Linea

I've soloed up to Vicious (Difficulty 3 of 5), I do not expect Ruthless nor Relentless to be soloable. The hardest fights where, depending on difficulty settings: Zoe/Rodney #2, and Ripplesurge.

Snipes are very good damage, and great for supplementing a weaker ST damage chain. Which obviously varies from build to build, some will need it more while others not at all. I use Shadowmeld more depending on the situation. When up to my eyeballs in Incarnated Psionics or worse (801/ASF) I'll use Energy Drain double or triple stacked for ~+10-15 defense, Energize for the EndRdx, and Shadowmeld. That's ~+35 ish defense, and mostly applies to Psionics as well, If I back that with Rune or Hybrid, what was my weakness is now much more manageable, at least for long enough to take out a boss and start dropping the incoming damage down to more long term survivable levels. The same for any other minor weaknesses or debuffs.

This is one issue.

Has anyone complied a Tier list for Brutes similar to Croax's Stalker Tier List? Seems like that would be a useful thing to have bookmarked somewhere.

Just exactly how much offense do you want !?! StJ without a secondary can push over 500 dps easily. I tend to run extremely heavily armored builds (that are tougher than many tanks), and they run in the 350 to 450 dps range, but that's because I devoted almost all my resources to durability instead of damage. But even this lower dps is enough to effectively solo just about anything that IS soloable. I also often have a second build that is damage oriented, but tend to prefer the armored builds. If it's an StJ stalker, run any armor you want. If you want absolute maximum dps, I'd probably say /Bio. StJ/Bio (all around) EnM/Bio (ST dps) ElM/SD/Snipe (AoE dps)

Any really, particularly if you go high recharge near-perma souldrain. As a general rule I recommend Fire, Ice, Water ... but paired with time, you get a lot more options, particularly if you want to proc out the build too. Bopper and others have some really nice proc builds built on /Time.

Pretty sure D is the current version, and 2L is the version I'm going to respec into later. C is an older version, and 2J is another alternative, but I'm not planning on going that far down that path. J is more of a general purpose path, and I prefer the 801/SoloASF path. I'm going to ease up just a tad on the 801/ASF armor to add a little more Psionics armor. But Only a little, as even a few points of SLE armor means massive increases in incoming damage at the higher to-hit numbers of Incarnate/801/ASF Hardmode settings. (and any or all of these builds may be scrambled a bit, as they are my personal working copies) RE: Taunt Aura EnA Taunt aura is in my experience just barely enough to hold AVs (and other targets) most of the time. It's also a very tight area, if you let small stuff slip even a foot or two away, they can escape. Stuff WILL escape and run sometimes, and some AVs will run even when triple tank taunted. Nothing's foolproof. EnM Ena ShadowMeld Scrapper - 801 - Recharge-T9 ver 2L - [i25].mxd EnM Ena ShadowMeld Scrapper - 801 - Recharge-T9 ver 1d - [i25].mxd EnM Ena ShadowMeld Scrapper - 801 - Recharge-T9 ver 1c - [i25].mxd EnM Ena ShadowMeld Scrapper - 801 - Recharge-T9 ver 2J - [i25].mxd

I have more Dual Pistols and Katanas each, than all other power sets combined. The orginal Kiski build 10+ years ago was Dual Pistols/Time, and she can solo a +4x8 ITF, toe to toe tank a 4 tower buffed Lord Recluse, solo up to 801.6, and makes 801.7 work for it even if it does eventually kill her. If you prefer to go more offensive, then DP/Time/Dark with Procs is probably he way to go.

Stone is fine, I just personally don't like stone. It's possible I won't mind the new stone armor, but testing it (if at all) is a very low priority.

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=v_goldbrickers.golden_brickernaut_hm.brickernaut_selfdestruction&at=boss_elite I'm just guessing at the interpretation, but .... Part of it is flagged ignore resistance. Looks like 13k, 20k, 20k, 20k?, 13k, with 40k+ ignoring resistance. Not sure if that's 3 ticks or only 2. Really doesn't matter, you're gonna be dead a dozen times over. As for what can survive, all my 801 builds have done 'well enough' so far. But I'm also still testing. Verdict is still out.

I think I noticed that and didn't realize it. Which means this is probably an issue of interaction of multiple players. And one of the other players is triggering the blue orb too close to the zone-in point, primarily in the mini-games. ... so extra coordination of "DO NOT MOVE UNTIL EVERYONE ZONES IN"? might work? Then RUN LIKE MANIACS! RUN!

Try duoing 801 +4x8 at 801.7 or above, or the ASF at Ruthless or above (You'll likely need a 4-man team for the ASF AV dps-check at Vicious or above levels). Eventually you'll set them hard enough that you'll die. ... Outside of that, and a few other situations I can think of, yeah, a well built tank only very rarely dies. 801: Solo +4x8 801.2 is standard and any tank of mine that failed it would be scrapped, that may be a bit harsh for others. Any Tier 4 IO Tier 4 Incarnate tank should be able to handle something between 5 and 7. A very good tank should be able to solo survive up to 12 (801.C, C is 12 in Hexadecimal). The 801 sentinel referred to above can handle 5 nicely, but struggles in 7 without a team. ASF: I feel like any Tier 4 tank should be able to survive Ruthless outside of the Self Destruct, AVs, and similar situations. Relentless, I've not gotten to test enough yet.

Angel Hornet is EnM/EnA and took out a Solo Vicious ASF (Difficulty 3 of 5). I'd say she's probably the one with the strongest of both offense and defense. EnA to maximize armors with T9 stacking and Demonic for the crashes, and EnM to maximize ST damage. She runs about 400 dps on the heavily armored 801 build. She should run 600+ dps on an offensive proc build, but I've never built her one. Her stalker counterpart's offensive build was 600+ on the test server. I chose scrapper instead because, stalker AoE is less than Scrapper, and I was looking to be more overall useful with more AoE and actually /wanted/ the scrapper's weak taunt, even if it meant I was a bit more squishy due to pulling more aggro. I chose the stalker (over the scrapper) on the stalker project specifically because I didn't want to pull aggro with taunt, but paired it with StJ to improve the stalker frame AoE performance over EnM. Same Idea, two different ways of approaching it. Kat/Bio is a real favorite of mine, but objectively many builds beat her in both offense, defense, and combined offense/defense. I'm just extremely fond of Kat, and Bio is a really nice, and offensive oriented, match for it. DB/Bio is another option, similar to Kat, but a variation on ST/AoE mix. A bit more offense overall, and a tad squishier. Favorites aren't always the 'best'. I have about equal numbers of Kat/ and Dual Pistols/, and each of those has more than all other sets combined. Favorites don't have to make sense. Armor Types (Armor Recommendations): Defense Armor: EnA (Any AT), Inv/ and SD/ as the Tank Alternatives. Resist Armor: RadA (Brutes and Tanks Only). Heal Armor: Bio (Any AT, paired with a Defensive Weapon). Offense Armor: SD, Bio

Here are some very old builds of mine. For a beginner I'd recommend the more heavily armored one, with less damage. The high damage build is an advanced build. None of these are leveling builds, although I do level with them. Nature DP - Fourcade 2 - [i25].mxd Nature DP - Charged Armor Prototype 1 - [i25].mxd Nature DP - Laoraine 2c - [i25].mxd

Maybe extend the first orb timer to 30s. I've had it spawn more than once within seconds of zoning, and I'm on a fairly fast machine. If you zone slower .... I would also like to see the graphics a tad larger diameter. I've sometimes been hit by an edge when I should have otherwise been outside it.

It's unlikely the existing devs will be able to find that level of excess resources soon(tm). I'd love it if they would do it, I have a 250+ hour base I'd love to import and upgrade to the current base tech. If you're a competent high level Software Engineer and C# programmer, the code is available, make it your own personal project. Expect to invest a years worth of your free-time in it.

It's way more complicated than that. The entire base system needs to be completely re-written before this can be done SAFELY without dev level manual intervention for each base. Even then it risks corrupting the entire shard. The risk to thousands of players is exponentially beyond the reward to one player. The base code is a complete disaster, we're lucky it works at all and hasn't already crashed the shard requiring restore from backup.

It's balanced toward layered mitigation. If anything it's balanced slightly in favor of Resist Capped Brutes and Tanks, with supplemental defense and/or buffs, with durability biased builds instead of DPS biased builds. Resist is RDR. Resist cap is the best RDR. If you go in Defense capped without resists to back you up, you're gonna be resist floored and taking quad damage in a blink. Which in turns means near instant death to Relentless Gold Bricker Alpha. If you're defense based you better back it up with as much resist as you can get. On the upside Defense based means you get half your DDR for free. If you go in Resist capped, without any defenses, or DDR, you will get defense debuffed at least some, if they drop you too far into the red, you can end up facing double damage. That's not as bad as the quad damage above, but it's still lethal. You need at least some defense (or buffs) to offset that, and preferably some DDR (ageless radial) to go with it.

tldr: This is why I don't like DPS Checks / AVs when solo. I would indeed love a Solo-Mode that downgraded the AVs to EBs, even if it reduced rewards by /10x. Ruthless ASF test Run (EnM/EnA 801 Built Scrapper): I drug along a couple of tanks so things wouldn't be so slow, just for testing. To-hit was fine, no real issues other than: When I was debuffed once, and When too many vengeances stacked, and/or pulling two groups. I can solo one Ruthless group and ONLY ONE Ruthless Difficulty group at a time, and only when fully T9 armored. When my armors are down I can only take about 1/3 of a group. Humorously, when fully armored, I was slightly more durable than the tanks. At least till my T9s dropped, then I was Instant-One-Shot Fodder. The tanks were much more reliable overall. T9 Armor Up, Crash, Wait or Die, Repeat. So those 90m missions just became 3 hours. Duoing the AV runs 7m no lore, 5m with lore Lots of math follows Assuming the tank did damage, this translates to 33m to solo the AV Assuming the tank did NOT do damage, this translates to 14m to solo the AV I can run 7m, Crash/Candy 30s to toggle back up, 3m, Crash/Candy 30s to toggle back up, 3m ... so 15m tops, using a full tray of candy It would take a perfect run to kill this AV, the first and easiest AV of the TF. If any of the AVs have higher resists, regen, or hp than the Cauldron AV, then there's no way in @#$% I'm pulling it off. At the very least Apex is twice as hard. The tank was doing at least some damage, so the answer is somewhere between 15m and 33m. 99.9% likely I can't get past the first AV. I can indeed clear to the AV, but not past it. And even if I DID get this AV. Its the easiest AV by far. I'd never make it past the next one. (ok, fine, demonic being an accolade, and recharged in 10m, I might could chain that to 18m using a full tray of candy. However, there is still the issue of dps loss while toggling up. Each crash costs a total of 1m, as you need at least 30s to gain back the 30s loss, and it's likely worse than that. So out of 18m I lose 4 or 5 due to crashes. That puts us right back at, this is probably not happening.)

I rate StJ best overall for Stalkers. The other bests are likely: EnM for ST Damage, and Electric/SD/Snipe for AoE.

This change is purposeful, and global. Popcorn was a balance issue. https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=boosts.attuned_sudden_acceleration_f.attuned_sudden_acceleration_f "(-1.0 * Melee_Ones)% Power Chance Mod (self only) for 10.25s " I don't remember the specific mechanics, you'd have to get a Dev for that, dig through all the old dev and patch notes, or be able to translate magnitudes. But I think It translates to something like 1/10th chance.

Solo Hardmode 2-Star Vicious ASF (Difficulty 3 of 5) Complete! That was not at all easy. It all went south on the last pool of the last mission. Anything that could have gone wrong, went wrong. But I managed to pull it out of the ditch in the end, but only barely. Took about an hour to clear my way to Midas, and Midas himself took about 30m. However, in-between there I had a total failure and let him regen to full health. I also had several minor finger fumbles and failures. All this extended the time needed exponentially. 90m should be doable, 120m definitely. I spent closer to 3h, and it was entirely my own fault. I typically play about one mission a day, and you can assume 60-90m per mission (Vicious). However, I had to redo at least 3. 1 Due to connection issues, and 2 due to my own failure and/or lack of time available. So while It should be doable in well less than 10h, I spent 16+ over about a week of real-time. This one is a new record for Longest Solo TF for me. No chance I'll be able to get past RippleSurge on Ruthless (Difficulty 4), and I've so far not been able to Duo Past the first AV on Relentless (Difficulty 5) at all. Also, given I soloed it on Vicious, I'm downgrading it's difficulty rating by one tier. For Vicious to be rated 7, I would have needed to fail it and not get past the first few missions.

Solo Vicious RippleSurge is Down. ... Finally. That was a tough fight. About 20-25m to clear 1/3 to 1/2 of the map to give me room to work. About 20-25m to clear the bug issues. Then about 20-25m to take down RippleSurge himself. Can't say exactly, but I did use 2 lore, and pretty sure I didn't get to the 3rd lore, but it was recharging. Primary Issues: The Bug - I suggest not trying to solo it till this is fixed. Confusion Protection hole in my armor. This one will destroy my dps and likely allow Ripple to Heal on Ruthless and above. A tiny defense gap when not T9ed. I can't T9, because that 30s crash could be critical and let Ripple Heal, and there' no way he's going down in less than 7m (Max fight duration without a critical crash. I can cover one crash, not two). That gap will get exploited Ruthlessly on Ruthless and above. I do not expect to get past the last pool of the last mission, but I'm gonna try. I should be able to reach the last pool, just probably not get past it.

So ... 100 + 2 - 30 ... ~= 72% ... that would do it. For some reason LR wouldn't report in the combat monitor. It's probably in the logs, but I never think to pull the logs. I would love a ... Solo-Mode switch ... for all TFs, now that we have new tech. Probably exclusive of the Master Switch. No Solo-Mode Masters. Something along the lines of: AVs downgraded to EBs Emps downgraded to Astrals Astrals downgraded to Threads RMs divided by 10, min 1.

Threw ourselves at a Duo Relentless ASF again, with a Tank and /Rad this time. Still not enough. To-hit issues, and/or not enough -regen. I'm not sure if it's a to-hit check on Lingering Radiation. It's been so long since I had to worry about to-hit checks I can't remember if the -regen is auto-hit or not. Or if one /Rad simply isn't enough to completely shutdown regen. And with no-temps, I can't even use a power analyzer to check the AV. Maybe a pair of Illusion/Rad with more traditional builds. (Mine is heavily armored, and can't afford to swap incarnates around and lose any recharge at all). Or Maybe a Trio. I'd place good bets on a Trio pulling it off, and expect sooner or later we'll see just that, if not myself, then someone else.