NW Incarnate Power alternative options
By
Android_5Point9,
Posted on: 2012-03-01 16:49 in Soldiers of Arachnos
Degenerative is a good interface, and you'll be stacking two toxic DoTs with the typical claw attacks, which is a nice thematic fit. The -maxhp is a bit weird, some say it works great, some say it's sort of bad. Not too sure. If you want to stay in the same damage range as Reactive, Spectral (immob) and Preemptive (end drain) do the same damage DoT-wise.
I don't like to use the word best, but Ion is probably the best Judgement. Void is a bit more of an exotic damage type and the radial branch gives some nice damage reduction to enemies to help with survivability, and Vorpal looks pretty cool and can be a thematic fit.
Cimerorans are the best single target damage Lore pets. Warworks have the Victorias, who are really nasty as well, and come with some aoe too. Not too sure what the other Lore options are like, sadly.
Incandescence is terrific for general teaming, and just a very handy assemble the team power on a much shorter recharge.. Core branch increases the duration of the knockback safezone and gives even more -healresistance than the radial branch. Radial branch adds a bit of stealth and move speed in exchange for less -healresistance and a shorter safezone. I'd go radial for general teaming/stealthing missions and TFs, stuff like that. Like you mentioned, the other destinies have uses for specific trials as well, but I wouldn't worry too much about those.
Hey thanks for the thorough response Android.
I decided to try out both Degenerative and Spectral at T3. I think in general I like degenerative better, just because it's one of the few interface powers to debuff something that might be useful in addition to its damage.
Spectral has been a disappointment, as the immob duration is so short as to be meaningless, and too low magnitude to affect the things I really want it to. Partially this is because I went for the dot side of the tree, but that's the side I would probably want to go for at T4 anyway. Still nice for its psi damage, but I'll probably stick with Degenerative as my first choice backup for now.
It's hard to get around the awesome targeting ability of Ion. I don't really need any of the secondary effects of other judgement powers, though void is probably the next-easiest to target IMO. Widow already has a lot of exotic damage, though (and I went gloom and dark obliteration, so I'm good on negative energy too), so I'll probably just keep on with Ion until I have a compelling reason to switch.
I appreciate the feedback on Incandescence. I hadn't thought about its usefulness in general teaming as a faster ATT. That'd come in a ton of handy on STF or similar TFs with a lot of opportunities for a fast stealther to get ahead of the group. Do you ever find yourself using it to help the team out of a tough situation? I wonder about the -healres ever accomplishing anything. I'd probably be more inclined to give +stealth on recall to help port people into hot situations.
No problem!
Incandescence is a little tricky. At T4, the radial branch gives 35ft of stealth, which is the same as Concealment's stealth, and a little less than a Widow's stealth (Mids also lists it having a stealth buff of 390ft, which could be a bug - that's far and above the cap even for Stalkers). It also gives a slight move speed buff, which helps, and -60% healres. All of those last the full 120 seconds, so if you want, you can make them essentially permanent. The radial branch's safezone lasts 5 seconds, and the core branch's lasts 8. The only other difference is that core gives -80% healres.
As an anecdote, I had someone use Incandescence during a STF. It bumped up my Rebirth heal from 750 to 1200 (60%). So, it can be helpful, but it's not essential. Overall it's still a very handy positioning tool.
A few other tidbits:
Alphas - every alpha applies its effects to judgement, destiny, and lore. Musculature will make judgement hit way harder, Cardiac makes it cheaper to fire off, etc. Musculature boosted Cimerorans are very good damage.
Judgement - you're pretty much dead on with Ion. A 40 target cap is higher than all the others, and the jumping is only a problem if you're trying to be conservative with your pulling. I also think it looks the coolest :P
Destiny - You may want to give Rebirth a try as well. As a Widow, your defense debuff resistance is lacking, so it's useful to have a heal and massive regen buff in case things start going south. The +maxhp version of Rebirth is really mediocre, though.
For judgement, I love using Vorpal Radial. Looks cool, activates quicker than Ion, 40 targets, huuuuuge cone, +30% base def for 10 secs.
Ion was my first T4 judgement and its great, but the activation time always felt so slow for me. With that huge cone, you'll find yourself hitting more targets than you do with Ion, many times hitting multiple groups. The defense boost is really nice to have when you find yourself knee deep in defense cascading since us VEATs have no defense reduction protection. That 10 seconds gives you a window of mini god mode to let some of that -def wear off.
Currently on Virtue:
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For my Widow, I decided to choose her Incarnate powers in more of a thematic way, rather than "by the numbers" - as I went with Soul for her APP, I decided to also choose Incarnate powers with either a similar negative energy theme, or something that matches her base claw skills as much as I could - so here's what I did:
Alpha - Agility
Judgement - Void
Interface - Spectral
Lore - Arachnos
Destiny - Rebirth
with the exception of Rebirth (chosen because she simply doesn't have a good way to recover from lucky hits otherwise) I picked all of these to fit either her image as a very fast and hard-hitting melee fighter (Alpha), her Arachnos history (Lore), or as an extension of her APP training a la Ghost Widow (Judgement and Interface)
of course, your mileage may vary, and it should be noted that I build characters, not min/max machines 
@Mistress Rue
Yes, I RP and play Redside on Virtue - No, Rumors of its demise have been greatly exaggerated
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I'm extremely happy with my Night Widow's current build (probably my favorite character yet), which means I've played it enough to have some spare incarnate components laying around. I thought I'd try to get some feedback from the forums on good alternate incarnate power options.
I'm currently running:
Alpha: Musculature
Interface: Reactive
Judgement: Ion
Lore: Arachnos
Destiny: Ageless
My main thoughts are that it's good to have some more options for destiny (Clarion for UGT, Barrier w/ rez for MoM, Incandescence for TPN), and someone suggested that it's nice to have a backup Interface for trials, since reactive only stacks 5 times.
I currently use Destiny for endurance management when solo, but have plenty of global recharge without it. Arachnos was just for flavor. Musculature, Reactive, and Ion were chosen for the typical reasons.
Any tips on fun choices for backup incarnate powers?