Can you soli

[Grouchybeast]

On 7/16/2020 at 2:09 AM, Ironblade said:

You actually can't be 'over-leveled'.  The Citadel TF, for example, is listed as level 25-30.  Anyone above level 30 will be exemplared down to 30 (thus losing a number of powers, including all your Incarnate stuff).

Overlevelling can make a big difference, though.  You get to keep powers for 5 levels above your exemped level, and more importantly you keep the all the slots from higher levels and possibly the set bonuses you have as a result of being able to slot more parts of a set.  A level 50 character exemped down to 30 could be a lot more powerful than the same character actually at level 30.

[arcane]

When you guys talk about solo’ing AV’s, just how safe is it to assume temp powers are being used? 
 

I have zero interest in solo’ing something my build alone can’t handle, so just curious how pervasive a part of the TF/AV solo’ing culture envenomed daggers and so on are.

[ImpousVileTerror]

I advocate for the use of everything at your disposal.

 

 . . . 

 

Except Inspirations.

 

Screw Inspirations!  Only good for tossing on the market and grinding up in to powder!

[wolfshadow31]

1 hour ago, arcaneholocaust said:

When you guys talk about solo’ing AV’s, just how safe is it to assume temp powers are being used? 
 

I have zero interest in solo’ing something my build alone can’t handle, so just curious how pervasive a part of the TF/AV solo’ing culture envenomed daggers and so on are.

I generally use the Envenomned Dagger for the regen debuff.  On characters who have some type of regen debuff in their powers already, I don't use any temp powers on AVs.  

[arcane]

14 minutes ago, wolfshadow31 said:

I generally use the Envenomned Dagger for the regen debuff.  On characters who have some type of regen debuff in their powers already, I don't use any temp powers on AVs.  

That’s what I thought. I just think ability to solo AV’s with or without temporary powers is an important distinction. Thanks for the clarification.

[wolfshadow31]

2 minutes ago, arcaneholocaust said:

That’s what I thought. I just think ability to solo AV’s with or without temporary powers is an important distinction. Thanks for the clarification.

Sometimes it's simply  a matter of time.  Pick some arbitrary numbers....If I can do 500 dps, and the AV regen's 400/s....it's going to take a lot longer to defeat them.  It's possible to do it without the Daggers usually.  As long as you can survive, and can out dps their regen...eventually you should defeat them.  but whether that takes ten minutes or 100 minutes...is the question. lol.

[Crater Kate]

2 hours ago, arcaneholocaust said:

When you guys talk about solo’ing AV’s, just how safe is it to assume temp powers are being used? 
 

I have zero interest in solo’ing something my build alone can’t handle, so just curious how pervasive a part of the TF/AV solo’ing culture envenomed daggers and so on are.

 

This is going to depend a lot on the character in question.

 

For me, that Stalker that I was talking about is what I use for big game hunting. Her kit is really well suited and streamlined to the task of killing AVs, to the point she can just raw damage down pretty much every +0 AV in the game. Versus the "squishy" +4 AVs, she can juuust about do the same. But versus tough AVs, she has to dip into temp powers. Incidentally, she carries the max of 300 daggers on her as frequently as I remember to refill them even though she doesn't need them often. Just because that's her job.

 

For a character less tunnel vision'd on AV hunting, temp powers become a lot more consistently relevant. Base buff +20% recharge, offensive amplifier, envenomed daggers being the more common ones, and then the Warburg buff for the nuclear (heh) solution. I'd be leaning on these more with any more general purpose character - maybe not a well built Scrapper, but certainly most Brutes and Tankers.

 

It's also worth mentioning that AV hunting might just be beyond your character of choice, and there's nothing wrong with that. AV fights are basically 2 checks: Check 1 - can you stay in the fight without getting pasted? Check 2 - do you have high enough sustained damage output to get him to zero before Check 1 fails? You need to pass both of them, and there's really no honor lost in not being able to meet the requirements of high durability and damage for many archetypes. Your Kin/sonic defender is going to be atrocious versus an AV solo, but they'll make up for that a hundred times over by how easy they make it for your team to melt that AV. And so on and so on. If you can't do it, there's nothing wrong with that, and being at peace with that is a lot better than beating your head against a wall until your brain turns to mush.

 

And then, of course, there are your MMs, Illusion/Cold Controllers, and certain Blasters that just laugh at, chew up, and spit out AVs AND GMs even on SOs.

 

So it really depends on the character 🙂

[Parabola]

Well this is now becoming my obsession. I've spent a good chunk of the weekend making and testing builds. The criteria I'm looking at so far are a couple of pylon runs, and then a carnies mission, a rularuu mission and the first mission of the itf, all on 4/8 with bosses.

 

I am only really interested in melee characters, I imagine an ill/rad would be able to do all this but it's not really my cup of tea. I don't mind a bit of pulling but in general I want to be getting stuck in and beating the enemy fair and square.

 

So far I'm in agreement with those above that have said that defence builds simply don't cut it. I've been testing willpower, rad and bio on scrappers, brutes and tanks. I've more or less settled on war mace as the best attack set option, I'm not a fan of titan weapons and war mace has good single target, self contained aoe and decent mitigation.

 

It's been really interesting comparing almost identical builds across AT's. So far they have functioned almost exactly as you'd expect. Scrappers do more damage but are much squishier, tanks are solid but can lag a bit damage wise (some very embarrassing pylon times), and brutes are somewhere in the middle.

 

Willpower surprised me a bit with just how tough it can get. It's big problem is that it offers nothing on the offence side and isn't tough enough to allow the use of a scrapper further limiting the damage output. The lack of an actual self heal also proved a liability.

 

Rad armour is really tough. Built entirely for res it can cover just about everything I need. My only concern with rad is whether I can make a scrapper or brute tough enough as the tank just couldn't quite do enough damage. I need to go back and fiddle with the builds some more as I'm sure there is more to be squeezed out. I'm making them en masse so they probably lack polish.

 

Bio is a great set for adding damage as we all know. It has the slightly annoying s/l res, e/n/f/c def structure but I have been largely ignoring that and just trying to pile on e/n/tox/psi resist. Unfortunately even on the tank version there is a pretty big e/n hole and a marginally smaller tox/psi one, particularly with offensive adaptation running. But it doesn't half add a load of poke. Interestingly I was getting similar pylon times with a bio/mace tank to those with a mace/rad brute. Those are probably my top two so far.

 

Tomorrow I'm going to have a look at some dark armour builds... 

[Ironblade]

On 7/19/2020 at 7:54 AM, ImpousVileTerror said:

"Run away."
A solid tactic which is seemingly lost to many.

If a battle turns against a player, there's no shame in popping around a corner and getting some distance from the mob of angry enemies.

Hell yeah.

It's not often I need to do this on my scrapper (Ironblade).  But I was doing some Ouro badges, exemped to level 14 in The Hollows with 'enemies buffed' and me having 'constant debuff'.  That's a tough combo at level 14.

[marcussmythe]

On 7/19/2020 at 3:21 PM, parabola said:

Well this is now becoming my obsession. I've spent a good chunk of the weekend making and testing builds. The criteria I'm looking at so far are a couple of pylon runs, and then a carnies mission, a rularuu mission and the first mission of the itf, all on 4/8 with bosses.

 

I am only really interested in melee characters, I imagine an ill/rad would be able to do all this but it's not really my cup of tea. I don't mind a bit of pulling but in general I want to be getting stuck in and beating the enemy fair and square.

 

So far I'm in agreement with those above that have said that defence builds simply don't cut it. I've been testing willpower, rad and bio on scrappers, brutes and tanks. I've more or less settled on war mace as the best attack set option, I'm not a fan of titan weapons and war mace has good single target, self contained aoe and decent mitigation.

 

It's been really interesting comparing almost identical builds across AT's. So far they have functioned almost exactly as you'd expect. Scrappers do more damage but are much squishier, tanks are solid but can lag a bit damage wise (some very embarrassing pylon times), and brutes are somewhere in the middle.

 

Willpower surprised me a bit with just how tough it can get. It's big problem is that it offers nothing on the offence side and isn't tough enough to allow the use of a scrapper further limiting the damage output. The lack of an actual self heal also proved a liability.

 

Rad armour is really tough. Built entirely for res it can cover just about everything I need. My only concern with rad is whether I can make a scrapper or brute tough enough as the tank just couldn't quite do enough damage. I need to go back and fiddle with the builds some more as I'm sure there is more to be squeezed out. I'm making them en masse so they probably lack polish.

 

Bio is a great set for adding damage as we all know. It has the slightly annoying s/l res, e/n/f/c def structure but I have been largely ignoring that and just trying to pile on e/n/tox/psi resist. Unfortunately even on the tank version there is a pretty big e/n hole and a marginally smaller tox/psi one, particularly with offensive adaptation running. But it doesn't half add a load of poke. Interestingly I was getting similar pylon times with a bio/mace tank to those with a mace/rad brute. Those are probably my top two so far.

 

Tomorrow I'm going to have a look at some dark armour builds... 

Defense builds have issues - though Id consider giving the SR Tank a look-see.  SR Tanks are hilariously tough, and largely agnostic in terms of what foes they face.

 

War Mace is one of your best choices for raw firepower, assuming you dont want to deal with TW.  Fire is also quite good - and better than it looks, as Fire resist is a rare thing, espc. against endgame mobs.  (S/L and once you hit Praetorians, E all get resisted.  A lot).

 

Rad Armor may see difficulties on a Scrapper... 75% resist cap!  But Ive not tested it - its wonderful on a Tank.

 

Over in the Pylon Testing Arena, Bioarmor is a given as the top choice - and by placing it on a Tank, your covering some of the Bio Squishy with Tank HP and Tank Defense Powerset Scales.  War Mace is also a known solid performer.  I don't think you'll find much better for doing what you want than the two you name, unless you want to take up Titan Weapons.  SS can probably beat WM if you go for the crazy stacked-rage-pool-powers builds, but that might not be your cuppa, and if you dont want to deal with TW, you may not want to deal with really degenerate builds.

 

 

[Parabola]

Thought I'd close out my ramblings in this thread. Firstly I will say it has been really interesting trying out a bunch of very similar builds on the test server and seeing how they perform. I learned a lot and highly recommend it.

 

I settled on war mace fairly early on and a bit further into the process decided on using a brute. Scrappers just aren't tough enough for the sort of content I am building for, hampered by the lower res cap and less hit points. Tanks do pretty well these days, particularly with bio, but it was the wonky progression with the melee set (maturing very late and being stuck with the wrong filler atrack) that decided it for the brute. Also even with the tank buffs brutes still do noticably more damage to really tough targets. When facing highly dangerous +4 bosses it's important to get them down as quickly as possible and brutes are better at it.

 

So I auditioned mace/bio, mace/rad, mace/wp, mace/dark and mace/elec brutes. All built for res and healing and largely ignoring defence. They were all pretty good and much as expected. Some do more damage, some are tougher. It's very difficult to quantify most of it, particularly on the durability front as they have different ways of achieving it and I was having to go on gut feel for how they seemed to play.

 

Rad is very tough against everything with good healing/absorb options. Bio adds more damage but I found it fiddly to build and use, you end up relying on the clickies a huge amount and that can go wrong against the really nasty stuff. Willpower is very solid and straightforward to use but I wish it had a heal. Dark is a set I love and it performs well. The energy hole is a worry at the high end though and although having a complete heal on something like an 11 second timer makes it basically unkillable, I did end up spending a lot of time healing rather than attacking.

 

The surprise for me was elec and this is the set I have gone for. It's very solid, I've got s/l/e/f/c/psi all capped and energise seems to roll around just often enough to make up for any neg or toxic getting through. I'm also planning to take the tier 9 which is something I usually don't bother with but it will cap neg and get toxic very close. Should be useful for proper emergencies.

 

But in the end it was actually the fx that clinched it. I was testing using a costume I had hanging around and it looked way better with elec than it did with rad (my no2 pick overall). If rad had looked better I'd have likely gone with it but I really find it a bit ugly.

 

So in the end days of testing and rambling about it (apologies to the op btw) have led to making a decision heavily influenced by cosmetics! Elec is properly tough though so I don't think I'll regret it. Now I just have to level her up for real!

[Parabola]

16 minutes ago, marcussmythe said:

Defense builds have issues - though Id consider giving the SR Tank a look-see.  SR Tanks are hilariously tough, and largely agnostic in terms of what foes they face.

 

War Mace is one of your best choices for raw firepower, assuming you dont want to deal with TW.  Fire is also quite good - and better than it looks, as Fire resist is a rare thing, espc. against endgame mobs.  (S/L and once you hit Praetorians, E all get resisted.  A lot).

 

Rad Armor may see difficulties on a Scrapper... 75% resist cap!  But Ive not tested it - its wonderful on a Tank.

 

Over in the Pylon Testing Arena, Bioarmor is a given as the top choice - and by placing it on a Tank, your covering some of the Bio Squishy with Tank HP and Tank Defense Powerset Scales.  War Mace is also a known solid performer.  I don't think you'll find much better for doing what you want than the two you name, unless you want to take up Titan Weapons.  SS can probably beat WM if you go for the crazy stacked-rage-pool-powers builds, but that might not be your cuppa, and if you dont want to deal with TW, you may not want to deal with really degenerate builds.

 

 

Yeah I'm sure sr tanks are very tough indeed. But I've been building specifically for the kinds of enemies that ignore defence altogether like the rularuu watchers so it had to be a res build.

 

War mace is a set I've played before but I've fallen for it all over again. Clobber simply deletes enemies! The single target attack chain of jawbreaker-clobber-shatter puts out significant hurt and crowd control-shatter-whirling mace isn't exactly shabby on the aoe front.

 

I wanted to keep the aoe all within the set as I need to take energy mastery for focused accuracy. I'm also taking ageless radial, planning for really heavy debuff environments. The only thing I don't have much of is ddr but without d to r the d of it doesn't matter much either way!

 

Fire melee isn't one I considered but I'm now wondering what a bio/fire tank would play like. Fire melee on tanks getting extra aoe (something I've never really understood). One project at a time though...

[marcussmythe]

5 minutes ago, parabola said:

Yeah I'm sure sr tanks are very tough indeed. But I've been building specifically for the kinds of enemies that ignore defence altogether like the rularuu watchers so it had to be a res build.

 

War mace is a set I've played before but I've fallen for it all over again. Clobber simply deletes enemies! The single target attack chain of jawbreaker-clobber-shatter puts out significant hurt and crowd control-shatter-whirling mace isn't exactly shabby on the aoe front.

 

I wanted to keep the aoe all within the set as I need to take energy mastery for focused accuracy. I'm also taking ageless radial, planning for really heavy debuff environments. The only thing I don't have much of is ddr but without d to r the d of it doesn't matter much either way!

 

Fire melee isn't one I considered but I'm now wondering what a bio/fire tank would play like. Fire melee on tanks getting extra aoe (something I've never really understood). One project at a time though...

Bio/Fire is fairly common.

Mace/Elec Brutes are rather less so, and conceptually awesome.  Let me know how it goes!

[Skyhawke]

On 7/19/2020 at 12:30 PM, arcaneholocaust said:

When you guys talk about solo’ing AV’s, just how safe is it to assume temp powers are being used? 
 

I have zero interest in solo’ing something my build alone can’t handle, so just curious how pervasive a part of the TF/AV solo’ing culture envenomed daggers and so on are.

Envenomed daggers were a part of my attack rotation until I got my Interface slotted with Flawless Radial Diamagnetic. 100% regen debuff and 50% tohit debuff is much nicer than I expected. I'm not purple ATO'd out, but my build is solid enough that I can solo AVs and Giant Monsters with just my powers now.  That being said, I still enjoyed it when I was using the daggers. There's that giddy "I just took out a GM by myself" feeling that never gets old. 

[marcussmythe]

A lot of soling AVs/GMs comes down to 'Plus What' and 'With What Resists'.  +0 AVs are a verrrry different animal than +4, and a GM that resists your damage type will easily put you below the 'beats their regen' level.

 

In a better world, AVs and GMs would have more HP, less regen, and hit substantially harder (for most of them.  A few already hit more than hard enough).

[Chirikiti]

On 7/19/2020 at 9:30 AM, arcaneholocaust said:

When you guys talk about solo’ing AV’s, just how safe is it to assume temp powers are being used? 
 

I have zero interest in solo’ing something my build alone can’t handle, so just curious how pervasive a part of the TF/AV solo’ing culture envenomed daggers and so on are.

Not safe =p

 

No envenomed daggers. No Temps Powers.

No Lores when Soloing GMs and a fair amount of AVs (Council WW was the exception)

Defences are 'low' 

 

One's mileage may vary o_-

 

Solo'd the Red and Blue content, almost all the GMs, almost all the TFs and Trials. There's a few outstanding things left to do/attempt/try. 

 

Most fun: Apex, MoLRSF, Manticore at +3 (didn't realize I'd be fighting three AVs hehe, I was pleasantly surprised)

Most Difficult: Tin Mage, Scrapyard, Council War Walker, and one of the Shadow Shard AVs gave me a bit of a worry.

 

 

Edited July 23, 2020 by Chirikiti