Overclock

Yeah, I caught some of the problems with the build about a day after I posted it. The final build brought the LotGs down to 5, added in the two resist set +Def IOs and still got to soft capped Melee, Smash and Lethal defense. Shield is a boring set, but that's a feature in this case since the goal of the build was to give something to a 72 year old player who's not particularly careful about which powers he presses in which order. Boring with tons of defense and an inexhaustible supply of End means no need to pay attention, you can just charge into everything and have fun.

Did a bit more tinkering and came up with this as my best first pass effort: Durable Brute - Brute (Dark Melee).mxd

Anyone have some good IO'ing tricks to help max out of the survivability of a Dark Melee / Willpower Brute? Or a build that plays as more or less indestructible? With my early Mids efforts, I'm getting capped Def to S/L and F/C but E/N is only at about 30% and none of the resists are anywhere near the cap (S/L is closest in the high 60s). Regen's a bit over 600% and Max HP is up around 2400 with the accolades in effect which is more of both than I have on a lot of builds, I just don't have a good sense of how resilient that will be in actual play.

This isn't quite fair to players without influence, but have you tried using Envemoned Daggers? They're available from the P2W Vendor in Nova Praetoria and they pack an enormous amount of -Regen (500% if memory servers). That should be plenty enough to let you outpace his regen. I'll admit, it's not a great answer since people shouldn't be dependent on temp powers, but it is an option for getting past him if you're stuck. Or you can team with someone and the extra damage they bring should do the trick (though again, not a great option with how sparsely populated the gold zones are).

One note: Increase Density gives the +Resistance to everyone it hits, but only the person you target gets the mezz resistance part of the effect. It's weird and annoying, but important to remember since it means you do need to cast it individually on people who need the Mezz Prot (if you care, generally squishies can fend for themselves).

I'm surprised no one has mentioned this before me, but the tried and true method for taking out most EBs and AVs is: Step 1.) Go to Bloody Bay Step 2.) Lose your fear of being ganked because no one is there anymore Step 3.) Earn a Shivan temp power by doing the quick mission for them Step 4.) Unleash Shivan on EB/AV. Step 5.) Help Shivan out if you feel like it (actually required on AVs, often not on EBs) Step 6.) Profit! Seriously, the Shivan temp power can be an incredibly decisive factor in any tough fight and its so easy to get these days. The P2W Vendor has other temp summons available but they're generally weaker than a Shivan and can be a lot pricier than an quick trip to Bloody Bay.

You make a compelling case @Mercurias. I've played AR before on live and haaated it, pretty much for the reasons mentioned. Looking between /Ice and /Nin, it's a harder call. Both have their issues and their strengths. /Ice I think has a perk over /Nin in this case though -> Ice Patch has some synergy with Ignite and packs higher damage in it's early attacks, where /Nin offers control. Also, since I won't be using Set IOs (apart from a KB->KD proc potentially), the LotG slotting advantage to /Nin goes away. So...since at least a few seem to be voting for it, I guess AR/Nin is the least survivable solo Blaster option?

I'm kind of leaning towards Sonic/Nin based on the thoughts above. When the "Flavor of the Month" post came out, I rolled up a Fire/Fire Stalker because those were the lowest picked sets for Stalker Primary and Secondary to make it to 50 and the combo turned out to be wonderfully fun to play. I'm not expecting Sonic/Nin to be anywhere near as enjoyable but I think it fits the bill of not being a (positive) outlier in terms of performance (aka no worries about "well of course Sonic/Nin Blasters can solo, they're the OP exception"). The other bonus is I've never played Sonic or Nin on a Blaster (only Sonic on a Defender) so it'll be nice to run with some sets that are new to me. I also like the idea of facing mezz heavy foes. CoT should work fine at low levels, and there's *plenty* of other options at higher ones. I'll have to eventually tackle Carnies, Malta, and Knives probably since those can be a nightmare even under good circumstances. At +0/x1 though (which is all someone who's having trouble soloing should really be trying) I think they should be fine. The only thing I think it's fair to avoid is Praetoria. Praetoria is a great set of zones, with some well written story arcs and interesting missions, even more so when you add in the First Ward and Night Ward, but it's definitely not where players who are having trouble surviving should be dipping their toes.

I guess since the point of this exercise is to show how to handle solo missions with even the "worst" combo, that I should also put in the rider for "no IOs" since solo only players are also likely to cry "but I'm too poor to afford IOs" (to which I would point them towards @Shinobu and her amazing guides on working the AH for 100M in a week). I should say "no IOs"...but with one caveat* for Sudden Acceleration. I'm almost morally opposed to playing - or seeing someone else play - an AoE KB set and not have the KB->KD proc slotted. If it's a teammate, I'll usually suck it up and just bear with it, but AoE KB, *ESPECIALLY* Radial AoE KB, is a level of evil I simply cannot be party to. The other thing I need to work out is which missions would be the best to showcase? As in which missions/enemies are people the most likely to give up on playing their blaster after facing? I don't think I need to literally solo to 50 to prove out that it's possible (the old MAN builds proved you didn't even need powers to get to 50), and this is more to show *how* to handle the rough patches, rather than prove that they can be handled (with Blasters soloing Mo{Everything} I think the proof's already there). *other caveats may apply - some builds just demand certain IOs

Blasters have a reputation of being "hard to solo" and "floor magnets" with but as a high damage AT they can handle a lot of solo missions simply via overwhelming offense. I want to put together a video series for new players showing how to handle both the basic missions and some of the tougher ones you can reasonably take on solo (aka not soloing a MoITF, just normal stuff, like soloing a Posi 1 or the regular arc missions). My feeling is that those can be done with basically ANY Blaster combo. But which one is the hardest? Which, in your experience or estimation, is *THE* worst combo of Primary and Secondary for surviving soloing content. Not "completing", since a combo can be miserable because it's sloooow, but rather the combo which makes it the hardest to avoid debt entirely.

Is that the unmodified Recharge time or does adding Recharge enhancements decrease the chance of the attack providing a stack of Assassin's Focus?

Bane's have some great melee options, and can provide an impressive amount of team support. The build for it is pretty simple too. For offensive support you can lean on Venom Grenade + Surveillance + Arctic Breath (from Leviathan Mastery) to provide a ton of -Resist (can also throw in Poisonous Ray for -Def and an Achille's Proc). For defensive support you can can provide Tactical: Maneuvers (10% base - much higher than regular Maneuvers), as well as the other Leadership toggles.

Not commenting on this particular build at all, just shooting down the idea that Traps and Devices are in any sense equivalent. What this build offers that Devices can't is -1,000% regen and -26% Res. There's a bunch of other debuffs, but those two alone can turn an AV fight into a trivial endeavor. Devices is a fun powerset, but it simply doesn't have that kind of impact on hard content.

There are some odd choices there from what I see. For example: - You're slotting Combat Jumping with Blessing of the Zephyr for Ranged and AoE defense, assumedly, but you're already well over the soft cap on both. - Also, despite having a lot of defense powers, there's no Luck of the Gambler: +Rech IOs slots (and it can't be a cost issue because there's plenty of pricey IOs in the build). - Slotting 2x Pancea in Health seems odd, when a Numina's or Miracle could fit in there instead. - Why leave Venom Grenade until 49 too? It's -Res is an important part of a Soldier's kit and with 1 slot it's horribly underslotted. - Mu Mastery is an interesting choice. Leviathan Mastery is the more common option. Was there a synergy with Mu that the build is striving for? Overall the build seems like it could trade off a lot of the +Def its currently got since it shoots far past soft cap and shoot for +Rech instead since there's a number of powers that you want up as often as conceivably possible.

I think when you're talking about fighting end game AV's it's a mistake to discount Rad as being "only for soloing" or "clunky in a team setting". Rad's toggle debuffs can be a pain on a team because teams will inevitably kill the debuff anchor, or knock things out of the debuff cloud. That's not ever an issue with AVs though. With an AV as the anchor it doesn't matter if the anchor dies (and they're not going to die first) and they're not going to be knocked back into another spawn either. If you're solely focused on high level AV killing then you have to be willing to admit that the trash around the AVs isn't particularly meaningful. Every other AT can obliterate those just fine, and at no level has a TF ever stalled out because a regular boss was too hard for the team to get through. Compared to the other AV-killing sets, Rad has a lot of advantages too: Storm -> really only offers -Resist as a meaningful debuff on AVs. Completely lacks -Regen. Also the -Resist is location based so a mobile AV can waltz out of it. Traps -> Again, AVs can leave the area the Traps are setup in. It's not a common problem, but unless the Rad user is foolish enough to get mezzed or run out of End, the AV's not escaping the toggle debuffs and can't escape the -Regen debuff either. Cold -> Can match and exceed Rad's debuff totals but requires a boatload of recharge to do it. Without serious set IO slotting Ice will have significant gaps in the coverage its debuffs supply. This is fine if you are only interested in Perma-Hasten level builds, but even in that range Rad has a small advantage that a bunch of -Recharge debuffs won't send it's performance plummeting down into the gutter.