perma mindlink on a fort?

Is it even possible to perma mindlink on a fortunata without hasten? I've been messing with various builds for a few hours now and can't seem to get its refresh down to its recharge...

So do all of you forts just spam hasten on recharge to keep ML up all the time? I really hate having to do that, which is why I played a widow in the first place toggle on powers and just pew pew.

I've also been checking out a ML-less fort and can't quite get my aoe up to cap without ML.... may have to sacrifice some powers for other set bonuses to do that.

Also do any of you take the darkest night debuff in Soul Mastery? I'd love to be able to debuff for groups but the endurance cost is excessive even with heavily slotting said power for end red. Seems like it forces you to take Cardiac Core for the excessive endurance drain.

http://www.cohplanner.com/mids/downl...B2FC05C5BB0169

It's doable, but there are far more efficient builds. Just put hasten on auto-fire and use ML when its up. It's not that much of a hassle that you have to spend billions on IOs to get enough recharge for it without hasten.

short answer is yet

cant really give a long answer since there are many roads to travel to get to that point

the best methods are global rech enhancement and membrane HOs (or equivalent +def/rech IOs), but membranes will give you the biggest bang for your buck

3 membrane HOs is ED capping defense and rech on the power (which normally cant take rech), then fill in the gap with global rech

nice thanks for the build and info on the membranes both of you.

So do all fortunatas just go for around 37% def and just spam hasten/ml all the time then? hasten on auto... in order to softcap or do people actually build for softcap without ML?

I found it was far easier to build that on a night widow then fort and my fort needs a makeover I think.

You'll need about 65% or so base recharge (plus Hasten) to get it down to 90 seconds. It's actually pretty cheap, since the only really expensive part (the LotGs) can be easily ground out with Hero/Villain Merits. Just grab AE tickets for cheap Crushing Impacts and two Malaise's Illusions and you'll be good to go.

Note that it's not quite enough to get entirely softcapped to Ranged/AoE from what I've calculated. I shored up my Defense with Gaussian's, a Thunderstrike, and Eradication.

Thanks for the replies everyone.

I created my widow/fort after the beta and used the same name I used during beta for her. When i built her I tried to softcap my positionals and keep my recharge around hasten levels (i'm at 75% ~ 4 lotgs have room for 1 more) as I don't have hasten, so ML became an oh crap/defense debuff cascade failure/team help tool. I only managed to get melee/ranged softcapped and aoe around 40%ish outside of ML.

Now that I have access to destiny:rebith+regen and am shooting for t4 from the t3 I have, I'm thinking of dropping first aid and adding in even more utility, such as regular assault to double stack them. I do have double maneuvers running currently and use the t3 or t4 alpha:cardiac due to endurance issues that widow veats suffer in general. Originally I took darkest night to help out teams with AV's and stuff but it was just too expensive so I specced into gloom/obliteration for some more damage as my damage always seemed a tad low to me (no pylons for joo).

trying to figure out what to juggle where gives me headaches . I did slot rech/def in ml and the pure rech from the accuracy set but didn't realize about the HO/SHOs so that's good news and I'm thinking of grabbing hasten anyway to help when dealing with being slowed by foes.

Will have to take a look at more builds and build for more recharge

On my Fortunata build I built for softcapped Ranged/Melee defense, but a bit lower on AoE defense. I played around with softcapping AoE defense but it wasn't worth the tradeoffs I'd have had to make IMO. I also built for perma Mind Link, though mostly as a team buff and buffer against defense debuffs.

You could argue that softcapping plus perma Mind Link is overkill, but I like to have the team buff up full time, and any time I'm facing heavy AoE I know I can softcap to AoE by firing Mink Link.

IMO AoE defense is less important on a Fortunata because I'm fighting from range and am seldom the target of a lot of focused fire. Not like a Night Widow who is constantly in the middle of things.

If you want to start with a soft capped Fort build, here's one I've been posting. It works very well, and I went Musculature & Rebirth with it to give it even more punch. It's fairly cheap too. The only thing I recommend is replacing Aim with something else, it's pretty useless.

http://www.cohplanner.com/mids/downl...00FE017CB9DE4F