Can ?/Kin solo an AV?

[Dread Tattoo]

Hello all!

Returning player after a far too long absence. Like the title says, could whatever/Kin solo an AV?

I've seen /Rad and /Cold do it in the past and I'm curious if a /Kin could ... and which Primary would have the highest likelihood of success?

Sorry if this has been covered and/or been beaten as badly as a pinata at 4 year olds birthday party.

 

Thank you in advance! So happy to be back!

 

[Riverdusk]

Pretty much everyone can now with the right use of inspirations, temp powers (especially envenomed daggers that you can buy at the P2W vendor), IO's, incarnate powers.  It gets tougher if you don't have or want to use one or more of those.  Also depends if you are trying to solo one at +0 difficulty or +4.

 

But general answer is it is certainly possible.

 

Giant Monsters are the ones that are more iffy to solo just because their regen is generally so much higher.

 

And welcome back!

[SaddestGhost]

I had an ill/kin on Live that I used to solo a few GMs (Kraken, Babbage, I think Eochai once).  Transfusion does have -regen, but it doesn't stack from the same caster, I believe.  I mostly attribute it to pet damage.  On top of PA and Phantasm, I was using the Tarantula from the Mace mastery and Lore pets.

[Coyote]

Some Lore pets do -Regen so they help a lot, and also Transfusion is pretty weak -Regen but does stack.

[EmperorSteele]

/Kin is good mostly for survivabilty and sustaining, as well as the +damage. With judicious use of Siphon Power, Siphon Speed, Fulcrum Shift and Transfusion, an AV will have a hard time doing meaningful damage. That said, if you're constantly spamming those powers, then you're not attacking. /Kin also isn't great for set bonuses, but it IS great for saving slots, as most of its powers can get away with only the default slot, especially if you have extra accuracy/recharge bonuses from sets put into your main and pool powers.

[Call Me Awesome]

Quite a few will be able to solo an AV.  Illusion is the classic choice with PA to handle the tanking although many other sets will be able to handle most AV's.  I've soloed a few with my Perma-PA Ill/Rad back before shutdown and I know several flavors of Fire/ have done it as well.

 

Anything with enough DPS/sustained -regen and a way to survive the damage from the AV can do it.

[Coyote]

9 hours ago, Dread Tattoo said:

which Primary would have the highest likelihood of success?

 

As Steele said, you can lower an AV's damage enough that you should be able to tank its damage especially with Transfusion spammed. So you don't really need to worry much about taking a primary that will help defensively, so what you will need is one that does two things:

1: damage

2: not much activation time used to do the damage, because Kinetics will keep you busy.

 

To my mind, this makes Fire the best option. You do free damage with Hot Feet, it has an Immobilize to set up Containment (pushing it ahead of Illusion), and its Immob and Hold both activate faster and do a bit more damage than Dark, which is the other set that can put out multiple pets besides Fire and Illusion (and Electric, but Electric is low single-target damage). So Fire is ahead of Illusion and ahead of Dark, and those are the only real competitors... Gravity does good damage but it has a busy attack cycle to do it, so it's not very compatible with Kinetics.

 

So, go Fire/Kin/Stone so that you also get Seismic Smash (because nothing says "I'm pretending to be a damage dealer" like a Fulcrum Shifted Seismic Smash with 5 or so damage procs on a Contained target 😄 ), and you'll be able to solo AVs reasonably well. You won't be a top AV hunter who can handle almost any AV, but you'll still be pretty good at it.

[Phalanx480bc]

Coyote, what about Plant/Kin based on your criteria.  It does't have an aura, but it's got Creepers.  It has immob and the area immob as well, that does double the damage of the other sets.  It also has Fly Trap.  I guess it is a little slow to activate versus Fire but it's damage is comparable. Curious if I missed something.

Edited March 23, 2020 by Phalanx480bc

[Frosticus]

creepers is a pretty low damage power when it comes to single target for a variety of reasons.

 

That said, my petless plant/poison can drop a pylon in about 3.5 min. So I'm sure a plant/kin could take down some lvl 50 AVs without too much fuss. 

 

I'll second the vote for ill/kin though if kin is what you seek and desire to fight AVs.

 

Regarding -damage: it is a useful debuff. It falters quickly against +2 or higher AVs unless you have either a lot of it, or a lot if -res to boost it. Many AVs have solid resistances to the same type of damage they deal. It those cases (or when they use a god mode) they will barely feel your -dam debuffs and proceed to deal out very high damage to you and your pets. 

[Hjarki]

Kinetics would not be one of my top choices for solo'ing an AV/GM.

 

The big power in the set - Fulcrum Shift - is considerably diminished by having only one target. So instead of fighting near/at the +damage cap, you're fighting only marginally better than you would have without +damage buffs. Most debuff sets will ramp up your single target damage considerably more than Kinetics will. Indeed, the sheer 'busy-ness' of the set tends to mean the +damage buffs are a bit of a wash due to the activation time they consume where you could blasting away.

 

In terms of defenses, Kinetics not only doesn't bring any resist/defense to the table but it's notoriously hard to slot for it. While it does have -damage, -damage is less effective than +resist for mitigating damage.

 

Siphon Speed is a bit of an advantage, since the slow can't be resisted. This permits you to stay at range against most AV/GM. But it's a very situational advantage.

 

[Without_Pause]

Siphon Speed would also be far more useful if it included -recharge.

[Phalanx480bc]

On 3/23/2020 at 1:46 PM, Frosticus said:

creepers is a pretty low damage power when it comes to single target for a variety of reasons.

 

That said, my petless plant/poison can drop a pylon in about 3.5 min. So I'm sure a plant/kin could take down some lvl 50 AVs without too much fuss. 

 

I'll second the vote for ill/kin though if kin is what you seek and desire to fight AVs.

 

Regarding -damage: it is a useful debuff. It falters quickly against +2 or higher AVs unless you have either a lot of it, or a lot if -res to boost it. Many AVs have solid resistances to the same type of damage they deal. It those cases (or when they use a god mode) they will barely feel your -dam debuffs and proceed to deal out very high damage to you and your pets. 

Just for my reference, single target or not, wouldn't the creeper vines do at least as much damage to a single target as an aura?  In essence, aren't the creepers really just an aura that doesn't cost endurance?  Just asking since my altitis never lets me reach the part of the game you guys experience regularly.

[Frosticus]

On 3/24/2020 at 4:43 PM, Phalanx480bc said:

Just for my reference, single target or not, wouldn't the creeper vines do at least as much damage to a single target as an aura?  In essence, aren't the creepers really just an aura that doesn't cost endurance?  Just asking since my altitis never lets me reach the part of the game you guys experience regularly.

Well they cost endurance up front. Perma creepers (120 recharge) would be equal to about 0.2 end/sec given that they cost 26 end to cast.

 

They'd probably be similar to an aura I guess. How they work best though is when you have a large spawn and their aoe attacks have opportunity to overlap. And then as the spawn dwindles if there are several of the big vines out they will all attack the remaining target and do decent damage for a short while.

 

vs just 1 target they don't really spawn much of the big vines (1 I guess).

[Hjarki]

On 3/24/2020 at 5:52 PM, Without_Pause said:

Siphon Speed would also be far more useful if it included -recharge.

-recharge is generally useless outside of PvP. In AE effects against large spawns, they never get a chance to cycle their attacks anyway. Against AV/GM, they resist the -recharge into irrelevance.

 

[Uun]

On 3/24/2020 at 5:52 PM, Without_Pause said:

Siphon Speed would also be far more useful if it included -recharge.

It does, although it's only -20%.

[Without_Pause]

33 minutes ago, Uun said:

It does, although it's only -20%.

I know paragonwiki isn't updated, but the -recharge isn't listed.

[Uun]

1 hour ago, Without_Pause said:

I know paragonwiki isn't updated, but the -recharge isn't listed.

Wouldn't be the first time Paragon Wiki was missing power information. It's in Mid's and City of Data.

 

http://web.archive.org/web/20140821104413/http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/powers/power.php?id=Controller_Buff.Kinetics.Siphon_Speed