Solo all stories

[Rinwen]

Hello, folks. 

 

This post is both for conversation and advice.

 

Similar in scope to the post by @Snarky "Soloing Blueside," I'm just kind of expanding on his post a bit... if you had to pick one character/Arch/powerset to solo Blue, or Red, or Gold, (I don't even know what Gold side is but see references to it, lol), what would it be?

 

Not twinked beyond SOs, IOs starting at lv 22, but not fancy, named ones... in other words, sorta gimp yourself, don't make yourself god like... yet... lol.

 

Hitting every contact, every story, cutting off XP where necessary, etc.

 

Using Snarky's Notoriety settings at +0 x1.

 

This isn't necessarily about the Meta, or "best," though it certainly can be... but it's also about which you think would be the most enjoyable ride to 50... which is of course subjective as everyone's idea of fun/enjoyable differs... which is why I think that this thread could be fun.

 

I ask because I'd like to try this on a character, and I'd like to hear some opinions on this.  Maybe some... many... of you have done this, maybe multiple times.   So far I've leveled mostly with Radio missions and a mix of story missions... but I'd like to try doing all story missions. 

 

Thanks for playing, lol.

 

 

[Greycat]

Hmmmmm.

 

I honestly am not sure. Doing them all, every AT's going to hit something that's its kryptonite, sometimes by powerset, sometimes feeling like it's there just to screw over your AT. (Masterminds from 18-24 or so, for instance, seem to both hit their weakest point minion-wise *and* hit a bunch of AOEs, at least redside.) And if I were doing this, I'd probably avoid a psi based powerset, *just* because of the times it seems I'm fighting mostly robots (which are resistant.) It can make it feel like a slog.

 

If I were doing this for me? Peacebringer, probably. Both because it makes those arcs natively available and I just flat out enjoy my Khelds 🙂 . Suggesting for someone else and not knowing anything else about how they prefer to play? A brute of some flavor.

 

(Also. Goldside = Praetorian arcs.)

[Shred Monkey]

I like MA/Shield brute for this task.  Brutes do really well at low levels due to fury providing damage when you don't have a lot of slots.  MA/Shield has really nice synergy with storm kick giving positional defense to make mid-late levels go smooth without needing much for IO sets. 

 

 

[Yomo Kimyata]

This sounds needlessly tedious to me, but many things I do are probably needlessly tedious to others, so...

 

I prefer melee to ranged, and there are so many ambushes redside that I would probably go melee.  And then, I would want stealth for making tedious missions shorter.  AoE for defeat all missions, good ST for bosses/EBs/AVs.

 

Maybe a staff/bio stalker.  I've got a lot of experience with those two sets and I actually enjoy them.

 

 

[Coyote]

Easy answer, I think:

 

Illusion/Dark

 

Illusion can tank basically anything, it can Deceive basically any combination of Bosses, and in the ridiculously few situations where it fails, /Dark puts out enough -Damage to tank basically anything through that. You would need Break Frees against mezzing AVs, but that's all you'd need to carry. Even in situations where tanking the direct source of damage isn't enough (for example, Lanaru the Mad summons Storm powers that are unaffected by debuffs or Taunt effects), you can move away from the storms and outheal their damage.

 

Offhand, all I can think of that you'd bounce off would be Siege, because he needs like 400+ DPS to beat and without heavy investment in sets that may not be doable. But Siege isn't going to be beaten by any build without high-end sets anyhow. And a few multi-AV fights would be difficult, but those are generally only in Task Forces.

[Gulbasaur]

26 minutes ago, Greycat said:

If I were doing this for me? Peacebringer, probably.

I know that people poo on peacebringers, but they are ol' reliable (as well as ol' flexible). I'm fairly certain the values in Mids are wrong - they certainly don't match up with what I see in-game for every attack, making people judge them them unfairly. There was also a spreadsheet going round with "carefully calculated" DPS readings of all the ATs a while ago which had a PB rotation that was pure ass (presumably a placeholder as it rotated in and out of Nova over and over again for no reason) meaning they were artificially low because of faulty data.

1 hour ago, Rinwen said:

Hitting every contact, every story, cutting off XP where necessary, etc.

This might help:

/macro_image "DayJob_XPBoost" "XP Toggle" "option_toggle noxp"

Copy and paste it into chat, press enter and it'll give you an XP on-off toggle.

 

Personally, I like the VEATs - there is very little they cannot do. Widows are armoured scrapper-controllers and SoAs are armoured blasterminds with a lot of AoE. Neither of them are the best at any one thing, but like the Kheldians there isn't much they can't do.

Edited January 4, 2021 by Gulbasaur

[gamingglen]

What's the issue?  I solo 99% of the time, with blasters, scrappers, stalkers, MMs, sentinels at those specifications. I don't do that many contacts because I've done them to death, just lots of street sweeping (mostly for defeat badges), tip missions, and occasional radio missions. I've gotten to the mid-20s with the only active contact being the radio, and then do several of those plus the safeguard to finally get a contact when I'm in the mood for one of those arcs.

 

The only thing I join a team for are TFs (not Posi 1, can do that solo) and fighting giant monsters, and sometimes not even that, just get to an existing GM fight and blast away. 

[RikOz]

5 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

This sounds needlessly tedious to me

I tried this idea myself a while back (on a Dual Blades brute), and yeah, it did get tedious after a while. I think I dropped the idea before I even finished Kings Row. I mean, I'm totally into being a completionist - I've "Loremastered" World of Warcraft (aside from the current expansion, which has bored me enough to quit again) on my main over there, including doing the entire "Old World" before the Cataclysm expansion streamlined the Old World into an on-rails questing experience. That meant traveling all over the entire world to hunt down questgivers in really obscure places., because the original requirements for the Loremaster achievement weren't "Complete these storylines in each zone", they were "Complete 863 quests on this continent, and complete 742 quests on that continent". So it was quite an effort, sitting at 862 quests completed and having to go over every single zone on a continent with a fine toothed comb trying to locate that one quest I missed. There was no "contact list" - you had to physically find and talk to each questgiver on your own.

 

But the key was that I went back after I was at max-level and banged out the older quest content I'd missed. In subsequent expansions, I just needed to complete all the storylines as presented in order to fulfill the new-style requirements, which was easy enough to do while simply leveling up. And of course, in WoW, quests don't disappear and become unavailable simply because you leveled past them - you can always go back and do them at any time.

 

So I think the issue for me, trying to be a CoH completist, was that it was frustrating having to disable XP and end up sitting there at one level for way too long. Unlike WoW, individual missions don't reward "gear", so you just do them for the sake of doing them. (This is one of the main reasons WoW  quests remain eternally available - you might want to put together a particular appearance for your character, and the only way to obtain a specific look is by earning the reward from a specific quest, so you need to be able to go back and do it if you didn't do it when it was level-appropriate.) So in CoH, it just fits my style of play better to use Ouroboros to go back and hit up the missions I missed on the way up.

[Yomo Kimyata]

I will say, this is inspiring me to set a much smaller goal.

 

I am currently on a rad/bio brute that I'm enjoying playing post-50.  I think I would eventually like to accomplish all lvl 50 redside missions on him at max, and although I dislike the Ouro interface, it does give me a convenient check-off list.  If I can keep my attention on that, then *maybe* I could *consider* something more comprehensive, but I suspect that OP has a lot more sticktoitiveness than I do.w

[Snarky]

I did this "hardmode" on live a couple times Redside on SS/Invul Brutes.  (I was newish, broke, and enjoyed solo play....good enhancers cost bucks back then)  When the Willpower Armor set came out I was in love lol.  So I did that 3-4 times more over the years.  Although the last couple I think I was dropping in some really good enhancers as soon as they were available.

 

If I had to do this on SOs and "non "named" inventions. (which I assume you mean no procs/globals, just common and uncommon sets, no rare sets?) I would indeed choose a Willpower Brute.  No doubt.  They run like a champ on SOs, at least solo fighting +0/x1.  With the changes in Energy Melee I might choose that over SS.  In fact I know I would, just to see the differences, get the feel.  So, for me, given your parameters, Energy/Willpower Brute.

[Snarky]

7 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

TAnd then, I would want stealth for making tedious missions shorter.  AoE for defeat all missions, good ST for bosses/EBs/AVs.

 

 

For my runs I put a +stealth proc in run or fly on my Brutes.  Although this last Brute was Dark/Dark so stealth was built in.  Not sure if a +stealth proc is allowed under these parameters though.  The stealth is ghetto, but it works well enough with Brute armor once you know the maps.  Run fat boy run!