harder content soloing / ITFs +4/x8 build suggestions

[R jobbus]

On 7/7/2024 at 1:01 PM, Murcielago said:

My dark/shield, Murcielago, can solo most content.

 

Hey i was reading a bit in your other topic for dm/shield, I've never done that on a scrapper. Do you have a build example? It sounds awesome

[Linea]

You want to be Tier 4 incarnate.  T4 is the twice performance level of T3, and that's probably double the performance vs no incarnates.

I'm going to guess the auto-hit nictus is your current problem.   That's frequently the one you want to kill first.   If you face tank, and spike rommy, that's usually the one that dies first.   It's usually easier to kill rommy than the nicti, but not always.   Rommy can and will run.  I have taken advantage of rommy running to purposefully kill the nictus instead.  I have Rune/Hybrid/Rune/Demonic on almost all my characters, specifically for things like this where I need to spike something or else.  Toss some large oranges or maybe duals on top, use lore, ... which one is the 99 billion dollar question.   Longbow, Cimmies, Carnies, Rularuu, even Bots (which are poor dps but very well behaved so you can position them and protect them).  I really can't tell you which one will work best for you, and each one you'll approach a little differently.   You may also want some red candy or daggers.   My usual plan is to pull up the clicky armors, pets, then engage the furball with the intent to spike rommy (while entertaining all the guests) in less than 5 minutes (3 minutes if you're using radials).  At that point the dreaded auto-hit should in theory be dead.  From there it tends to be a cake walk.  The main point here is that you only have to survive that 3 to 5 minutes, and during that burst you literally throw every thing at him including the kitchen sink. No Holds Barred.  I can be brutally efficient for 3 to 5 minutes, but eventually the entire house of illusory cards will come falling down.   But as a scrapper, and not a tank, you rarely have to pull the rabbit out of the hat for longer than that.

 

This is probably the armored build I used:

Kat Bio Scrapper - Alpha 3 ITF - [i25].mxd

 

Here are offensive oriented builds by others:

These being pylon builds, I can't say if they are even playable outside of pylon runs, but you can use them for ideas on additional offense.

Kat Bio Mu - Ston 600dps Pylon Build 1 - [i27].txt

Kat Bio Scrapper - SomeGuy Pylon 600 DPS - [i27].mxd

Edited July 17 by Linea

[Without_Pause]

3 hours ago, R jobbus said:

 

Hey i was reading a bit in your other topic for dm/shield, I've never done that on a scrapper. Do you have a build example? It sounds awesome

FYI, the build is old. I'm currently running it with it being at 50, but I am playing around with the build and taking notes for what changes I would make in a revamp.

 

[R jobbus]

On 7/17/2024 at 11:07 AM, Linea said:

You want to be Tier 4 incarnate.  T4 is the twice performance level of T3, and that's probably double the performance vs no incarnates.

I'm going to guess the auto-hit nictus is your current problem.   That's frequently the one you want to kill first.   If you face tank, and spike rommy, that's usually the one that dies first.   It's usually easier to kill rommy than the nicti, but not always.   Rommy can and will run.  I have taken advantage of rommy running to purposefully kill the nictus instead.  I have Rune/Hybrid/Rune/Demonic on almost all my characters, specifically for things like this where I need to spike something or else.  Toss some large oranges or maybe duals on top, use lore, ... which one is the 99 billion dollar question.   Longbow, Cimmies, Carnies, Rularuu, even Bots (which are poor dps but very well behaved so you can position them and protect them).  I really can't tell you which one will work best for you, and each one you'll approach a little differently.   You may also want some red candy or daggers.   My usual plan is to pull up the clicky armors, pets, then engage the furball with the intent to spike rommy (while entertaining all the guests) in less than 5 minutes (3 minutes if you're using radials).  At that point the dreaded auto-hit should in theory be dead.  From there it tends to be a cake walk.  The main point here is that you only have to survive that 3 to 5 minutes, and during that burst you literally throw every thing at him including the kitchen sink. No Holds Barred.  I can be brutally efficient for 3 to 5 minutes, but eventually the entire house of illusory cards will come falling down.   But as a scrapper, and not a tank, you rarely have to pull the rabbit out of the hat for longer than that.

 

This is probably the armored build I used:

Kat Bio Scrapper - Alpha 3 ITF - [i25].mxd 5.97 kB · 231 downloads

 

Here are offensive oriented builds by others:

These being pylon builds, I can't say if they are even playable outside of pylon runs, but you can use them for ideas on additional offense.

Kat Bio Mu - Ston 600dps Pylon Build 1 - [i27].txt 5.2 kB · 3 downloads

Kat Bio Scrapper - SomeGuy Pylon 600 DPS - [i27].mxd 1.43 kB · 2 downloads

thanks alot for the tips. I'm trying out your first build in the beta server, it's cool. Do you fight in offensive all the time or defensive? 

 

also what do you mean by spiking? just full buffing and throwing everything at something to try to kill it before the buffs wear off?

 

I'm not sure what nictis is causing me trouble, but I assume it's the auto-hit one, since I haven't managed to kill any of them yet. But I haven't tried again just yet.

 

so when you say 'spike rommy' what do you mean? Sorry for the questions, i'm a bit new

Edited July 18 by R jobbus

[Linea]

Standard Content, I spend most of my time in offensive mode, but I do also swap to defensive sometimes.  Hardmode Content and 801s I spend most of my time in defensive.

 

Spike: kill him and kill him fast.  You don't have to maintain this level of offense or defense forever, just long enough, barely.  If you can kill him in 5 minutes, even if you have to wait 15m before you can do it again, you've still won.  It's just a matter of time.  (In the 3-star ITF Rommy #4 died about 2-3 seconds before my Lore expired, on the 13'th attempt with Angel (NOT the /bio, no way will my /Bio pull this off))

 

...

 

I primarily evaluate performance on a 'long term sustained basis', usually 10 minutes of full throttle combat.   This is really good practice for things like endurance management.   It works well enough most of the time for generalized offense and defense as well.  .... However ... you really need to evaluate some things in more discrete terms and time intervals.  Blaster Aim+Buildup+Gaussian's is one example of something that can only be evaluated in more discrete terms.  Ex: the Armored Fire/Rad Blaster spins up full armor, walks into the first big ITF room, walks or hovers slowly around aggroing everything, then finally walks to the middle, hovers up just out of reach, then unloads a massive 10 second spike of damage that is completely off the standard damage charts .... very little is left standing, what little that is left, is running, limping, or crawling away.  I might not be doing that again soon, as some of the powers are longer recharge, but it's a very effective opening.

 

In more detailed terms, you have to look at the waves or wave-forms of both offense and defense.  I say waves because if you graph it, it's not a solid horizontal line.  Instead there will be ups and downs, peaks and valleys, Alphas and Omegas.   You want the peak of your defense wave to face the peak of the incoming damage wave.  One example of this could be easing into a group, hitting DA, then Following that up with ShadowMeld, then DA.  You'll have a 10 second spike in defenses during the time the incoming damage spikes the highest from the alpha.  In addition by easing in, instead of diving right into the middle, you've also distributed that peak out over a larger area (time period), hopefully allowing your peak in defenses to better mitigate the opposing offensive peak.   You do the same for offense, only in that case, you want to pit your peak offense against the opposing valley of minimal defense.  

 

I take this idea of leverage for lack of a better word, to extremes, with the result being other players feel like I'm invincible.  I'm absolutely NOT invincible, I'm just really good at leveraging my advantages (peaks of the wave) against the opposing disadvantages (valley of the wave).  If I so much as blink at the wrong instant, I die (or fail offensively), and even if I don't die immediately, the disruption to my timing and rhythm of applying my wave forms against the opposing wave forms eventually causes a loss of synchronization, which means the bastards hit me with a mountain of damage while I'm in the very hell-pit valley of  minimal non-existent defenses, and I fall over dead in one server tick.  This is why when I'm solo, I may pause for 5-15 seconds here and there, I'm primarily re-syncing my armors, although sometimes It's re-syncing offense as well.  On a team that synchronization is constantly disrupted as players will not so much as pause 5 seconds, and instead charge in, get themselves killed, aggro the whole room, than then steam rolls right over top of me and the rest of the time while my armor clicks are still spining up and locked mid-animation.   If they'd only waited 3.5 seconds, they'd still be dead, but I'd at least have been able to intercept and hold off the steamroller.  "You blink you die" build and playstyle.

 

Edited July 18 by Linea

[R jobbus]

4 hours ago, Linea said:

Standard Content, I spend most of my time in offensive mode, but I do also swap to defensive sometimes.  Hardmode Content and 801s I spend most of my time in defensive.

 

Spike: kill him and kill him fast.  You don't have to maintain this level of offense or defense forever, just long enough, barely.  If you can kill him in 5 minutes, even if you have to wait 15m before you can do it again, you've still won.  It's just a matter of time.  (In the 3-star ITF Rommy #4 died about 2-3 seconds before my Lore expired, on the 13'th attempt with Angel (NOT the /bio, no way will my /Bio pull this off))

 

...

 

I primarily evaluate performance on a 'long term sustained basis', usually 10 minutes of full throttle combat.   This is really good practice for things like endurance management.   It works well enough most of the time for generalized offense and defense as well.  .... However ... you really need to evaluate some things in more discrete terms and time intervals.  Blaster Aim+Buildup+Gaussian's is one example of something that can only be evaluated in more discrete terms.  Ex: the Armored Fire/Rad Blaster spins up full armor, walks into the first big ITF room, walks or hovers slowly around aggroing everything, then finally walks to the middle, hovers up just out of reach, then unloads a massive 10 second spike of damage that is completely off the standard damage charts .... very little is left standing, what little that is left, is running, limping, or crawling away.  I might not be doing that again soon, as some of the powers are longer recharge, but it's a very effective opening.

 

In more detailed terms, you have to look at the waves or wave-forms of both offense and defense.  I say waves because if you graph it, it's not a solid horizontal line.  Instead there will be ups and downs, peaks and valleys, Alphas and Omegas.   You want the peak of your defense wave to face the peak of the incoming damage wave.  One example of this could be easing into a group, hitting DA, then Following that up with ShadowMeld, then DA.  You'll have a 10 second spike in defenses during the time the incoming damage spikes the highest from the alpha.  In addition by easing in, instead of diving right into the middle, you've also distributed that peak out over a larger area (time period), hopefully allowing your peak in defenses to better mitigate the opposing offensive peak.   You do the same for offense, only in that case, you want to pit your peak offense against the opposing valley of minimal defense.  

 

I take this idea of leverage for lack of a better word, to extremes, with the result being other players feel like I'm invincible.  I'm absolutely NOT invincible, I'm just really good at leveraging my advantages (peaks of the wave) against the opposing disadvantages (valley of the wave).  If I so much as blink at the wrong instant, I die (or fail offensively), and even if I don't die immediately, the disruption to my timing and rhythm of applying my wave forms against the opposing wave forms eventually causes a loss of synchronization, which means the bastards hit me with a mountain of damage while I'm in the very hell-pit valley of  minimal non-existent defenses, and I fall over dead in one server tick.  This is why when I'm solo, I may pause for 5-15 seconds here and there, I'm primarily re-syncing my armors, although sometimes It's re-syncing offense as well.  On a team that synchronization is constantly disrupted as players will not so much as pause 5 seconds, and instead charge in, get themselves killed, aggro the whole room, than then steam rolls right over top of me and the rest of the time while my armor clicks are still spining up and locked mid-animation.   If they'd only waited 3.5 seconds, they'd still be dead, but I'd at least have been able to intercept and hold off the steamroller.  "You blink you die" build and playstyle.

 

This is cool. Thanks  for the breakdown. I feel like i'm getting better at the game and managing all of these things in a resourceful way, but I'm stilll learning.

 

So like, for basic groups in the ITF with bio-katana, katana's main strength offensively is single target (if you aren't trying to burn lores on regular groups in an ITF),  is the plan to try to offensively burn down the most damaging enemies in the pull while throwing in lotus in your rotation? Or like how do you do enough damage before running away when the debuffs start coming. I do probably need to remember to involve DA more.

 

I am using the first armored build you posted for it in the beta server. It may be that i'm just not used to using rune/melee properly etc.

 

I am used to doing it on my titan/bio but it is such an offensively based build that while it can put away entire groups in an ITF in seconds, it's the one that straight up struggled to do anything to final romy at all, probably from the build just not being tanky enough maybe.. But that might be my skill as well. I did manage to take out romy on stage 3, but I had to run away anytime the debuffs started happening, which at times was every few seconds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Linea]

I monitor defense obsessively.  If you're not using the combat attribute monitor, you should be. 

• monitoring defense and mitigating ddr is one vital step.
• the second vital step is to cap your resists as much as possible.  The Auto-Hit never misses, and 2 or 3 of those and you're dead.  But you can't let Rommy Run, him running halves your applied dps.  Similarly you can run, a little, but that also can halve your applied dps, and also then allows your taunt to fail and can get your lore targeted.  So you really want to mostly engage, only bouncing in/out for a second when absolutely necessary.  maxing resists combined with your regen, healing, and absorbs should be enough to survive those 5 minutes.

Ageless radial +DDR will likely give you 30 seconds or so of not having to worry ... but it drops off fast after that.

When you hear a 'tink' land, either immediately back off, or at the least check your combat monitor.

Always keep at least 1 DA ... if you go 3 DA deep that alone can keep you upright at times, but not always.  you just have to get a feel for it.

Inspirations.  They drop like candy solo.  45+12 (small purple) and you're mostly good for the next minute or so, depending on ageless and luck.  again, it's not absolute, so you just have to get a feel for it.  It's a mixture of art and science.

 

Full offense Titan/Bio .... if Rommy is the only issue ... I'd design in inspirations with kinetic dampener, base buffs, wedding band, lore .... you only have to live 5 minutes ... so lets see ... I'm not in game so I'm guessing here ... I'm assuming no base values, all offense, no defense, no resist.  5 columns, 1 minute each.   2 large dual Ref/Res, 2 large Res .... again I'm not in-game, so I'm guessing, but that should probably do it.   You'll have to do larges with no base, so you'll have to put in bids well ahead of time and build them up slowly.  Clear everything, and I mean everything, even the upper walls.   Kill anything at all that he might run to and produce adds.    Pull up Lore, eat your 1st column, and go full offense.  Then repeat every minute for 5 minutes .... you'll run dry just as the lore de-spawn ... with luck you've killed at least one rommy or nictus.

 

There are also team inspirations that can buff your pets as well.  But that gets even more difficult logistically.

 

As you get a better feel for it, you'll be able to adjust your builds and playstyles to match each character and your own preferences, and you may eventually find you need much less help from inspirations and other powers.  You can also approach it from the other direction and solo it +0x8 first, then slowly increase the difficulty as you learn how to overcome each hurdle.

 

Combat Monitor on the Top Right

 

[R jobbus]

4 hours ago, Linea said:

I monitor defense obsessively.  If you're not using the combat attribute monitor, you should be. 

• monitoring defense and mitigating ddr is one vital step.
• the second vital step is to cap your resists as much as possible.  The Auto-Hit never misses, and 2 or 3 of those and you're dead.  But you can't let Rommy Run, him running halves your applied dps.  Similarly you can run, a little, but that also can halve your applied dps, and also then allows your taunt to fail and can get your lore targeted.  So you really want to mostly engage, only bouncing in/out for a second when absolutely necessary.  maxing resists combined with your regen, healing, and absorbs should be enough to survive those 5 minutes.

Ageless radial +DDR will likely give you 30 seconds or so of not having to worry ... but it drops off fast after that.

When you hear a 'tink' land, either immediately back off, or at the least check your combat monitor.

Always keep at least 1 DA ... if you go 3 DA deep that alone can keep you upright at times, but not always.  you just have to get a feel for it.

Inspirations.  They drop like candy solo.  45+12 (small purple) and you're mostly good for the next minute or so, depending on ageless and luck.  again, it's not absolute, so you just have to get a feel for it.  It's a mixture of art and science.

 

Full offense Titan/Bio .... if Rommy is the only issue ... I'd design in inspirations with kinetic dampener, base buffs, wedding band, lore .... you only have to live 5 minutes ... so lets see ... I'm not in game so I'm guessing here ... I'm assuming no base values, all offense, no defense, no resist.  5 columns, 1 minute each.   2 large dual Ref/Res, 2 large Res .... again I'm not in-game, so I'm guessing, but that should probably do it.   You'll have to do larges with no base, so you'll have to put in bids well ahead of time and build them up slowly.  Clear everything, and I mean everything, even the upper walls.   Kill anything at all that he might run to and produce adds.    Pull up Lore, eat your 1st column, and go full offense.  Then repeat every minute for 5 minutes .... you'll run dry just as the lore de-spawn ... with luck you've killed at least one rommy or nictus.

 

There are also team inspirations that can buff your pets as well.  But that gets even more difficult logistically.

 

As you get a better feel for it, you'll be able to adjust your builds and playstyles to match each character and your own preferences, and you may eventually find you need much less help from inspirations and other powers.  You can also approach it from the other direction and solo it +0x8 first, then slowly increase the difficulty as you learn how to overcome each hurdle.

 

Combat Monitor on the Top Right

 

again thank you for the detailed posts. I'm still learning how to do this kind of stuff. this screenshot helps alot.

 

Though I've already done it on my sd/ma tanker, I ended up beating the ITF +4/x8 with a claws/bio scrapper I made on the beta server. 

 

I really tried to not use inspirations or temp powers hardly at all, and I ended up accidentally separating the nictus from rommy's aggro somehow. so I was fighting all the nictus as a group, then fought rommy. It took quite a long time and he'd regen so much health each time he'd spawn extra enemies, since I had to run away to avoid too many debuffs. But after a looong time I was able to finally do it. Maybe 45 minutes for just that fight.

 

The claws build was built almost exactly like my titan/bio, I just was testing it's aoe capabilities which are really good. The incarnates I used were pretty basic, barrier core, hybrid assault core, musculature, reactive radial t4, I forgot to use lores ..... that probably wouldve helped haha. I'm sure I have build problems but alot of it I think too is i'm just new to doing this kind of stuff. I need time to learn lol. So I want to practice with tankier builds and paying more attention to defense values and everything that's going on like you suggested.

 

I am glad I managed to do it though, it was good practice at knowing when to run off, which I'm assuming is more a side affect of not using inspirations or temp powers. Even in offensive mode, with barrier core or shadow meld, the defense debuffs are really the only thing that causes me to have to move at all.

 

Bludd - Scrapper (Titan Weapons - Bio Armor).mbd This is the build I was using for titan/bio, that my claws build was based off of in the beta. It's almost identical, except sub out the titans skills for claws skills. It's built as similarly as I could. It's heavy on offensive, but dna siphon and albative are quite helpful as well. I did get rid of a few slots to give carapace and tough a little extra resistance.

 

Before I do another run I'll probably try to get used to doing things with slightly tankier builds. It's just difficult cause my tendency as a scrapper I feel is to give myself enough buffs offensively and defensively to take out an important unit out of the group, then once they die, I either win the exchange and have taken out the others easily with aoe in the process or if it's not enough because there's too many, and I run away and regroup. at least in terms of debuffs etc, so I'm not yet used to having a bit less damage.

Edited July 20 by R jobbus

[hejtmane]

On 7/3/2024 at 1:47 PM, Ston said:

Willpower will probably never be able to solo that difficulty on an ITF. It doesn't have enough HP/Regen to mitigate the incoming damage. Willpower and Regen are, IMO, the weakest of all Scrapper secondaries overall. They don't really have any meaningful debuff resistance and no offensive tools.

You realize ziggy on live soloed an itf with a Katana/wp and it is still possible just saying been done before my guess is Katana helps the pairing

 

Now on to what I have I use I have soloed itf on +2 not tried +4 I am pretty sure I can just it be a longer slog I rather not due

I have completed itf with with 

 

Dark Melee/Shield

Katana/Radation

Ice/Energy Aura

 

 

[StriderIV]

On 9/1/2024 at 11:20 AM, hejtmane said:

You realize ziggy on live soloed an itf with a Katana/wp and it is still possible just saying been done before my guess is Katana helps the pairing

 

Now on to what I have I use I have soloed itf on +2 not tried +4 I am pretty sure I can just it be a longer slog I rather not due

I have completed itf with with 

 

Dark Melee/Shield

Katana/Radation

Ice/Energy Aura

 

 

All outstanding pairings. I will forever love DM/Shield as one of the original “do it all” Scrappers.