My Fire/kin that is purpled out can do it in 4:51. If he doesn't die. He died quite a few times trying.
Are insps allowed? I think I could carry a bunch of large purps and oranges to maintain survivability while i plow one of the things down.
-STEELE =)
Allied to all sides so that no matter what, I'll come out on top!
Oh, and Crimson demands you play this arc-> Twisted Knives (MA Arc #397769)
I think the strict stress test is no insps, no temps, no accolades. I'm not quite willing to go so far as turning off my auto-accolades, but insps would skew the times quite a bit, I think, esp since it would allow for offensive-oriented builds who can just carry big purps to boost their defenses for the duration of the fight.
I mean, obviously, you can carry out the test any way you want, but if we're to establish a fair baseline, I think no insps, no temps and no click accolades is best.
An Offensive Guide to Ice Melee
Its a dps test not a survivability test
I have solo'ed rikti pylons with both my fire/kin and ill/storm with no insps. However my fire/em blaster can do it insanely faster, although she needs insps.
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Its a dps test not a survivability test
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You fail at making intelligent posts.
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Its a dps test not a survivability test
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You fail at making intelligent posts.
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Did my reply how i see pylon soloing require that? 
EDIT:
It is an immobile stationary object that fires ranged, lethal attacks at you What is the great acheivement in surviving it?
Its a nice dps benchmark though.
EDIT2:
Everytime i see people make posts like these i imagine them going:
"Oh lawd someone has a opnion that differs from mine! MUST MAKE AD HOMINEM ATTACK TO MEND MY ACHY BREAKY HEART!!!!111!!"
Post made
"PWNED [censored] I RULE THE INTERNETS"
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Did my reply how i see pylon soloing require that?
EDIT:
It is an immobile stationary object that fires ranged, lethal attacks at you What is the great acheivement in surviving it?
Its a nice dps benchmark though.
[/ QUOTE ] Being able to solo AVs/Pylons/GMs requires a balance of dps and survivability. If it was just a test of dps, then blasters would be the #1 av/pylon/gm killer hands down. Being immobile doesn't mean much in terms of how hard it is to kill. Pylons can still hit hard, and have a decent KB component to it, and you do need some way of mitigating it. Is it hard? Not really. But that doesn't mean it is just about dps.
[ QUOTE ]
EDIT2:
Everytime i see people make posts like these i imagine them going:
"Oh lawd someone has a opnion that differs from mine! MUST MAKE AD HOMINEM ATTACK TO MEND MY ACHY BREAKY HEART!!!!111!!"
Post made
"PWNED [censored] I RULE THE INTERNETS"
[/ QUOTE ]
You still fail at making intelligent posts.
Lets hug <3
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Being able to solo AVs/Pylons/GMs requires a balance of dps and survivability.
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Correct, this is a stress test of the toon as a whole, not just "how much pure DPS can you pour out". That'd be a whole different, and a valid, test, but likely, blasters would win that hands down. In fact, the "solo" designation is largely lost in that context since you'd be best conducting the test w/a few FF/Son defenders in tow, maybe a few Emps to alternate RA for infinite end, just no direct damage buffs. Then again, controllers have pets & more debuffs, esp for -regen, so I *would* in fact be interested in seeing a purely offensive controller build (say Fire/Rad, Kin & Storm) vs. an ST specced blaster (prolly Fire/Elec?).
Having said that, the spirit of this stress test is the essence of "soloing" which includes keeping yourself alive, and with enough end to sustain the fight. Sure, you can use insps to that end, but again, to keep things fair, it's simpler to just exclude any outside influences and compare build vs. build, powerset vs. powerset (even AT vs. AT, since I suspect a solo-specced controller can beat scrappers & blasters at this).
I should also mention, my Fire/Rad's 5:35 time is with 100% suvivability. Maybe 99%, since the pylon would have to string together a whole lot of lucky rolls to outdamage my self-heal, but in a typical run, I get hit maybe 5-6 times during the whole fight (and each hit actually slows down DPS because of the self heals). Also, end drain is nil during the normal attack chain (I actually get back a bit of end during my normal attack chain), so again, this is an infinitely sustainable fight. If you were to introduce even green & blue insps, I'd be able to modify the build for even more DPS, but that wouldn't be in the spirit of this test, which is to say complete self-sustainability. To wit:
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I have solo'ed rikti pylons with both my fire/kin and ill/storm with no insps. However my fire/em blaster can do it insanely faster, although she needs insps.
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It's prolly not hard to put together a insp-free soloing build for blasters (just cap your range & AoE def, take Aid Self), but what that costs you in DPS is the question this stress test would answer. Even just Aid Self, since it's a long cast, would lower your DPS significantly, I think. Even if you only fired it off 5~6x in a fight, that's an extra 20sec or so, not only of no damage, but letting the pylon regen during those times.
An Offensive Guide to Ice Melee
Pylons are a DPS test. The most common method is to either carry a bunch of purps or get a tanker to taunt it while you whittle down it's HP. Since it is an easy target with lots and lots of HP and no regeneration it makes a very reliable way to measure sustained damage output.
Pylons have no regen? My experiences say otherwise. In fact, Nihilii just confirmed in this thread that:
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LR lowers the pylon regen rate to 35.79hp/s (just checked it in game).
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Also, controllers have debuffs which indirectly affect DPS. Pure DPS is calculable on paper, at least to the accuracy that we understand arcanatime fully (which we don't, but it's close enough). The Pylon gives us a "real life" # that's accurate and practical. As I stated, some builds will be better at the Pylons than others depending on if they're specced just for the Pylon or against all sorts of different (AV-class) foes.
If you wanna use insps, by all means go ahead, but for *this* stress test, I'd like to use non-insp numbers. Feel more than free to start another stress test and use whatever parameters you like--they'll all be worthwhile since they'll measure different abilities. In fact, I've always thought insps were "valid" for soloing things, but temp powers weren't, but for purposes of *this test*, I'd like to limit it to no insps.
An Offensive Guide to Ice Melee
Dave,
I will work on getting my Plant/Storm to 50 and then run this for you. It should be interesting, since she has no self-heal outside of Spirit Tree...and that doesn't affect her DPS much. It might take a little time since I have other RL things happening over the next few weeks which will keep me from leveling her up. I'll let you know.
- Feint
7+ year vet with too many alts to list...
Yeah, to be honest, I was wondering if my Ice/Storm could even do this w/no self heal, and I wasn't about to take the Med pool just for this challenge. I ended up taking Hibernate, but I don't know how practical that is for a (mostly) DPS stress test.
BTW, based on the scrapper thread numbers, I calculated a sub 3:30 time using Ice Blast instead of Mental Blast w/my Fire/Rad (yes, MB is really that lame). I shudder to think what a Fire/Kin/Ice can do, if those numbers bear out.
An Offensive Guide to Ice Melee
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The most common method is to either carry a bunch of purps or get a tanker to taunt it while you whittle down it's HP.
[/ QUOTE ] Tanker taunting while you attack does not = soloing. Use of purps still falls in the realm of soloing, but it kinda defeats the purpose, if you say you solo a pylon with a tray full of purples, I'll say so what, you do it with no insps and I'll say gj or whatever.
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Since it is an easy target with lots and lots of HP and no regeneration it makes a very reliable way to measure sustained damage output.
[/ QUOTE ] Pretty sure pylons have a good amound of regen, I haven't done it in a long time. I do however remember transfusion spam lowering it's regen per combat attributes.
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It's prolly not hard to put together a insp-free soloing build for blasters (just cap your range & AoE def, take Aid Self), but what that costs you in DPS is the question this stress test would answer. Even just Aid Self, since it's a long cast, would lower your DPS significantly, I think. Even if you only fired it off 5~6x in a fight, that's an extra 20sec or so, not only of no damage, but letting the pylon regen during those times.
[/ QUOTE ] You don't need aoe defense, pylon attacks as long as they target you will be counted as range positional. If the attack targets someone near you, and you are in the radius, it is counted as AoE postional.
And for sure its easy to cap a blaster's ranged defense. My nrg/em blaster is capped, but my fire/em blaster is built for pure offense.
15:35 on my plant/rad.
She only has cheap sets right now and it shows. End usage was terrible while CP was down, LR was up ~75%, 80% of the time, and lacking good enough KB protection, anytime the pylon hit I was on my back. Plant being relatively low damage, the Apoc proc in Entangle should help a lot too. I also need to get these accolades.
I know it's old news to many, but it was interesting for me to see a rad with cheap sets (I estimate I didn't spend more than 40m for the whole build) could solo a pylon without insps, especially on a set like plant which is on the bottom when it comes to ST damage. Looking forward to see what it can do once IOed out.
I just tried my Fire/Rad on test w/the psi pool swapped out for Ice Blast. Best time was 4:09 ("effective" DPS of 281.8), but that was pretty lucky w/almost no hits (hits = lost time due to healing back = lower DPS) and no misses on LR. Averaged right around 5:00 for the most part. Could still be better, because w/the available IOs on hand, my end recovery wasn't good enough to keep my attack chain on full--I'd actually have to slow down a touch on the Char & RoFs, just fire Ice Blast as soon as it recharged.
Might try again with Fire Blast & Bonfire slotted up and see if I can do any better (Fire Shield would also be better since Frozen Armor is useless for this build except as an IO mule). I'd like to crack 4:00 if possible. I'd still like to hear what a Fire/Kin or /Storm can do.
An Offensive Guide to Ice Melee
This seems to be quite the rage on the scrapper boards to calculate your DPS (DPS = 38343.75 / seconds to solo pylon + 127.8125). Unfortunately, debuffs, esp regen debuffs, play havoc with true DPS calculations, but it's a good baseline to see how much damage your controller is outputting while surviving.
So, anyone try it? And time yourself? Any AV/GM soloers wanna give it a go? I'd love to see what a tweaked (for ST damage, anyway) Fire/Kin or Fire/Storm could do with this challenge. I'd also be curious what Ill/* can do, since some have theorized that Ill's ST damage is actually very low on the controller totem pole.
My Fire/Rad with no insps, no temps and no click accolades did it in 5:35 (roughly 242 DPS). I could reduce that by going to the Fire or Ice EPP, but I wanna keep Mental for IW, since this is a generic AV/GM solo build, and a lot of AVs mez (unfortunately, Mental Blast's DPA is kinda lame). A more specialized Fire/Rad could should go well under 5:30.
An Offensive Guide to Ice Melee