End Draining AV’s

[StriderIV]

Hi all!

 

I understand that mobs can always attack, even if they have 1 endurance.

 

However, is it possible to fully drain and AV or GM and KEEP them at zero endurance so they can’t attack? I was under the impression that you can’t, but a buddy of mine says you can.

[Snarky]

I am sure SOMEONE o (more likely) some team can do this.  For most of us supers it is pull out the frying pans and beat it on the head until it stops moving.

[Crysis]

The game engine allows computer-controlled mobs to “cheat” a little on Endurance usage.  If they have even 1 tick of Endurance, they can still attack, whereas you can’t launch a 20 End attack with only 1 tick of endurance left.  Then there’s the AV heightened resistance and outrageous recovery to worry about.

 

So with the right powers/AT’s and teamwork, likely you could drain an AV’s quite a bit, even floor it.  But for that same amount of Endurance you spend on doing that, you could just likely straight up launch attacks and defeat the AV.  

 

Sapper builds abound on the boards.  I have a couple that work that way and I wasn’t really even aiming to do so.  But on AV’s, it’s pretty much 0 endurance all the time or its a wasted effort.  Against normal minion/Lt/Boss spawns it can be a pretty effective tactic.  But against AV’s and GM’s...not in my experience.

 

PS - Last sapper build I had was a /Elec Affinity Mastermind.  Could have other contributing factors than just END drain but I found sapping bosses would make them run away VERY FAST like the Council Werewolves.  Annoying as all get out, especially on a MM as my pets would try to follow them and end up aggroing a bunch of other stuff while giving chase.

Edited February 19, 2021 by Crysis

[StriderIV]

12 minutes ago, Snarky said:

I am sure SOMEONE o (more likely) some team can do this.  For most of us supers it is pull out the frying pans and beat it on the head until it stops moving.

Haha makes sense, and my preferred way as well 😂

[StriderIV]

5 minutes ago, Crysis said:

The game engine allows computer-controlled mobs to “cheat” a little on Endurance usage.  If they have even 1 tick of Endurance, they can still attack, whereas you can’t launch a 20 End attack with only 1 tick of endurance left.  Then there’s the AV heightened resistance and outrageous recovery to worry about.

 

So with the right powers/AT’s and teamwork, likely you could drain an AV’s quite a bit, even floor it.  But for that same amount of Endurance you spend on doing that, you could just likely straight up launch attacks and defeat the AV.  

 

Sapper builds abound on the boards.  I have a couple that work that way and I wasn’t really even aiming to do so.  But on AV’s, it’s pretty much 0 endurance all the time or its a wasted effort.  Against normal minion/Lt/Boss spawns it can be a pretty effective tactic.  But against AV’s and GM’s...not in my experience.

 

PS - Last sapper build I had was a /Elec Affinity Mastermind.  Could have other combinations, but I found sapping bosses would make them run away VERY FAST like the Council Werewolves.  Annoying as all get out, especially on a MM as my pets would try to follow them and end up aggroing a bunch of other stuff while giving chase.

Makes sense. I have an E3 Sent that drains EB’s and below very easily. Hard to put a dent in an AV though, by myself at least. Would probably need to build a team around it. Just with AV recovery, idk if it is actually possible to keep them from attacking, since they only need 1 end to do so lol

[Replacement]

45 minutes ago, StriderIV said:

I understand that mobs can always attack, even if they have 1 endurance.

 

25 minutes ago, Crysis said:

The game engine allows computer-controlled mobs to “cheat” a little on Endurance usage.  If they have even 1 tick of Endurance, they can still attack, whereas you can’t launch a 20 End attack with only 1 tick of endurance left.  

To my understanding, this isn't strictly true.

 

The big thing is that non-minions have a lot of endurance, and every "tick" of endurance is a % of your max - so sayeth the wiki,  6.667% recovery every four seconds for all critters.

 

With the very large pools of Endurance an AV has, it only takes one tick to gain enough endurance to use any of their moves.  This is why once you do start scraping something's endurance to 0, the most important stat is -recovery, since (iirc- ^{citation needed}), every second of -100% recovery = another second delay until they get that tick.  

I am having a hell of a time trying to find AV endurance, but I want to say it's like 600-1200.

 

This is made worse by AV resistance.  Even removing the Purple Patch from the equation, if you're level 50 and fighting a level 50 AV, they will reduce all -Endurance and -Recovery effects down to 15% of their listed effects!

 

There's a lot that could be adjusted to make this possible without being unfair to the AVs themselves -- the big one would be reducing the actual size of their Endurance pool, though.  Even paired with an inherent endurance discount, this would make sapping actually something that could cost them an attack every now-and-then.

[Techwright]

5 hours ago, Snarky said:

I am sure SOMEONE o (more likely) some team can do this.  For most of us supers it is pull out the frying pans and beat it on the head until it stops moving.

But I like my frying pans. Top of the line cast iron.  Seasoned often.  With lard even! 

 

Maybe Goodwill has some I can buy on the cheap.

 

4 hours ago, Replacement said:

 

With the very large pools of Endurance an AV has, it only takes one tick to gain enough endurance to use any of their moves. 
 

Any move?  That's more than a little cheat.  That's a whole lotta cheat. 

 

I could see its moves being ranked in class and a set of the lowest powered moves being available to it at 1 tick of the endurance.  That's a little cheat.  But if any move is available, why even bother to have an endurance meter?

[Coyote]

13 hours ago, Techwright said:

Any move?  That's more than a little cheat.  That's a whole lotta cheat. 

 

I could see its moves being ranked in class and a set of the lowest powered moves being available to it at 1 tick of the endurance.  That's a little cheat.  But if any move is available, why even bother to have an endurance meter?

 

Well, you regain 5% of your Endurance whenever you get an Endurance tick. So you can't use powers that cost 20 Endurance.

An AV has 800 or so Endurance, so they regain 40 points whenever they get a tick. So they CAN use powers that cost 20 Endurance. I'm not sure that there is a single power that has a cost higher than how much an AV regains in a single tick.

 

AVs can be drained, especially at middle levels. Their resistance gets weaker by about 1% per level below 50, so a 35 AV suffers 30% -Endurance and 30% -Recovery. Given that there are powers like Drain Psyche with -500% Recovery, 15% of that won't shut down an AV's recovery, but 30% would. It is really hard for a single character to do it, you pretty much need two sets that both do -End/-Recovery. I'd bet on a Ele/Psy Dominator, maybe Ele/Nrg Blaster (for Power Boost), maybe Ele/EA Defender. I drained Nosferatu in the late 30s with a Bots/EA MM, but I can't drain AVs at Incarnate levels, since their debuff resistance increased... but if a /EA MM could do it in the 30s, then probably a double-Electric Defender can do it at 50.

[Doomguide2005]

     Yes a couple of fully enhanced, high recharge defenders or blasters (no difference in the power between ATs) builds with Short Circuit could stack ugly amounts of -recovery.   A duo could faily readily hit -400% in 10 seconds or less with just SC.  No power boost or Incarnate powers for that.  Add in more teammates and or power boost or PBU it'll get ugly even for higher level targets with lots of resistance i.e. AVs etc. fairly quickly.  Toss in some Power Sink to drain endurance while pounding with SC and oh look no end or recovery.  But that is with a team of dedicated sappers.

     

[Snarky]

45 minutes ago, Doomguide2005 said:

     But that is with a team of dedicated sappers.

     

who wants to team with a bunch of saps?

[Doomguide2005]

1 hour ago, Snarky said:

who wants to team with a bunch of saps?

Well good sir

 

Lovers of maple syrup unite!

[Coyote]

2 hours ago, Doomguide2005 said:

     Yes a couple of fully enhanced, high recharge defenders or blasters (no difference in the power between ATs) builds with Short Circuit could stack ugly amounts of -recovery.   A duo could faily readily hit -400% in 10 seconds or less with just SC.  No power boost or Incarnate powers for that.  Add in more teammates and or power boost or PBU it'll get ugly even for higher level targets with lots of resistance i.e. AVs etc. fairly quickly.  Toss in some Power Sink to drain endurance while pounding with SC and oh look no end or recovery.  But that is with a team of dedicated sappers.

     

 

I ran an attack chain analysis once for an Electric Blaster to drain an AV (I forget if it was /Ele or /Nrg), and found that it could drain a level 50 AV, on the average... this includes the -End effect, so it doesn't necessarily mean 0% Recovery... but if the AV did get a tick once in a long while, it would be re-drained quickly. The catch was, however, that it relied on spamming Tesla Cage and Short Circuit, which do little DPA. So it could drain, but then wouldn't beat the AV's Regeneration. An alternate attack chain could beat an AV's regen but wouldn't be able to drain it.

 

However, an Ele/Psy Dominator would be using Drain Psyche for -Regen anyhow, so using it for -Recovery doesn't hurt the attack chain, and using Tesla Cage slotted with damage procs wouldn't be a big loss given the relatively weak attacks in /Psy. And Static Field, Conductive Aura, and Gremlins contribute to the draining without taking action time. So I think one could both beat an AV's regeneration and drain it. Eventually... you would still have to survive a couple of minutes of draining it, you do have 800 points of Endurance to work through even if the AV is helping by making attacks.

[golstat2003]

Interesting discussion but with what you need to do, to do this, might as well debuff the AV and smack it in the fact till it dies.

[Coyote]

7 hours ago, golstat2003 said:

Interesting discussion but with what you need to do, to do this, might as well debuff the AV and smack it in the fact till it dies.

 

Well, if you're soloing AVs, there is the question of how to survive. While a lot of squishies can range-tank AVs, some AVs are really hard to tank with just Defense since they have -Defense abilities. Others will self-heal, or summon, or do other unpleasant things. Sometimes, shutting down their abilities and attacks is really important, and End draining is an option (though a pretty difficult one). Especially an AT that doesn't have much self-defense like a Dominator, and not all Doms can perma-Hold AVs.

[golstat2003]

34 minutes ago, Coyote said:

 

Well, if you're soloing AVs, there is the question of how to survive. While a lot of squishies can range-tank AVs, some AVs are really hard to tank with just Defense since they have -Defense abilities. Others will self-heal, or summon, or do other unpleasant things. Sometimes, shutting down their abilities and attacks is really important, and End draining is an option (though a pretty difficult one). Especially an AT that doesn't have much self-defense like a Dominator, and not all Doms can perma-Hold AVs.

I was referring to a team of sappers as has been suggested. To me that seems like a lot of effort versus just inviting some folks who can put something like a cold or rad debuff on the AV and going to town, damage wise.

[Frosticus]

A few AV's seem to have pretty high endurance burn on their own, so you could probably sap them much easier.

Something like Bobcat in the Tinmage TF. She can nearly tank her own end in a few minutes of fighting, so it shouldn't take much to push her over the edge.

[Coyote]

5 hours ago, golstat2003 said:

I was referring to a team of sappers as has been suggested. To me that seems like a lot of effort versus just inviting some folks who can put something like a cold or rad debuff on the AV and going to town, damage wise.

 

Oh, I see. Yeah, that would be way too much trouble. Especially since the point is to get a way to defend against them... and if you're inviting a team, likely someone will be able to tank it, or give out team buffs, or debuff it, or something. Looking for End drain specifically as a mitigation method seems like something only practical if you have a set team built for draining.

[EdgeOfDreams]

I just soloed Vandal at the end of the Citadel TF on my Elec/Bio Sentinel. Admittedly, I was using all three Amplifiers + Envenomed Daggers to combat the regen. Anyway, using the nuke, short circuit, and my single-target attacks, I had him drained to zero before he was below half health. He'd still get a tick back every few seconds and attack, but the overall effect was that he wasn't attacking nearly as often for the second half of the fight.

[Jaguaratron]

On 2/19/2021 at 3:23 PM, StriderIV said:

Hi all!

 

I understand that mobs can always attack, even if they have 1 endurance.

 

However, is it possible to fully drain and AV or GM and KEEP them at zero endurance so they can’t attack? I was under the impression that you can’t, but a buddy of mine says you can.

 

I vaguely recall a "secret" hami strategy way back in the early days pre ED was to drain hami with a bunch of rad/elec defenders so mitos coudlnt spawn