What builds/power sets are able to tank/solo +4x8?

[Zect]

This is such a funny, typical scrapper forumite question. I view it as a Rorschach test - your answer says more about you than it does about your toons.

 

Beyond the obvious factors of enemy groups, damage types et cetra, there's the question of under what conditions your +4x8 soloing can be done. What a lot of forumites will not tell you is that their builds make significant sacrifices in offensive power or utility to achieve this, or that they solo slowly and only with great risk, or that they need to wait for key powers to recharge between spawns, or that you need a lot of tactical knowledge (which mobs to burst down first, etc.). It's not necessarily the guns-ablazing, Rambo play that the coh community is used to.

 

With this in mind, all toons can find some combination of conditions under which they can solo some enemies at +4x8. The questions are: which enemies, how fast, how reliably, what are you paying (in terms of build constraints) for the privilege, and is it actually a practical endeavor or is it just for epeen purposes.

[Yomo Kimyata]

A problem is that even when we are responding to a specific question, we never really know who our audience is (and as other people read and respond, it gets more muddled.)  You don't want to be the jerk who says, "Only me and my leet frenz can do this!"; nor do you want to be the jerk who says "Any dumbass can do this."  Because neither of those seems to be true to me.

 

Let me give my personal context.  I apparently have 22 lvl 50 scrappers.  I generally am running at +3/x8 in the high 40s and make it +4 at lvl 50 unless I have a lot of accuracy bonuses in which case I do it earlier.  I'm pretty sure I've run every one of these at +4/x8 (no AV) through the Mender Ramiel arc and the Heather Townsend arc.  I don't generally run +4 AVs because I don't find it fun to beat on something for ten minutes and I have to afk from the game a lot.  That said, I run a lot of my scrappers through solo TFs.  

 

None of them is completely invulnerable.  If I am fighting Council, I can easily zerg.  Most radio missions are like that as long as you know who your first targets should be (sapper, dark ring mistress).  When I am fighting Longbow, I would like to know if either of the bosses are radiation before I jump into the middle of a spawn, so maybe you snipe someone and make them come to you around the corner.  I think that's pretty basic.  If I'm getting bounced around by a few Singularities, well, first of all, I'm laughing like mad.   Then probably hitting a few inspirations.  My general strategy is to use inspirations if I need them, and convert to ones I need; I always forget about activating incarnates, and I think they are overkill, but the alpha and the interface are nice.  Destiny is so overpowered.

 

I don't think I'm giving up anything in damage other than not putting in damage procs on top of 95% damage.  I also don't think I'm creeping along at a slow pace.  But on a scrapper I've found that layered mitigation is important.  There's the defense/resistance/healing triad, but I rely a lot on stun and knockdown as well.  Also, kill them first.

 

You *can* run +4/x8 from level 1 to 50 on any character.  But that is so incredibly tedious that I don't recommend it.  But if you want to solo +4/x8 on a scrapper at lvl 50, and you know what you are doing, it's there.  It's not trivial and it's not unique.

[Stormwalker]

On 7/10/2023 at 3:16 PM, Yomo Kimyata said:

You *can* run +4/x8 from level 1 to 50 on any character.  But that is so incredibly tedious that I don't recommend it.  But if you want to solo +4/x8 on a scrapper at lvl 50, and you know what you are doing, it's there.  It's not trivial and it's not unique.

 

You pretty much said it all right here.

 

My two level 50 scrappers (Claws/SR and Energy/Energy) on HC can run +4/x8 against most villain groups if I want to.  The several 50 scrappers (Claws/SR, DM/DA, Katana/Regen, DM/Regen, and I know I'm forgetting some) and the two 50 brutes (EM/Inv and SS/Inv) that I had on Live could do it also.  The groups that each character has (or had, in the case of the ones on live) problems with are different, because different powersets and different builds have different weaknesses.   And all of those weaknesses can be overcome if you're willing to go to enough trouble to do it.

 

For that matter, the only 50 I have ever had that couldn't solo at +4/x8 was a blaster.  And I'm sure if I'd had a better build for her, she could have done it, too, but she was a pure concept character and I generally suck at building blasters anyhow.

 

That said, I usually don't solo at +4/x8, even though I can.  Why?  Because it's slow and I am just not that patient most of the time.  Sometimes I will do it just for the challenge, or to savor the feeling of being able to do it, or to test some tweak to one of my builds... but doing it all the time?  Ain't nobody got time for that (except obviously some people do... but those people are not me)!