

I don't generally have all the trouble a lot of people are claiming in terms of getting into melee, myself - combat jumping is gold, or maybe I'm just well practiced at it. Having subdue and dominate in my fort build can be convenient, but I'd be able to live without them just fine. And don't forget if you just want to shoot runners in the back that NWs can get a couple ranged shots too; you can even take mental blast if you're very worried about unstoppable. In terms of damage resistance, using an older damage resistance spreadsheet with about 1600 enemy resistances listed, I came up with the following average resistances across enemies by damage type:

Smashing: 9%; Lethal: 11%; Fire: 6%; Cold: 7%; Energy: 6%; Negative: 6%; Psy: 8%; Toxic: 10%. So lethal is more resisted... but by less than most people tend to think. And Psy resistance is almost as bad as smashing resistance, which is something a lot of people call a drawback to smashing sets. I still conclude that the claws approach for widows wins out decisively thanks to followup and better attack stats, even accounting for resistance.

In overall build terms, at the end of the day I'm finding my NW build being more focused on being a 'good pure melee' is helping it in survivability more than offensive output. Total dom and aura of confusion are nice against spawns... spawns that being softcapped already make a non-threat. Against high damage spikes (like from critting victoria-mkivs) and AVs/GMs, barrier and aid self are just solid gold. But this is my experience-based opinion from having tried it both ways: I'd rather have extra burst survivability than area control in the most modern content (aka, incarnate trials).

As for judgement rolling, my friends and I usually get into a groove where we pretty well synch judgements (and sometimes destinies) by default, because after we take turns the first few spawns we're all on staggered cooldowns and each using their judgement off cooldown is good enough to keep it staggered.

You seem to be missing the point that I am making Flux, because you are talking about dps, and I am talking about control. Yes, if you want to be a scrapper, then by all means, you should play a NW, or maybe a scrapper, or a brute, or a tank. Now if you want to play a controller without pets or heals, instead with an invis and high dps and good defense, then only the fort will achieve this package.

Now as a result, it is tough to compare, because you can measure dps. The NW has better dps. How do you measure dominate and confuse? Thats what we call an intangible.

Now if you don't rely on crowd control, if you don't care about clean pulls, then these skills probably aren't going to be important. If however, you have been playing cc since the days of eq, then you might use these skills to deadly effect.

Now I can hear you say, yeah, but the redraw is killing my dps. So what? The room is pacified. Nothing is hitting me. If something does, it wont be in 3 seconds. If I need more dps, I can sit around for a few seconds, re-stealth, and then get my crit-shot. I've actually taken out some elites like that.

The problem is, there no way to quantify the reaction time of 30 years worth of pianist finger training.

When SoA first came out, my friend and I both made Fortunata. He is hybrid with Follow-Up and claw attacks while I am all ranged. Starting at lvl 24, I feel my damage is a lot lower because I don't have Gloom. However, once I have Gloom and set bonuses, I feel my performance is way smoother than his hybrid. Yes, claw redraw does slower things down a bit and I don't need to "chase" a runner.

I can see the idea in hybrid Fort because there is no melee class in the game that has Fort's defense, buffs and controls. If you make a melee Fort, you can out-control any other Melee. You just focus more on melee and less on controls.

Now if you mostly only use claw attacks and only use control powers in the beginning or on runners, then your melee dps shouldn't be hurt that bad, but if you rely on Dominate in the attack chain, you'll get hurt by weapon redraw.


I have to guess a melee Fort should solo better than a true Night Widow because a simple stacking hold can save you a lot of effort in the end because some bosses turn into god-mode. A Fort can avoid that.


Well, the gist is, whichever way you play, you can't make a "bad" Fortunata!!

Actually, I think you're missing my point, and also don't understand DPS or control in this game, but I'm not really arguing with you or your playstyle, I'm sharing my observations from extensive play and actual empirical testing, and trying to clear things up because people seem to be misunderstanding me on something fundamental here:

I'm saying that melee fort and NW single-target DPS are very close. The NW advantage there is small. That in my opinion ST DPS is NOT a reason to pick NW over fort, especially at higher tiers of build.

In short I basically agree with you: the reason to go fort vs NW in endgame-tier builds is for different tools!

However I also feel the need to emphasize that Redraw is a tested and proven DPS destroyer for widows, it took what I thought would be up to a 20% dps gain from going from FU-lunge-strike-swipe to FU-lunge-strike-gloom and turned it into about a 5% dps LOSS in practice. Considering the DPA difference between gloom and swipe, that implies redraw's actually got a hugely negative effect on your damage output. And the fort psi attacks all have lower DPA than gloom, so they'll be bringing you into an even bigger damage loss.

Also crits for widows aren't a significant DPS increase (placate with its about 2.5s of animation is DPS-neutral with simply attacking again instead), so if in fact you're waiting to re-hide for longer than 2 seconds or so, you're probably actually losing DPS.

And control is certainly quantifiable, it just compares to survivability rather than to damage output. If you want to quantify it in a cheap and easy manner you'd come up with a method of estimating how many attacks it stops you from taking over X amount of time, and compare it to how much damage your regular mitigation would have defeated in that same time. Say for example estimating your control's "uptime" by comparing its purplepatch-resisted duration with its recycle time and tohit rate, and factoring in the time things spend not attacking you as 'lost' time in their DPS towards you. It's not as simple to determine as DPS, but it's certainly doable.

What I did say is that I find the burst survivability my NW can run is better in the incarnate trials - I don't find control very useful there because the trials are heavily stacked with bosses that hit very hard individually and that you can't land enough AOE control on by yourself to overcome their protections. And yeah, you can make a fort with aidself... but I think you'd be giving up some of those fun tools that are the reason to be one, then.

You still can do very well either way. I'm not sure why anyone's taking my posts so seemingly personally when I've been saying that all along, with numbers and other evidence.

hey with the multple builds why chose? you can have a Night Widow and a Fort build

No worries flux. I don't take you personally. We are just looking at things from different views. You are a pylon tester. When it is to the numbers, I have no reason to doubt your expertise. In contrast, I am a controller, that wants to amp up dps and defense. I also depend on stealth. As such the fort is very good for my playstyle.

Now that said, I also have no reason to doubt your xp on trial content as well. I'm lucky to play enough to finish 5 tips missions in a week.

Where I do disagree is the statement that it requires a lot of inf to get a solid fort build. In fact, I would argue that purps are not that good an investment for a fort build. They give no def bonuses. You are better off getting yellows and oranges, and they are very cheap if you run tips missions. Its 50 merits, or two days to get a yellow.

So all that withstanding, here are possibly the two most important questions. Do I expect to solo av's? No. Do I think the fort will be as powerful as my ill/kin controller? I'm going to find out, however, that really depends. With kin I can hover above a battle and chain transfusion, transference, and fulcrums shift, and my group is in God-Mode. Of course, if I get to close, I will die. Now solo wise, I've got IWill/Phantom army close to perma cast, unlimited end w/ transference, a really big heal, fs, and I can drop 2-3 spectral terrors to just about lock everything down.

Thats really tough to beat, but you know, A NW is not really gonna beat that either. When it is a battle of raw power, in a group, the only equal to a kin is a tank. And a kin def is nowhere near a controller/kin, I've played both. And ill is so powerful, they banned the class for dom. (the only more powerful support class combo I can imagine would be an Ill/dark, which to is banned. And really, it would be a great solo/combo, however, you just can't beat transference/ fulcrums, and transfusion is a better heal in group situations.) That said, I'm tired of playing healer, and hiding behind my pets.

So the next question. Could I keep my fort alive, and could they contribute to the group? Yes. Good aoe dmg, good buff/debuff, max def, decent CC, decent burst dmg. Overall, a very surviable toon, with decent dmg. No complaints.

Of other note. I mentioned earlier, that I used crit dmg to defeat an elite. You responded, that standing toe to toe does more damage than stealth crit. This is very true, however this is an intangible. You see, I had fought the elite down to half damage, and in the process, I burned all my inspirations. I ran away and rested. At that point, I realized I couldn't take him in a head on assault, nor could I nuke him to death. However, I could outburst him, and outregen him. So I changed my tactics, and won the battle. Thats something that no amount of empirical testing can gauge. This is the realm of radical empiricism, in which there is no truth. Emperical testing would only tell me it was an unwinnable battle.

I guess I really answered all my questions.

Quickly replying since there were questions in the previous post...

1 - Do I expect to solo AVs? Yes. And I have. Repeatedly. With my NW and Fort builds both; my NW build just doesn't need any incarnate powers or insps to (they do make it a lot faster, though). I've also soloed AVs with my brute, my defender, and my MM. It's not really hard to actually, in most cases it's just a little time-consuming (and it's not even time consuming for the defender or MM, or now that she's got a very rare reactive interface, the NW).

2 - If you burned through all your insps and had to hit-and-run on an EB as almost any character at 50, especially an IO'd VEAT, you're probably doing it wrong somehow*. * - a very few EBs are 'special' (Biff comes to mind). Your insp tray by itself is more than sufficient to beat the majority of EBs from a cold start.

Also, a non-veat related bit of market advice: orange and yellow recipes aren't good uses of merits. Good uses of merits at this moment are Kinetic Combat recipes or random rolls in the 30-34 or 25-29 level ranges. Whichever you feel happier with. I like rolling at the moment, because it forces you to stay diversified - it'd suck to have 5 KC's up for 200m each, then have the bottom fall out of their market (though really, thanks to the game's current overall state I don't see the market for KC dropping without a nerf to it, or to defense). If the price difference between a recipe and the crafted IO is more than 4 million inf, craft it before selling.