Best AT / Powerset to Solo content

[JCServant]

Salutations.

 

I'm curious to know what AT's and powersets you consider best for solo'ing as much of the content as possible, including AV's and the like.  If you have links to full builds as well, that's much appreciated. Thank you!

[kanga]

My old fire melee/energy aura stalker does quite well. soloed a few AV's in the Maria Jenkins arc. This build can be tweaked too. I have made a change or two, I have provoke instead of placate for example, to help some lowbies i was teamed with. It is also an aoe monster for a stalker.

 

 

 

Edited March 20 by kanga
notes

[Snarky]

Hmmm.  Solo…. To solo the game on standard settings +1/x1 with Default Bosses solo but no AV solo you can take just about anything. And take what you enjoy.  
 

If you are comfortable I would recommend something with AoE.  There is a lot of kill-alls in the game. 
 

Then you casually drop “solo AVs”. Okay, now that is an entirely different topic.  If you believe what I said above then really throw out the “do everything in the game” (because anything can) and retitle “what can solo AVs”. Because I am not sure everything can. 
 

Maybe this is just me but I am thinking you have more really big things you want the toon to be able to do buried in “as much of the content as possible” that maybe you should specifically let us know what you want this thing to do….

Edited March 18 by Snarky

[venetiasilver]

In the original 5 AT's Scrapper's Journey was this "Underdog" training arc.

Much Solo, Very Time Chamber.

[Two5boy]

Pure solo that can do most content and varied difficulties settings I would say mastermind. Has all the tools needed as it’s pretty straight forward to play but you might get bored as it’s the minions that doing the killing. 

[Lunar Ronin]

I second Mastermind.  Primary really doesn't matter.  Secondary?  Nature Affinity, Electrical Affinity, Dark Miasma, Thermal Radiation, Time Manipulation, Storm Summoning.  Sonic Resonance would work well as long as your primary has at least one melee henchman and you can find a way to deal with enormous endurance drain, and find a way to work Aid Other into the build.

[Ukase]

So, I'm one of those folks who tends to read/hear what other folks like, tries it out and figure I'm in the minority more often than not. 

The ATs that I do not enjoy playing solo are, in no particular order: 
Dominator
Tank
Warshade/Peacebringer
All controllers but illusion Primary
MMs. 


That's not to say I can't, or you can't solo well with them, but for various reasons, I don't enjoy the experience. 
Tanks got a buff on HC to deal out a bit more damage. But, it's not enough to encourage me to tackle high bags of hitpoints in missions. The damage just isn't enough to suit ME. 
MMs and Dominators have pathetically low HP. They are terribly fragile. MM pets are also fairly fragile, at least the beasts and thugs I've played with. I don't see Demons or bots in my future because I don't want to look at them, let alone hear them. Dominators achieve domination more easily on teams. No idea why that is, but it is. 

Warshades/PBs - there isn't much I enjoy about playing these ATs teamed or solo, really. Interesting concepts, but they need a lot more slots to support the forms. 

Controllers are okay to play solo past level 24 or so - but you have to get there! And even then, pets aren't controllable, and some of them are just stupid. 

For me, the easiest AT to play solo is a sentinel. But, it's not the most fun or most rewarding to me. 
For my money, the SS/Fire brute is the most fun to play solo. 

In early levels, you have fury to aid in dishing out more damage than you'd expect from a lowby. You have high resist cap. If you can manage your endurance, you're darned hard to kill. And, when you get footstomp, man, for me it's just a hoot. Burn and Footstomp? with double rage? man...that's just too hard to pass up. 
And because you're solo, you don't have to sweat any KB, you don't have to worry about taunting, unless you just want to. 

 

A blaster is great fun, but you have to worry about status protection. 
A scrapper is kind of fun, but the damage that outdoes a brute's is overshadowed by the lack of a taunt aura around them. Those npcs are rightfully scared, but the way they run away annoys me. And the brute's base hitpoints are higher. For me, a scrapper is a crapper. Hardly worth making - but that is just me. I've seen some scrappers do serious dps. Like, next level amazing stuff. But, they're not for me. 
 

Corruptors are fantastic, solo or teamed. Still have to worry about status protection, but breakfrees are cheap. 
Defenders are as good as corruptors when solo, maybe even better because they get a damage buff of 30% when solo. Just kind of depends on how you slot which is going to be better. 

But, in summary, the SS/Fire brute is the way to go. 

All that said, if your desire is to solo AVs, the best combo I can think of is ill/rad controller, the AV/GM killer. It will take a while, but it's certainly doable. 
There are some AV's, like Clamor and Arakhn that are easily clobbered by just about any AT, but some are downright difficult. Marauder has a huge chunk of hitpoints, and Silver Mantis can be problematic for a lot of ATs. But, with perma-Phantom Army, you're in good shape no matter what you're facing. And with the rad secondary, you can really whittle them down. 

Edited March 20 by Ukase

[JCServant]

Ah... I think I need to clarify.  In my humble opinion, nearly any class can solo most story arcs at default settings. But which class can solo the most content - i.e. task forces - which would require taking on full arch villains and the like? Since if one solo's a task force, that is likely to be the hardest part to get through as there's no way to turn off A/Vs in task forces.  That's why I mentioned AV in my original post. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if one solo's a task force, they are facing AVs, right?

[Zect]

If you mean soloing for "practical" purposes, as in you want the reward at the end and care somewhat about your time efficiency as opposed to completionism or chasing e-clout, my answer is pre-nerf TW/Bio scrapper. It turns out that when you munch ultimates, feed a gazillion team insps to lore pets, and play the two most overpowered sets in the history of the game, you don't need a team to speedrun MLTF.

[Go0gleplex]

I'm strictly a solo player. Easiest to solo with are Sentinel, Brute, MM, Blaster, Scrapper/Stalker...in that order. Of course power set selection will affect things as well...

[Snarky]

2 hours ago, JCServant said:

Ah... I think I need to clarify.  In my humble opinion, nearly any class can solo most story arcs at default settings. But which class can solo the most content - i.e. task forces - which would require taking on full arch villains and the like? Since if one solo's a task force, that is likely to be the hardest part to get through as there's no way to turn off A/Vs in task forces.  That's why I mentioned AV in my original post. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if one solo's a task force, they are facing AVs, right?

Yes.  And, by definition you are ralking every AV in the game.  Some of them… oof.  It is a rock paper scissors game.  At a certain point you will rnd up in the tough end of that triangle.  And….. just for fun, some TF/SF have multiple AVs.  At least two trials have complex mechanics teams struggle to accomplish. Although these may scale down for solo, the AV issue looms huge.  

[Latex]

Where you're going to struggle with solo stuff is probably AV's so -Regen of some sort is helpful, theres that temp throwing knife power I forget the name of that helps.

 

But then you probably want a balanced character that can solo at quick speed, so something like an Ill/Cold Troller might deal with most AV's easily, but not be as quick as some other stuff for map clears. Idk, I'd probably go with a Scrapper ??/Bio Armor, you get a lot of utility with Bio and Absorb is very very strong, for primary I'm not sure.

[Sovera]

Anything with an agro aura. My last Sentinel run fizzled in the 30s as my desire to play got worn down to a nub from enemies running all over the map, which, usually, I'd ignore, but it was consecutive kill all missions so I could not leave them to wander around the map.

 

A Tanker can kill anything. Anything can solo and kill AVs though especially with Envenomed Daggers. So a Tanker who can already solo AVs will just solo them faster with those.

 

 

But as the others said it depends on what you want. I like Tankers because I can start very early doing x8 missions. But does that matter? Even with good AoE x8 takes a while especially when we start doing kill all missions. If you're not into taking it slow then perhaps x4 suits you better. Once at x4 you can do anything with everything. Even Scrappers that are not the sturdiest early/mid-level.

 

Something that starts being girthy is the (near) immortal build in my signature. Level 13 and we're already near immortal at near 40% defense. One Build-up + Gaussian + both AoEs kills all the minions in a group leaning lieutenants at half HP, which is acceptable for me.

 

 

Pretty much anything can solo depending on what difficulty setting you choose. At base literally *any* AT. It's only when you want to increase the difficulty that things get spicier. Even then it depends at how early you want to go all out. My Sentinel soloed Posi 1 and 2 at 0x6, then Yin at +1x8, and it made a much shorter work of the AVs than my Tankers usually do, but by Citadel I could not stomach mobs running away and all over once I had used my nuke and AoEs. I spent longer chasing and defeating them than my Tanker does just continuing to unload AoEs to their face while I'm working on the boss.

 

So my initial advice stands until the detrimental fear code is punted out of this game: anything that has an agro aura.

Edited March 18 by Sovera

[Biff Pow]

I soloed the Task Force Commander TFs with an Energy/Energy Blaster. No tricks needed with that amount of damage.

[biostem]

23 hours ago, JCServant said:

I'm curious to know what AT's and powersets you consider best for solo'ing as much of the content as possible, including AV's and the like.  If you have links to full builds as well, that's much appreciated. Thank you!

Currently, I heavily favor sentinels.  The catch is that, even though you have an armor secondary set, you're still not quite as durable as a tanker or brute, (at least not initially), so try and keep your distance until you are pretty well slotted.

 

That being said, if you want an overall safer experience, I suggest going with one of the 2 extremes - either a tanker for maximum durability, or a stalker for their stealth, crits, and the overall ability to pick and choose your fights.

 

Prior to end-game content, masterminds can also be incredibly effective soloists, but you'll want to keep an eye out for damage patches or other such AoEs that can quickly KO your henchmen...

[evetsleep]

19 hours ago, Lunar Ronin said:

I second Mastermind.  Primary really doesn't matter.  Secondary?  Nature Affinity, Electrical Affinity, Dark Miasma, Thermal Radiation, Time Manipulation, Storm Summoning.  Sonic Resonance would work well as long as your primary has at least one melee henchman and you can find a way to deal with enormous endurance drain, and find a way to work Aid Other into the build.

I have a bots/sonic that perfoms quite well.  I do often send in the assault bot into a pack with sonic resonance running, but honestly it's rarely necessary.  Most baddies come into melee range without me needing to do much.   The heals that bots offer helps /sonic tremendously.

 

So I wouldn't say it's purely necessary to have a melee pet.

[Scarlet Shocker]

Han or Napoleon!

[JCServant]

14 hours ago, Supertanker said:

I soloed the Task Force Commander TFs with an Energy/Energy Blaster. No tricks needed with that amount of damage.

Oooo...my main is an energy/invul sentinel.  Maybe there's hope for me 🙂

 

[Player2]

Blaster + Brawl.

 

That's all you need, baby.

[Doomguide2005]

There are an absolute ton of variables and subjective answers to the basic question(s) unwritten or otherwise in your post.  Overall outside of the most difficult stuff in the game at post 50 with a t4'd incarnate very little is out of reach if anything.  But in general I'd agree with the other posters in the thread and I wouldn't start with an Empathy defender.  I say that as a fairly experienced player of Empathy knowing of several who have solo'd a +4/x8 ITF (think about a very well buffed t4 Lore pet with other company before you dismiss it out of hand).

[JCServant]

Well, I'm just hoping to hear from you all what builds YOU have found most usefull/successful in solo'ing the most amount of content possible. Which, I would imagine, would be those characters capable of tackling a variety of AVs since without that, one cannot solo task forces.  Nearly any character can solo story arcs, though some a lot slower than others. Speed isn't my main question here, however. It's more of capability. Which ATs / powersets can take on the most content in the game solo.  If possible, link builds as well 🙂  

[Snarky]

57 minutes ago, JCServant said:

Well, I'm just hoping to hear from you all what builds YOU have found most usefull/successful in solo'ing the most amount of content possible. Which, I would imagine, would be those characters capable of tackling a variety of AVs since without that, one cannot solo task forces.  Nearly any character can solo story arcs, though some a lot slower than others. Speed isn't my main question here, however. It's more of capability. Which ATs / powersets can take on the most content in the game solo.  If possible, link builds as well 🙂  

I very rarely solo AVs.  Maybe 2-3 times ever.   The first, always memorable, was the Tree in redside respec trial.  I could not get anyone to join.  
 

I dropped every pet temp i had and used envenomed dagger.  Look, if you want to solo AVs there are not only P2W “start” vendor pets but a bunch that can be gotten from story arcs.  Refresh through ouro.  Then there is the Heavy from Vanguard, bought in RWZ with vanguard merits.  Finally there is a Warburg Nuke unlock that gives you a temp pet. Repeat for next AV.  

[nihilii]

A very simple heuristic for me is 300+ DPS and as little conditions as possible.

 

I say 300+ DPS as a baseline. Ideally most of your damage would be elemental as AVs often resist S/L. Ideally you'd have a little more than that too. Because you are fighting AV regen, and lvl 54 AV regen with resistances and tricks in some case, damage scales nonlinearly. Adding +50 DPS can be the difference between a stalemate and victory.

 

That being said, all but the hardest TFs should be doable with ~300 DPS.

 

I personally like Sentinels a lot for that reason. You pelt stuff at range with survivability almost comparable to a Stalker; which in practice (provided you stay mobile) makes for survivability closer to a Tanker than to a Scrapper, because enemies deal much less damage at range. Fire, Elec and Sonic are strong primaries. Bio, Nin, SR, Rad are great secondaries.

 

Scrappers and Tankers are objectively better builds for that purpose, in general. It's impossible to go wrong with, say, an EM/Bio. Stone/EM Tankers were likewise absolute beasts before the Stone buffs, and now should be even better as you can play in normal armors and switch to Granite godmode only if something pierces through.

 

Night Widows have been buffed, A LOT. They're now fully rounded characters with no real hole save for the lacking of healing, which can be mitigated in various ways. I think they would be good contenders too, again in the spirit of flexible character able to adapt. Can make full use of the second build, i.e. having a Fortunata ready to go to hold the green mitos in LGTF.

 

You mention your Energy/Invul Sentinel. This would not be the easiest character to solo with, I'd rank it as "average" to perhaps "slightly under average". But, with good tactics, build optimisations, regular insps, eventually temps, I'd assume you could get:

 

(tier 1: if your build is good, you should be able to turn off your brain and at most chomp on insps. You can even solo many of these on a bad build)

- all the oldschool sub 50 TFs

- all respec trials

- Cavern of Transcendence

- Death from Below

- Drowning in Blood

- Rularuu TFs

 

(tier 2: you will likely have to think, there will be deaths, some optimization required)

- Mortimer and Sutter. Hard fights, but level 40 scaling works in your favor.

- Descent to the Hydra. Pain in the ass than anything. Honestly I'd skip this one unless you really care for the achievement of doing it solo, it's just a grind to take out the shields then shoot down the head veeeery slowly with just your one cannon.
- ITF with some effort. Good middle point to know if you can take on the rest of the lvl 50 TFs.

- Aeon. Mostly have to pay attention to the special mechanics.

- Market Crash. The challenge here is the final robot, who breaks every game rule. No real trick to it except be on the ball, jousting helps to avoid -maxHP debuffs stacking too much.

- LGTF with a dedicated build, you'd want to grab an epic hold and slot it for maximum recharge+hold. Honoree can also be a showstopper, his Unstoppable cycles may outpace your damage.

 

(tier 3: getting into real challenge territory, failure is expected and victory should be celebrated)

- LRSF. Perhaps counterintuitively the easiest of the hard TFs, because you can pull the final 7 level 53 AVs individually or in duos if you work hard at it.

- Apex. Got to be quick on your feet, this is one TF where being a Sentinel over say a Scrapper can be helpful. Still a trial to beat lvl 54 Battle Maiden.
- Tin Mage. No blue patches of death but mandatory 2+ AV fights *and* robots with good resistances puts this slightly higher on the difficulty scale, it's possible to hit a regeneration roadblock here.

- Eden??? I haven't tried to solo Eden since they buffed it, no idea how to assess save that the Crystal Titan is a tough cookie now...

(tier 4: likely impossible for Energy/Invul Sentinel, and for that matter for many many builds)

- STF. Extremely difficult. The 4 patrons can be pulled individually and defeated. Taking on buffed up Lord Recluse himself is another story. You have to take out the towers but you won't have the DPS to burst them down. The hardest part as a soloer is tagging the repairmen in time too. I think an Energy/Invul Sentinel would fail this unless the player was elite.
- Barracuda/Kahn. Reichsman requires gargatuan DPS, no two ways about it.

[Doomguide2005]

2 hours ago, JCServant said:

Well, I'm just hoping to hear from you all what builds YOU have found most usefull/successful in solo'ing the most amount of content possible. Which, I would imagine, would be those characters capable of tackling a variety of AVs since without that, one cannot solo task forces.  Nearly any character can solo story arcs, though some a lot slower than others. Speed isn't my main question here, however. It's more of capability. Which ATs / powersets can take on the most content in the game solo.  If possible, link builds as well 🙂  

     I haven't really done this much on HC.  Did some back on Live but pre-Incarnate.  Soloing through Maria Jenkins with my Claws/SR scrapper but eventually I got bored beating sacks of hit points.  I find fighting huge swarms of foes more interesting.  The current version of my Claws/SR has solo'd several early TFC AVs but as pointed out they are not particularly difficult.  My Emp/Rad has also solo'd a couple early TFC AVs.  Both were Incarnates exemplared down.  The 3rd who might be up for soloing AVs would be my Earth/Storm though I'm thinking she be much better at it from the 30's onward after she got Rocky and her later Storm powers.

     In addition to things like regen debuffs and Nihilii's 300 benchmark for dps I'd recommend for your ranged characters a way to immobilize the AV.  Nothing will cut into your dps like chasing your foe all over the map.

     

     

[TheMoneyMaker]

Elec/Shield stalker