City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

Dual Blades/Invulnerability against... stuff.

Alyx_Smith

By Alyx_Smith,
Posted on: 2009-01-22 16:04 in Scrappers

 

Posted

Absolutely AWESOME!

You're freekin scary!

 

Posted

Nihilii, you're really starting to scare me! Well, at least you didn't have Anti-Matter/Positron in there... yet.

Out of curiosity, what level / where did you slot the Gladiator +3% def IO? I've heard somewhat conflicting information about how it exemplars. I've heard it exemplars like a purple (ie: always on), but I'm not sure if it works if you exemp below the power you have it slotted in. I'd test it if I had one (I wish!), but no such luck, I'm afraid.

 

Posted

The Gladiator IO is slotted in RPD, and being out of respecs to try it on Test, I have no way to check how it works with exemplaring, sorry. :/

Two more AVs :

Aillen Mac Midhna
Screenshots : 1 2
Video

He's a sonic blast/fire assault AV. Not hard, but fun to fight.
Arc ID : 30242

Custom Dr Aeon
Screenshots : 1 2
Video

This custom Aeon is bots/elec assault, and there's 3 ambushes of possessed scientists triggering at 75%, 50% and 25% hp.

He doesn't summon bots while you're in melee range, it gives you tactical options with tradeoffs between taking his big hits in melee or moving at range, letting him summon.
The possessed scientists ambushes make things tricky, as they like to spam snow storm / quicksand. I had to run away quite often - unfortunately, near the end I went too close to one of the allied elite bosses, who instantly used a pain dom buff on me. I managed to lose him while keeping aggro on the AV.

All of this made this fight very entertaining, much more dynamic than your usual AV encounter. While I found the rest of the arc to be lacking, this Dr Aeon alone makes it worth a playthrough. The author found a perfect balance between challenging and fun, and managed to do all that while keeping it in theme.
Arc ID : 67277

 

Posted

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The Gladiator IO is slotted in RPD, and being out of respecs to try it on Test, I have no way to check how it works with exemplaring, sorry. :/

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D'oh!

Hmm, on second thought, I do have a respec recipe laying around somewhere that I could copy to Test to give you... not sure what your playtime hours are, though.

 

Posted

You could make a bunch of copies at once and then drop all these respec recipes on Test. I've put a 13M bid, I might get one eventually.

 

Posted

Nihilii against Adamastor, Infernal, Requiem, Marauder, Arakhn, Chimera
Videos : 1 2 3
Screenshots : First Last
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

You might wonder why is there so many screenshots and so few videos. The game started being jerky and my harddrive went full during the third AV, so I quickly deleted the last video segment to make some room (while fighting ; man, it would have sucked if they all hit me at that time) and took screenshots instead ; so, no videos for the last fights. The first ones were the most interesting anyway.

It took a lot of trial and error, both in fight tactics and AV selection to win this. For reference, my 4 AVs fight was done in only one run. This ? Between map selection, AV selection, herding the AVs to the proper spot, and dying while fighting the first two AVs, I'd estimate it took me thirty, fourty attempts. Maybe more than that.

I think it's possible to push it to 7 or even 8 AVs with my build, but the amount of luck it'd require would be so insane I'd have to try everyday for weeks to pull this off. So, 6 different AVs is the best I'm going to do for a long time, if not ever.

The key to this fight was keeping some AVs at range. Chimera and Infernal can lock at range easily, so I used them. Looking back, I should have swapped Requiem or Arakhn for Tyrant, who also locks easily at range.

I started with Adamastor ; he has a negative damage with very high accuracy that debuffs damage, he doesn't heal and is weak to lethal damage. All good reasons to take him down first. I tried to hold on DP until I absolutely had to use it, as you never know when the RNG is going to fail you causing multiple AVs to hit at once.

Requiem was next. I was worried he'd hit Soul Drain and kill me like he did the other time, it also seemed he'd go down faster than Arakhn or Marauder. He actually managed to buff himself with Soul Drain, but I got lucky - he hardly hit me while it was on. While he was low on HP, all the AVs hit me right as I was using DP - using it half a second later would have killed me. Lady Luck was definitely on my side.

... Then I attacked Arakhn. I fought her for a while, until her Dark Regen hit - at that point, I panicked and switched to Marauder.

That was a terrible idea. Stupid Nihilii ! Stupid ! STU-PID.

*ahem*

As most of you probably know, Marauder's tier9 can bug and he'll end up at 75% health (or whatever exact number it is) ; but that wasn't the only problem. Arakhn hits harder, and while attacking Marauder I also killed two minions, reducing my defense to elements and energies below the softcap... which meant, not only I was getting hit more, but Arakhn would heal more and be harder to kill.

Worst case scenario happened... Marauder went back to high health after Unstoppable. That's also the point where that little "your harddrive is almost full!" message popped in the bottom right corner of my screen.

I kept attacking Marauder, but this time when he went into Unstop I switched to Arakhn. My reasoning was, if he does a 75% health "crash" again, I'll just keep fighting Arakhn. This time, he crashed to 10% so I finished him.

Arakhn now... Yeah, she was trouble. Fortunately, she is weak to lethal damage - something I didn't know ! She was taking as much damage as Adamastor. She healed a bit but finally went down.

Now, I had to choose between one of the two ranged guys (Chimera and Infernal). Chimera can debuff defense in melee, the sensible option in my mind was to kill Infernal first. The fight went without much trouble. I had to be cautious while DP was down, as a fire breath + fire blast + Chimera's arrow combo could take me down, but other than that it was smooth.

As Infernal hit the ground, I knew I won the fight. Poor Chimera did his best, but there's nothing he could do and he quickly met all his friends.

 

Posted

That's incredibly impressive. O_O
Gratz on that!

And now i know exactly what to say when people keep saying one of my favorite set (invuln) is one of the weakest defensive set.

"It's a scrapper. If he can't handle it, no one can." -BrandX

 

Posted

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That's incredibly impressive. O_O
Gratz on that!

And now i know exactly what to say when people keep saying one of my favorite set (invuln) is one of the weakest defensive set.

[/ QUOTE ]

Used to be...
i13 and now i14 changed all that...

 

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That's incredibly impressive. O_O
Gratz on that!

And now i know exactly what to say when people keep saying one of my favorite set (invuln) is one of the weakest defensive set.

[/ QUOTE ]

Used to be...
i13 and now i14 changed all that...

[/ QUOTE ]

While i love the buffs it got, it wasn't enough "a weakess" set into one of the best. =P

The new IOs also helped a lot depending on the build.

"It's a scrapper. If he can't handle it, no one can." -BrandX

 

Posted

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That's incredibly impressive. O_O
Gratz on that!

And now i know exactly what to say when people keep saying one of my favorite set (invuln) is one of the weakest defensive set.

[/ QUOTE ]

Used to be...
i13 and now i14 changed all that...

[/ QUOTE ]

While i love the buffs it got, it wasn't enough "a weakess" set into one of the best. =P

The new IOs also helped a lot depending on the build.

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Invul still has the highest performance deviation: it can experience incredible, unmatched highs (gratz Nihilli) if it's soft-capped or be fairly subpar (SOs and no tough, weave, aid self).

Our sister, Willpower, on the other hand, is far more steady and even-keeled: a much higher performance with SOs and lower performance with IOs (this is where Invul's defense stacking, particularly Invinc, and defense debuff protection pushes it ahead).

In fact, I recall Arcana saying that Invince actually resulted in a net damage gain on scrappers only using SOs (due to the taunt aspect).

To all you Invul inspired forumites: be prepared to spend loads of inf...if you're not, then stick with WP for it's smoother performance from 1-50.

On another note, have you considered slotting the Panacea proc in health, Nihilli? It's a huge boon to all soft-capped characters, but even more for soft-capped invuls and their layered mitigation.

Intuitively, that's what I think, but perhaps someone has crunched the numbers and determined otherwise.

 

Posted

That is truly the most amazing thing I have seen in this gaem to date. You didn't die in this? Not even once? Incredible.

 

Posted

My gut feeling about Panacea was that it'd be a net loss or at most slightly better, seeing as I already have Numina, Miracle and Regen Tissue in Health, but it turns out I didn't think about this clearly - I thought I'd lose around 30% regen, but it's only a 8% regen loss (and, of course, 1.88% hp and 2.5% recovery).

Then again, looking at the Panacea topic, it looks like it has a 20% chance to heal for 65 hp and 7.5 end every 10 seconds. So, one proc every 50s on average. That's 1.5hp/s (roughly equivalent to 15% regen while DP is up, 20% without) and 0.15end/s (about 8% recovery for my build).

While these numbers are better, it's not enough for me to change my Health slotting. The random nature of procs makes it not worth the tradeoff, imho ; add to that I'd be losing the 1.88% HP bonus (in tough situations, most of my deaths happen while DP is down).

Nonetheless, thanks for mentioning this. It made me look at the numbers more closely, and now I know I don't want the proc, instead of vague impressions.




Invulnerability while leveling up always felt fine to me (I started this character in I13, she's also my first 50 so I didn't have that much experience either). Admittedly, I started slotting some IOs as soon as level 20ish - using the merits I got from a posi TF and a synapse TF to buy a steadfast +3 def. By 30, I also had a Miracle (merits), Perf Shifter (bought for a few millions), Tough and Weave and a bunch of frankenslotted IOs. The Attack Vitals combo is also very light on end usage compared to most other attack chains, which helped a lot.

With this, and thanks to Invincibility's great taunt, I often acted as the team tanker. Can Invul take on teamsized spawns by level 30 ? Yes, if you use all the tools available to you : inspirations, smart positioning, temp powers, and last but not least... teammates.

That's one other reason why I like Invul as a leveling set. If you're on a team, either you've got a tanker and the dude can hold the aggro while you focus on asskicking, or you don't and that probably means you've got more defenders/controllers who can buff, debuff, or blasters/scrappers killing fast, so survivability isn't too much of a concern for any secondary, except for the alpha - something Invul does well anyway. On top of that, being able to aggro stuff by simply walking next to them has proved invaluable to me, helping teammates with lower defenses or simply gathering mobs around me for maximum AOE potential from my teammates.

I've got no clue what the situation with SOs is, but I firmly believe anyone can have the same experience as I did. At the time, I had no global friends, no sugar daddy and almost no experience heroside (level 22 plant controller, and that was it). My playstyle consisted of running story arcs solo, and teaming for TFs while I was in the correct XP range. I also ran a bunch of Ouroboros TFs, mixing XP and merits, something you can't do with the same return today as they lowered the rewards on these.

That isn't a problem. Today, we have the Architect. Prices on all Pool As are dropping, fast. The Steadfast +3def doesn't cost more than a few millions, with a constant supply. Other Pool A, including stuff like Crushing Impact are raining from the sky. If Bronze Rolls stay as they are right now, I fully expect anyone will be able to afford a decent IOed out build, using stuff like Crushing Impact, Doctored Wounds, Thunderstrike. In fact, as it is I think it's very doable for an invul to shoot for ~30% S/L def with one foe in range by level 36. Steadfast becomes cheap, Reactive Armor and Smashing Haymaker are pool A. Slot 3 Reactive sets in Temp Invul, RPD and Unyielding, 3 Haymaker sets in attacks, and you have :

Steadfast : 3%
Reactive Armor : 3.75%
Smashing Haymaker : 5.64%
Invincibility : 7%
Tough Hide : 6%
Weave : 6%

Which gives you around ~31% against the most used damage type.

IMHO, Invul is a fine leveling set, with a slow but steady progression curve. The only thing that always irks me is Unstoppable ; with a 75% RES cap, I just don't see it as worthwhile even while leveling up, but I'm aware other people like the power so it could be a matter of taste.

 

Posted

AV soloing topics are entertaining, but sometimes we forget anyone can read and watch what we're doing. For most people, it's not a problem, but... What happens when a mad scientist reads the scrapper forum ?

Screenshots : 1 2
Video

The clones have Strike, Swipe, Slash, Smite and Shadow Punch. Slash's defense debuff can stack pretty quick when there's so many AVs attacking ; I jumped around as soon as two Slash debuffs were on, to avoid cascading defense failure.

Jumping around, you lose Invincibility +DEF, and the AVs get a hit on you while your defense isn't high again when you jump back in. It took me time to understand that (which is why I jump so much near the end), but I finally realised the easiest way was to jump near the edge of the group so they would have to run back to me and Invinc would be effective again.

 

Posted

Nothing you can do about it, but they seem to be dumb as nails; namely how they have a tendency to stay in combat mode just staring at you from 10ft away.

I did laugh when I saw the AV though.

 

Posted

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The Gladiator IO is slotted in RPD, and being out of respecs to try it on Test, I have no way to check how it works with exemplaring, sorry. :/

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D'oh!

Hmm, on second thought, I do have a respec recipe laying around somewhere that I could copy to Test to give you... not sure what your playtime hours are, though.

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Or you could just use a purchasable respec, since the test server connects to a fake billing server, and you don't get billed for extra slots, respecs, renames or transfers, on test only.

@Roderick

 

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Adamastor (Giant Monster)
Screenshots : 1 2
Video

I used temps (boo !) and insps (hiss !), more specifically two warburg nukes and a bunch of tier3 red inspirations. It was fun to do, but dull to watch - the bio nuke that I'm using for its +dam also comes with an hefty regen bonus.

Viridian
Screenshots : 1 2
Video

At first, I thought he was just a palette swap of Crimson without Caltrops, but his Elude seems much stronger than the watered down version most AVs get. Despite being pure S/L without any debuffs, martial arts do enough damage to keep me on my toes.

Shadow Spider
Screenshots : 1 2
Video

Her broadsword seem to have an exotic component (looks like negative energy, but I didn't check), but doesn't debuff defense, making her rather easy. Web grenade slowed me down - and it took me a long time to realise I'd be better off adding a Power Slice after my usual chain, instead of waiting for SS to recharge.

Magus Mu Drakhan
Screenshots : 1 2
Video

As he is pure energy, I was able to turn off Tough and Temp invul to save end. I had some lucky streaks with procs and crits, but despite that his end drains forced me to retreat behind corners a couple of times.

Ice Mistral
Screenshots : 1 2
Video

I had to kite behind corners to toggle off her Snow Storm ; however, I had to be careful not to kite *too* much or she would regen and toggle frozen armor, and possibly deal much more damage without Invinc's +DEF. Tricky to balance, and a very fun fight.

 

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I have enough of an issue with altitis as is. I was already considering making a db/inv cause of this thred. Now you solo a GM? Gratz, but I still hate you.

Willpower has more passive regen than Regen does. Who thought that was a good idea?

Can we get a fix for Energy Melee instead of more new sets?

 

Posted

Heh, thanks.

To be fair, I think any scrapper combo could solo a GM with these temps and insps. It'd probably be easier to use shivans too, but I like going with nukes - having a pet doing more damage than me is rather humiliating !

 

Posted

Nice work Nihilii!

Level 52 Viridian just hits Excelerate too hard for me to get him. Strangely enough all those AVs are currently scaling to level 50 for me in MArc. I've no idea why but it's let Ex finish off the 4 he couldn't get before.

 

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Couldn't find the other thread but how is your ma fire/regen project going.

 

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Good question, since I have one going, he's at 26 now. Not many of em around for some reason.

Willpower has more passive regen than Regen does. Who thought that was a good idea?

Can we get a fix for Energy Melee instead of more new sets?

 

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Mine is pretty much shelved indefinitely. I never got into the character, and there's so many interesting stuff to do since I14 it's unlikely I'll get back to him.

 

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I may have missed this somewhere but can you confirm your attack chain? With your power selection I'm assuming it goes Blinding Feint > Ablative Strike > Vengeful Slice > Sweeping strikes and that you never use Nimble Slash. Is this correct? Have you ever set up a secondary build? Say one that focused on the sweep attack chain and not Attack Vitals or do you feel you already get enough AoE damage?