Survivable toons for the new Aeon SF

[Meknomancer]

So after a few normal runs and some relentless (all tf/sf should be run on relentless you get a much better sense of teamwork its starting to feel more like the good old days of CoH, people running ahead as normal get pounded) i've had to take a hard look at all my builds. I was finding it a dawdle through 99% of content just running about with some 45% defence builds but the new SF murders them when you get sucked in and all the -resists/mez kick in. There's only so many bf's you can carry and i've found myself switching over to account 2 just to email wakies on more than 1 occasion. Kiting doesn't seem to be working that well and i was wondering if it's necessary to slot for more kb protection or if this will make 0 difference or if i should be switching to more resist based builds even if it means sacrificing a ton of recharge. So my question is this: which At's/toons/builds are people finding it easiest to survive Aeon with (other than the obvious tanky/brutes) especially when it comes to non melee At's that don't have mez protection? I've been testing it with a bunch of corrs/fenders to help out teams and tried solo on a db/bio scrap which didn't go well when i did the optional mish after Apex and got splatted by Hero 1 and friend.

[The_Warpact]

We did it on Vicious last night, a SS/WP, EM/Bio, Ice/Elec, and me on a Ill/Trap troller. 

Bio was the weakest, WP next, and Elec last. As long as I didn't get mezzed I was ok with PA taking the brunt and I'm capped on melee def and all res. Taking the alpha from the Goldbrickers was impossible on any build. 

I think with all the -res it would be bad on any AT going that route, of course with the high to hit, def probably isn't any better.

I'm wondering how any of my tanks would have done especially my /Rad with his debuffs/heals. 

[Coyotedancer]

I'm tempted to try it with one of my regen monsters, but... yikes. Sounds like it would be painful with a capital OW. 😱

[The_Warpact]

Multiple VEATs would probably be a great team make up. Double leadership, Maneuvers, Mind Link, etc.

[Lazarillo]

Out of curiosity, what type of mez gets tossed out?  Is it the standard stuns and sleeps, or are they mixing in Fears and Confuses that will necessitate specific defense sets and/or teammates that can provide mez protection via buff sets/Clarion?

[golstat2003]

1 hour ago, Meknomancer said:

So after a few normal runs and some relentless (all tf/sf should be run on relentless you get a much better sense of teamwork its starting to feel more like the good old days of CoH, people running ahead as normal get pounded) i've had to take a hard look at all my builds. I was finding it a dawdle through 99% of content just running about with some 45% defence builds but the new SF murders them when you get sucked in and all the -resists/mez kick in. There's only so many bf's you can carry and i've found myself switching over to account 2 just to email wakies on more than 1 occasion. Kiting doesn't seem to be working that well and i was wondering if it's necessary to slot for more kb protection or if this will make 0 difference or if i should be switching to more resist based builds even if it means sacrificing a ton of recharge. So my question is this: which At's/toons/builds are people finding it easiest to survive Aeon with (other than the obvious tanky/brutes) especially when it comes to non melee At's that don't have mez protection? I've been testing it with a bunch of corrs/fenders to help out teams and tried solo on a db/bio scrap which didn't go well when i did the optional mish after Apex and got splatted by Hero 1 and friend.

 

You should be relying on your team mates for buffs (and applying debuffs to various enemies). ASF really needs you think of your team make up and not just try to rely on your self if you believe that "all tf/sf should be run on relentless you get a much better sense of teamwork its starting to feel more like the good old days of CoH, people running ahead as normal get pounded"

Edited November 28, 2021 by golstat2003

[Meknomancer]

I'm not trying to rely on myself i'm saying its much better having to work as a team. I'm saying i keep getting crushed regardless which i've gotta say i'm quite happy about as it makes me think more when playing. I was only curious about what people were running through it with and doing well. I only went in solo once to get the hang of the maps/layouts/objectives and see whats what.

[Meknomancer]

As to the mez i found they were throwing out alot of immob's which aren't that much of a problem, probably some holds/stuns the biggest things were the ripple resonator (blue sonic/tar patch type power that does all the -res) and the power that sucks you into it (no idea what that was called). Once your actually standing in the patch it can be really difficult to get off it, bit like being hit by a consigliere and his grav pet, you just get tossed about, immobilized, stunned/held with 0 resist while the range toon hits the eb dropping its hp who then goes into his elude type defence and countsdown to a nova. Anyone in range or not watching just gets 1 shotted and while it looks like things are going well suddenly 6 players faceplant. Its great fun but even with a break free on and clarion running you often feel like your in an unwinnable situation. Doesn't matter how high your defence is, although i will have to give SR tank a try the ripple resonator lowers your resist massively and it looks like they can be stacked up while you get vortex'd into them. I think. There's a lot going on usually got a feeling it will be a while for everyone to get to know whats going on. All in all though its easily the best and most fun content in the game and the new rep settings make it even more so forcing teams to work together and actually consider team make up rather than just grabbing any old alt. 

[KaizenSoze]

19 hours ago, The_Warpact said:

Multiple VEATs would probably be a great team make up. Double leadership, Maneuvers, Mind Link, etc.

I want to try this at some point. I have been playing around the beta server with builds.

 

Good points:

• Plenty of defense
• Plenty of accuracy
• Plenty of controls if there are enough Fortunatas, which are probably the most common VEAT
• Plenty of damage buffing
• Plenty of mez protection
• Plenty of psi and toxic damage which are weak spots for mobs on this SF

Bad points:

• Widow/Fort scaling resists don't cut it. Too much auto hit -resists plus low hps. I feel you need to have tough.
• Low VEAT hps in general
• Almost no DDR (Defense Debuff Resistance). There isn't a ton of -defense, but it's there with melt armor.
• No resist buffing
• No healing
• No end buffing
• Who is going to be the tank/puller?
• No aggro control unless provoke or melee hybrid is taken
• Uncontrollable pets can be a real liability

 

I do have a "Night Tank" build, but I haven't tried it out with a group. It can solo the first 2 missions at 0x8 and 801.5.

 

IMO. At the highest difficulties:

2 Crab/Night Widow "tanks". Puller and secondary aggro control.

2-3 Fortunatas

2-3 Crab/Banes for venom grenade. I actually think Banes are better here due to good single target damage and two forms of -resist. But I am biased towards Banes. 🙂

Edited November 29, 2021 by KaizenSoze

[Meknomancer]

Psi attacks were great for this sf, at least while my fort was alive i think it faceplanted 8-9 times on a relentless run but i don't run tough on it which i think would make a big difference having seen the 2nd fort on team have time to jump out of the debuff patches which pretty much 1 shotted me.

[DreadShinobi]

I am currently looking at nature affinity as a great option for relentless specific runs. I just haven't decided on defender or controller. Controller gets psi app with permanent mez protection and psinado for force feedback procs and obviously some better control options. Defender gets the juicier buff mods. Nature looks good to me because of the heal over time effects, absorb shields, and a fast recharging rez (by means of slotting ot with panacea). Overgrowth is actually an incredible t9 when the rest of the set is supported by content challenging enough to require the defensive nature of the rest of the set. Defender Overgrowth provides 82.5% dmg buff, conserve power, and a huge tohit buff to counter the +defender passive from relentless. Power boosted overgrowth + non power boosted tactics = +52% tohit buff. Defender vs troller is proving to be a hard choice here

Edited November 29, 2021 by DreadShinobi

[The_Warpact]

I'm thinking a SR/Rad tanker, with TP pool. High def with the -def, how good is the heal in Rad that might help.

 

[InvaderStych]

On 11/28/2021 at 11:54 AM, The_Warpact said:

Multiple VEATs would probably be a great team make up.

 

I've done runs with my Psi/SD scrapper with and without VEAT buffs on the team and noticed a difference in durability with/without them.

 

Psi Melee seems to do quite well on DASF, despite the minimal AoE it excels at eliminating priority targets and none of the AVs seem overly resistant to Psi, which can be an issue in some cases (Siege/Nightstar, for example).

 

@Meknomancer - RE: Not a Tank/Brute/Scrap:

 

Other than that it's been with the Fire/Martial blaster, and I don't think I've ever seen Inner Will fire off even remotely as often as it was during that run.  Having that on auto seemed to help a great deal with mez.  The "traditional" soft-cap build I've been running isn't right for the task though, too much investment in defense and not enough in offense, so I'm working on an alternate build that will be Fire/Martial/Fire - if I can figure out how to slot the damn thing. I'm torn. The way it is setup now lets me play more boldly and makes a good base for team buffs. OTOH, changing up the tactics a little bit and leaning on the team for survival means more delicious damage, so .... 🤷‍♂️

 

Blaster Experts?

 

I know there are better secondaries for +dmg and other effects (the holds in /atomic might be interesting, for example), but there is something to be said for the "Free Break-Free" effect of Inner Will on Auto.  Though Ripple 2 can make life tough on a blapper when the swarm comes to save the monstrosity. Hopefully switching to Hover/EvM from ground-pounding will help with that though.

Edited November 30, 2021 by InvaderStych

[Ruin Mage]

In terms of an ASF team surviving higher difficulties, A Relentless team that I ran had some nutty survivability with:

• Dark Miasma (Shadow Fall)
• 2x Cold Domination (Benumb also fucking rocks)
• Sonic

We also had a VEAT to help a little bit.

You could throw stuff out there like someone with Shield Defense for scrapper/tanker or other supports like Nature, Time, or Thermal.

In terms of tankers, the ones I've seen work the best are Electric Armor & Bio Armor. However, most any set should be fine...unless you go with no support at all. In which case god speed you magnificent bastards. Invuln could probably do well too.

Edited November 30, 2021 by Shadeknight

[Excraft]

People should have expected this.  The only way to make "support more useful" was to totally nerf everyone else or add stupid levels of mez, damage or -resists/-def to that you need outside buffs.  Whether or not that's a good design decision is debatable.  Personally, I'll be running this for the new badges and then never bother with it again.  Don't get me wrong, it's a solid TF and definitely something different.  The new environments and such are top notch and the team here did a great job with all of it.  It's just that running it on higher difficulty settings is too long a slog for me.  I just don't have a couple of hours to devote to running it when I can farm other TFs/iTrials faster.

[Meknomancer]

The time duration of the sf is what pleased me the most. When we first got HC back it was speed speed speed and i found myself teaching people how to speed tinpex within a couple of days of being back for incarnate components. Now that things seem to have settled and we know the game isn't going to vanish and we continually get new powersets and great content its nice to see stuff that takes you back to the way the game was originally (almost if you discount the set system) where team make up and teamwork matters and you can't simply fly through content in record times for a few extra merits. I never really noticed speed runs being a thing til the last few years and it made the game less enjoyable for me at least, nobody chats during tf's anymore and i realise i was just as bad there were plenty of times i thought i only have 50 minutes playtime lets get this done. The new sf forces you to plan ahead which is great in terms of what you bring and how long you have to get through it.

[KaizenSoze]

2 hours ago, Excraft said:

People should have expected this.  The only way to make "support more useful" was to totally nerf everyone else or add stupid levels of mez, damage or -resists/-def to that you need outside buffs.  Whether or not that's a good design decision is debatable.  Personally, I'll be running this for the new badges and then never bother with it again.  Don't get me wrong, it's a solid TF and definitely something different.  The new environments and such are top notch and the team here did a great job with all of it.  It's just that running it on higher difficulty settings is too long a slog for me.  I just don't have a couple of hours to devote to running it when I can farm other TFs/iTrials faster.

I think you are underestimate the ingenuity of the player base.

 

There are already 17 min base settings runs.

 

Also, no one is making you do this new content. That is the joy of COX pretty much everything is optional.

[Ruin Mage]

I have to say that if I can get through the MoASF with only a dark miasma and a cold domination as support on a team of 3 tanks, then anyone feasibly should be able to handle Malicious at least.

Or maybe I'm just built differently.
 

Edited December 1, 2021 by Shadeknight

[Avarius]

did it with a team on only vicious settings the other day. Started with a full team but 2 dropped out. I used my StJ/Dark Brute. He faceplanted several times by either getting too far ahead or the first time getting hit with goldbricker alpha before I knew to run away lol. I t was nice to have a challenge again. First time in a long time my /dark brute couldn't stand up to almost everything. Usually he steamrolls most content. Not on Aeon.

[Uun]

Ran it on Relentless the other night with 2 controllers (Illusion/Time and Plant/Sonic or maybe reversed), 2 defenders (Dark/Dark and Cold/Beam), 1 dominator (Mind/Energy), 1 sentinel (don't remember), 1 tank (Rad/Ice) and 1 widow. Completed in 2h12m with 18 defeats (including the Vanguard AV battle). All experienced veterans with complete T3/4 incarnate builds. 

[Ruin Mage]

Yeah, that team comp is great.

[Meknomancer]

Had a quick run through solo with a seismic/stone scrap no idea what i was doing build wise without mids just to see what i would need for teaming with it and it got through to the 2nd last mish (with a lot of running away hiding round corners to avoid the ripple resonator and geode saving my bacon) and it seemed ok until i hit the 2 bricker av's and got pretty much 1 shotted 2-3 times in a row. I didn't have high expectations with so much s/l defence and not much else but even with the minor damage pbaoe's the control from them made it very survivable and it soloed most of the av's no problem ( i forgot to buy envenomed so the fights took a while) although apex took massive chunks of hp until he whipped out the sword and became useless. Looking forward to some mids updates as i think it could prove to be a really good toon.

[Cybot X-22]

First blind run on merciless was a bit of a slaughterhouse for the team. My warshade tank with 35% def and 85% resists, overcapped. Did ok. Had a lot of trouble landing hits of some of the stuff as it was purple 54's. I'm at 50+2 at least. Might have been in over my head. Only went down when I got really focused hard or shifted to do something and got caught out of form.

 

A team even with a little bit of +def and + acc will probably do ok so long as they don't rush too hard. All of that  - res though....

[nihilii]

On 11/28/2021 at 9:06 PM, Lazarillo said:

Out of curiosity, what type of mez gets tossed out?  Is it the standard stuns and sleeps, or are they mixing in Fears and Confuses that will necessitate specific defense sets and/or teammates that can provide mez protection via buff sets/Clarion?

Out of AVs / special encounters, it seems mostly standard mezzes.

 

I'm currently multiboxing it on Relentless, with characters without Fear/Confuse protection; which gives me a lot of time in between faceplants to contemplate what kills me. Usually, it comes down to stacked buffs and debuffs - or the Goldbricker boss explosion, which seems to kill even a Tanker at the HP cap.

[Excraft]

On 11/30/2021 at 10:32 AM, KaizenSoze said:

I think you are underestimate the ingenuity of the player base.

 

There are already 17 min base settings runs.

 

Also, no one is making you do this new content. That is the joy of COX pretty much everything is optional.

 

I'm struggling to understand where/how you got any of this from my post.

• Never said one word about the ingenuity of the player base
• Never said there would never be speed runs, nor do I care what power gamers can do on base settings as it's not a crowd I run with
• Never said anyone is forcing me to do any content

Were you to actually go back and read what I wrote instead of knee jerk reacting to defend this new content from some incorrectly perceived slight, you'd see I made several compliments about it.  I also specifically mentioned running it on higher (as in not base) difficulty taking too long for my (as in me personally, not anyone elses) play schedule.

 

Reading comprehension skills go a long way.