SoA Av Killer

I put a dual build on my Fortunata to test this out. The build lacks +Rec tools as I only spent about 100M on it.

I was able to solo Swan, but it took a while as I kept having to Placate her or just stand there while I let my END recover a bit.

I tried solo'ing Hro'Dtohz, but his hard hitting forced me to retreat too often and once he got a lucky streak that allowed him to regen from under 80% back up to around 90% I lost patience and used inspirations and temps and took him out.

I could solve the END issues with an investment of INF, but the problem of low HP is more difficult to deal with. Even with Aid Self I had numerous long stretches where I was in danger of being taken down by the next hit while waiting for the self-heal to be available for a 2nd application.

If you're willing to accept defeats until you get a long run of luck, then it's quite doable. But otherwise I think the Night Widow is just a bit too squishy in the presence of one-shot capable AVs such as BABs or Hro'Dtohz to make the AT a good AV killer.

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If you're willing to accept defeats until you get a long run of luck, then it's quite doable. But otherwise I think the Night Widow is just a bit too squishy in the presence of one-shot capable AVs such as BABs or Hro'Dtohz to make the AT a good AV killer.

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For what it's worth, the detailed retellings of AV defeats on the Scrapper forums typically involve multiple defeats before success. Certainly that risk is higher with lower base HP.

My own finding was that, with Aid Self, something between one half and two thirds of the AVs I fought primarily used attacks that dealt single-blow damage I could mostly recover from unless they hit be twice in very rapid succession. Having scaling DR was a big boon against these AVs.

There were other AVs, though, who could consistently hammer me such that the one-shot code was all that saved me, or at least drive me deep into the red. Aid Self can't get you back from this very fast, so you're left in a position where the next hit will probably kill you, since the one-shot code only kicks in at or very near to full health. This was a big part of why I had so much trouble with BaB - he had three or four attacks like this, at least.

My Widow has about 45% more HP than baseline now. I don't know how much I had when I fought the AVs in the screnshots linked, but I know it wasn't that much. Probably more like +10% or less.

Nice guys. Thansk for relating. It definately gives SoA's some hope...let me ask you this tho; Do you guys have yoru accolades for +reg +recovery +hp + end and the like? What about numina's and such?
I realize that with the AE generation, alot of people ar neglecting accolades and some of the uniques, but most of the Vets still run for them and such, thats all I was wondering

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Nice guys. Thansk for relating. It definately gives SoA's some hope...let me ask you this tho; Do you guys have yoru accolades for +reg +recovery +hp + end and the like? What about numina's and such?
I realize that with the AE generation, alot of people ar neglecting accolades and some of the uniques, but most of the Vets still run for them and such, thats all I was wondering

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I have all those those things now. Of course, I'd strive to have them even if I wasn't going to try to solo AVs, because "stronger, better, faster" is just how I like to play.

IMO, you always want these things for AV soloing. Every little bit helps. The inventions system, generally, is all about adding up little buffs to big net effect, and most of the passive accolades fit nicely in this scheme.

O defiantely. I kow my bane isnt completely IO'd, and I usualy only pull him out for VG events, like ther espec trial as he cant pretty much solo the tree, when the brutes and cor's are dead, I keep wailing on the tree and eating another purple. I do like the survivability of my bane, but he just seems so slow. I havent even taken him to an ITF yet. I figure, if I cant farm the wall solo, my toon isnt ready for ITF. I dont know. maybe I will give it another shot tomorrow and try an ITF with him. see how good he does against a real AV and not just the respec tree.

All I have on my Fort/NW is Invader.

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LOL, while checking this I noticed I picked up an Apoc proc in the Hro'Dtohz test that will pay for most of the dual build I did.

Well, dusted off my Crab yesterday. Went and ran an ITF and was on a rikti raid (YAY Finaly got the Mother Ship badge and a bit under 500 Vanguard Merits from the raid alone). My Crab did better than I remembered, but then again he only has SO's still. I know he done have a chance in hell of soloing an AV, but it sure was fun watching all those buggers drop with the help of my team toggles (YAY I even hit a few, Not alot mind you as I am only using SO's and most arent even 50 SO's)

Sorry it took me a while to post in this thread. I'm played that tricked out melee fortunata UberGuy was talking about. I've managed to solo quite a few AVs but haven't tried many new ones since I reworked my build, lack of pvp ability has sort of turned me off from the game.

Keeping to the original topic, yes SoAs can solo AVs. Like many people have stated picking and choosing at first is the way to go. Psi AVs with little resistance like Numina and Swan are good ones to start with. Staying away from ones with to-hit buffs and defense debuffs are also good ie. Black Scorpion, most sword users. After enough practice and build work you can move on to more difficult ones and be succesful.

There really isn't a reason for us to not be able to do it. A night widow is essentially a claws/sr scrapper. Anything they can do, we can do, it just may take more slotting

One thing to note, and anyone who tries this will tell you, just because you beat them once doesn't mean you'll do it every time. The Psi AVs mentioned are pretty easy, but anything beyond that I'm not always successful. I'm like 4-0 against Numina but 2-6 vs Sister Psyche. And more difficult ones... I can't even tell you, I have 2 wins against Ghost Widow with over a dozen deaths.

All that being said, I guess my original post with the screenshots got trashed In the screenshots you can see the inspiration trays are open and none are used during the battle, also either the map and team windows are open, so its seen that i'm solo. (Links at bottom)



For anyone who doesn't believe in screeshots, I'm sorry but I don't have any video capturing software. I can however demonstrate my fort's AV soloing abilities ingame if you truely don't believe an SoA can do it. Just post anytime you're free during the week after 1pm est. Log on freedom and i'll show you

Countess Crey
Mother Mayhem
Numina
Swan
Ghost Widow

Let me clarify on one thing I said... We're like claws/sr scrappers with no defense-debuff resistance, so we can do anything they can do as long as it doesn't involve defense debuffs

Also to any Widow/Fort trying to solo AVs... Start with Countess Crey! She is by far the easiest AV I've tried, I never lost to her, even before my build was complete.

Note: not "no" defence debuff resistance, just "significantly less." On the flip-side, it's a lot easier to perma-or near-perma softcap a Widow (especially a Night Widow) than an SR Brute or Scrapper. Also, it's much easier for a Night Widow to recover from an Elude crash, considering roughly half their defence comes from a passive and a long-lasting click.

Offensively, I think the ability to crit at will via Placate lets Night Widows catch up significantly to Scrappers in DPS, as well as having a toxic damage part in addition to the lethal.

So basically, I really see no reason why a moderate-to-highly IO'd NW can't solo AVs compared to a moderate-to-highly IO'd out Claws/SR.

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Note: not "no" defence debuff resistance, just "significantly less."

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You are correct. For clarification I was speaking of AV soloing, the defense debuff resistance is not significant enough to make a difference. If I get hit by Romulus or Positron, I have no other damage mitigation to fall back on besides aid self, which is really nothing. In short, if an AV hits me with a defense debuff, or has a to-hit buff, I'm going to die unless the RNG is feeling very generous.

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Offensively, I think the ability to crit at will via Placate lets Night Widows catch up significantly to Scrappers in DPS, as well as having a toxic damage part in addition to the lethal.

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While NWs can definitely compete with Claws Scrappers for damage, Placate really doesn't help much.

The value of Placate is essentially the Crit damage minus your normal DPS times the Animation Time of Placate. Generally speaking, the Crit is worth less than the time taken to Placate. Since the Crit is 2/3rds of the damage of the attack and Placate has a somewhat longish 1.716s Activation (ArcanaTime) that means it doesn't really add as much to the Widow DPS as you might hope (if any).

Here are the effective DPA numbers for Placate when followed by the various attacks in base DS/s:

1.066 Slash
0.711 Lunge
0.559 Strike
0.405 Eviscerate (5 targets)
0.355 Follow Up
0.309 Swipe
0.256 Spin (10 targets)


Swipe has a 0.905 base DPA and Strike is 1.216. So basically, the best case for using Placate for damage is just a bit better than using Swipe instead and inferior to using Strike, the two most commonly used filler attacks. Given its longer cast time, you usually have to delay the following attack if you use Placate, so it's better to compare it to using *both* filler attacks. At which point it's a wash at best.

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So...No takers yet?
Now that the discussion (Cough cough arguements) are over with, noone has any stories to tell? or pics to post of SoA's even trying to solo an AV?

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Last night I tried to solo Ghost Widow at level 50 with my Fortunata who is 48. The fight pretty much went exactly like I knew it go, she couldn't kill me and I couldn't kill her. When I brought out the Shivan it was easily doable, but trying to do with without the Shivan was a complete deadlock.

There were a couple worry moments when she was able to get through my defense and landed a hit on me with Gloom, but otherwise my Fortunata was perfectly fine going toe to toe with her and I wasn't even using Mind Link.

I would try to solo someone with my Night Widow, but I am not playing her anymore until Going Rogue comes out.

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Offensively, I think the ability to crit at will via Placate lets Night Widows catch up significantly to Scrappers in DPS, as well as having a toxic damage part in addition to the lethal.

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While NWs can definitely compete with Claws Scrappers for damage, Placate really doesn't help much.

The value of Placate is essentially the Crit damage minus your normal DPS times the Animation Time of Placate. Generally speaking, the Crit is worth less than the time taken to Placate. Since the Crit is 2/3rds of the damage of the attack and Placate has a somewhat longish 1.716s Activation (ArcanaTime) that means it doesn't really add as much to the Widow DPS as you might hope (if any).

Here are the effective DPA numbers for Placate when followed by the various attacks in base DS/s:

1.066 Slash
0.711 Lunge
0.559 Strike
0.405 Eviscerate (5 targets)
0.355 Follow Up
0.309 Swipe
0.256 Spin (10 targets)


Swipe has a 0.905 base DPA and Strike is 1.216. So basically, the best case for using Placate for damage is just a bit better than using Swipe instead and inferior to using Strike, the two most commonly used filler attacks. Given its longer cast time, you usually have to delay the following attack if you use Placate, so it's better to compare it to using *both* filler attacks. At which point it's a wash at best.

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Hmm...hadn't run the numbers. Good point.

I would think that Soloing AV's now as a NW or a Fort would be a bit different now than it once was.

When SoA"s were just released you had the glut of people making them, admittedly I was one of them, and while people were learning what they could quite a few soloed AV's.

I personally soloed soloed BaB, Aurora, Valkyrie, Barracuda, Khalinda, and Statesman if memory serves. No, I didn't take any videos or Screenies. Back then it wasn't part of the point as it was just playing for fun.

However, I don't think I could do the same anymore as the Defense calculation changed in regards to NPC rank at some point that I missed. It used to be that if you had capped defense you had capped defense unless your opponent had above par To hit. Now, any Lt,Boss,EB, AV has a higher floored chance to hit than 5% no matter how high your defense is. On a toon as fragile as a widow.... I think I would I have to get really lucky to do those fights again with the possible exception of the Psi heavy damage AV's given that we have decent Psi resists.

Interestingly enough several AV's that seemed to be impossible for me to even come close to doing was Synapse (I only attempted a few times but he seemed to have one attack that never missed) Ghost Widow and Silver Mantis. Didn't seem to matter how many times I tried I either couldn't kill them fast enough or couldn't survive more than a minute.

If you could build a NW with fairly decent resists at least to S/L I'd say it's still very doable. NW's have more than enough DPS to overcome AV regen rates and even though it is very small the regen debuff in PD would only help that even more. The biggest issue now that I can see is survivability.

I have a Bane and have had him for a very long time. To this day, he remains one of my most beastly characters. He has no problem running up to an AV and giving them their last rites before they die. From what I remember, Bane Spider and Night Widow have the best odds of soloing AV's and the Rikti Pylon than the others. I've come close to soloing the pylon on my Bane and that's without IO's.

Wow, surprised to see this post resurrected.

I'm no avid AV soloer, but I have soloed pylons and that clockwork AV in the LGTF with my widow (clockwork king? He just popped up while I was AFK near the ent of one of the missions so figured "what the hell" and went for it). Of course, he has a lot of psi attacks, which widows laugh off anyways.

I've also soloed the two AVs in the last incarnate mish with my widow, not sure if they were considered true "AVs" but they went down without much hassle. As long as the RNG doesn't hit a wild streak I think a well built widow, and bane I suppose, could tackle quite a few AVs and be successful.

Are they the "ideal" AT for AV soloing? Hell no, but it's always worth an attempt in my book. Yeah, we aren't as efficient as the FotM AV soloers (bots/traps MMs, rad/sonics fenders, illusion/colds trollers... combos even a monkey could solo AVs with) but they can pull it off in the right circumstances and the right build.

Would it be possible for a fortunata to be able to defeat an AV with poison dart and dart burst?

I have solo'd several AVs and I can regularly do a Pylon with my Crab spider. Though this is with perma-pets to deal damage. So I am not sure this is something you would be interested in.

For those wanting proof, I just recently came back from a several month long hiatus and am lacking any. Though I do intend to pull out fraps and record it eventually.