ARRRRRRRRRRGH fort

Ok, I keep talking to people in VB, and asking friends and just generally trying to figure out wth a Fort is.

I know I need/want perma mindlink.
I want almost everything in widow training (all those toggles/autos)
I know I want the stealth power, for 2.5 def if nothing else.
Subdue/theotherthing both have 1 sec animations. I love them.
Spine burst has a 2.3ish animation. I love that too.


I like spin, but its only 8 foot range.
I like followthrough, but its also melee.

I have a bunch of 80 foot powers, but 1 cone (psyscream) with a short range and ugh animation (2.5+)
1 cone with an short range (burst) but good anim and rech
A pbaoe of awesome but long rech.

I totally dont understand how to play this char. Should I cj/hover or just hover all the time? People say it plays at range, and I have some reasonable st range attacks, but that seems so... ugh and not fun.

At 35 I get gloom (thats nice ), and 41 I get oblit. However, if I want to play level 30, I dont get access to gloom, so my attack chain would suffer. Plus, its just another long range st attack.

If I use oblit/burst/scream/burst/wail, that seems like a really nice attack chain, but I dont get wail or oblit until much later. And I get 0 use out of followthrough as a result, or spin (which seems kind of anemic and long anim to boot).

I just turned 28, and I am getting kind of depressed/frustrated from lack of... stuff. ish. I cant figure out how to play this char. Part of it is just playing like a defender. I dont get the other part. I defintely don't want a night widow.

I took psynado so far, but it seems kind of sucky, since if a mob dies while using it, it just disappears. Plus its DOT, eats a _lot_ of end, and while it looks cool, it just feels blah. The range is 80ft, which is fantastic, but with no aoe immob, they just walk out of it. I could take tentacles and max its range out, but thats at 38, putting me into the not-really-functional-until-40 range.

At 40, does this seem reasonable?

rangeboosted tentacles -> oblit -> subdue/zap boss/lt -> (close) burst -> (close) wail

It is all fast animating and reasonably fast charging.

But what about at 30? Is it ok to just forego all of the melee attacks? How bad a hit am I taking by not taking followthrough? Should I take it and lunge just for AV fights or similar?

Melee forts seem almost as common as ranged forts in my own experience and frankly I don't understand why. What forts do better than any other AT is ranged psi damage plus control and unshakeable defense. Use that! The best chain, that I can see, is subdue -> dominate -> gloom. TKB is nice to keep around for exemplaring as well. You can have a convincing aoe arsenal with just psychic scream and psi tornado, but by all means add dark oblit if you are so inclined. Absolutely go with wail, too: it's like having two judgements instead of one.

As you can see I made no mention of any claw/dart powers. They don't benefit the single target chain while letting you stay at range, and burst doesn't mesh very well with the aoe chain given its redraw. Psi tornado is basically just fireball but all dot, it doesn't require the focal target to be alive for it to work. Purely in terms of damage it doesn't exactly inspire but I like it for its soft control as well. It's a great place to put the AT proc.

In any case, yeah fortunatas are sort of slow going at first. Once you get wail at 32 you start to get more of a spring in your step and after that it's pretty much just solid goodness. I began IOing around level 30 because I like to be able to keep as much of my defense and recharge as possible down to that level anyway, so that really helped my fort as well. It's been the only character I've run all the way through Dark Astoria and it did it with aplomb if I do say so myself. The finale of, uhhh... the Cimeroran arc (I want to call her Sister Solaire, dark soulllllls...) was a real highlight: I declined the assistance and pretty much took Romulus' entire army to the cleaners. Satisfying. So, ranged forts can be pretty damn cool!

I've played multiple variants of forts, I prefer the melee version. My build is in my sig. Older ranged builds are in my archives in my sig, but none that I'm aware of are up to date.

I haven't exactly run the numbers on my fort's actual damage. I suspect that in terms of pylon times it'd be pretty poor compared to a single target focused meleer. That was a tradeoff that I was aware of while planning the build; in addition to the damage, the ranged fort gets many other benefits. That chain I mention can stack something like 30 mag hold with five slots in Dominate devoted to damage slotting and the sixth slot with a level 50+5 unbreakable constraint: hold piece. The immobilize in subdue is surprisingly unreliable, it often works on LTs and below but almost never stacks up on bosses. You also have gloom providing -tohit, and the entire chain is exotic damage types which is extremely handy for content such as the aforementioned Cimerora missions.

To make that very long story shorter, yes, it definitely kills bosses, just not as fast as a night widow or bane spider would.

I know what you mean about dart burst. This is actually the second fortunata I've made, the first was a long time ago and I abandoned it at around level 40. On that one I relied on burst -> scream which was fine, but I found the redraw super noticeable when I got past the level where I was using my melee much. If you use dart burst in conjunction with the claw powers or just single target dart, no redraw. Use it with the psionic powers, mega redraw. You might find that less annoying than I did though.

My #1 toon is Fortunata. All range, no melee.

Dominate (with two purple procs) + Gloom + Subdue and some TK Blast is more than enough for your attack chain. It's not the best damage in the game but all range attacks are at 80' (or longer if you have Incarnate abilities). That is probably the safest long-range build in the game you can find.

Fortunata also excels in buffing team members, surviving with god-mode defense, excellent mez protection (almost nothing can mez Widow), decent controls and a great mini-nuke.

I know people have hybrid Fort but to me but I like my Fort all ranged. No need to chase. Oh and I Hover in sky all the time too for even extra protection. :P


Psionic Scream takes a bit time to activate but it has -recharge debuff and it is a pretty wide cone. I used to take tentacles from Soul mastery because I wanted aoe immb to stop foes from running towards me but the dot damage is slow and its range is pretty bad. Later I respec into Psio Tornado and put Chance for +Recharge. It is lovely. :P Tornado's radius is huge.

Whew this thread got me so fired up for fortunatiation I had to go blitz through a LGTF. With that out of the way, the case for psy scream.

Is its DPA great? It is not. That aside, it has better range than dart burst. This is important to me because with cardiac and enhancement I was able to get every one of my ranged powers to 96 foot range, psy scream included. Given how easy it is to saturate its target cap, then, it's nice that psy scream has a target cap of 12 to dart burst's 10. I don't have strong feelings about the secondary effects of either power but at least the -recharge stacks with the same effect in psi tornado. Most of the time, I count the fact that psy scream does psi damage as a point in its favor. Basically fortunatas are going to suck against robots no matter what you do and dart burst's lethal damage will not speed things up very much. Most of the time though that pink goodness gets the job done just fine. The last thing I'll say for psy scream is that I think it's one of the coolest legacy particle effects in the game. The casting animation looks neat and the effect on the enemies screams, heh, to the team, "I am FORT! Hear me psy-roar!" Nothing wrong with that!

Oh right, dominate slotting: That's where I put the AT set. I was all excited to slot it in gloom and then... you can't put it in ancillary pools. Oops.

I hate to keep linking to my own thread, feels like I'm spamming it here, but this is basically what the build still looks like. Turns out all you need in addition to posi's blast in psy scream is a generic 50 range IO.

The Dominate slotting I have in my build (see sig), with an SBE Devastation Hold Proc, should be very high chance to Mag 5 Burst Hold. However, I've not tested the i22 build it yet.

The reason the hold duration is better than a hold proc is green mitos. You can stack a lot more mag if you enhance the already-great duration.

I like mixed damage types on my fort so I took some melee attacks. There is no reason not to go in melee with the defenses that forts can achieve and I prefer not to spend aeons dealing with psi resistant enemies. On my fort I have 3 major damage types available and more options = mo bettah.

When in trouble, switch to ranged mode and kite. Other than redraw I don't really see any substantial downside to taking melee attacks.

Forts can be played melee or at ranged.

the difference between a fort and a night widow(aside from mind link's recharge and...obviously different skills) is that a fortunata is slated slightly more towards support, and offers a bit more utility.

Ideally, you'll want the leadership from your widow training.

Including vengeance, because it effects yourself as well as your team. Then you'll possibly want assault and maneuvers from the leadership pool, as well.

Hover is good to have because staying at range is useful, assuming you're wanting to be a range fort.

Uh...as for spines, I didn't take any claw skills on my fortunata, because of the redraw that they have to go through. I took dominate, subdue, telekinetic blast as my main offensive moves, with soul mastery as a patron power pool.(tentacles, gloom, dark oblit)


as for slotting, don't slot dominate for control/hold, slot it for damage. The only thing that should be slotted for control is aura of confusion and possibly the total domination.

IF you're worried about survivability, take it from me, a pimped out fortunata can survive just as well as a scrapper.

Thank you all for the help! In the end, I decided on a few things:

I am keeping spin and muling it for an erad set.
I am keeping dart burst because its recharge is so awesome I can continuously fling darts when other better powers are down.
I will go with hoverblasting.

I am not slotting the +2 holds in dominate. I originally thought it would be good, but, in the end I am opting for 3 pieces tstrike, and 2 perioxisomes or whatever. MOAR DAMAGE! Plus, the enhanced mez from the hamios will be nice. I may however, run 2 hamios and 4 basilisks. This puts me at just 66% damage at 50 and down, but... 7.5% rech and 1.25 or something ranged def. Unfortunately I can't boost the hamios, and that is really where I want to max out with 95% damage...

I took up tough, and it seems to help even unslotted. I may take weave too.

At 42, with just generics, I am doing pretty good at 1/1. This may not sound like an accheivement, but I was getting roughed up before pretty bad. Once I get some sets in there I think upping the difficulty seems reasonable. I cant wait to finish this damn patron arc and getting gloom/oblit.

On my (melee) fort, I slotted Dominate with 4x Basilisks and 2xlvl 50 common damage IOs. Gives me some decent set bonuses including a 7.5% rech, as well as 85% damage enhancement. Without Purples and/or ATIOs (the former were too expensive and the latter didn't exist when I slotted her up), I think it's pretty much the best combination.