Best Ranged Character For Solo

[damnimgood]

I was looking at the reddit for "Most OP Solo Character", and I was wondering what the Best Ranged Character for soloing would be. Doesn't have to be a Blaster or a Sentinel. (Or so called "OP") Could be a Controller or something else. I'd really  like some out-of-the-box ideas so I can try something different. I've just made a character with a great design (IMO lol) and I prefer range over Scrappers, Tanks, Stalkers or Brutes. I KNOW there's drawbacks to this, but just my preference, and was looking for ideas for good range soloing.

 

 

[ZorkNemesis]

If you're soloing on a pure range you generally want something to help mitigate damage, usually through a secondary effect.  Dark Blast stands out in this regard as every attack comes with -To Hit to help you evade attacks.  Ice Blast is also helpful with stacking slow effects that reduce the number of attacks against you along with keeping them away with the movement slows.  Controller sets also help with damage mitigation by nature of preventing foes from attacking but outside of specific sets (Plant and Illusion for instance) your overall damage will be lower than you'd probably want and solo play becomes a chore until late game builds present themselves.

 

If you want to stay at a distance, I might suggest a Dark/Energy Blaster.  Dark will help you avoid damage while Energy can amplify the -To Hit of your attacks and Life Drain's heal with Power Boost, plus Boost Range giving you a lot of extra space to shoot from.  Energize is a little inconvienent being a click-based sustain, but the combo still works well together from what i'm looking at. 

 

If you want a Controller instead, I would rep Plant/Time.  Plant gets a mass confusion power very early that makes most fights a non-issue and the Carrion Vines literally eat everything alive when procced to hell.  /Time gives a slew of buffs and debuffs that cover most aspects including a 50% Recharge from Chrono Shift and a strong Def/To Hit from Farsight, both can be made perma with good slotting and Hasten.

[plainguy]

Any Sentinel with Super Reflex will give you Defense cap.

A Range cap hoverblaster works. 

You will be able to run 8/3 for sure.  

 

[plainguy]

Ninjutsu is also another set that can get you defense capped. 

[SomeGuy]

A claws scrapper.

[carroto]

The right Controller would probably be safe, but perhaps a bit slow until the build matures.  For anything without mez protection I'd choose based on how to deal with mez.  Dark Blast is decent, but in my experience I'm not able to stack enough -tohit to reliably avoid getting mezzed, and then once I am my debuffs wear off and I can get chain mezzed.  I prefer slows here, because even if I get mezzed, usually once it wears off I'll have a chance to act before the enemy's mez recharges.

 

I've played quite a bit of Sonic Resonance because it's one of the few sets available to squishies that offers mez protection.  Pair it with Dark Blast for a heal and you can be built pretty tough.  If you build for defense to stack with the -tohit, that on top of your resistances can make for a well-rounded character.  The big problem there is that you best -res power requires an ally anchor, so it's not the best for soloing.

 

I've also paired Sonic with Earth on a Controller.  That way I had Stoney as my anchor, with me always.  No heal though, so I built for defense and regen and hoped for the best.

Edited July 19, 2021 by carroto

[Zepp]

On 7/12/2021 at 8:04 AM, ZorkNemesis said:

Controller sets also help with damage mitigation by nature of preventing foes from attacking but outside of specific sets (Plant and Illusion for instance) your overall damage will be lower than you'd probably want and solo play becomes a chore until late game builds present themselves.

Illusion isn't that good for ranged as you have to get in proximity to the enemy to guide PA for attacking.

[ZorkNemesis]

33 minutes ago, Zepp said:

Illusion isn't that good for ranged as you have to get in proximity to the enemy to guide PA for attacking.

 

My point was more that Illusion tends to be a more offensive set compared to other control sets.  There's a reason it's one of the top performers.

[Zepp]

4 hours ago, ZorkNemesis said:

My point was more that Illusion tends to be a more offensive set compared to other control sets.  There's a reason it's one of the top performers.

For overall damage from Range, Gravity is probably the best choice followed by fire. The sets which rely on pets for damage (like Illusion) often require you to be in melee to get your pets to focus the right enemy.

 

The three reasons that Illusion is popular is PA allows a significant amount of damage (but requires you to move into melee to make them useful), two of the three best stealth powers in game (and they stack!), and they use a type of control that is still functional in high level content boss fights (aggro control). However, as this thread is about range damage Illusion Control only has their T1 & T2, which are not the best amongst trollers.

[krj12]

For ranged soloing:

1.  Plant/Storm Troller - can be a bit slow at low levels, but comes into its own.

2.  Ice/Ice Blaster - great damage with slows, and knockdowns.

3.  Fire/Kin Troller - haven't played one since live, but used to be the defacto top farmer.

4.  Fortunata - like a psych blaster, but with great survivability.

 

[Snarky]

I am soloing Redside on a Dark/Dark Blaster.  This is at +0/x1 with DFB buffs and P2W and all the goodies. But it is a very chill powerful set up.  The to hit debuffs do a nice bit of lifting when the going gets rough

[gorebash1]

Blasters!!!

I really had a fun time leveling up Dark/Temporal. Solid CC, good de-buff & a Heal!

 

My current favorite for solo is Nrg/Martial. Keep those mobs bouncing and if they get too close KI Push on auto fire. 😄

 

[SmalltalkJava]

this may be out of scope for what you are asking, but if you want a "blasting" set like a sentinel/corruptor/blaster/defender, and you want a "pure" ranged blaster then you need to pay attention to the tier 9 nuke.

 

 

 

**T9 Ranged Nukes**

Archery
Assault Rifle
Beam Rifle
Electrical Blast - (but Short Circuit is a pbaoe)
Ice Blast
Water Blast

**T9 PBAOE Nukes**

Dark
Fire
Energy
Dual Pistols
Psychic
Sonic
Radiation

 

 

A good option is Plant Controller,   also @DreadShinobi has a Kinetics/Rad defender build that is just ungodly cool to play.  But Kin and Radiation are both generally, sets that like to be up close to melee range.

Edited August 4, 2021 by SmalltalkJava