New to Night Widow, lots of questions

Hi,

I'm going to run a Night Widow as part of a 3 man regular team, but I've never played a stalker/widow type before, so I need some clarification on how the whole 'get a crit if you attack while hidden' thing. All of the guides for Widows I have seen are *very* out of date, and I want to be sure I understand what I'm supposed to be doing. The other two members of the team are going to be Arachnos Soldier types who have run them before.

I see that Mask Presence provides stealth (45 rating), and that Smoke grenade is an AoE debuff to perception for the enemy. Placate looks like a single target 're-hide' power.

Do I have to have all 3 of these as a NW?

Does stealth from other sources make me 'hidden' like Mask Presence? Or do I have to use the NW specific powers to be hidden? I'm a big fan of Super Speed combined with a +Stealth IO in Combat Jumping (I use this on my main character) but I don't know if this will work for a NW. I do understand that Mask Presence won't work with other Concealment powers like Stealth, and so forth.

How does Smoke Grenade work? Does it aggro the enemy when I toss it into a crowd?

Assuming I am hidden when I make my first attack on a target, is the critical automatic, like a stalker gets? Or is it just a chance for a crit, like a scrapper gets? If it's a chance, how much of a chance is it?

I see that Placate has to hit to be effective. Can I 're-apply' the Placate effect between my attacks, to keep hiding and critting the target? Or is there a limit to how often you can use it on the same guy? Should I even care about using Placate?

If you have any further advice for a melee-oriented NW, particularly one that will be teaming regularly with a pair of Arachnos Soldiers, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks for your time!

Mask Presence and a Stealth IO are sufficient.
Smoke Grenade is completely optional.
Unlike Stalkers, for Veats Placate is a waste of animation time, you're better off just hitting something again. (Placate+Damage+Bonus) / (Placate Animation + Damage Animation) ~= Damage / Damage Animation.

Mask Presense, Super Speed, Stealth IO, etc all stack. There do appear to be power exculsions between MP and Concealment, but I'd have to look them up to check. I've never tried to combine concealment with MP, as I never had any reason to do so; A PvP build may have some reason to do so, but I don't PvP. You can always double check on Test Center if the information isn't available on Paragon Wiki or City of Data.

Smoke Grenade should not normally cause aggro.

Check City of Data or in-game numbers for the chance to crit values and the crit magnitudes.

You can placate as often as it recharges, however, that recharge is fairly long and duration fairly short. Again, as far as sustained damage is concerned, your better off just punching the guy in the face again than bothering with Placate. Placate, however, can be a useful control tool when soloing taking a boss completely out of the fight while you kill a different one. Placate can also be used with Crowd Control and maybe Spin in a type of Crit Exploit, but it's really still not worth the bother and it likely IS an exploit.

Outstanding, thanks for the answers, this helped me out a lot! I'll look for that levelling build, too.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=264465