Soloing City of Heroes

[Sir Myshkin]

The Experience

I went digging, I do a lot of sleuthing about on the nitty gritty of the game these days, looking for a small bit of information on a specific Task Force the other night that I found myself soloing simply for the heck of it. By the other end of it I came up pretty empty handed both in regards to that Task Force, and just the general fact that there was strangely a lack of discussion around the idea of soloing it. Hoped back onto the forums from beyond Google to see if there were ever any threads with open discussion about soloing content, thoughts, experiences, just anything in general in the last few months. Not a thing specifically designated to that purpose. So I figured, why not open that floor up and see what the thoughts are out there?

 

I recently took on the challenge of building a Titan Weapon/Regeneration Scrapper with the explicit purpose of putting it through as much challenging content as I could, with as much solo as I find the time to do. The game was quiet, so I decided I'd try and take a peak around Khallisti Wharf for the first time ever, and also take a swing at the Task Force (Market Crash) while I was around. I hadn't actually taken a tour through it yet, and thought it'd be fun to try and run something brand new. There's relatively no direct-link resource for that TF, so it was a bit of a blind-run (not a big deal, really), until the end with the last AV (Crimson Prototype). That thing smoked me within 15 seconds and I was, truly and honestly, baffled. I hosp'd and took another swing, got it about 1/5 down before it happened again... just flat-lined out of no where. Que growing rage.

 

For an AV, the Crimson Prototype is kind of annoying, but in a solo circumstance I was finding him, on that build, irritatingly difficult and it wasn't until another death, and really looking at the combat log that I realized it causes -MaxHP. I knew I had a ton of effective debuffs stacking on me, but not a lot of time to really stop and question them individually in my fight to kill that thing, and stay alive at the same time. There's also the fun little fact that whenever it manages to get a hold of, or summon a Force Field Generator, that tiny little drone makes the CP effectively untouchable. Its debuffs are what killed it for me on a Regen, though. I could cycle a lot of +Def and +Res, and hold up for a considerable amount of time without question, but at the end of it all Regeneration is one of my key elements, and that guy was stripping me down 100's of HP at a shot to the point where I was getting dropped by half, making those meager 150-200 damage attacks critical me.

 

In the end I had to fold and give up the TF. It didn't matter if my Regen ridiculously high, it was chopping my hit points right out from under me. In the end, I might not have made the attempt if I'd come across a more definitive "btw, watch out for this..." I'll possibly revisit it down the road once I have the last few sets catalyzed in my build, and the Incarnates at least all T3 (versus only having Alpha and T1 Judgement).

 

The Call to Action!

That being said, I wanted to call out to others whose quest is to solo the content of our great city on their thoughts, tips, tricks, or stories they've experienced that might weigh in on the idea for others. What lessons did you learn, or what event happened that no other soul got to witness but you, alone in that dark cavern beneath Oranbega? I wanted to hear from others, to share those memories into something constructive for others, if anyone's interested.

 

What's your Solo:

• Best Experience
• Favorite Content
• Task Force Tips
• AV Challenges
• GM Takedowns
• Bang-for-Buck Arcs
• Merit-Making Side-Runs
• Soul Crushing Defeats
• World Breaking Wins
• Solo Questions
• Advanced Warnings
• Overall Tricks

 

If enough people dive in and there's a good flow of info, I may even go back and edit it together into an archive/table of contents.

[nihilii]

I've soloed every TF in the game save for Reichsman on my fire/rad sentinel. Some thoughts here, as well as great insights from other players: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/6721-silly-sentinel-tricks/

For Crimson Prototype, my go-to strategy is to use Lore pets and generously break line of sight when -maxHP starts stacking up, as to let aggro switch between me and my pets. Also helps if you have as much absorb sources as possible, as absorb isn't affected by -maxHP.

The force field generators are summoned at 75% hp, 50% hp and 25% hp - one per player, and only once each time. The Prototype is immune to all damage as long as at least one FFG is alive, even if that FFG is all the way to the back of the map.

On top of -maxHP, I think the Crimson Prototype has one particular attack that seems (?) to deal unresistable damage, on a very long timer.

Yet another possible strategy: you can pull the Crimson Prototype to the PPD cops at the entrance of the map, which is just up the hill. Although it's worth noting the Prototype spawns Raider adds every now and then, and I think those adds are spawned according to targets in range rather than players - so NPCs add to that count too. Definitely something to keep in mind for builds with no defense debuff resistance.

Brute force strategy can also work, as the Crimson Prototype is "just" a level 50 AV. On a high damage character, damagecapping yourself with insps might let you defeat it in a minute or two.

Edited November 25, 2019 by nihilii

[Veracor]

I've soloed a good amount of this game as a Bio/TW Tanker just for the hell of it, which is a powerset combination very high on sustained damage.  However, Tanker is certainly not the AT to be soloing on and I often had to rely on a temp pet or two to supplement the low Tanker numbers against GMs.  TW/WP or TW/Bio Scrapper/Brute specced defensively (stuff like Shield Wall x4's and winter IOs), Savage/Bio Stalker, Fire/Storm Corruptor against AVs that don't run away, Fire/Storm or Grav/Storm Controllers against AVs that do run away, and a few outliers like procmonster Fire/TA or Rad/TA Blaster can demolish a lot of content solo.  Turns out -res is really strong (who knew!).

 

A lot of people have recently been crunching this game for solo, and the TF speedrunning competitions are starting to take interest for solo/duo category runs.  Hasn't broken into categories by AT yet, though, so Scrapper's been dominating the results.

 

Some general tips:

 

Chug inspirations like candy to gottagofast (Disclaimer: Don't chug candy), and disable the wakies because they'll stop you from chugging.

 

Auction House can be used to buy insps in bulk to claim between missions, email can be used to store insps to claim during missions.

 

Most damage is Lethal/Smashing/Energy and some Fire.  The other damage types only show up in dangerous amounts in specific TFs/Trials.

 

Solo on bigger team size if you're an AT or powerset that benefits from having additional targets (such as Warshade).

 

Temp powers allow you to fill in holes on your build.  Some of them can be bought at the P2W vendor, some of them can be had from doing specific arcs in Oro.  Envenomed Dagger and Kinetic Dampener are crazy value for their inf cost, as long as you remember to renew them after every batch of TFs you run.

 

Defensive ATs such as Tanker will benefit better from temp powers that summon, while offensive ATs benefit better from toggles/damage buffs.

 

Signature Summon powers from the P2W vendor vary heavily in what they summon, including alignment.  Switching to rogue and using the Tank Summon to get Lord Recluse seems to yield an abnormal amount of damage, and I personally get to tank for LR's own pet, too (which I presume is the intended weakness of this one: part of its DPS is killable).

 

You'll probably use Ageless Destiny for everything so your build can afford to be pretty harsh on endurance and recharge (Unless you're an AT that needs Clarion for mez prot).

 

Speaking of Destiny, Controllers can get perma-able mez prot in their Psionic Mastery epic pool (Combined with Combat Jumping and/or Acrobatics) so they can skip Clarion forever.  Which is good, because they're probably /Storm for the damage which eats endurance like crazy, and Leaping for the gottagofast speedrunners.

 

Longbow Lore pets apply lots of -regen, and Banished Pantheon pets apply lots of -res (doubly so if you're cold or negative damage).

 

As for my own knowledge (Won't bother with a lot of the easy/slog TFs):

 

Redside respec trials were all solo-able.  Blueside respec trials were still solo-able as a tank, but definitely way harder.  Freakshow bosses coming back to life and aggro caps, ugh.

 

Descent to the Hydra trial was pretty fun to solo as a Tanker, because the damage on the boss is fixed so it really made Bio shine down there in the sewers.  Probably the only trial that Tanker is preferred for solo?  Eden was a fun one regardless, but offensive ATs will excel here because the Crystal Titan will oneshot summons (or it will when they don't fall off the platform and lose line of sight, typical pets).

 

The Market Crash AV is pretty tough solo if you just sit in one place or don't summon anything else to take aggro for you.  You'll need to kill shield generators at 75/50/25 life and you need to let the maxHP debuff wear off, unless you don't really care and just die to reset it.  Summoned temp pets can get squished/distracted/stuck in ragdoll from knockback pretty easily here, so this TF solo definitely favors high DPS.

 

Lady Grey TF is an interesting solo favoring the ranged ATs because pool powers can literally kill yellows, but I know it's been done on Scrappers and Stalkers regardless.  Ice Melee has an advantage here with its big DPA attack also being a hold, but a big take-away is to use Enhancement Unslotters during this TF to swap out your hold abilities for Lockdown's +2 mag proc.  You'll eat fewer EoEs killing the greens, and yes you do have to kill all the Mitos for the mission to complete (Killing Hamidon first extends the mission, as you then need to kill the Buds).  Honoree may require pets for additional damage, or else his actives could recharge during the fight.

 

I know a few people who tried to solo Dr. Kahn and weren't able to kill Reichsman before running out of temp power charges.  Not even with Ultimates and super reds going, but they all tried it on Scrappers.  Maybe a character focused on -res could make it work (Psy/Cold Corruptor comes to mind with its strong singletarget chain and -regen as well, but Psy has terrible AoE so that might need to be Fire instead).

 

Barracuda SF has to be soloed by a Defender or a Mastermind due to the AT restriction.  As far as I know the adds do eventually run out to prevent intentional farming, but there's a ton of them to get through.  Rad/Thermal Fire Defender is the best shot here, I guess, but it would still take ages to clear the adds.

 

Other:

 

I've led somewhere around 350 iTrial badge/master runs since Homecoming started and I can't think of any that could be soloed aside from Keyes (AM has no level shift and doesn't naturally regen, can aggro warworks to jump off of terminal platforms, but you'd need to be Bio or WP to reliably survive and recover from Disintegration).  Maaaybe Lambda with temp power usage and psi damage and/or res debuffs?  We have, however, completed some iTrials with fewer than the minimum required players just for fun (multibox accounts to get ourselves in, then quitting the league with the dummies).  I thought BAF's prisoner phase would be impossible with only one team, but the number of prisoners was scaled down pretty hard (Scaled down to less than the minimum 12 players?  We're not sure).

Edited November 25, 2019 by Veracor

[Sovera]

Funny enough I just come from raging against Market Crash's last boss. It always has a 22.5% chance to hit. I thought it was due to some incarnate shiz, but not, after loading up on purples ON TOP of my softcap it still had 22.5%. I then tried loading up on oranges but despite lasting longer I still got two shot eventually. I was unaware of the -HP since I've messed with my buff icons and it doesn't show.

 

It made me so disgusted with my Sentinel, which frankly I had been eyeing sideways for a while, that I feel I'll just ditch it and go back to something that actually does damage like a scrapper.

[Extor Prime]

Ill/Cold/Ice (or Mace).

 

GMs: I've taken down everything except Lusca, Avatar of Devouring Earth and Seed of Hamidon solo. I think. Might be missing some.

 

Soloed the Freedom Phalanx TFs, but at 1/1/1/1 with a crapton of P2W powers.

 

Soloed ITF at 4/8/1/1. 

 

Favorite content so far was the signature arcs. Did all at 4/8/1/1, but had to bump down the diff in 2 missions because they are bugged: instead of spawning several ambushes in sequence all ambushes spawn at once. Iamverybadass.jpg, but I couldn't handle what looked like a hundred mobs stuffed in a very small indoor map. Sig arcs are very gainful too because lots of merits.

 

 

Edited November 25, 2019 by Extor Prime

[Parabola]

This very much depends on what you mean by soloing the game - is it solo as much as possible as you go along or get to a high level, build and then solo big stuff? They are two very different prospects in terms of what's possible and what is a good choice of character. In another thread we have been discussing this from the angle of trying to complete as much of the game as possible as part of the levelling process. This means being stuck at low levels, with few powers and slots to play with for long periods of time. The problem with the real powerhouse GM soloing builds is that they all seem to be endgame propositions requiring powers only available late on and serious IO investment to work. I came to the conclusion that the character I wanted for a content runner (basically some sort of stalker, scrapper or brute) and the character I wanted for endgame GM tomfoolery (Ill/cold_rad_traps_dark_etc) just weren't the same thing.

[Sir Myshkin]

6 hours ago, parabola said:

This very much depends on what you mean by soloing the game - is it solo as much as possible as you go along or get to a high level, build and then solo big stuff? They are two very different prospects in terms of what's possible and what is a good choice of character.

That point of discussion is open floor to anyone as they choose to respond to it. I have a close friend who spent 75% of his active time playing City of Heroes pre-sunset purely solo. He'd roll a new character and work through contacts exclusively alone, and only team periodically for things like the Task Force badges or difficult AV's (pre IO's). It wasn't that he was adverse to people and teaming, he just really enjoyed digging through the lore of the game and taking his time to experience it all.

[Lines]

3 minutes ago, Sir Myshkin said:

That point of discussion is open floor to anyone as they choose to respond to it. I have a close friend who spent 75% of his active time playing City of Heroes pre-sunset purely solo. He'd roll a new character and work through contacts exclusively alone, and only team periodically for things like the Task Force badges or difficult AV's (pre IO's). It wasn't that he was adverse to people and teaming, he just really enjoyed digging through the lore of the game and taking his time to experience it all.

Same boat. Can’t go too slow for me.

 

I enjoy teaming, particularly on builds that have a clear place in a team, but I can’t beat kicking my feet up and quietly meandering along through the stories.

Edited November 25, 2019 by Lines

[Haijinx]

I generally do not solo if there are teams around.  But my schedule means i miss peak times for anywhere basically.  

 

Lately though i am doing a completionist run, so I am soloing everything.

 

I have all the goldside, blueside and redside 1-20 done (that can be oro where applicable)

 

Im saving the TFs for the end though.

 

====

Sounds like market crash might not happen based on Sovera's post. 

 

[Sovera]

30 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

Sounds like market crash might not happen based on Sovera's post. 

 

Others here have said that they managed it though. All a matter of blocking LoS until the -HP debuff has passed or somesuch.

[Snarky]

Last night I joined a PUG tree spec (1st) for the badge and merits on my main.  Good team and we rocked it.  One thing at the end caught me by surprise.  The team was explaining to a new player about the tree at the end.  This is after we killed the vines.  I got bored and charged the AV.  It took them about a mi Ute to folllow me in. I was shocked at what was happening.  Now my main is an I/o monster with all tier 4 incarnates but we were playing at 30 or 35. I was untouchable. Not shocking the AV was not even scratching my paint. What was shocking is I was soloing it effectively. Not fast.  It the health on this thing was noticeably decreasing at a very predictable rate.  Then the team jumped in and it popped down fast.  I never thought it was possible to solo an AV for me especially exemplared. But evidently it is possible at least against some AVs

[EmmySky]

I took my 50 tank to ouro and soloed Cavern of Transcendence.  I didnt remember there was a monster in there.  Last time I did it had to be 05 or so, still needed 8 people to clickie simultaneously.  I just did it on a lark because someone said they changed it and its soloable now. 

 

Tanks arent known for their damage output but TankYou managed to take down the beast!  Slowly, yeah, but she succeeded! 

 

I was so shocked and surprised that I, someone who doesn't even understand IOs and incarnates yet, someone who has never min/max built or anything remotely similar, managed it that I am considering her for some TF solo runs just to 'see what shes made of'.  

 

I will follow this thread and hopefully others like me, with little clue about building massive power, will join the conversation.  You dont have to be the best builder out there for some of this stuff, and that is awesome!

[Sir Myshkin]

6 hours ago, EmmySky said:

Tanks aren't known for their damage output

If the damage balance (buff) manages to eventually make its way to the live server, you'll be in for a big surprise in performance.

 

7 hours ago, Haijinx said:

Sounds like market crash might not happen based on Sovera's post

We're going to need a soloist support group for Crimson Prototype...

[Lost Ninja]

10 hours ago, Sir Myshkin said:

That point of discussion is open floor to anyone as they choose to respond to it. I have a close friend who spent 75% of his active time playing City of Heroes pre-sunset purely solo. He'd roll a new character and work through contacts exclusively alone, and only team periodically for things like the Task Force badges or difficult AV's (pre IO's). It wasn't that he was adverse to people and teaming, he just really enjoyed digging through the lore of the game and taking his time to experience it all.

I solo... but play three accounts at once... 😉 

 

So probably not solo... still enjoy what I do though and I think that is what counts. 😄 

[jubakumbi]

My life mantra is "I do what I want, when I want, with whom I want".

Has not really changed since I was a teenager, now in my 50s.

I mostly soloed the game on Live, I solo the game now as none of my RL friends wanted to come back.

From my PoV, I have to wait on other humans in my way all the time, everyday in the real world.

The last thing I need in my playtime is having to wait for some random person to go AFK and have the rest of the team not want to do anything until they return.

On the other hand, the last thing I want to do is make some other random human wait for me to go fill my bowl.

 

The virtual world is really one of the only places I can truly enjoy my free time without having another human decide to ruin or waste it.

Just look at some of the posters here, waiting, prepared with lists of 'undesirable playstyles', ready to lecture and correct others on the 'right' way to play.

I don't need that in my life, thanks. 🙂

 

With IOs and Incarante powers, my characters can actually become Super, unlike so many other MMO games where the boundries prevent a single character from clearing content.

IMO, the value of this game lies in the fact that there are no barriers preventing a single character from ultimate power. 

I love the FF MMO, right up until I am forced onto a team to clear content to progress in the main story, for example.

 

There is no "I" in team, which is why I don't team very much at all.

 

So far, my Elecx3 Dominator and my DP/MA Blaster have been very effective and fun.

Working on a couple Tanker ideas now.

 

Just because a game is an MMO, it does not have to mean you have to team, ever, I have played almost almost all of them solo.

The City was one of the first that really broke the need for a trinity in MMOs and I will always be thankful to it's creators for that alone.

 

IME, my free time on the planet is better spent playing games solo over waiting for other peoples RL difficulties to pass so I can kill more pixels.

[Megajoule]

Back when the game was live and new (late 2004), I soloed much of what content there was, so I could experience the game's story at my own pace.  That pace was often rather slow, as my main at the time was a Defender, but I didn't know any better. 😛

 

I still prefer to experience any new story content on my own; but for most other things, especially when playing a character with low defenses and/or damage output, I'd rather be on a team.

[Chirikiti]

I made it a point on live to solo all the non-tf content (story arcs, mayhems etc) on my two mains on the highest difficulty setting. This sorta meant something when there was only SOs and maybe some Hami hehe. When Going Rogue came out I took my main over to hero and did everything from the lowest to highest level. I preferred to experience new content solo AND I found at lower levels soloing was faster leveling than teaming

 

(Not a fan of blue-side content. Much of it is from the 'if you make it take a really long time artificially, they'll have to sub longer' school of game design, including the zone design and under 50 TFs.)

 

As for here. Given a second chance to play I wanted to play allll of it so, soloing the normal content was a must. But it was the TFs/Trials/Giant Monsters which really held my solo interest.

 

To-date I've solo'd all the TFs/Trials and GMs except: Barracuda, Kahn, Miss Liberty, ASN   and  Council War Walker (it's annoying to spawn and people show up) and Lusca (I forgot this was even a thing 'til this week O_o)

 

SOLO TFS AND GMS: 

 

***** NOTE ***** If you log in a second account to help with the tough parts of a TF/SF (say a hover brute during the miss Lib towers or some sort of helper for Reichsman, then you are NOT soloing it, you are duo'ing it. Other wise one could log in 4 accounts on 4 machines and 'solo' stuff'. Solo means your one toon and what you can bring to the table. ***** NOTE ***** (nothing wrong with a duo, my MLTF/Kahn/Apex duo's are in my bio)

 

*** Note ***  Personally, soloing GMs I don't use Lores for them. I started my GMs solos without using them so that's my standard. Other people's mileage may vary. That being said...I also intend to use 'em for Council WW and whatever else is left ((lazy hah))

 

 

Quick notes: Shadow Shards TFs bite. I did enjoy Faathim TF though and was my first oh man this guy is sorta hard AV (after having done all the other blue side TFs)

 

                     Citadel or Manti- whatever one you kill the rather tough bald guy AV in... oooh shit you mean another AV spawns? (Mother mayhem I think)...oh now I have to fight the first guy again (I was not expecting these to happen from the TF description hah)

 

                     Posi 1- barely a TF

 

                     Yin- Faster solo than with a team

 

                     Silver Mantis- The final mission took longer than the whole rest of the TF (all those turrets)

 

                     MoLRSF- Fun TF anytime. I basically fought everyone and everything instead of Mind-Dom-Cheesing them. Except the last mission, it's hilarious fun to see Yin gank all her friends. She really does a number on them hah. She wasn't too bad herself, dangerous, but in a manageable way

 

                     Apex- My first lets do a fake try see if it's viable wasn't the best, I dicked around on the police steps with the final 6 WW too long trying to be too clever, and my BM fight wasn't really planned out and she one-shotted me in melee range through a fresh barrier, an ultimate, and a couple super insps.

                               My successful second attempt went mmmmuch more smoothly and in about a 1/3 of the time, I played it much smarter with BMaiden.

                               *Apex is my fave content in the game. Love it. So winning this was a must.

                     

                     Tin Mage- Not my fave in general, I see it as the price of admission to an Apex hehe. Still can't solo Apex and not solo Tin Mage. Except Tin Mage is all freakin robots (psi not the most damaging vs robots and inanimate)...and there was the 4 AV problem at the end. Tanking all 4 while fighting each one in turn? oi

                     I don't remember my opening move buy I did fight Neuron alone (these guys are tough), and the 2 AV WW spawn. I think I died to them or bobcat not sure which. But I found some interesting mechanics. They follow you on the map no matter where you go. I load back into the map and they are right there at the spawn point zap dead hah. Okay insp up a little first. Then it was a straight tank both and take them down. Tough fight.

                     Which leaves Bobcat. F**kin Bobcat. The 1-shotter. I had a devil of a time with Bobcat. One-shotted me a number of times...and I was getting weary. So I said alright I'm using everything at my disposal (added in a Shivan, a signature summon, and I used all my Nukes). Win! phew. THAT was the toughest one.

 

                    Market Crash- My first foray was a I don't know anything about this so lets do a recon-solo see what it's all about...oh AV okies. Oh same AV fine. Oh look another freakin' giant robot. Okay well if I can solo the Kronos Titan GM with no lores etc I should be able to do this....nope. I was completely bamboozled by a giant KB, wtf?! I don't ever get KB, and then that threw me off...dead. So I ignored MC-solo until last week. Everything went smoothly...honestly it was a little bit easier than I expected considering my first disaster of a try.

 

                     Solo MOLGTF, MoITF, MoLRSF

             

 

Giant Monsters- Scrapyard was hard. His regen even with drain psyche is through the roof, lots of reds

                           Kronos Titan GM- I'm still sorta amazed cuz you know /psi vs robots...not the worst, lots of reds.

 

 

I highly recommend soloing TFs (and content in general) or Duo-ing/trioing them. You learn a LOT about NPC and powers behaviour, observations you'd never see in a team, and new ideas on how to approach problems. 

 

 

-Number-Six  THE Mind/Psi Dominator (=p) Vet level 565

 

 

                     

                    

                     

 

 

 

Edited November 26, 2019 by Chirikiti

[Shred Monkey]

My beam Rifle hover blaster is my new solo artist, but he just hit 50 and hasn't made the rounds yet.  He's solo'd a few GMs and a bunch of AVs.  Doing Battle Maiden in the Apex TF is probably the hardest thing he's done so far.

 

My favorite fight so far was doing the final DA boss on +4 with my StJ/Bio stalker.  It took every bit of healing/absorbing that I had to survive despite soft-capped defenses, and it took a few rounds of lore pets to beat it down all the way.   It was extremely satisfying to win a battle that had me right on the edge of failure for a good 10-15 minutes.

[tidge]

On 11/26/2019 at 12:13 PM, jubakumbi said:

🙂

 

There is no "I" in team

There is in Spanish.

[jubakumbi]

46 minutes ago, tidge said:

There is in Spanish.

I get along really well with Spanish speakers IME, so I will join those teams. 😉 

[Gulbasaur]

Best Experience

There's a Ritki War Zone mission that puts you up against some Ritki AV and then Nemesis. I solo'd fricken Nemesis. He was, like, the ultimate enemy in the early game, so coming back and taking him out felt pretty good. He can shove his whole forcefield up his arse, though. I am sure I took out the last 10% of his health bar about nine times. I'm also pretty pleased I could take out Dr Vaz exemped down to L16, admittedly with a decently IO'd build. I'm pretty certain it's doable with just SOs if you can deal with his regen. 

 

Favorite Content

First Ward into Night Ward - the story is just really well written and there's a good variety of mission types. I highly recommend it. 

 

Task Force Tips

More a trial tip: The reactor trials throw a lot of bosses at you in quick succession, which means you need a huge amount of AoE near the end and a way of getting aggro off the reactor. I nearly solo'd the Ritki one, but the boss rush at the end got the better of me.

 

Stock up on temporary powers before you go.

 

Also, a couple of the task forces have AVs, no matter what. Positron 2 always has Dr Vaz turn up as an AV, even if it's set to spawn an elite boss. Keep those envenomed daggers going and watch out for adds. 

 

AV Challenges

Envenomed Daggers and inspirations all the way. Most of them are more about endurance than anything else. 

 

Bang-for-Buck Arcs

The Signature story arcs are really well done and reward you very well for the time spent. I highly recommend them.

 

Merit-Making Side-Runs

Signature arcs, easily. 

 

Soul Crushing Defeats

Silver fricken Mantis. Even as an elite boss, she was harder than some AVs. She hits very hard, debuffs defence and is very sturdy. I had to come back with support and even then she one-shotted two of my teammates. 

 

Overall Tricks

Stock up on temporary powers - the wedding ring from the Striga arc is almost too good to use, but it's there so you should crank it out when you need to. You can buy a summon at the P2W vendor for relatively little and it's a good complement to your damage output and really works well alongside Lore pets. Envenomed daggers are worth getting if you plan to go AV-hunting. 

[Chirikiti]

Best Experience

 

This one is recent. Soloing my favourite TF in the game Apex/Tin Mage. Apex was fun and Battle Maiden solo with sword and NPCs and constant blue patches was fun. And finishing off 4 AVs (2 of which I had to fight at the same time, the Robots, was a thrill because the outcome was uncertain.

Honorable mention: I just love cheesing Yin with confuse at the end of an LRSF, it's hilarious to watch all the other AVs melt to her.

 

Favourite Content:

 

Dark Astoria story arc (not those repeatable missions). Challenging in places, great story, some excellent cut scenes with you in it and a moral choice at the end

 

Task Force Tips:

 

/shrug inspirations?  Actually the best task Force tips is run them, them ore experience you have with them the better one does.

 

AV Challenges:

 

Inspirations, various temp powers. I found many of these extras unnecessary and never used em for most of my solos. But I do bring them and have used em. (I had to use everything and more to defeat bobcat who can 1 shot me (and did a number of times)

 

Bang For Buck Arcs:

 

Dark Astoria story arcs. 

 

Merits Making Side Runs:

 

SSA is decent the first few times. But the winner goes to flashbacking the Heather DA contact from the story arc. This 4 part mission can be run in 9-12 minutes and you get 1 Emp merit and a common automatically AND a choice of a second emp or a c-vr incarn reward roll. 2 empyrian merits can be converted to 20 merits. Best return for time invested outside of an Apex/Tin Mage run.

Can t4 all your incarn powers in as little as 3 days.

 

Soul-Crushing Defeats:

 

My first Apex try. Nothing going on one night, well lets load up a solo Apex and see first hand if it's a viable solo. Make way to the end and Battle Maiden. Take her down to half, , she disappears, fight the mobs, she reappears.

Tough fight she hits hard. So hard she 1-shotted me in melee range with a fresh Barrier, multiple super inspirations, and a just popped ultimate.

Lessons learned, second attempt went very well indeed.

 

Overall Tricks: Let's see.....oh wait is that the phone? <goes to answer it>

 

Silver Mantis was mentioned. Just the normal contact EB one is tough, but my nemesis was always the Miss Liberty in the 40s villain content. Especially if one is only tricked out with SOs etc and not sets. I remember finally getting her down to close to defeated only to have her heal up to half and having little insps left. This was back in the day. My toons are set pieced up by level 30-32 now so it's a lot different.

 

 

[lemming]

5 hours ago, tidge said:

There is no "I" in team

My answer to that is "There's no 'U' either"

(And yes, I used that in a corporate meeting at the person who said it...)

[Tahliah]

I soloed all the ouro content on live and am working my way though it (sporadically) now.  My toon is an ice/ice/ice blaster.

 

I agree with all the tips above and wanted to add one:  use the base empowerment buffs.  These are especially helpful if you are working on your ouro badges but some are great for various particular enemies (get more resist/defense for particular baddies, etc.) or for just picking up extra recovery when exemped or whatever.  I even get the travel speed one for more quickly traversing big maps on some flashbacks/tfs. 

[Sir Myshkin]

4 hours ago, Chirikiti said:

But the winner goes to flashbacking the Heather DA contact from the story arc. This 4 part mission can be run in 9-12 minutes and you get 1 Emp merit and a common automatically AND a choice of a second emp or a c-vr incarn reward roll. 2 empyrian merits can be converted to 20 merits. Best return for time invested outside of an Apex/Tin Mage run.

This is gold right here. I can say I wasn't cognizant of that mission providing a repeatable bonus like this. Just ran it casually today with a bit of wandering and reading a bit of the arc stuff, making sure I had the expectations of each mission right, and roaming the maps a bit extra and still knocked it out in 20 minutes. Was also surprised that even at 0x4 "50" it still applied the Incarnate shift and made everything grey/green/blue. Super easy to flip through. Definitely a >10/min capable arc and has a great reward roll chance for incarnate parts. I'll definitely be using this one to build my second set of Incarnate enhancements.