Werner

The map was very helpful, and I just successfully avoided the ambush. Thank you!

Similar experience here earlier today doing a minimum difficulty ITF. Took out the fluffies, started on Romulus, and when he spoke and triggered the first ambush, I was reminded of this, and headed to the door to see what would happen. I fought the first ambush, but no further ambushes came out of the door. In case relevant, I had also been curious what would happen if I flew at maximum height over Romulus, then turned off the jet back to skydive onto him. The only thing that seemed a little unusual was that I was able to do that without triggering the cut scene until I was skydiving. I doubt that had anything to do with a lack of ambushes, but it was one thing I did differently from my normal. Also, earlier, despite flying straight up and to the oracle, I triggered the ambush. I'm still not clear what exactly does and doesn't trigger them. Edit: Ran it again. This time went to the ambush door after the first fluffy went down. No ambushes. Edit: Third time. No dive bombing, just straight in, then drag Romulus to the door, no ambushes. It seems to be consistent.

As I recall, they wanted to get rid of the counterintuitive nature of the current rules where lowering your recharge can make a power better. That mechanic amused me, and I abused it, but I admit it wasn’t intuitive. Hopefully their replacement will make more sense.

Bio is good, but I’m not sure I’d even say it’s the best armor set overall. It depends on what you want your armor set to do. I suppose this is a DPS thread so yes, it’s good for improving damage. But it wouldn’t be in my top several choices for tanking for instance. Titan Weapons is a clearer outlier in my opinion.

Amazing! Congratulations! Well, maybe there's a challenge for us, then, since clearly a maxed buffed MoITF is too easy (LOL). I can't imagine it's possible on a Scrapper, but do we think it's even possible to do a Tanker run with "no incarnates" added to the list? Just the level shift is brutal. Probably impossible on anything without DDR. My Dark/MA would get slaughtered without Barrier. My Shield/MA... it seems unlikely that I could survive the level shift and the loss of Cardiac. And the level shift plus the loss of Reactive and Assault would destroy my DPS. Yeah, there's no way I'd have the DPS even if I somehow survived. Custom-built Invuln/TW before it gets nerfed? Invuln has lowish endurance requirements. Best hit points. Titan Weapons has great damage so might have enough to do level 54 AVs even when they're a true +4 and with no Musculature, Interface, or Hybrid. I don't know. And no heal. Well, not much of a heal. Grab a lot of regen bonuses and the healing procs. Maybe? I really don't know. Eh, I'm going to finish up the Shield/MA before I start on some new project. Someone else would beat me to it anyway. 😉

This could significantly speed things up! And awesome job! I was still fiddling with builds and wondering if this is even possible, and you just go knock that sucker out of the park! Woot! I’m relieved in a way. I don’t think I’ll even try now. I’m just happy it was done. 🙂

I did it with Shield as well, at least if we count beta. But the build is almost complete on live. I might be able to tackle it for real next weekend and try to get a better time.

I think there are better choices, particularly for this challenge, but I have a strong nostalgic fondness for Dark Armor, so I wanted to see how far I could push it. It’s not weak, at least.

I’m game! 😁

Was that on the Scrapper? My thought was to have both, though. 75% SLEN resistance PLUS Rebirth. I think it might take both to survive the final fight on a Scrapper.

DDR makes it easier, but I did it with a Dark/MA Tanker using Storm Kick and Barrier as my “DDR”.

I was thinking Cardiac and Rebirth, suspecting that even with everything else, we might not have enough healing and regeneration for the autohit fluffy and three other AVs. Well, two since we can hover. So I’m thinking target 75% EN resistance without Barrier (because Rebirth) and without Melee (because only 50% uptime and no Barrier backing it up). 75% EN is tight but doable. My first rough draft got there with amplifiers, but its 55% SL defense with amplifiers wasn’t what I was hoping for, and I had other issues. Admittedly that’s with 1 in range of Invincibility, which doesn’t reflect what’s actually going on. I’ll have to experiment on beta to see what a good target is in practice to avoid cascading defense failure with Cimerorans, or at least make it rare enough to only occasionally run. If we don’t need Melee, we can go Assault for extra DPS to help reduce time exposed to danger. Your attack chain sounds promising in that regard. Anyway, those are my initial thoughts on how to crack this nut. You may be right, though. It certainly gives you more build flexibility if you don’t need every single EN resistance bonus available, and you’re right about being able to manipulate when you need the resistance except in the final AV fight. I just... that final AV fight. 🙂

I started fiddling with a build in Mids, and getting it to where I want it to be looks pretty rough, even if I use amplifiers and I sacrifice everything that doesn’t help with the challenge. We’ll see I guess.

I’m no arbiter of the rules, but given that the game doesn’t turn them off, I personally consider “no P2W” as an optional additional restriction. More impressive to do it without, but still impressive to do it with. I did my Katana/Dark Brute and Dark/MA Tanker runs without. I did my Shield/MA run with because I was trying to get the best time. As with pylon runs and everything else, I think the important thing is to be up front about what you used and what you didn’t. Like I don’t generally use Lore. But there’s nothing saying I can’t. So it’s an optional additional restriction. I specifically built and beta tested my Shield/MA Tanker around using the P2W Defense Amplifier, but not the Offense or Survival Amplifier. I’m willing to pay 2.5 million per hour in normal play, but not 7.5 million. So I consider P2W defense part of the build, but not the other two. Very arbitrary, and very contentious to call any of them part of a build. But I see no need for a semantic debate about what counts as part of the build and not, as long as I’m honest about what I use. I see this challenge similarly. Does “no temps” turn off base empowerment buffs? I think I’ve never used them on anything ever.

I agree with Invuln. I earlier proposed Katana/Invuln for the extra smashing/lethal defense buffer in combination with 50% DDR to handle Cimerorans. Now I’m thinking DM/Invuln, and crank smashing/lethal defense well over 45% with bonuses and P2W to handle defense debuffs. P2W for extra regeneration. Rebirth. Not sure how high EN resist can go, but maybe 75% with P2W? Target Bright Novas to avoid their cascading defense failure. Hover for the final fight to split off Rommy. Tanker-like HP, softcap hopefully undebuffable defense, 75% resistance, good regen and healing. Sounds doable to me.

Yeah, particularly in Tanker form, where you can hit 90% resistance with quite a few hit points left, I think Super Reflexes tends to be underestimated. Even knowing the math, it can be hard to believe just how hard an SR Tanker can be to kill. It does take being fairly injured to get to maximum immortality, so I can imagine some vulnerability to damage spikes with buffed enemies, but I guess with all that juicy DDR to compensate, @Bill Z Bubba demonstrates that it's a very solid choice.

Yep, and +50% accuracy and +50% damage means 2.25 times more incoming damage than usual, with nastier spikes. As I recall, they also pick up 50% mez resistance for 2/3 normal duration of mez?

Call it a proof of concept. 🙂 That’s how I feel about the run I did on beta with Shield/MA. Decided I like the character, now making him on live for some “official” runs. Hit 50 this morning and finished task force commander. Still quite a bit required to get into fighting shape, but I’ll get there.

You got this. 🙂

I did it with my Dark/MA, but it was slow and iffy. My planned Shield/MA did make for a very smooth and speedy buffed maxed ITF on beta. I don’t think I’ll ever get down to @Tsuko’s Rad/SS time. I plan to try, though, once I have my Shield/MA finished on live (currently 48). 🙂

If that’s a “challenge accepted” smile, I thought you didn’t want to see another ITF for a decade! 😉 I admit that I’m thinking of trying it myself on beta, but I’ve got a lot on my plate right now so I’m unlikely to get to it. And it sounds painful. I mean, yeah, I’m a CoH masochist, but there are limits!

Congratulations! Faster than my Brute, which I think was around four hours. I’ll be extra impressed if anyone does this on a Scrapper. Hmmm, how would I even approach it? I guess “all” you need is a Scrapper with soft capped defenses, high DDR, capped lethal and negative resists, and a whole lot of healing, right? So... DM/SR with Rebirth rocking enough hit points and resistance to cap lethal and negative resists using scaling resists before their hit points get low enough to get one shotted? But with enemies buffed, I’m not sure it’s possible to avoid being one-shotted. If we have low enough hit points, they’ll one shot us through 75% resistance. If we don’t have low enough hit points to cap our resists, they’ll one shot us from lack of resists and Scrapper hit points. Maybe an Invuln, then? Katana/Invuln? Katana, 50% DDR, and high lethal defense handles the defense debuffs, Invuln easily caps lethal resists, focus set bonuses on negative resists, use Dull Pain and set bonuses to get as many hit points as possible, take rebirth to try to stay topped up to handle the big hits. It might work. Might be tough to build, and require some luck, but I bet it’s possible. Difficult, but possible.

Haha, OK, this version of my build has done a solo no-temps no-inspirations enemies-buffed +4x8 ITF with no deaths. I think it did 280 DPS, but I'm not finding it right now. After that, I sacrificed some survivability to get to 363 DPS with Divine Avalanche. Chain is Golden Dragonfly -> Gloom -> Soaring Dragon -> Divine Avalanche. This is my current build. As I recall, the main sacrifices were being weaker to endurance debuffs and drains and to hit debuffs. The plan was to also pick up Ageless Radial, and switch between that and Barrier Core depending on the enemy. I did a little testing on beta that suggested that would do the trick for the enemies the live build had trouble with. But I never got Ageless on live, because I almost immediately rolled a Dark Armor/Martial Arts Tanker, and never looked back. Though now I'm leveling a Shield Defense/Martial Arts Tanker that seemed even better while testing on beta. Anyway, my current Katana/Dark build could probably do the ITF with the same conditions as the other build, though it would be riskier and might take a few tries, but I haven't tried. This is the one I'd build, well, clearly since I did. But if you want max and better proven survivability and are willing to sacrifice 80 DPS to get it, you could go with the first build. But neither are going to be AoE powerhouses, so depending on what you're after, neither build may suit you.

Yeah, buffed is harder, but it’s mostly a big bump to incoming damage rather than some categorical shift in enemy capability. And as long as you can get enough DPS for the AVs, Tanker will of course be easier than Brute. I think you’re seeing that it’s probably possible with the right build. 👍

Congratulations! It makes me so happy seeing people do this. I need to finish leveling and IOing and incarnating my Shield/MA and get back to this on live instead of beta. I know I can’t beat your time, but I know I can at least beat my own time, which will still put a big smile on my face.