Are there any good AV soloing powersets?

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Ill/Rad has long been the build that is viewed as the "AV Killer." Fire/Rad is awesome, but doesn't have the same protection of three invulnerable tanks. I'm not doubting that you can do it, but it may be that you are just that good. When lots of folks can do it, that suggests that it is the build that is the cause.

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ill/rad is only percieved as "better" by the general public, but I've come to the conclusion that it's mostly an Urban Legend of CoH.

When fighting these targets, survivability only matters to a certain extent. Once you're at a point where you can survive, having more survivability is irrelevant, at this point it is the offense that makes the difference between the good and the best. Fire/Rad is superior to ill/rad in this aspect.

I'll make sure to post screenies to back my claims soon enough

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I think your perspective may be a little different than mine. I suspect that you are talking only about maxed level 50 fully IO'ed out builds. And even then, a "Perma PA build" is pretty easy to put up against an AV, while a Fire/Rad is going to need a bit more work. Against that single powerful target, a Fire/Rad has more limited options.

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It's true that illusion is easier (and that's where its porpularity and legend status come from) but the difference is comparable to an automatic and a manual transmission car; the automatic car is easier to drive, but once you've learned what you're doing the manual shift car will outperform the automatic in potency, speed and traction.

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New age performance automatics seem to be > manual transmissions. I wouldn't know as I'm too poor to own a car like a Maclaren SLR, or Nissan GTR, but the interweb doesn't lie... ever.

I hear what your saying though.

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Cold is better than Dark but worse than Rad for AV/GM soloing

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And your reasoning is.....?

It's easier to soft cap a cold than rad
Cold can dish out /alot/ more -res than rad
Cold has /much/ better -rchg than rad
Cold has better defense debuffs than rad (for whatever its worth)
Cold has much better -dmg compared to rad (50% (80% vs fire) vs the 20% that rad has),
Cold has -special, Rad does not
Cold has equivalent -regen to rad with high amounts of rchg
Cold has heat loss effectively giving it unlimited endurance at high rchg.

With high rchg a cold will melt an AV faster than a rad, easily.

A Rad has a self heal
A Rad has a faster rchging regen debuff (which becomes a nonfactor at high rchg)
A Rad has +rchg in AM
A Rad has mez resist in AM, (but cold can get similar results with benumb)

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IME with my fire/cold corr and the few AV's I've tagged the thing that limits /cold is how much time you spend applying your debuffs. They spend upward of 15-20% of their time layering the debuffs, which can seriously eat into dps. Plus additional time healing with aidself.

Conversely, a rad just has to reapply LR, AM every 2 ish min, and heal occasionally.

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Ill/Rad has long been the build that is viewed as the "AV Killer." Fire/Rad is awesome, but doesn't have the same protection of three invulnerable tanks. I'm not doubting that you can do it, but it may be that you are just that good. When lots of folks can do it, that suggests that it is the build that is the cause.[/QUOTE]

Good point.

Who needs 3 indestructable pets when you can be an indestructible master yourself?

Would you believe my grav/kin solos AVs without a problem? Between the Singularity, the 6-slotted Transfusion, the 6-slotted Transference, and the Immob/Holds that all have PROCs for SOME kind of alternate damage, she has been known to tear a** through stuff with surprising ease.

But that's just me.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

Once you step into the realms of AV soloing you'll also realize that "AV soloing" is a very broad term. There's a huge difference between being able to solo Chimera and being able to solo Lord Recluse

In the last hour or so I've soloed Jack in Irons (in 15:49), Kraken (in 7:01), and Babbage (in 9:10) on my newly minted 50 Ill/Rad. AVs are a joke. It's pretty hard to go wrong with that combo, especially if you have a lot of money to burn.

Hi everybody,
yep TopDoc says in his recent article in the City Scoop that he has done every GM apart from the Kronos Titan, Ukon Gria and a Rikti Drop Ship and that he too found Lusca the longest contest, simply because it is actually nine GM's in one. All done with his Ill/Rad troller.
Cheers

lots of good points in this thread....there is a big difference in AV's I totally agree....the Paladin, Kraken, and Babbage are by far the easiest...those I have done with no insps or temps...but when Ive gotten to DE monsters/tougher AV's I've had to dip into my insps (blues mostly) due to the sheer longevity it takes.....

PS

speaking on Ill/Rad btw

Late comments:

1) Ill/Rad is the best all-around, IMO, as it uses a practically "unbeatable" defensive ploy, while other defense ploys (Immob, Ranged Defense, etc) all have weaknesses. For example, you can depend on Defense but if Ghost Widow hits you with her Hold, it's over, while with perma-PA you have no such worries.
1.1) I know of some Ill/Rads who have done all the AVs. I did Kronos Titan, but that was back in I4 if I recall right, and damage and regeneration have changed since then.

2) Fire/Rad is a great AV soloer, while it has some holes unlike Ill/Rad, when it's facing something that doesn't have an ace, it can usually do the job faster than Ill/Rad.

1-2) /Cold should be about as good as /Rad, give or take a few IO sets for Defense.

3) Earth/Therm (and soon Earth/Cold) is an underrated set, since it can make Stoney able to tank an AV very easily. It is by far the cheapest AV soloing build since it has all the tools in the 30s and doesn't require much in the way of special IOs. It does have a DPS problem, so fights will be slower and there will be some AVs that it can't take. But I do think that it's a bit underrated just because it's a bit slower, the ability to get very good defense VERY easily is a major selling point for a casual soloer.

For Silverado:

Here is a screenie of my lvl 49 ill/rad standing over the body of a DE monster soloed with no temps, no insps. Made room in my tray for an EOE by deleting, but didn't get the drop.

It's a long fight but not a hard one.

(Edit: it seems I have more to say...)

It bears mentioning that this ill/rad was created back in i8 and soloed his first AVs without temps/insps before inventions even existed, sometime in the mid-30s as far as level is concerned. I'm not going to go out on a limb and say that a fire/rad couldn't solo AVs by level 35 with only SO enhancements, but I imagine it would be more difficult than it would be for an ill/rad.

As far as fire/rad being better against multiple AVs, I've found that placement of Phantom Army and luring the AVs into the right spot is key, and with this properly done, decoys hold the aggro just fine. The only drawback is that so much of your damage is coming from pets, it's hard to focus them on just one AV to spike it quickly.

But there are some AVs which I reckon would give a fire/rad much more difficulty than an ill/rad: Ghost Widow for example. Sure, a fire/rad can solo her, but there's a good chance that sooner or later, Ghost Widow will land a Soul Storm, at which point it'll be over. My ill/rad took her down easily in 1 try, and Soul Storm was never an issue.

Anyway, ill/rad could be built for softcapped defense just as easily as any other controller; the reason why nobody does it is that perma-PA > 45% ranged defense.

Ultimately I think it's a little overboard to say that fire/rad is clearly best. It does more damage than ill/rad, sure, I don't dispute that. However, in practice my ill/rad does plenty of damage to beat an AV or GM, and does it with exponentially more safety than any of my other half-dozen AV soloing toons (including a fire/rad corruptor).

The one glaring weakness of Illusion control is the lack of a single-target immobilize, which made it impossible for me to defeat Diabolique without popping a shivan.

But I've defeated every other AV I've matched myself against, and done it very easily and safely, dying maybe twice or three times during several dozen AV and GM fights, in one instance taking down two AVs at once.

And I did all this while leveling, not at lvl 50, and even defeated several of the AVs back in i8, before IO enhancements were available.

That, to my mind, is enough to recommend ill/rad as the equal of any AV-soloing build, and far, far better than most. It blooms early, it's combat-ready versus AVs by level 30, with or without IO enhancements, and you could literally solo dozens of AVs without ever dying to an unlucky break.

When did ED come in? I know I was soloing pretty much every AV out there w/my Fire/Rad pre-ED, including the fire resistant Infernal. Never could solo a GM back then though, even w/a full tray of insps.

From the 30-40 game, there were really two that I can remember back then: Terra, who was the easiest AV in the game (mag 3 hold protection) and Envoy, who I never really tried to solo in my early 30s (and this was way before flashbacks and all that).

Anyway, there's no doubt Ill/Rad is one of the top soloers out there, and certainly far safer and easier than a Fire/Rad, but at the very top end, Fire simply does more damage than Ill and thus is faster. Unless you're dealing w/psy-vulnerable AV/GMs, Fire will pretty much always kill faster than Ill.

Multiple AVs are always tricky, but for different reasons depending on your build & strategy. My F/R build & tactic (common enough, I'm sure) is to keep the aggro on my instead of the imps by dishing out more damage--easy enough to do on 1 AV/GM. On multiple AVs, the imps invariably grab aggro and get themselves killed, which slows down my DPS a lot (and recasting takes time & end). I'd prolly need to switch up tactics a bit to group them tight and use more AoEs like Bonfire instead of my current ST chain.

Please forgive an AV killing newb here, but what attacks would a Fire/Rad use that are doing so much more damage? It seems to me that Hot Feet pretty much has to be out of the equation if you don't want to get crunched, so that leaves patron powers (which Ill has equal access to) and...what? The ST Fire Immob? Wouldn't Spectral Wounds be about equivalent to that in damage?

Of course, the imps have to do more damage than phanty, but are also squishier since they have to be in melee.

Edit: I've also head mention that Choking Cloud is a must, but is that just for farming? I can't imagine that it would do anything but drain end against an AV.

Cool, thanks for all the details!

Summarizing: For Fire/Rad, your attack chain will be some permutation of RoF, Char, Fire Blast and Fire Ball. And the set bonus priorities are: (1) ranged defense (~40%), (2) recharge (for Hasten/AM, Fire Ball), (3) recovery (to keep up the attack chain with all the toggles running). Stay at max Hot Feet range with the big bad guy pointing away from your impys, and fry. Rawr!

For Ill/Rad, the attack chain will be some permutation of SW, Blind, ST epic blast, AoE epic--keeping PA up as much as you humanly can. Set bonus priorities: (1) recharge (goal is perma-PA with Hasten/AM) and (2) recovery. For those of us who don't yet have perma-PA (or may never, depending on how expensive that is), what do we do while PA is down? Kite? Hope Phanty's decoy gets the aggro?

My Fire/Rad chain is RoF, Char & Mental Blast. I could go higher w/Fire or Ice epics, but won't do w/o mez protection, so get stuck w/MB. Bonfire also has very good DPA even on a single target. All these things plus 3 imps put Fire well above the other primaries. To illustrate how good Fire is at damage, W/containment, RoF & Char have around the same DPA values as most T1 & 2 blaster attacks (minus definace... and no BU/Aim...).

I never run HF or CC during AV fights since their ST DPS/DPE is rather pathetic, esp compared to what I'm already pumping out w/just my ST chain + Imps. I also don't use AoE attacks (though again, I'm considering adding Bonfire) because of their low ST DPEs. As it stands, I recover end during my normal ST chain (w/RI+EF and all my defensive toggles running) which means I can keep up my attacks forever. If I started more multiple AV attempts, this would obviously change.