For a (generally) solo char, tank or scrapper?
By
Bill Z Bubba,
Posted on: 2009-09-11 24:29 in Archetypes and Powers General Discussion
For soloing? Scrapper. The extra mitigation provided by the tank doesn't come close to the extra damage from being a scrapper.
Be well, people of CoH.
Got no issues with Bill's advice.
That said, a Burn Aura/Ice Melee tank is an excellent PvE soloing machine
once you embrace the destructive force that is Burn and Ice Patch.
Add in defense toggles, a heal, and End leech, and you're good to go
(Mine solos the Cimoera wall all the time).
Regards,
4
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Short answer: Scrapper.
Slightly longer answer: Some tanks, mostly FA/somethings are good soloers. Any scrapper makes a good soloer.
Agreed. Across the board, scrappers are the best soloers, by and large.
That said, tanks can be nearly as good if you go offensive with IO sets and whatnot. My 50 fire/stone scranker dishes AoE better than anything that isn't spines/ and does TONS of damage to big mobs... as well as being pretty tough to bring down.
Personally, I prefer tanks, but scrappers solo with ease.
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Pre Issue 16, single target DPS scrappers are the way to solo. You can use the higher damage of a scrapper to finish missions and level faster, but you can't use the higher defenses of a tanker because it's overkill against solo spawns. You just don't need tanker level defenses against solo spawns.
Post Issue 16, you can load team-sized spawns for yourself, and that complicates the question a bit. By increasing the spawn sizes to levels where higher defenses actually pay off for you, high AoE damage tanker builds and high defense scrapper builds shouldn't lag so far behind the typical high single target damage scrapper build anymore. So if your heart is set on a */Fire tanker with Combustion, or a WP/* scrapper running fully saturated RttC, Issue 16 will make those more feasible thanks to team size scaling.
I had actually forgotten the whole scaling system coming out with i16. Meh, that does complicate things a little bit...well, not really I guess. I still want a shield scrapper/tank, and if I get even more damage buffs out of it now even better. I can sit at an easy ~80% damage buff all the time, would make jumping into mobs with my shield teleport even tastier. On the other hand...meh, dunno 
It does make me wonder what sized mobs I want to mess with now. Would a shielder get eaten fast enough to not make it worth it...
Great, now I don't know who to solo with :3
For what it's worth, my Shield/DM tanker has no trouble soloing, including most AVs or +4/x8 spawns without insps or temps (although I will face the occasional defeat if I never use insps).
A DM/Shield scrapper will go much faster, but in damage mitigation it's not even close. The thing is, this superior damage mitigation is arguably wasted in most situations if you're willing to use inspirations (or if you don't want to push the envelope).
We've had both. I had a sd/fire tank and my cousin had the same as a scrapper. Well, with his 1 shot kill capabilities, and my squishy feeling as a tank, needless to say i deleted my tank at 46. I didn't have "sets", just commons. But hey, they say the game is still built around SO's, so it shouldn't matter. Right.
I guess with enough inf sd can be a decent tank but i've heard of many people deleting or re-rolling as a diff AT.
As far as strength, it took me 2 shots to do as much damage as him with 1. All he had were commons also. Good luck with your choice, but i'd go scrapper for the xtra damage.
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This.|
Originally Posted by Bill Z Bubba
For soloing? Scrapper. The extra mitigation provided by the tank doesn't come close to the extra damage from being a scrapper.
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Soloing with a Tanker is painfully slow.
There's already builds in place for softcapped DM/SHields, that use the best DPS chain for Dark Melee as well (not saying cheap, but possible).
Scrappers tend to have enough survivability, for solo play, that what you really want is damage to make it faster.
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Bill, you wouldn't even suggest a tanker for team play.
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Originally Posted by Bill Z Bubba
For soloing? Scrapper.
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Personally I would pick a blaster over a tank when soloing. Damage is king.
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With a dark melee / shield scrapper, you won't need to worry about mob size. Teleporting into mobs from a distance with with shield charge is fun, but if you've got dark melee, you might want to jump into the midst of the mob first and hit them with a soul drain before sending them flying with a shield charge. That soul drain puts a huge buff on your next attack. Put simply, a dark melee / shield scrapper is *meant* to jump into the midst of large mobs, "against all odds".
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Originally Posted by Phoebe_Ponderas
I had actually forgotten the whole scaling system coming out with i16. Meh, that does complicate things a little bit...well, not really I guess. I still want a shield scrapper/tank, and if I get even more damage buffs out of it now even better. I can sit at an easy ~80% damage buff all the time, would make jumping into mobs with my shield teleport even tastier. On the other hand...meh, dunno
It does make me wonder what sized mobs I want to mess with now. Would a shielder get eaten fast enough to not make it worth it...Great, now I don't know who to solo with :3 |
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To be more specific, I'd say the extra mitigation will almost never benefit you in solo play because almost everything should be survivable with Scrapper level defenses. The extra damage however will always be useful.
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Originally Posted by Bill Z Bubba
For soloing? Scrapper. The extra mitigation provided by the tank doesn't come close to the extra damage from being a scrapper.
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Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU
Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.
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Hmm, thanks for all the replies so far. I think what it comes down to is, with i16 allowing us to pad our own spawns...what do you think would take down a maxed out setup while solo? I've been playing with mids and can soft-cap both a tank and a scrapper (at least for melee, not so easily others if I focus on melee) but the loss of 1000+ hp makes me feel a tiny bit uneasy when swimming into 10+ purples >.>
And this assumes I even stay with dark melee and shields. Willpower for the 1000%+ regen, super strength for foot stomp, and several other sets are looking appealing the more I look into things.
I suppose the real question is staring to become, what sort of characters can really take on fully maxed-out settings on their own and do well :P
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The shield with IOs can. Go to the scrapper section and ask for help. |
Originally Posted by Phoebe_Ponderas
Hmm, thanks for all the replies so far. I think what it comes down to is, with i16 allowing us to pad our own spawns...what do you think would take down a maxed out setup while solo? I've been playing with mids and can soft-cap both a tank and a scrapper (at least for melee, not so easily others if I focus on melee) but the loss of 1000+ hp makes me feel a tiny bit uneasy when swimming into 10+ purples >.>
And this assumes I even stay with dark melee and shields. Willpower for the 1000%+ regen, super strength for foot stomp, and several other sets are looking appealing the more I look into things. I suppose the real question is staring to become, what sort of characters can really take on fully maxed-out settings on their own and do well :P |
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A soft capped Shield Scrapper can handle that quite nicely. I loaded my level 50 Broadsword/Shield scrapper onto test and had no problems at all soloing Carnies, Malta, Council or Freak missions set to 8 man/+2 level. I was able to solo 8 man/+4 level missions with some care... well, make that "lots" of care... it wasn't easy by any stretch but it was possible. The 8/+2 however was fast and fun.|
Originally Posted by Phoebe_Ponderas
I suppose the real question is staring to become, what sort of characters can really take on fully maxed-out settings on their own and do well :P
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Just for giggles I made up an AE Freakshow mission with a final room loaded with about 50 freaks and 30 spawned ambushes... my BS/Shield is capable of soloing that on Live at Invincible. Roughly 10 minutes of fighting with the aggro cap of 17 level 52-53 mobs beating on me the whole time... soft capped Shield is a beautiful thing.
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Hmm...I wonder how hard it would be to soft-cap a Willpower without giving to much up in the process? Considering soft-capping makes you (generally) get hit pretty rarely the massive regen would more than likely refill your hp bar between the hits you do take. On the other hand Willpower doesn't do nearly as much good as, say, Shield Defense when you haven't actually taken damage.
Shields would give me a better overall kill speed and is VERY easy to softcap (on a tanker you don't even need the +3% IO's, may or may not need them for a scrapper) but if I get hit I'm going to need to get healing on my own. On the other hand, Willpower will give me the endurance I need to sustain the long fights with an army of grapes as well as recover me when I do get hit, but it's a lot harder to softcap and won't give me any damage benefit at all.
Also, when trying to soft-cap, if your going tank/scrapper is Melee the best one to shoot for since thats where you are? On a Shield it doesn't matter, you can soft-cap all positional defenses very easily. But on a Willpower I'm not so sure you can soft-cap all three.
I suppose the fact that I can't decide what to play means the company is doing a good job. If there was only one choice to make it wouldn't be very much fun now would it?
[edit] Just to bring in the things I've been told on the main two forums so far in combo with this one...
If I do tank: Seems fairly even-up on choosing Willpower or Shield Defense. One for insanely high regen with near soft-cap, one for great damage. Neither seems to be pulling ahead on this one.
If I do scrapper: Pretty much universally said Shield Defense unless I want to play a set that is mutually exclusive with shields, then go Willpower
For offense: So far Fire is winning by a mile on both sides :P
I've been messing around with a Shield Dark-Melee build for a while and am a bit unsure which direction to take them in. Being able to softcap defenses easier on the tank means I have more free space to enhance damage with IO's. On the other hand, scrappers already do more damage but will take more IO's dedicated to my defense away from attacks.
Not really sure which will be better in the long run, any ideas?