Silly Sentinel Tricks

[marcussmythe]

Forgot AVs can resist -regen. (I never had any debuffers in live.) Fire is definitely the king of soloing.

 

They do not resist -Res.  I need to math Sonic some.  Though the Sent version carries a much smaller res debuff than defender...

 

Rad does pure energy damage and carries a DEF debuff, so could carry Achilles Heel easily.

 

Your probably still correct about fire, though.

 

Still waffling on secondary.  Rad’s regen, heal, resist, absorb, recharge, etc. make a strong case.  As a heavy user of Bio on scrapper and brute, Im concerned about the very poor energy resist - and at the +4 Incarnate AV level, defense isnt very much defense.  Im very much looking forward to hearing your feedback on how Energy Aura is working for you when you get to the place where your doing special sentinel stuff.

 

 

 

[nihilii]

Took a shot at Tin Mage.  Neuron First - got Neuron, couldnt handle Bobcat.

 

It's worth noting Bobcat becomes super strong if you kill Neuron first, but I'm not sure Neuron gets anything from Bobcat dying first (more clones? More fuel for /bio clicks ;) ). I hovered out of range and her Shockwave and Focus only did 300-350 damage each (on ~70% S/L res).

[nihilii]

I soloed the LRSF today. 🙂

 

This wasn't a master attempt, but I tried to respect the spirit of it as much as I could. So I didn't use Envenomed Daggers or other disallowed temps, and I tried to play in a reasonably conservative manner rather than rolling the dice.

 

The first 4 missions I've talked about before, so let's skip to the finale.

 

I decided to pull using jetpack and Dominate, setting myself on the city hall side. Dominate is my longest range power at 96 feet, thanks to the Sentinel sets. I figured that extra range might influence the pulls.

 

And I believe it did, because on my first shot, I got Numina all alone. First, I flew high, waiting for Positron and/or Citadel to join. Then, as no one came, I decided to lure her to the city hall.

 

Numina is not especially tough on her own, although there's two things to watch out for:
1) she has a -fly power, so facing her in the sky will lead to you dropping like a rock at some point
2) she likes to use psionic tornado, a long-lasting dot, followed by hard-hitting psi attacks; which can make for a sudden spike of damage

 

She went down easy enough without Lore.

 

Second pull: Citadel. Again, he surprisingly came on his own. I dragged him to the city hall once again. It makes for a nice vantage spot to keep an eye on the rest of the Phalanx, see if they start wondering why their buddy is gone. But they didn't, so all went well.

 

For Citadel I pulled out Lore, as I didn't want to take chances. He's not especially hard, but he has Overload (the Energy Aura T9), which makes him tough to hit near the end. Taking him down took me the full 5 minutes of Lore.

 

For my next pull, I tried Synapse... Why not Positron? I don't know. Positron replacing Statesman and having the central spot, I figured he might jolt more allies to follow; whereas Synapse was on Numina's side, now fairly lonely with Citadel and Numina gone.

 

Well, that was a bad move, because Yin and Manticore were eager to follow Synapse. I didn't try to be clever, and disengaged right away.

 

Instead, I flew to the other side of the globe, pulled Positron and flew up. He came alone... Obviously, being the last flier! BAB wanted to have a piece of me too, but he was confined to impotent superjumps on the globe as I was out of range for him.

 

Positron is a pain in the ass for /radiation. Every one of his attack does about -25% def, and you have no DDR. On top of that, I was in the sky. A REALLY conservative solo Master Of attempt could have waited for Lore to recharge and switched to Storm Elementals, I suppose. But I preferred to power through with luck insps and Barrier.

 

Positron has his own form of Overload, so once again you've got to be ready to whiff. It's all about making sure you get some good hits during your 10 seconds of Aim.

 

Positron went down, and I stepped on the globe to take care of BAB.

 

BAB isn't too threatening. He has strong hits, but slow animations, and no debuffs tied to them. You have to be mindful of knockback in his Energy Transfer, which bypasses normal knockback protection. With the wrong positioning, it could send you flying off the globe. He also has a short version of Unstoppable which resists psionics (unfair!), and a Dull Pain he likes to activates right when you're about to land the killing blow (I'm still sour about it).

 

After BAB, I was left with Synapse, Manticore and Yin.

 

I tried to get a pull on Manticore. He seemed to come with just Synapse this time. Out comes the Lore pets, and we start fighting... Only for Yin to come running, and immediately land a hold through mez protection. Manticore finishes the job, and I'm down. So it goes.

 

This is where our pretend "master of" attempt ends. Never fight Yin with any other AV around!

 

Denied but not deterred, I use the opportunity to refill insps and I come back.

 

I figure I'll try to pull Synapse this time. No dice. Yin comes running after, no matter what.

 

But then, as I bunnyhop back to see if I can keep Synapse and lose Yin, a strategy organically forms: Synapse is fast. I can use his speed to shoot him while hopping away, keeping Yin forever out of range.

 

And so we played carousel in Atlas Park, running more than 2 laps around the map with Synapse eagerly getting shot in the face. This wasn't entirely without risk. Sometimes Synapse would back away for a moment, and you lose sight on him easily with his "blur" effect - it detargets your reticle sooner than usual enemies. Yin got 5 or 6 attempts on me during the whole process, which could have gone terribly wrong had she landed her unresistable hold or even just her terrorize. But it went fine in the end, and better execution could have made this 100% safe.

 

There isn't much to say about Synapse himself. He's fast. He likes to get in melee to do a whirlwind attack that does damage. He has a little bit of defense, but nothing you won't punch through with Kismet and Tactics. So he dies easy.

 

Next, I tried to get a pull on Manticore, towards the steps leading to the globe. Luckily, he came on his own.

 

Manticore is not particularly strong, but he's got one trick up his sleeve. His Teleport Arrow ignores your resistance entirely. So you will get hit for 1300+ damage inevitably, and it's important to be prepared to heal up that damage - and of course, have strong enough mitigation you won't die from a lucky second hit.

 

Manticore went down. Now for the toughest fight: the strongest psychic on Earth aka miss I-hit-for-6000-damage-sometimes, the one and only Penelope Yin.

 

I'm not sure how her mechanics go. It's clear her damage varies, and she's got this pet she summons that does a "psychic link" thing. My working theory is that this is what causes her damage buffing, a periodical damage buff that stacks until it's used. The pet itself has only about 1000hp, so I made sure to clear it quick whenever it spawned.

 

The fight didn't start so well at first. I pulled out my Lore pets, immediately used Barrier, sent them to attack her... and she took down my Cataphract before I was even done with my first Blaze.

 

Nonetheless, I decided to fight on.

 

I think her damage buffing is indeed linked to her pet, because after she made short work of my Lore, her damage numbers were in a reasonable range all thorough the fight (600-700 per attack at most). Of note, of course, is her ability to hold through mez protection as well as fear. Because of that, I made sure to use Particle Shielding and Barrier proactively, and to heal up the second she landed a hit; the hope being I would have enough HP left to survive through being held.

 

I also used a whole lot of rage insps I had left, hoping to overpower her with damage before she got *too* lucky.

 

And what do you know, it worked!

 

After about 3 minutes of fighting she went down, and so I got my new shiny Synthetic Nucleolus (clearly the best part of this whole ordeal 😉 ).

 

All in all it took 1 hour and 40 minutes, and I died once. I feel this could have been a solo MoLRSF without my harebrained notion to stand and fight against 3 AVs including Yin. Plus, I refilled insps only once, whereas I could have taken the time to fill my tray between each pull for safety.

In any case, this is really satisfying to me. It seems so far ago now to think of the LRSF release, and teams scrambling to figure it out on both American and European servers. It was a different TF then (8 AVs including Statesman, and all level 54) and a very different game (no incarnates, no IOs, and people barely discovering the new levels 41 to 50 on villains). Fun to reflect. 🙂

Edited July 24, 2019 by nihilii

[nihilii]

Sharing failures can be as interesting as victories, so... I've been banging my head against Lambda yesterday.

First, a critical piece of information on itrials (and criminally underdocumented for us lovers of soloing things that shouldn't be soloed): they require at least 4 players to be alive, else you get a big fat "too few players to continue" message, and the trial ends.

This is true for Lambda, MoM, Diabolique. I'm not sure about the other trials - which require at least 12 players to launch.

So, the only way you're going to "solo" any itrial is by keeping at least three extra warm bodies at the entrance, which means dualboxing and bribing a friend with free incarnate rewards. 😉

There's problems tied to that, too. In MoM, players get zapped regardless of their position, so the warm bodies die and the trial fails. In Lambda, the warm bodies will receive grenade drops during the infiltration phase, which means you won't get to have all your grenades unless your buddy is there to give them to you.

But onto Lambda itself!

It's actually appropriately challenging for a solo player, pushing you hard but not quite impossible.

First, destroying the turrets. They can deal a fair amount of damage when focused on you, which makes fighting them less dull than usual.

Clearing the courtyard is straightforward, you fight IDF groups except they have more bosses than usual.

Then you enter inside and meet the oddly named "Security Team" (a Goliath War Walker AV). Because you have your 3 level shifts, outdamaging his regen isn't as tough as in, say, Tin Mage. On the flipside, once low on life he heals every 30 seconds, so it's likely you will have to use Lore to get past him.

Now for the fun part, the infiltration phase.

Quick reminder of how it works:
1) there's two separate buildings, each holding 10 crates/pods scattered onto a large map. Breaking a crate or a pod gives an acid temp power (to close reinforcement portals) or a pacifier grenade (to calm down the Big Dog)
2) you start on a timer of 5 minutes. You get an extra minute for each crate+pod combo destroyed (i.e., if you break down 3 crates, no bonuses. But if you break down a pod after that, you immediately get +1 minute, and the next 2 pods will give you +1 minute as well)
3) the timer cannot go over 5 minutes, so it's best to get a bunch of crates or pods first, then travel back to the other building and resume breaking stuff
4) if you get all 10 crates or pods in a building, you're teleported in the center area close to the other building. If you get all crates and pods or if the timer runs out, a cutscene starts and Marauder comes out

This is a good stress tess of your character, testing damage, resilience... but also movement speed, which is an attribute we rarely get to challenge.

For me, while I have a rough idea of where things are, I'm not a Lambda pro by any measure. So I mostly ran around like a headless chicken, doing my best to shoot down the right stuff. I blew up 5 crates at first (which took about 3 minutes and change), ran out of the building (warehouse) and to the other one (lab), destroyed 8 pods, ran back to the warehouse, destroyed 8 crates (in total), ran back to the lab, took down one pod, couldn't find the last one, ran back to the warehouse, got the last two crates, and there went the timer!

I had to pop a lot of luck inspirations to get through, plus the occasional break free to deal with Seers throwing fear effects, and I wasn't prepared at all so that emptied my tray before Marauder. Not so great!

Ending up with 9/10 and 10/10, despite a... less than efficient approach. So, there's leeway here. Afterall, you have 14 minutes to play with, thanks to the bonus times.

Then comes Marauder.

The big bad is on a 20 minutes timer, after which he jumps away into the sunset and you lose.
He's surrounded by 10 portals summoning IDF consistently, which you want to close ASAP. More IDF also come regardless, with crates/acid deliveries.
Marauder enrages every now and then (I'm not sure about the frequency, but I want to say one minute?), during which... You know, I'm not even sure what Enrage does, because I throw a grenade at him the moment he even starts to look upset, but I'm guessing he does more damage? (Edit: looking at Paragonwiki, it seems to suggest Enrage actually increases his defenses)
And then he's got the Nova Fist move, which deals a ton of damage if you stay close to him, but is easily telegraphed. Just make sure you're not locked in a long animation nor feared by a Seer...
He jumps around every now and then, not quite sure of the frequency/trigger either.
Finally, he has his own version of Unstoppable when the going gets tough.

This is not an easy fight, especially because you've got to focus your own damage on Marauder while more IDF keep streaming, adding their pesky buffs and debuffs to the mix, attacking your Lore pets. Tough!

I'm going to come clean and say it, I cheated.

Because I came unprepared insp-wise and emptied my tray, I knew I had no chance that way. So on top of grenades and acids, I pilfered lucks from my other account and my friend's.

It strikes me as fair: I could have just as well used the email system to send me insps beforehand. 😉 Another solution is to buy a bunch of T2/T3 luck insps before the trial, as they give twice as much defense as the T1 ones you will only need half as many.

Closing the portals fast isn't too hard even on your own. You need to make sure you're not too close to them - they explode on impact, which locks you into that strange repel/knockback effect you've probably experienced blowing stuff up in mayhem missions. And you don't want to lose time on that! Making the round trip through Lambda sector closing everything took less than a minute, leaving a large sized but not insurmontable group of IDF around Marauder.

This is how the fight went down:
- chaos
- despair
- anguish
- confusion
- lots and lots of jumping
- Seers fearing me way too close to Nova Fist for comfort
- panicky summoning of Lore pets probably way too early
- the damn IDF, the damn IDF

I didn't die, but I found myself out of insps while Marauder was still at 52% life (and damaging him BEFORE Unstoppable is obviously the easiest part). So, I could tell the ship had sailed on this solo attempt!

I tried to throw my second account into the mix, only to have it promptly Nova Fisted into oblivion, and lose the trial because "There Are Too Few Players To Continue". Thank you game. 😂

Oof. I'm thinking it might be possible to solo, there's just a lot of moving parts and it requires a great deal of skill (which is codeword for luck). Having to gather 8 accounts between players to launch it makes trial-and-error obviously more inconvenient than otherwise.

It's also important to recognize taking him down to 50% life is perhaps 1/5 of the fight. You have to deal enough damage to him, but also fast enough you don't run out of pacifier grenades. You can't even realistically destroy pods to get more grenades, because with the 4 warm bodies requirement - you only have 1 chance in 4 to get a grenade. So, it's also possible this is plain impossible...

[Sunsette]

You are really somethin' else. I wouldn't have even tried to solo an iTrial, man! Look at you, goddamn! Thanks for sharing, was an entertaining+informative read. 

[Sovera]

I have to say, Nihili, you really make me want to continue playing my sonic character and test myself. Though not in this particular thing since getting players or dual boxing just to try it would be more than I'd like to get myself into.

[nihilii]

There's some good stuff hiding in the new i24 arcs.

Mr G in particular becomes quite a treat (threat? you decide) on +4/x8.

"Good Television", second mission of his second arc, has you facing the peacebringer PPD in the standard Brickstown mayhem mission map. A good workout to start with... Then as you exit the bank, you meet the New Praetorians as a group, each of them a lvl 54 AV:
- an unpowered Marauder who lacks Unstoppable, but still has a weaker Nova Fist and a blend of Street Justice and Superstrength moves.
- Grant Creston, imperial commander who ends up the tank of the group with 30% res to every damage type
- Aurora Pena, basically Mother Mayhem without the evil. Evil or not, she's got all those weird psi powers to melt your mind.
- Riptide, everyone's favorite spines/elec scrapper.
- Pendragon, a Titan Weapons AV (good thing he doesn't slot his attacks as efficiently as the player version...)
- Alex Parson, a Beam Rifle / ...Clockwork? mastermind. He's no joke, as he summons a boss-level clockwork regularly *and* heals it to full.

Better yet, they've got some decent group aggro, or so it seems to me as I could hardly get a single pull without the rest of the band showing up a minute later.

And none of them fly, so you can't just abuse jetpacks the way you might in the STF or LRSF. 😅

It's still possible to split them using the rooftops, so you fight just 2 or even 1 of them. Good thing this takes place in Bricks rather than IP. Plus, the rooftops let you knockback Alex's clockworks all the way to the ground, so they're stuck climbing back rather than resummoned next to you...

Mr G also has you fight the Awakened, a full psi faction with all sorts of weird powers and up to 3 bosses per group on x8 thanks to many named bosses objectives. This all culminates in a fight with Penelope Yin AND her above cronies. Bring insps, or tell me how you managed to pull it off otherwise. 😉

Although on the topic of what to do when you run out of insps, I've had a personal breakthrough in the form of Vorpal Judgement. There's little mention of it, but the T4 version on the right side gives you +30% def to all for 10 seconds.

It's like Shadow Meld on a longer recharge, and you also deal damage as you use it so it's not too detrimental to your DPS. Makes for a nice breather in a pinch. You do have to hit something with it for the defense bonus to apply, so it's not foolproof in that way.

(Besides that, it's also fun to use if you're like me and move your camera around with right-click all the time. Its cone is targeted based on whatever you're looking at. So you can spin your camera with a flick of your wrist in the rough direction of what you want to hit, click the power and off it goes.)

I also got Apex under 20 minutes, finally! Potentially useful tip if you're dualboxing with an alt: Apex mobs get very confused when you leave your other character at the entrance of the map, that is to say in an inaccessible part. It seems as if the mobs spawn aggroed to a random team member, and when that team member is not in the fight zone, they stand there confused while you hit them. Sometimes they aggro on you, after a while. Sometimes they will let you beat them to their death arrest.

This is true for War Walkers, warrior ambushes in mission 2, even Battle Maiden herself when she comes back. Which can make for a nice way to smooth out the learning curve, if you're shooting for solo.

[nihilii]

I failed a MoSTF today. 😞

Then I licked my wounds, and kept going.

So, I soloed a STF today! 🙂

As mentioned before, the first missions are mostly non-events. My build hasn't changed for a while now, but I'm playing around with incarnates. Instead of Barrier, I used Ageless (the debuff side); and Longbow were replaced by Cimerorans. This combination made for higher direct damage: with all the -res we can access as Sentinels, the Cimeroran boss can hit for 800+ at times even on a lvl 52 AV.

I also grabbed all 3 amplifiers (defense, offense, survival). It comes out to +180hp, +40% regen, +20% recovery, +15% damage, +15% recharge, +10% tohit, +5% defense, +7% resistance, and some helpful fear/confusion protection. Not bad! To be honest, I was expecting amplifiers to shut down by starting a Master of run ("no temp powers"), and was pleasantly surprised it didn't. I'll take any help here. 😉

Onto the Patrons... Using the same strategy as for my dualbox MoSTF, I started getting the fliers away from the groundbound. Got a single pull right away on Scirocco, and flew him back to the ship (I don't think the Longbow help all that much, but I get a kick out of seeing them try). Mostly an eventless fight, although one has to be careful with his tornadoes doing -def.

Then it was time to take a lucky spin on the Ghost Widow roulette. There's the constant worry of that 9.5% chance of landing a Soul Storm. Pulled her to the ship again, but as it turns out Black Scorpion was dutifully following. So I flew back up and fought her in the skies.

Well, for all of 20 seconds, before she landed a Soul Storm landing him into the sea. So ends our Master attempt.

I was a little bummed it happened so fast, and somehow kept playing on autopilot. So I hosp'ed, toggled up, and ninjajumped back to the patrons while lost in my thoughts... only to find nobody but Mako. Neither my killer nor her pet dog were back to their original positions yet.

Might as well try for Mako, then. I pulled him behind that little corner teams like to prep (for the teams who prep, anyway), that one next to the ramp leading down to the patrons. Mako comes alone. No other aggro. Black Scorpion and Ghost Widow eventually make their way back, but they stand still like statues while I whack on poor sharkboy, who is as useless as ever and goes down without a noise.

Pulling Black Scorpion again, with Dominate at max range which seems to work really well for pulling singles. I lead him to the very same corner. He's a little stronger than Mako, but again, not a big deal as long as you're careful.

Then it was time to try our luck with Ghost Widow... again. Oh joy.

But it hit me I was quite silly: I should have done the pulls in that order to start with, leaving Ghost Widow last so she's standing still, limiting exposure to her attacks before unleashing everything.

I swapped to Barrier, in the hope it'd help me as well as the pets. As it turns out, a Soul Storm landed right as Barrier expired...

...But, I actually survived that Soul Storm! With full HP + Particle Shielding 700 absorption + Preventive Medicine proccing for 300 + regeneration, passive stats and a luck inspiration, I made it through the duration and even two additional hits (then gobbled other insps in my tray like a madman the moment I broke free).

Which makes me think, in retrospect: the right move would have been to go with Rebirth for even more regen, *and* adding overkill defense through luck insps. With 2 tier2 purples, you would maintain 50% defense even when suppressed by Soul Storm. Given decent regen and full HP at the time it lands, you're going to survive that. So, it should be possible to beat her reliably with the right preparation.

Down goes the ghost, and spiderman makes his speech. I'm still not big on "bowing down", so I decide to get more insps and give the whole tower business a try.

(After taking down the Arachnos flier, which had respawned by that point. +6 reward merits, can't complain.)

Frankly, I started the whole thing on a whim and without a clear strategy. I guess I'm going to bunnyhop around, shoot a tower, doing my best to deal damage and not get killed?

That seemed to work okay to an extent. Except once the repairmen come out, there's no way to focus on them fast enough while jumping in circles with a Recluse on steroids shooting end drains at you.

Nevermind that then, let's turn on the jetpack, fly close to the tower and fight. Maybe Recluse isn't so bad at range?

Recluse is still pretty bad at range.

Now, the +tohit he gets from whichever tower gives him +tohit (red?) is sizeable, but not insurmountable with our best friend the luck inspiration. I think you need about 85% defense to floor him to his minimum 9.5% chance - which seems ridiculous, but comes down to "only" 2 phenomenal lucks when you start at 24% def as I did.

I actually started with Good Lucks, because come on: +25% defense for 5k on one hand, +33% defense for 100k on the other hand. But it felt rather absurd to either use 3 per minute or increase my risk by ~20% just because I was too cheap to spend a little more influence.

So we're armed with ~85%ish defense, we've got our /rad clicks, even Rebirth to add a sizeable heal and significant +regen. Life should be good.

Life isn't so good.

I end up struggling to manage all the moving parts. The repairmen. Recluse draining my endurance. Running a full attack chain on the tower. Lucks running out.

Oh, and this took so much time the flier respawned again at some point.

A swap to Ageless helped with the end issues, ergo survivability, more than Barrier or Rebirth. Funny how that works.

But really, my big mistake lied in going full on offense. At least for the first tower or two, it's a hard enough job managing mitigation. The right move was to wait for lore pets, let them focus on the tower, then make no more than half-hearted attacks myself, instead keeping an eye on repairmen (and of course, making sure I don't die from Recluse). Cimerorans are actually quite adequate at taking down a tower all on their own, as long as you dutifully dispatch repairmen.

The blue tower and the red tower fell during the duration of Lore, which made what came next significantly easier. I could now survive Recluse (at range) indefinitely, paying attention. Add one insp per minute to decrease the attention required and increase focused damage on the tower.

It still took me *quite* a while to wittle down the towers on my own. You click a long animating power, and boom two repairmen pop up. Then your fireball misses one of them, and a heal goes off.

To be sure, those were my mistakes. The rhythm of repairmen spawns is somewhat regular - two waves of either 1 + 2 or 1 + 1, then a lull. Rationally, you should click any long animation in that lull and that lull only.

But, it's a long fight and there's a 10-armed guy scratching your back and it's easy to slip up.

The yellow tower went down nonetheless. By the time the green tower was at half, Lore was recharged. That last tower fell fast under a joined nihilii-cimeroran effort. Sweet! I'll get to let them loose on Recluse right away. Maybe I can take him down.

I couldn't take him down.

Rocket missiles from half a country away came swarming on us, then the familiar sight of the Arachnos flier - respawned for the THIRD time - rushed towards us.

Hotshot as I might feel taking down the towers, Flier + Recluse didn't seem like a smart move, so I pulled back.

Technically, I pulled up in the skies, to take down the Flier without anybody interrupting. If you fly at your maximum range in a direct vertical line, Bane Spiders have no chance to web grenade you down, and you can safely take out the Flier no matter what.

So that's done and over. For the fourth time.

Now for the big 1-on-1!

A level 54 Recluse is still a good threat for most solo characters. I could get his life down, somewhat - but he would get some good hits in, too.

At this point, my amplifiers were gone, as I bought 2 hours worth of them (cheapskate, remember? But really, it was a matter of not giving it much thought at the time). I had no insps left either. So, it was a balancing effort between dealing damage and kiting him a little bit.

It could have worked as is. But if you know Recluse, you know he goes crazy with boss-level Bane Spider summons when he's low on life. Barely outpacing his regen when he's going easy on you means you're in for some trouble down the line.

Stepped out of the mission, grabbed more lucks, went back in.

After that, it's mostly a standard, tough AV fight. With lucks I could stay in melee and use Mind Probe / Inferno consistently. Endurance management remains important due to his end drain, so Ageless was used still.

2/3rds of the way in, Lore was recharged again. A welcome addition for the Bane Spider phase. On the flipside, it meant I had to fly and give up melee. Recluse will easily 2-shot a boss level Lore pet with just his AoEs.

It turned into a pretty good fight once he brought out his own summons. More incoming damage, more AoEs hitting pets. But, nothing we haven't seen before.

Down goes Recluse. The world is safe once again. Our band of heroes is rewarded with a single Synthetic Peroxisome Exposure (Dam/Mez), but that's OK because the other two guys disappeared back into the magical Lore dimension after their 5 minutes were up. More loot for me.

Also, I took down the Arachnos Flier an extra two times during the writing of this post. Thanks for the merits, sucker!

In conclusion, it seems possible for a Sentinel to do a MoSTF without hoping for a lucky streak (but with ample reliance on lucks!). There's a seemingly reliable strategy for every key part I failed at.

Resistance builds with decent regen, decent ST DPS and quick animations have a strong shot. I'm thinking /elec in particular could do very well here. Their regen is great, they have superb end management and they ignore end drain. All things you want in a STF.

Go Sentinels! 😁

[Sovera]

 

1 hour ago, nihilii said:

(...)

 

Nevermind that then, let's turn on the jetpack, fly close to the tower and fight. Maybe Recluse isn't so bad at range?

Recluse is still pretty bad at range.

(...)

So we're armed with ~85%ish defense, we've got our /rad clicks, even Rebirth to add a sizeable heal and significant +regen. Life should be good.

Life isn't so good.

 

(...)

The yellow tower went down nonetheless. By the time the green tower was at half, Lore was recharged. That last tower fell fast under a joined nihilii-cimeroran effort. Sweet! I'll get to let them loose on Recluse right away. Maybe I can take him down.

I couldn't take him down.

 

(...)

This was an emotional rollercoaster 😄 You're an amazing nut, good grief, two hours butting heads in something like this.

 

I'm almost done with my build to start trying my own luck. But I will need more since I tried a mere +2 ITF in a GROUP and got slammed down by a random patrol. Ninjutsu's DDR is crap. Will get Ageless with DDR before trying anything.

[ParaBruce]

@nihilii, this morning started off rough IRL, and you've got me smiling, laughing, and scheming. Thank you, a lot.

 

[Hopeling]

On 8/15/2019 at 11:10 AM, nihilii said:

Resistance builds with decent regen, decent ST DPS and quick animations have a strong shot. I'm thinking /elec in particular could do very well here. Their regen is great, they have superb end management and they ignore end drain. All things you want in a STF.

...I think you talked me into it. I'm going to give this a shot sometime.

[nihilii]

6 hours ago, Hopeling said:

...I think you talked me into it. I'm going to give this a shot sometime.

I would love to hear about your experience! Your Beam/Elec was a big inspiration, and I know for sure my next Sentinel will be Rad/Elec.

[nihilii]

I soloed the Hamidon Task Force! (mislabelled ingame as "Lady Grey's Task Force", for some odd reason)

So the problem in this TF is green mitos. While they're not mezzed, they have capped resistances and capped regen. On top of that their friends heal them for +200hp regularly.

It's hard to run a power analyzer on green mitos, as the moment you step too close, they all blast you with dots. But as it turns out, they only have 7 mag protection.

This is doable with just Dominate! Slotted for maximum hold and recharge, and on a build with significant global recharge, you can stack enough magnitude to mez them. From that point on, it's not too hard to defeat them: mitos have about 800hp (I think?), so a volley of your best ST attacks once the hold lands should get rid of the pest. If all else fails, add red insps.

Hamidon is tough but not impossible, if you remember you can buy Essence of the Earth inspirations on the market, giving protection against its damage. I blanked out about EoEs, so I made it much harder on myself...

But interestingly enough, it's still possible to get through it solo. Hamidon ignores defense and resistance, so regeneration, heals, HP and absorb are your best friends. He also applies -regen/-heal (I think??) with each attack, so if you're the sole target for his powers, you will fall down eventually. I went with Vigor + Rebirth + Melee Hybrid, and this *still* wasn't enough to survive for a couple minutes.

The key is to joust him with your Lore pets! If you pick melee Lore pets, staying at range and pulling back when getting hit too much will likely swap the aggro to your Lore. And on the reverse side, whenever Hamidon knockbacks them your own attacks will grab the aggro back to you.

So it's feasible to play table tennis with aggro, up to a point anyway because neither your Lore pets nor you will be able to take all that many hits. Bring enough red insps to cap your damage, and fill the rest of your tray with greens!

(Better yet, don't be like me: use EoEs.)

[ParaBruce]

Nihili, you really need a user pic with mad scientist gear going off. I certainly imagine these posts being displayed on a weird-tech screen with Jacob's ladder, Tesla coil, and bubbling brightly colored chemicals in the background.

 

[Hopeling]

Unrelatedly and less impressively, I just failed a MoITF because I got into an argument in /help right after engaging Romulus, then died by not paying attention. So that was dumb. But I'm confident I'll get it on the next try; the whole thing was a cakewalk up to the final fight, which lured me into a false sense of security. Negative energy damage is also not /Elec's strong point.

 

Also, I soloed Clamor quite easily for the weekly. Didn't even need to use any defensive inspirations. /Elec is absolutely perfect here, Beam's -regen is resisted less at level 25, and Sentinels get complete attack chains by 26 instead of 32 like most melee.

 

 

Edited August 18, 2019 by Hopeling

[Sovera]

31 minutes ago, Hopeling said:

Unrelatedly and less impressively, I just failed a MoITF because I got into an argument in /help right after engaging Romulus, then died by not paying attention. So that was dumb. But I'm confident I'll get it on the next try; the whole thing was a cakewalk up to the final fight, which lured me into a false sense of security. Negative energy damage is also not /Elec's strong point.

 

Also, I soloed Clamor quite easily for the weekly. Didn't even need to use any defensive inspirations. /Elec is absolutely perfect here, Beam's -regen is resisted less at level 25, and Sentinels get complete attack chains by 26 instead of 32 like most melee.

 

 

At what difficulty?

[Hopeling]

+0/x1, haha.

[Hopeling]

Finally went and did MoITF correctly. Since Rommy runs all over the place without taunts, I decided to just clear the whole area before engaging, and after that it was easy. Apparently, if you fly far away really fast after he dies, the Nictii will just forget to rez him, then you have to kill them directly when you come back. That wasn't really what I intended, but it worked, so OK.

 

I then attempted the same thing on +4/x8, died trying to rescue the first sybil, and gave up. I think I could do it, but I'd have to clear through rather than rush straight to the rescues, and that would take absolutely forever with my mediocre AoE. I may try +4/x1 at some point, but even that might just be an exercise in patience.

 

Next, I tried to solo Apex like @nihilii mentioned in the first post.

• How on Earth can you do this in under 25 minutes? It took me that long just to kill all the War Walkers in the first mission. (Should I be trying to AoE them down? With Beam Rifle, I don't know if I can even do that efficiently, not to mention that the WWs don't seem to herd very well.)
• With no ranged defense and no toxic resist, Electric Armor is a very bad choice for tanking hydra pylons. I died a lot of times here. Should've loaded up on purples instead of reds before starting.
• When I zoned into the second mission, I encountered a bug where the game somehow forgot that I had an alpha power slotted, so it hit me with the "Emperor Cole's Incarnate Control" -4 level shift penalty. Thus I was level 50(-3), and really really confused why I couldn't even make a dent in three minion swords on the rooftop. Relogging once didn't fix it, so I relogged again, stayed offline five minutes, unslotted and reslotted my alpha for good measure, and one of those things fixed it.
• Battle Maiden is much more dangerous in melee than she is at ranged. Strangely, she's perfectly happy to sit at range and just crossbow you occasionally, even if you're on the ground and not very far away. This fight was much easier than I expected.
• That said, I should get some flying Lore pets. Robotic Drones would fit the aesthetic.

My final time was 1:13. I could probably get that under an hour now that I know the drill and don't waste so much time on the pylons and the bug. I doubt I could get it much under 45 minutes at this point though; those War Walkers are a huge bottleneck.

Edited August 25, 2019 by Hopeling

[nihilii]

The War Walkers are definitely the main challenge to get Apex done fast. With their tremendous HP + healing + resistance, I think it's best to defeat them 1 by 1. This is the moment to use Lore pets, with mastermind commands to focus the same one you are attacking.

It's also worth keeping the peacebringers alive if you can. Their damage stacks up, thanks to -def. You don't want to spend time luring War Walkers to them, but some will land close enough to fight the peacebringers.

The alpha slot bug is a huge pain in the ass as well. I don't know how to avoid the bug triggering specifically. It seems to pop up more often if you enter the mission and start fighting really fast, and it tends to be at the beginning of a mission.

If you slot another alpha, the bug goes away (for the mission; it can pop on both missions). I have the 2 Musculature T4 alphas on my sent, so when I'm hit by the bug, I fly up, and once the 15 seconds or so of "out of combat" mode allow me to swap alphas, I slot the other one.

[Hopeling]

I got Apex down to 44 minutes. I don't think I can get 25 minutes with this character, but there's still some room to improve.

 

Then I attemped to solo Dr. Kahn, because I don't recall anyone saying they'd done so, even though I couldn't remember why it would be impossible. (But I haven't run it in about seven years, so what do I know?)

 

Mission 1 was easy of course. Schadenfraude was annoying to solo because he seems to have Siphon Life AND Twilight Grasp, both of which heal for about 8k, so he bounced around in the 10-50% range for several minutes. He also runs a lot, which is an issue in those caves due to LoS. Fortunately, two Chain Fences were enough to keep him in place, and he eventually went down.

 

In the second mission, during the very short encounter with Reichsman, I noticed a problem which would also crop up in the final fight: his Fist of Tyranny is a mag 100 stun, which also deals about 75% of my health bar, and he's easily able to finish me off with my toggles suppressed.

 

That's okay, though: Chain Fences has a -fly component, so I can just hoverblast him while out of danger. Fast forward to the big fight, and this plan works, if slowly. I was barely making headway except when my Lore pets were up. In the final mission, I got him to 75%. Nemesis came out, I tried to pull Nemesis into the hallway, Reichsman reset to full, bah. Killed Nemesis, fought until Lore came back, got Reichsman to 50%, Countess Crey came out. Started fighting her... wait, why is Reichsman suddenly back at 90%? ...he has Dull Pain. Okay, time to abort. It took me almost an hour to deal 25% then 50% of his health; I can't beat a 40% heal on what is ostensibly a 6-minute recharge, especially not once Unstoppable comes into play later.

 

So! I can't solo this fight. To do it, you'd need two things:

• Very high ST damage. If Dull Pain heals 40% of his ~226k HP on a 6-minute recharge, that's about 250 HPS. This is in addition to his 113 hp/s regeneration, or 158 during Dull Pain. So overall he's recovering about 136k health every 360 seconds, which is about 380 hp/sec. Even with 600 DPS, you're looking at something like a 20-minute fight. And even then, Unstoppable might throw a wrench in things; ideally you'd deal psi damage so you can ignore it.
• An immobilize or -fly power to keep him and his stun away (Unstoppable probably gives him immob protection, so -fly might be the only option), and the ability to do that DPS from range, OR the ability to somehow tank his stun (eg Shadow Meld when he starts the animation)

So you need a character in the upper echelons of pylon performance, dealing psi damage, and attacking from range. Even if you have people continuously fill your mailbox with Super! red inspirations, that seems like a high bar to clear... but I think it might be possible.

[nihilii]

Wow, this is a really cool breakdown!

I gave it a shot several times before. Never thought of -fly strategies, and just resorted to popping lucks. I gave up because I also felt Unstoppable would be a showstopper, at the very least I'd be sure to run out of resources before finishing him up.

Perhaps with 300 charges of Envenomed Dagger, red insps and hoverfighting. 🤔

Edited August 29, 2019 by nihilii

[Pharce]

I’m thinking of trying some of this craziness some time. I just got my sent to 50 fire/rad. When for mu as a third but ended up not liking it and changed to psi. I’m very close to final build but still need to work on my incarnate powers. Still no lore pets.

 

what is a good place to start? Is there an SF that might be a little more straightforward?

[Hopeling]

Any SF or AV fight is a pretty reasonable place to start. Sub-50 SFs work fine too, and still give good bragging rights since you can't use Incarnate powers.

 

One classic test of a character's solo abilities was to run through the Maria Jenkins arc with AVs turned on, and see how many you can handle.

[nihilii]

Raise from the ashes, thread!

No new achievement to post. But... my town has finally entered the 21st century.

Mmm, fiber optic. Feels like an Internet superpower.

What better way to test new upload speeds than to solo a STF, and record the attempt?

Here it is, in all its, uh, 720p glory (maybe I'll change my 15 years old LCD screen, too. One day)
 

Edit: current build for reference (fire/rad/psi)

Incarnates - Musculature Core, Ageless Core, Degen Core, Assault Radial
 

Spoiler

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Long version, if you can't import the above to Mids
 

Spoiler

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.962
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Level 50 Magic Sentinel
Primary Power Set: Fire Blast
Secondary Power Set: Radiation Armor
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Leadership
Power Pool: Fighting
Ancillary Pool: Psionic Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Flares

• (A) Superior Sentinel's Ward - RechargeTime/Chance for +Absorb
• (3) Superior Sentinel's Ward - Damage/RechargeTime
• (3) Superior Sentinel's Ward - Accuracy/Damage
• (11) Superior Sentinel's Ward - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance/RechargeTime
• (11) Superior Sentinel's Ward - Accuracy/Damage/RechargeTime
• (29) Superior Sentinel's Ward - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance
  

Level 1: Alpha Barrier

• (A) Unbreakable Guard - Resistance
• (17) Unbreakable Guard - Resistance/Endurance
• (23) Unbreakable Guard - +Max HP
• (23) Steadfast Protection - Resistance/+Def 3%
• (27) Gladiator's Armor - TP Protection +3% Def (All)
• (46) Unbreakable Guard - RechargeTime/Resistance
  

Level 2: Gamma Boost

• (A) Preventive Medicine - Chance for +Absorb
• (37) Preventive Medicine - Heal
• (45) Preventive Medicine - Heal/Endurance
  

Level 4: Fire Ball

• (A) Superior Opportunity Strikes - Accuracy/Damage
• (5) Superior Opportunity Strikes - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance/RechargeTime
• (5) Superior Opportunity Strikes - RechargeTime/Chance for Opportunity
• (7) Superior Opportunity Strikes - Accuracy/Damage/RechargeTime
• (9) Superior Opportunity Strikes - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance
• (9) Annihilation - Chance for Res Debuff
  

Level 6: Blaze

• (A) Apocalypse - Chance of Damage(Negative)
• (7) Apocalypse - Damage/Endurance
• (19) Apocalypse - Damage/Recharge
• (19) Apocalypse - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge
• (21) Apocalypse - Accuracy/Recharge
• (21) Gladiator's Javelin - Chance of Damage(Toxic)
  

Level 8: Proton Armor

• (A) Unbreakable Guard - Resistance
• (13) Unbreakable Guard - Resistance/Endurance
• (27) Unbreakable Guard - Resistance/Endurance/RechargeTime
• (29) Unbreakable Guard - RechargeTime/Resistance
  

Level 10: Fallout Shelter

• (A) Unbreakable Guard - Resistance
• (25) Unbreakable Guard - Resistance/Endurance
• (33) Unbreakable Guard - Resistance/Endurance/RechargeTime
• (37) Unbreakable Guard - RechargeTime/Resistance
  

Level 12: Hasten

• (A) Recharge Reduction IO
• (15) Recharge Reduction IO
  

Level 14: Combat Jumping

• (A) Luck of the Gambler - Recharge Speed
• (15) Reactive Defenses - Scaling Resist Damage
• (25) Winter's Gift - Slow Resistance (20%)
• (31) Kismet - Accuracy +6%
• (31) Shield Wall - +Res (Teleportation), +5% Res (All)
  

Level 16: Proton Therapy

• (A) Preventive Medicine - Heal
• (17) Preventive Medicine - Heal/RechargeTime
  

Level 18: Maneuvers

• (A) Luck of the Gambler - Recharge Speed
• (39) Luck of the Gambler - Defense
  

Level 20: Particle Acceleration

• (A) Run Speed IO
  

Level 22: Aim

• (A) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - Recharge/Endurance
• (33) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - To Hit Buff/Recharge/Endurance
• (39) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - To Hit Buff/Recharge
• (40) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - To Hit Buff
• (40) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - Chance for Build Up
• (43) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - To Hit Buff/Endurance
  

Level 24: Boxing

• (A) Empty
  

Level 26: Tough

• (A) Unbreakable Guard - Resistance
• (31) Unbreakable Guard - Resistance/Endurance
• (40) Unbreakable Guard - Resistance/Endurance/RechargeTime
• (45) Unbreakable Guard - RechargeTime/Resistance
  

Level 28: Particle Shielding

• (A) Preventive Medicine - Heal
• (33) Preventive Medicine - Heal/RechargeTime
• (37) Preventive Medicine - Heal/RechargeTime/Endurance
  

Level 30: Weave

• (A) Luck of the Gambler - Recharge Speed
• (34) Luck of the Gambler - Defense
  

Level 32: Inferno

• (A) Armageddon - Chance for Fire Damage
• (34) Armageddon - Damage/Endurance
• (34) Armageddon - Damage/Recharge
• (36) Armageddon - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge
• (36) Armageddon - Accuracy/Recharge
• (36) Fury of the Gladiator - Chance for Res Debuff
  

Level 35: Mind Probe

• (A) Hecatomb - Chance of Damage(Negative)
• (39) Hecatomb - Damage/Endurance
• (42) Hecatomb - Damage
• (42) Hecatomb - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge
• (42) Hecatomb - Accuracy/Recharge
• (43) Touch of Death - Chance of Damage(Negative)
  

Level 38: Meltdown

• (A) Recharge Reduction IO
  

Level 41: Dominate

• (A) Thunderstrike - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance
• (43) Decimation - Chance of Build Up
• (46) Unbreakable Constraint - Chance for Smashing Damage
• (46) Ghost Widow's Embrace - Chance of Damage(Psionic)
• (50) Neuronic Shutdown - Chance of Damage(Psionic)
• (50) Gladiator's Javelin - Chance of Damage(Toxic)
  

Level 44: Ground Zero

• (A) Superior Avalanche - Accuracy/Damage
• (45) Analyze Weakness - Chance for +ToHit
• (48) Superior Avalanche - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance/Recharge
• (48) Superior Avalanche - Damage/Endurance
• (48) Superior Avalanche - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance
• (50) Superior Avalanche - Recharge/Chance for Knockdown
  

Level 47: Tactics

• (A) HamiO:Cytoskeleton Exposure
  

Level 49: Assault

• (A) Endurance Reduction IO
  

Level 1: Brawl

• (A) Empty
  

Level 1: Prestige Power Dash

• (A) Empty
  

Level 1: Prestige Power Slide

• (A) Empty
  

Level 1: Prestige Power Quick

• (A) Empty
  

Level 1: Prestige Power Rush

• (A) Empty
  

Level 1: Prestige Power Surge

• (A) Empty
  

Level 1: Sprint

• (A) Empty
  

Level 2: Rest

• (A) Empty
  

Level 4: Ninja Run

Level 2: Swift

 

 

• (A) Run Speed IO
  

Level 2: Health

• (A) Panacea - +Hit Points/Endurance
• (13) Numina's Convalesence - +Regeneration/+Recovery
  

Level 2: Hurdle

• (A) Jumping IO
  

Level 2: Stamina

• (A) Performance Shifter - Chance for +End
  

Level 0: Freedom Phalanx Reserve

Level 0: Portal Jockey
Level 0: Task Force Commander
Level 0: The Atlas Medallion
Level 50: Musculature Core Paragon
------------

 

Edited December 10, 2019 by nihilii

[drbuzzard]

This is all quite impressive, and I'm quite sure I couldn't duplicate the feats. I just don't tweak my builds hard enough nor am I nimble enough at popping inspirations, and while I have soloed the ITF on a sent, the time spent didn't feel worth it to me, so I can't imagine trying these. Kudos to you for showing it can be done though.