A lot depends on your primary. Necro is not a particularly high damage set, so it's going to take longer for you... spamming Twilight Grasp and Howling Twilight as often as possible will help since both have -regen components, and of course Tar Patch for the -resist. Incidentally, Ghost Widow is a royal pain for even a lot of high-powered AV soloist builds so that's a bad place to start... not sure about Libery since I've never fought her as an AV.
The keys to soloing AVs are DPS and survivability. The harder you hit, the shorter the fight and therefore the less time you have to survive. The harder you are to kill, the longer you have to do damage. I suspect what happened to you was that the pets were dying too fast and therefore dropping your DPS... you stayed alive, but you couldn't keep a solid stream of damage going. AVs tend to squash pets like bugs, especially in melee, so your best bet is to get Challenge or Provoke and slot it well... if you stay in Bodyguard you can take the hits a lot better than any of your minions can. Still, Necro is a mostly melee set and AVs tend to have PBAoEs or melee cones, so keep them as debuffed as possible and hope they miss. You could really use global recharge bonuses, both for spamming debuffs faster and also for replacing pets. I'm sure Necro/Dark can solo AVs, but I don't play the set so I can't give detailed strategies...
The most "casual friendly" AV soloing combo is Bots/Traps. They can solo quite a few with just SOs. Bots are tough and all ranged, Traps has debuffs (includung huge -regen), an immobilize and a nice area +regen power, and both Bots and Traps boost the Mastermind's defense. You can beat a lot of AVs by simply having your pets stand on a Triage Beacon in Bodyguard mode, immobilizing the AV with Web Grenades, and keeping it taunted while the bots shoot it. Drop your Acid Mortars and Poison Traps as they come up and stay on the edge of the Beacon yourself (but a bit away from the bots to protect them from AoEs) and you're pretty hard to kill. You also have enough defense to get Aid Self and Aid Other off most of the time even under fire. You even get hold and stun protection. With Necro, you're just going to have to rely on keeping them debuffed and slowed... hopefully you can get the AV to chase you around while the zombies and Grave Knights pound on it. The Black Scorpion patron pool might help... it has a nice defense-based shield that will help you tank the AV if you go the taunt route.
Cascade, level 50 Blaster (NRG/NRG since before it was cool)
Mechmeister, level 50 Bots / Traps MM
FAR too many non-50 alts to name
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actually soloing an av as a +2 av will depend on your primary and secondary combination.
a lot of poisons debuffs are hurt due to av resistances. tohit debuffs are likewise hurt. if you are poison or dark i recommend dropping the av down to EB status until you can io out.
thugs/traps and bots/traps has the easiest time with av's due to the tools available. with bots you are likely to have to replace the probots regularly. with thugs you will prob have to replace the tier 1 pets regularly. you can softcap your thugs at 40 by getting and 4 slotting gang war and putting in all 4 pet uniques for defense and resistance. bots will never softcap the probots as thugs/traps.
positioning is key and is why i have team teleport. your pets MUST all be under the ffg.
of course other primary/secondary combos can solo some av's, but if you want to solo every av redside - and our av's are substantially harder than anything blueside deals with - thugs/traps or bots/traps cant be beat atm.
Soloing AVs is by no means the norm for a "casual" player
Hi there,
I just came back from a 2-year hiatus recently, so I'm lost on what's "the norm" nowadays. I have a 48 Necro/Dark/Soul MM, with a setup similar to Geek_Boy's (in the sticky); I have level 50 enhancements, with half or so being SOs and the other being simple IOs (no set bonuses). I feel sorta foolish asking, but I'm wondering whether it's common for an MM to solo a Hero or AV?
So far, I've attempted to take down Ms. Liberty (Abyss story arc) and Ghost Widow (Patron pool). I've been able to stay alive (my pets weren't so lucky; I was riding recharges closely) for a while before giving up and setting them to an EB; I just can't do enough damage to them to overcome their regen. I'm guessing soloing an AV or Hero on max setting is only doable by specific builds and enhancements, and not casual players--right?
Thanks in advance for any replies.