Mind/Fiery AV soloer

I started a new series on soloing AVs in the City Scoop, and the first two articles are already out. Looks like I'll need to do a case study on Doms in one of the future articles. I hadn't ever considered perma-holding them solo, but silly me I never ran the numbers to see if it was possible. Time to pick one of my Doms and do a Respec. I have a feeling my Fire/Psi will do pretty well.

I created an arc in the MA, #168611 "Level 50 AV Challenge" that has all of the level 50 AVs available. In the first mission (so far), they all tell you their Resistances as well. So if you don't have 80 minutes, you might look for some that are vulnerable to Psi and/or Fire.

Yes, Fire/Psi is definitely a top candidate for AV soloing, with Drain Psyche to halt their regen and Fire Imps for that extra damage output.

Thanks for the arc link, but I've done my dash for AV soloing now. I'm feeling quite content since Ghost Widow has quite the reputation, and I put plenty of limitations in place. From now on I'm going to fall back to more expedient methods, like getting teammates.

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They are heavily edited, no one needs to watch me Blazing for an hour and a half.

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I always wondered what that plant in your avatar was.

Good job Lil. Well played.

gj nice descriptions too

Eighty minutes?

Basically what keeps me from soloing AVs on any AT is how easily I get bored in fights that aren't under 10 minutes. My Mastermind can kill most under that time constraint, though.

Very good job, I don't see myself doing it any time soon.

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Don't you think you should have summoned your pet?

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quoting this for awesomeness
thanks!

She had a patron pet people....I'm not retarded.

Don't forget the vet pet too!

you sir/madame are a trooper to sit their for over a hour pressing two buttons over and over x_x

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If anyone can tell me how to choose specific levels for enhancements in Mid's that would really help in showing the nuances.


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While choosing enhancements, if it's an IO, type in the level before you choose the enhancement. If it's a TO,DO,SO, or HO, hit plus or minus to change the variance(while in the SO screen, hit plus twice to choose a +2 SO)

You will see the change in the lower right of the enhancement choice window.

Nice vids, I just wanted to know how you manage to not get hit often or how you kept her held for so long. This must be a perma-dom only thing right???

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Nice vids, I just wanted to know how you manage to not get hit often or how you kept her held for so long. This must be a perma-dom only thing right???

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If you have enough recharge, you can hold AV's through the PToD.

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Nice vids, I just wanted to know how you manage to not get hit often or how you kept her held for so long. This must be a perma-dom only thing right???

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If you have enough recharge, you can hold AV's through the PToD.

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You also need to have a really fast animating ST Hold (like Mind/ or Fire/). Beyond a certain point that becomes a factor.

So I copied my build over to test and tried Ghost Widow on again. Things went much faster, and I took her down in less than 25 minutes using identical tactics. The increased damage on Blaze and Fire Blast helped a lot for this, and the increased recharge was not a problem because I'm always prioritizing Dominate. Additionally I could get more coverage out of Fiery Embrace because I wasn't hitting the damage cap. On the old system I had to delay Fiery Embrace because there was no point in activating while my Domination buffs were stacked.

The one downside was endurance, I hit the bottom quite a bit more, although with Stamina that would not be a problem.

If you check out the most recent edition of the City Scoop, you'll see my article on soloing AVs with a Dom. I include the numbers for stacking holds and such, and it appears to be reasonable for a Mind or Fire Control Dom to hold an AV through the purple triangles. Doms without one of those primaries will have a significantly harder time due to the longer animation time in their single target hold. They'll need around +200% global Recharge Reduction.

My Fire/Psi Dom could defeat an average AV in 3.5 minutes in Issue 14. I don't expect that to change significantly in Issue 15, but I haven't tested it.

Nice article, I always wondered what i'd need to do to solo hold an AV. Might be worth getting the purple hold and AoE sets, since those would push me up closer to the required recharge. Then I could use the empowerment station + time lord to actually hit the recharge.

I think you should have included some info about S/L def capped doms though. Like you, I'm /psi, but unlike you (maybe), I have capped defense. Since I have drain psyche, it's not as huge of an issue to kill the AV before I run out of greens oranges and reds. I also use PFF to regen a bit if I get smacked.

I've attempted soloing GMs with the defense build too, but the main issue there is that GMs run away from me, for whatever reason. As a result I end up missing drain psyche over and over again and just give up.

I took Fire Breath because I wanted more AoE damage.

I used to have Incinerate, but I dropped it because I didn't find myself using it much. My big issues were that it was the only power that required me to be in melee range, and the DoT was hard to manage or wasted.

For this build I chose my powers first, and then chose where to fit the purple sets. 8 of the 10 purple sets can go into the build (9 if you put a stun in boxing, ugh)

Ok .. you stood there and tried to tank AV'S . Not once did you kite or use los. Not once did you use anything in geography or your character movement to shift the battle to your advantage. No wonder we got these lame dom chnages with people like you at the helm whispering " THIS is what dom's need!!" in Castles ear.
No offense ,Lilli. You're a fun guy . I have a question though... just one. Do you tackle every ingame objective by trying to "tank" it when you are on an archetype without the hp or def//res to support that particular approach? Do you ever think .. ya know.. OUT OF THE ******* BOX? Instead of advocating playstyles that make everyone play dumb and that make it really boring for people that don't stand around like idiots for 80 minutes , trying to tank an AV instead of PLAYING in a proactive fashion that would end the AV encounter in under 5 minutes, is there a reason you do that and advocate that playstyle?

I am really curious to get your answer. You may think I am attacking you but I am not. I am simply trying to understand why any player would put themselves through 80 minutes of hell that another player would complete in 5-10 minutes with a different tactic playing the same archetype with similar slotting etc...etc ..etc. Good job on soloing the AV's.

Id like to add that as a mind// you have confuse. Did it ever occur to you that a confused target does not attack you or pop tier9'? Wanna knock an hour off that fight? Pop some yellows and use confuse.

Umm, ok.

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Originally Posted by Southern_Comfort Ok .. you stood there and tried to tank AV'S . Not once did you kite or use los. Not once did you use anything in geography or your character movement to shift the battle to your advantage. . . . Do you tackle every ingame objective by trying to "tank" it when you are on an archetype without the hp or def//res to support that particular approach? Do you ever think .. ya know.. OUT OF THE ******* BOX? Instead of advocating playstyles that make everyone play dumb and that make it really boring for people that don't stand around like idiots for 80 minutes , trying to tank an AV instead of PLAYING in a proactive fashion that would end the AV encounter in under 5 minutes, is there a reason you do that and advocate that playstyle? I am really curious to get your answer. You may think I am attacking you but I am not. I am simply trying to understand why any player would put themselves through 80 minutes of hell that another player would complete in 5-10 minutes with a different tactic playing the same archetype with similar slotting etc...etc ..etc. Good job on soloing the AV's. Id like to add that as a mind// you have confuse. Did it ever occur to you that a confused target does not attack you or pop tier9'? Wanna knock an hour off that fight? Pop some yellows and use confuse.

This post just makes you look ignorant. Perhaps you could post your own video to dispell that. But I'm happy to answer your questions, because it might be interesting to other people who also haven't soloed AVs on their Dominators.

Watch the video with Ghost Widow again. I used character movement a lot to protect myself. It seems you don't know that when an enemy wakes up they'll take a moment to turn around before attacking you. That's why I was alternating Mesmerize and Dominate and jumping over her head a lot. It's also why I had Combat Jumping on.

As for using geography and breaking LOS, all the movement interferes with casting Dominate, which has to be used every time it's up, so it usually just gets me dead. It makes sense on the other primaries, where you can immob the AV and jump up and down from behind a box to deal with them, but with Mind you're better off sleeping them and getting behind them.

In fact, I'm at a loss to understand why you thought I was "tanking" at all. Ghost Widow did get off a few shots at me, but those only happened after I missed a few times in a row. If you'd tried this yourself you'd know that it's very hard to predict when or even if the AV will break free after you miss a couple of times. The only way you know they're free is because they just took a shot at you.

I'm trying to guess your tactic to end the fight in just 5 minutes, which you've omitted from your post. You can't possibly mean that leaping around like a mad thing would speed up the battle. Most likely you're suggesting to do it with a Fire/Psi? Well yes, Drain Psyche, Fire Imps and Hot Feet will do that for you. I however thought that it was more interesting to do it with Mind/Fiery since everyone knows Fire/Psi can do it, and it's also my favoured character. Not to mention I don't actually have a 50 Fire/Psi.

You also have some pretty serious misapprehensions about Confuse. Most importantly, in I15 Confuse's activation time was 3.3 seconds. It was so long that when alternated with Dominate it prevents you from stacking enough mag to hold the AV, and definitely seriously reduces your damage output. In I16 it's 2 seconds, so the tactic may become viable. Secondly, a confused enemy will pop Tier 9s and will move around. Thirdly Dominate does damage, Confuse does not, and damage is what reduces duration of a fight. The only way Confuse can reduce the duration of the fight would be if there were another enemy around to help out.

Finally you should know that taking yellows would have absolutely no effect. The AV cons evenly to me, and I'm totally IOed out, which means at least 100% bonus to accuracy on all my powers. Of course the biggest clue is in my combat attributes I'm tracking "last hit chance" which stays firmly at 95%. If it dropped below that even a sliver you can be sure I would have turned on Tactics.

If you want some proper criticisms, why not read the rest of the thread, including these:

• If I summoned my Mu Guardian and vet reward pets I could push up my damage output.
• I should maximize my use of the Apocalypse proc by putting it in Blaze instead of Fire Blast.
• I should have used Total Domination and Telekinesis at the beginning to get an extra 12 mag and probably avoid the bit where the AV is free briefly after triangles go up.
• I did not leverage streakbreaker as well as I could have, and ended up with a few too many misses of Dominate near the beginning.
• I could generally optimize my build better for this. (Assault)

Finally as a footnote, when I tried this out in I15 test with the Dominator "nerfs" in place I did it in 25 minutes.

Yea I don't think Lili did anything wrong. Why break LOS when the idea is to you know, permahold the AV? Eventually it's going to happen and the mez will wear off because of too many misses. If that happens that's what Mesmerize , inpsirations and jumping over the AV is for.

Using confuse would make killing slower. Even with the animation changes it's hard to permaconfuse AV's and still be able to put out enough damage. Does it ever occur to you that a held target does not attack you or pop their tier9? And just like Lili said, yellows are useless when you already have a 95% chance to-hit.

You also said that the fights could've have been a lot shorter, certainly yes if shivans and nukes were used. But, what's the point of that when anyone can do it that way?

"All the movement interferes with casting dominate, which has to be used every time it is up."

|_______| if this is the box you are in, she is asking you to to this |_________|

I think what she was suggesting with confuse is that slotted w/ domination it has just shy of a 90 sec duration. I've never used a confuse approach, but if they have the same protection to confuse as everything else then you'd be in a situation where you only need to cast confuse every ~10 seconds to maintain enough mag. Which would leave a lot of time to rack up damage even with the old cast time.

Something like confuse>blaze>blast>levitate>blaze>confuse if you are cautious, even adding another fireblast after levitate if you are feeling risky (could definitely squeeze in the second fireblast with the new cast time). Would produce a lot more damage than dom>blaze>repeat while being safer and like she says "less tanky"

At a glace I'm seeing about 20% more dps vs dom>blaze (i14 numbers and before FE) and much less required recharge. Add in some cheap dam procs to confuse and levitate and once you factor in FE on such a high recharge build it is easily 25+% more dps. Apoc added in, more like 30+% more dps. And you can just sit back and spam confuse before engaging and do it all with near zero risk. Factor in the i15 damage buffs and the new 25 min time you posted will probably be halved.

*Like I said, i've never tried a confuse approach as I don't even have a high level mind dom, but I believe that is what Southern is talking about.

If you do it like that then I can see it work. I forgot that Lili was facing even con'd AV's, while I typed my response I was thinking about my experience with 52 and 53 AV's. With no extra confuse protection, I can put out around a 90 mag confuse on a lvl 50 AV, but it's obviously reduced as their level goes up which makes that strategy pretty useless against higher level AV's.

Thank you Frosticus.

No offense to you,Lilli. Congratulations again on your accomplishment.