What would you make to do all Praetorian content?

[redcnz]

I'm wanting to go through with a Praetorian character and do First and Night Ward arcs when I get there. I'm stuck staring at the character creation screen.

 

What would you make to tackle Praetoria?

[Lunar Ronin]

Your easiest time would be on some sort of Brute or Scrapper.  Primary power set wouldn't really matter.  For secondary, you'd want something with good energy and psionic damages defense and/or resistance like Electric Armor or Radiation Armor, or good melee and ranged defense like Ninjitsu or Shield.

 

Another option if you don't want to play melee would be a Dual Pistols (using cryo rounds), or Ice Blast/Time Manipulation Corruptor.  Dual Pistols' cryo rounds or Ice Blast to slow all of the ambushes.

[Shocktacular]

I'd say whichever AT you feel like you survive best with. Some of that depends on playstyle, but armored ATs probably have an advantage here. Brute and Sentinel would be my top picks, personally.

(Also, shameless plug for the Praetorian AE arcs in my sig goes here)

[Frozen Burn]

My go to is always a Blaster, but I prefer them over every other AT.  😄 

 

Really, any AT will be fine as long as you enjoy playing it.  As with any content, your damage dealing ATs do better solo vs lower damage ATs.  Whether you choose a shielded AT (melee - including Sentinels) or not (ranged), is up to you.  

 

 

[Sanguinesun]

17 hours ago, redcnz said:

I'm wanting to go through with a Praetorian character and do First and Night Ward arcs when I get there. I'm stuck staring at the character creation screen.

 

What would you make to tackle Praetoria?

 

Anything.  But keep in mind that for some AT's/Power set choices you're going to have to reduce difficulty on various missions to be able to handle the content.   Essentially no different than were you doing hero or vil content.

[Metatheory]

So... I've played a lot of Praetorian character journeys and while anything can work, I have found overall that blasters offer a very smooth experience through the first 20 levels where you can expect to solo quite a bit. Once you get to First and Night Wards it's usually easy enough to get a team together and then your AT becomes less relevant ofc.

 

My last run was with an AR/Plant blaster with hover, and the ability to control the range made all the underground and ghoul encounters very straightforward indeed. They are significantly less dangerous if you can keep them out of melee range.

 

Otherwise I've done all the usual solo types like scrapper, and sentinel (boring - to me) but also solo goldside story runs with defenders (most recently TA/Psi - not too bad but a lot of flash arrow and entangling to get through it), and possibly the trickiest of all dominator runs (Illu/Sonic & Dark/Martial) which I found to struggle with the 1-20 due to lack of damage and not really being able to leverage their key abilities at low levels, either due to too much downtime or straight up not selectable at that point. The illu/Sonic in particular I remember getting absolutely destroyed by PPD bosses

 

TL;DR - try giving a hover blaster a go

[Cheveyo]

Praetoria tends to have more difficult enemies than in the other parts of the game. So I'd stick with anything that can handle itself solo and without pets.

 

This basically leaves you with Brutes and Scrappers. Tanks could work, but it'll be slow. Stalkers are basically screwed over by a lot of what happens in missions there. Squishies are going to be a pain to level up, especially the low damage ones. Sentinels can work, but their lower damage and res/def numbers may make some things annoying.

[Shred Monkey]

Brutes are especially good at low level content since you don't have enough slots to enhance for damage... brutes do really good damage without enhancements.  I'd especially look at Martial Arts for the +defense bonus. 

 

Also, I'd pick up Air Superiority and slot for recharge in whatever you pick.  This power allows you to knock down a single target permanently.... which is very very helpful when soloing at low levels. (I use this attack on almost every toon I make for the first 15-25 levels.)

[Oubliette_Red]

I had a decent time going through on my MA/Nin Stalker. I did set her up early with some procs and while she's a single-target fighter which can be an issue with the constant ambushes in many of the Praetorian arcs, she was able to hold her own with popping the occasional blue. Took 42 hours of in-game time to get her through Praetoria proper (sans First/Night Ward), but then, I did do the all-the-arcs run.

 

Regardless of chosen AT powerset combo, one thing all Praetorians need it is: /macro_image "DayJob_XPBoost" "XP Toggle" "option_toggle noxp"

This will give you an XP toggle on your toolbar to more easily turn XP on/off if you're looking to complete any or all of the arcs.

 

[JJDrakken]

Depends if you plan to solo or not

 

Solo: Tank, Mastermind, Sentinel, or Stalker.

 

Duo: Mastermind+Controller, Stalker+Controller, Dominator+Defender/Corrupter, or Tank+Defender/Controller/Corrupter/Mastermind.

 

4 Way: Tank, Mastermind/Sentinel, Controller, & Defender/Corrupter

 

Compared to Red/Blue for the levels you'll be their.  Goldside is far harder for content, but more rewarding.

[kelika2]

getting a sample of hamidon and then make human hamidon hybrids and accidentally a whole universe that stops the batallion but then the well connects you, hamidon and all the multiverses to blow everything up to reboot to city of heroes 2

[Nemu]

I imagine that most people that ask what build to run goldside with have the inclination to experience as many contacts/content possible. I typically run goldside content at -1/1 and doing so gets me through all the contacts organically, no street hunting or repeatable missions for those last scraps of xp to get me to the next set of contacts.

 

In that context, goldside content isn't all that much harder. People that say stalkers are ill equipped to handle goldside content can't be more wrong.

 

1 - sneaking past stuff and getting to objectives is still faster than fighting your way through mobs and stalkers don't have to wait until level 12 to get total invis. If you want to experience as many arcs as possible this is the xp conscious way to run missions.

 

2 - ambushes and mobs are dumb as fuck and you CAN just run past them for the 2-3 missions that spawn mass ambushes that home in on you or for escort missions. For escorts you can turn hide, travel and sprint off and saunter past mobs naked from one end of the map to another and still make it to the door with the hostage. I have yet to experience an escort mission where I had non-ambush mobs chasing me relentlessly after I casually walked out of their aggro radius with my escort.

 

3 - build up + assassin's strike means you kill objectives faster, making those ambush missions a lot less dangerous because you are not fighting a war of attrition against overwhelming odds. The ONLY dicey mission with overwhelming ambushes is the eliminate shen mission from bobcat, and guess what? DPS wins and stalkers have that.

 

I just ran through goldside 1-20 with my db/stone stalker. At no point did I think "man this is hard for a stalker." The one mission that I did find to be a slog is the kill 100 weakened destroyers mission from Tammy Baker, but I imagine that to be the case for most ATs simply because of the lack of endurance sustain at that level.

 

I would not pick an AT with low damage to solo goldside or not. At those levels killing stuff fast is really the best way to carry you through.

[Without_Pause]

Missed in the answers is not knowing what diff setting the missions are going to be set at. +0x1. Any/any. Outside of that, you are looking to deal with damage types for your damage and what you need to mitigate against. I can't recall if I bumped up my diff yet for my low level Kat/sr, but they have handled Gold side rather easily so far. 

[Doomguide2005]

Whatever I wanted.

[Ultimo]

I actually started doing it tonight, never having done it before.  It's a really good looking set of zones.  However, at L4, my Dominator was sent into a mission where he's to talk to a sergeant, who then turns hostile along with the 12 other +3 lieutenant level enemies in the room, who all swarmed on top of the Dominator and obliterated him in around 2 seconds.

This is considered L4 content?

 

I asked in chat if this is what all the Praetorian content is like, and was told it pretty much is, so I doubt I'll be doing ANY of it again.  Ever.  Challenge is one thing.  Overpowering the PC with 12-1 odds where all the enemies are 3 levels HIGHER is just not any fun.

[UltraAlt]

On 6/15/2024 at 6:02 PM, redcnz said:

I'm wanting to go through with a Praetorian character and do First and Night Ward arcs when I get there. I'm stuck staring at the character creation screen.

 

What would you make to tackle Praetoria?

 

Nothing.

I would avoid it like the plague.

[Without_Pause]

On 9/29/2024 at 2:29 AM, Ultimo said:

I actually started doing it tonight, never having done it before.  It's a really good looking set of zones.  However, at L4, my Dominator was sent into a mission where he's to talk to a sergeant, who then turns hostile along with the 12 other +3 lieutenant level enemies in the room, who all swarmed on top of the Dominator and obliterated him in around 2 seconds.

This is considered L4 content?

 

I asked in chat if this is what all the Praetorian content is like, and was told it pretty much is, so I doubt I'll be doing ANY of it again.  Ever.  Challenge is one thing.  Overpowering the PC with 12-1 odds where all the enemies are 3 levels HIGHER is just not any fun.

That's not at all the norm. Yes, the content can be frustrating in it's difficulty, but it is doable.

 

I haven't gone though the content yet with Elec Armor, but I think that's one set fairly built to go through the content. It covers for all of the Energy damage you'll take on and you can get enough protection from Psy.

[jprewitt73]

On 9/29/2024 at 2:29 AM, Ultimo said:

I actually started doing it tonight, never having done it before.  It's a really good looking set of zones.  However, at L4, my Dominator was sent into a mission where he's to talk to a sergeant, who then turns hostile along with the 12 other +3 lieutenant level enemies in the room, who all swarmed on top of the Dominator and obliterated him in around 2 seconds.

This is considered L4 content?

 

I asked in chat if this is what all the Praetorian content is like, and was told it pretty much is, so I doubt I'll be doing ANY of it again.  Ever.  Challenge is one thing.  Overpowering the PC with 12-1 odds where all the enemies are 3 levels HIGHER is just not any fun.

As someone who has run the Praetorian content many times, I have never had something like that happen. Have I died? Yeah, of course. I don't play conservatively. I typically bite off more than I can choose, but that's because I think it's fun. I would suggest trying that again. You shouldn't be fighting any +3s unless you have your settings turned up a bit too much for you to handle. At level 4 if you keep your settings at +0/X1 you should be fine. 

 

[BrandX]

I've done it with Stalkers, Brutes, Tankers, Scrappers, Sentinels, Corruptor and Defender.  I do prefer the melee defense sets to be honest, for soloing the Praetorian stories.

[SeraphimKensai]

I did a lvl 1-50 Praetorian run with an Electric Armor/Ice Melee Tanker solo. It was pretty fun. Eventually though I did bring him over to Primal Earth as it felt weird to only be able to do SBB and AE missions if I wanted to team once he was 50 and IO'd.

[Saxondale]

On 9/29/2024 at 8:29 AM, Ultimo said:

I actually started doing it tonight, never having done it before.  It's a really good looking set of zones.  However, at L4, my Dominator was sent into a mission where he's to talk to a sergeant, who then turns hostile along with the 12 other +3 lieutenant level enemies in the room, who all swarmed on top of the Dominator and obliterated him in around 2 seconds.

This is considered L4 content?

 

I asked in chat if this is what all the Praetorian content is like, and was told it pretty much is, so I doubt I'll be doing ANY of it again.  Ever.  Challenge is one thing.  Overpowering the PC with 12-1 odds where all the enemies are 3 levels HIGHER is just not any fun.

The enemy levels are only ever a function of how you have your reputation set so turn it down and run the mission again. This is not how Praetorian content is, and whoever told you that in chat was talking out of their hoop.

 

As mentioned above, Dominator is one of - if not the - most difficult ATs to solo through Praetorian content, but it can be done. This is primarily because you wont have domination available as much as you would like to, and there are some enemies - notably TEST Provosts - who can chew through you in no time unless you can mez them. But they won't show up until later.

[lemming]

3 hours ago, SeraphimKensai said:

I did a lvl 1-50 Praetorian run with an Electric Armor/Ice Melee Tanker solo. It was pretty fun. Eventually though I did bring him over to Primal Earth as it felt weird to only be able to do SBB and AE missions if I wanted to team once he was 50 and IO'd.

Any non-door trial can be done by Praetorians.    And the Bella arc since it's done via the Nightward.

[Octogoat]

Praetorians need EATs

[Icono04]

On 10/2/2024 at 2:04 PM, BrandX said:

I've done it with Stalkers, Brutes, Tankers, Scrappers, Sentinels, Corruptor and Defender.  I do prefer the melee defense sets to be honest, for soloing the Praetorian stories.

Pretty much the same here. I have done solo Praetoria runs on brute, tanker, dominator, mastermind, scrapper and stalker - in that chronological order.

 

For me, the stalker was definitely the easiest one and the domi was the most difficult. For comparison purposes, note that I am not a particularly skilled player and I played on +0/x1 difficulty most of the time. As others have mentioned, having a melee armor set makes a noticeable difference in goldside content, but on the other hand you want a pretty good damage output, as a lot of the goldside mobs are more robust than their Prime counterparts. For me, the stalker struck the best balance between survivability and damage.

 

Domi has less survivability and less DPS, and the low levels in Praetoria one does not have Domination up often enough to use in all the boss/EB fights.

 

Brute, while the concept of "enhancement-less damage boost from Fury" sounds compelling, suffers from the problem that at the sub-15 levels a brute doesn't have enough EndRed slotting to keep battling without taking breaks - which means losing the Fury bonus. In fairness, though, I am particularly bad a playing brutes in general, so I am not a reliable commentator in this regard.

[Octogoat]

Pick the right brute primary and end isn't an issue. I had a wolverine type claws/stone brute named Mistress Mole who shredded her way through praetorian content.