Mot the Hard Way

[Sovera]

1 hour ago, Sir Myshkin said:

I have another one for you that I just stumbled across today. I popped into Steel Canyon to head over to Positron thinking about starting a Posi 1 & 2 when I saw a building on fire. Being Ice, I was like "Eh, why not." Put the building out, got my Volunteer badge, and then noticed this strange little Jaeger named Helden sitting right next to the building, and I was like "Wut?!"

 

I talk to the little bugger and he tells me this crazy Nemesis plot, and I'm like, "Dude, I gotta tell Positron about this!" Of course I'm like "Let's do this at +4/8, right? Totally." First mission, bit hectic, decide to just knock out the core tasks and GTFO, amirite? Get into the next mission and it's filled with Nemesis Automatons. I'm like "..." I zip through, find the task, activate a computer, and an alarm raises. No big, I'm stealth, yeah?

 

Nope.

 

Ambush, ambush, ambush, they don't stop! They're just rolling down the hallways like a TRAIN for miles. I'm dead. Deader than dead. But I can't complete the mission until the timer expires, and I reactivate the machine! I Hit the med-porter and come back in, and they come after me! They're at the door like, "Hey, have you found Statesman?!" I drop a Blizzard, toss some Judgement, and the Vengeance lights up like a Star Wars Christmas Special, the horror! I died, again. What was I thinking?!

 

It's the SSA2 Episode 5 with the contact HeldenJaeger who sits in the Northeast corner of Steel Canyon. Arc is only a few missions long, and the last one has a scaled-difficulty final ending based on whether you decide to collect some extra abilities.

 

Nothing quite like giving 60 Nemesis mobs 8 stacks of Vengeance.

It's the arc used to farm fake nemesis for the badge (-1x8 and they pop as lieuts being two-shottable allowing everything else to be ignored and just zoom around picking them out).

 

Nemesis are such an enormous pain to deal with though.  There is nothing that makes them doable other than killing slow and oft times simply waiting out Vengeance. I don't think I'd even want to take the tank I posted above through what you've mentioned. Even having accuracy coming out of the gadzoo and the +acc from stacked Vengeance being a non thing for a 90%-to-all resists.

 

 

Also, hey, thanks for the 1 mill 😄 I tried to say thanks but I think I got some weird mail error. I had no idea I had teamed with an internet celebrity!

[Werner]

15 hours ago, Sovera said:

It's the arc used to farm fake nemesis for the badge (-1x8 and they pop as lieuts being two-shottable allowing everything else to be ignored and just zoom around picking them out).

I may know what you're talking about, then. Endless clouds of poison? I ran it through Ouroboros.  I think I started farming on +4x8. Dark Regen and some minor resistance was enough to keep me alive in the middle of the poison. I'm mostly single target, so I could save the lieutenants for last. Then I'd try to kill them all at about the same time to avoid waiting vengeance out. But it was a slow, obnoxious slog, so I turned it down to +1x8. Still a slow, obnoxious slog. I eventually just went back to Peregrine to hunt them there. I guess the secret is -1x8. I'll keep that in mind next time, thanks. 

[Sovera]

2 hours ago, Werner said:

I may know what you're talking about, then. Endless clouds of poison? I ran it through Ouroboros.  I think I started farming on +4x8. Dark Regen and some minor resistance was enough to keep me alive in the middle of the poison. I'm mostly single target, so I could save the lieutenants for last. Then I'd try to kill them all at about the same time to avoid waiting vengeance out. But it was a slow, obnoxious slog, so I turned it down to +1x8. Still a slow, obnoxious slog. I eventually just went back to Peregrine to hunt them there. I guess the secret is -1x8. I'll keep that in mind next time, thanks. 

The actual secret is to bounce around -only- picking at the fake nemesis. Everyone being -1 allows the damage to be ignored even with half the map agroed so we don't kill the rest. The fake nemesis spawning as -1 lieuts allows them to be two shot to be constantly on the run instead of doing full rotations.

[Caulderone]

On 3/24/2020 at 1:03 PM, Sovera said:

the Status in the Totals is a thing of beauty

Just in case, with Musculature toggled on, the bonus from SMotT is being boosted in the planner.  Be sure to toggle off SMotT  or Musculature to verify your resists.

 

PS.  Super Reflexes can do the same thing in the Debuff Resist section, swapping End/Recov for DDR, plus even more Perception.

Edited March 25, 2020 by Caulderone

[Sovera]

4 hours ago, Caulderone said:

Just in case, with Musculature toggled on, the bonus from SMotT is being boosted in the planner.  Be sure to toggle off SMotT  or Musculature to verify your resists.

A good point, but uber resists is more for max level content so Musculature should be on.

 

I've further refined this build but I'll stop cluttering Werner's achievement thread and move to the Tanker forums. I'm now considering War Mace since what Tankers are still short of is ST damage and War Mace is nipping right on Titan Weapon's heels.

[Werner]

After grabbing Task Force Commander, I soloed the ITF without inspirations. I started on +4x8 kill all, and had my one death when I at first refused to run kite during the ambush at the oracle. Then it was pretty smooth sailing through to the AVs in mission 3, at which point my friends were bugging me to join them doing other things, so I bailed on it. Figuring there was no way I had the damage output for level 54 AVs anyway, and not wanting the slow slog up the hill again, I set it to minimum difficulty when I restarted that mission and stayed on minimum the rest of the time, only killing what I had to. Turns out that having huge melee defense and 90% resistance to negative energy makes the final Romulus fight a breeze, at least with the AVs at level 51. I didn't touch Barrier Core or Melee Core, and only used Dark Regeneration once. I probably would have been fine without it, but I didn't want to take chances.

 

I'm going to do a minor respec, just some fiddling based on what I've seen so far, mostly to pick up Focused Accuracy to help against defense buffs and to-hit debuffs. I need to throw myself at +4x8 Arachnos and Carnies. I remember them being difficult on my old Scrapper. And do other things mentioned in the thread. I'll get to it, but I'm a "casual" player now. 😉

 

(Edit: Hmmm, I guess before I do a respec I should learn all the new sets being added and see how they might be useful. Or just respec again I guess.)

Edited March 31, 2020 by Werner

[Werner]

Maybe aim for a +4x8 no-inspiration MoITF using lore pets for the extra damage I need to take down uplevel AVs? I've never used lore pets as part of any solo challenges, but they aren't temporary powers, so I guess it's no different than leaning on Barrier and Melee, even to the point of building around their use. It just never felt "solo" to have pets and NPCs on a Scrapper or Brute, even if it is. I usually try to get my NPC "helpers" killed because they're mostly in the way. I remember seeing a spreadsheet (?) of lore pet stats. If anyone knows where all that information is, I'd be much obliged. LMGTFY? OK, I'll search for it myself too. Or just "everyone knows that storms are the best for AVs" or something. 🙂

 

Starting to feel strange about having posted in the Scrapper forum if I'm going to keep chatting about things that no longer have anything to do with my old Scrapper.

Edited March 31, 2020 by Werner

[nihilii]

I think Longbow is generally the most practical choice for AVs, as they deal good damage at range (although the Cataphract has a tendency to go in melee), and most importantly the Cataphract has a -500% regen debuff tied to one of its attacks.

 

Banished Pantheon is another favorite, due to high damage + -res. The right side tree is also slightly "bugged" in that the support intangible pet has an attack, which can be a fun way to add some DPS in situations where your Lore pets would be obliterated.

 

Cimerorans deal very high damage in melee, with the caveat that they have to survive melee, of course.

Even though Storms aren't talked about much I've always liked them, they do decent range/AoE damage and they fly, which lets you do all sorts of jetpack shenanigans (i.e. to split AVs when some fly and some don't). Probably not relevant to a +4/x8 MoITF.

[Werner]

Thank you! I was just reading/skimming your Silly Sentinel Tricks thread. Awesome stuff. I've not done Sentinels and have no idea how they play, but a friend likes them, and I've been trying to think about what might be fun to level up, because my friends all want to start leveling their new lowbies, and I'm the only one without a lowbie to level. Maybe I'll level myself a Fire/Rad Sentinel to get a feel for it, and if I love it, I have your build to tweak to my liking.

 

OK, back on Katana/Dark, maybe I'll get those four Lore choices and see which I like best, maybe swap them out a little depending on what I'm doing. I took right side Banished Pantheon on my SS/Fire Brute for the farming. The big guy gets obliterated in seconds, so I don't have much hope for melee pets in +4x8, but we'll see. Since I didn't know what to do on my Katana/Dark I took Banished on him as well to get me the to the level shift then stopped. 

Edited March 31, 2020 by Werner

[Werner]

I grabbed some tier 4 Longbow and headed into AE to beat on a level 54 Chimera to check my damage output. No luck. I got him down to a little over half his hit points before the Longbow disappeared, then he slowly healed back to full before they'd recharged. I'm not surprised. I definitely didn't build for DPS. I'll probably make an alternate L54 AV-soloing build with more DPS and less but hopefully sufficient survivability. Or maybe as a quick fix, some enhancement unslotters to swap in some key DPS ingredients like Achilles' Heel, and swap in alternate Incarnate powers like Musculature and Assault.

 

Is Degenerative the best for big game hunting these days? I grabbed Reactive instead while they were tweaking Degenerative due to Hami raid issues, but I think they're done with their tweaks.

 

Core vs. Radial? I'd usually think Core, but don't level 54 AVs have 87% debuff resistance or something? Maybe some raw damage would be better?

 

(Edit: Wait, damage resistance debuffs are resisted by damage resistance, not by debuff resistance, so maybe Reactive Core is the best I can do against level 54 AVs, as Degenerative's HP debuff would be highly resisted?)

Edited April 1, 2020 by Werner

[Sir Myshkin]

The Interface abilities are a little weird in that regard, and you stack them to a limit so quickly that unless you're gun-ho about Core, Radial can often be sufficient, but it really depends on the attack cycle I suppose more than anything. Degenerative gives -MaxHP, and I'm not really sure anything will dramatically scale against that, but it is technically (technically) the better Interface, but Reactive is really close when a lot of damage is on the table, but either way I'd probably say go with the 25/75 DoT favored version of whichever you choose (probably Degen in your case, since HP/time healing is probably going to help a lower DPS better).

 

Oh, and if you go Assault, go Core, +Dam buff is better for DPS than Proc . If you don't have the materials to go [T4 on it, go T3 right tree, left rare,]* it gives +3 stacks of +Dam and 30% double proc chance. It's the next best (crazy) option.

 

*edit: I think I might have that wrong off the top of my head, and actually be left tree, right rare that does the +Dam/+Proc in that orientation.

Edited April 3, 2020 by Sir Myshkin

[Werner]

Thank you. I probably have enough for a couple more tier 4s, and if not, it's easy to grind it out.

[Werner]

On 4/1/2020 at 8:39 PM, Sir Myshkin said:

go with the 25/75 DoT favored version of whichever you choose (probably Degen

Switching to T4 Degenerate Radial took me from 178 DPS to 194 DPS in a Pylon test. This gives up nothing.

On 4/1/2020 at 8:39 PM, Sir Myshkin said:

Assault, go Core

Switching to T4 Assault Core took me from 194 DPS to 222 DPS. That's slightly exaggerated due to over 50% uptime on Assault. I only rarely used T4 Melee Core. I'd have died in my Mot run without it, but I've made other tweaks to the build based on that run, and DPS is a survivability tool. Probably still doable.

 

Achilles' Heel in Golden Dragonfly took me from 222 DPS to 249 DPS (Edit: 232 DPS). That's slightly exaggerated due to over 50% uptime on Assault. It's probably worth fiddling with my build to give up some survivability to put these in every attack other than Divine Avalanche. Again, with DPS being a survivability tool, that seems an easy enough trade.

 

And he'll be more fun to play with more DPS. 

 

(Edit: I think I got the time or calculation wrong on the first Achilles' Heel run. I changed to Achilles' in Soaring Dragon, Fury of the Gladiator in Golden Dragonfly, and got runs for 247 and 256 DPS. Took the Achilles' Heel out of Soaring Dragon and got runs for 235 and 229 DPS. Looks like 250ish DPS is good enough for level 54 AVs in combination with T4 Longbow. Took down Mother Mayhem before they disappeared.)

 

(Edit: Editing because I don't want to push this to the top, but wanted to record a little more information here. New build. Higher recharge to be able to run Golden Dragonfly -> Gambler's Cut -> Soaring Dragon -> Gambler's Cut with a two-tick gap. Purple and resistance debuff procs in Golden Dragonfly and Soaring Dragon. Average time of five pylon runs = 4:13 for 279 DPS. Can solo level 54 AVs without Lore.)

Edited April 20, 2020 by Werner