How to solo an EB?

It has been a loooong time since I played my Dominator (Plant/Fire), but double XP weekend had me enjoying her all over again.

Now that she is in her early 40s, she is going to find a LOT of missions with EBs in them, and I was wondering if anyone had some good advice for how to deal with them?

My current plan is to use a lot of inspirations and making sure that 'Domination' is ready so that I can have 'blue on demand', mez protection, and more control. Then... I basically just hammer them and hope I don't run out of purple inspirations.

If anyone has any good advice, I would be glad to hear it. Thanks in advance.

Well, you more or less have the method. Ignore your primary (more or less) and load up on insps.

It's a sad truth, but there's not much of anything your powers are going to do to actually keep you alive against a PToD EB. Possibly stoney could tank some of them, since he has taunt in his attacks (but you don't have stoney), and you can always immobilize them outside of melee, but it's a rare EB that won't just shoot your face off anyway. Illusion, if we had it, might be able to do better, but we don't. Power surge from the Mu epic might be able to slow your defeat, and hibernate can help you recover from a nasty hit, but neither can really get the job done on their own.

What I like to do is use medium purples - two of those will soft cap your defense for one minute, and since you only need two instead of the four you'd need with small purples, your insp tray lasts a lot longer. Medium purples aren't usually expensive on the market, so just place a few bids every time you log out and you should keep yourself stocked easily enough. Aside from that, load your tray up with reds and a few greens/blues, make sure you've got dom ready for an end refill, and just try to spike him down before you run out of purples. In the vast majority of cases, that's about all you can do. It sucks, but that's the price we pay for being so much fun everywhere else.

Muon_Neutrino is giving you good advice.

Here's some other tips on dealing with an PToD EB:

• Obviously purple insps are the key. You'll also need some greens for the odd lucky shot and some combination of blues, reds and (depending on the EB) break frees. Personally, I rarely stock reds, and if I'm particularly hunting an EB I'll go with a stock of about half purples, quarter blues and quarter greens.
  
• Use your immobs to keep the EB at range. They still hit lke a mack truck, but most of them don't have a one-hit kill power at range. Combined with a good supply of purples you can survive for some time this way. You can dart in for heavy hitting melee when the PToD go down and the EB can be held.
  
• Pets make excellent speed bumps. If you're fighting an EB that you can't immob easily (Mynx is a good example) or the EB breaks free of your immob, then you can summon a Fly Trap or a PPP pet in front of it. That typically allows you enough time to take whatever remedial action you need (popping insps, waiting for a power to recharge, etc).

Pretty much what Muon said. I'd add, though, that against some EBs, oranges can work better. See: Silver Mantis and her auto-hit -def patches.

If you don't mind being slow and passive-aggressive You can pick the Leviathan epic, immob the EB around a corner and let carrion creepers, water spout and your pets DoT it down.

Thanks for all the advice all. It is much appreciated!

Yeah, referencing mynx and silver mantis, there *are* some EBs which are bigger than usual pains in the rear.

Positron is one - he's got massive quantities of defense debuffs, has a nuke and a nasty defense-based godmode, and can debuff you in many other nasty ways as well. He doesn't seem to have RI, so he doesn't have any *auto-hit* defense debuffs, but there's still that 5% chance, and once he hits you, you can kiss your defense goodbye.

Mynx is another - she's got more than one ranged attack, and her defense means you have to pack yellows as well, cutting into your stock of reds/greens/blues. She's also fast, attacks quickly, and has a defense-based godmode. You'll need yellows to cut through elude, or very careful timing to get the triangles to drop just when her health is getting low enough for her to use it - if you can't bust elude, she'll just outlast your purples and tear you up.

And then, there's Synapse. Dear god, Synapse. As far as I can tell, he's completely immune to immobilization and slows. He also runs at lightning speed, has lots of ranged attacks, and has an *AUTO-HIT* PBAoE damage/KB power in his version of whirlwind. All meaning that there's no way to avoid getting hit. Pack extra greens against him!

Also, even though they each only appear in a single mission, don't forget Woodsman and Zenflower. Both are basically plant controllers, and they're both real pains. Zenflower has fly trap and carrion creepers, and woodsman can summon hordes of tuatha. Both cause the same problems - distracting any pets you may have, getting in the way, and drastically increasing the number attacks directed at you. Also, although I can't find it in their power lists, I could have sworn they both had *something* which debuffed my defense.

Silver mantis is tougher than usual, but I didn't find her as difficult as any of the above EBs for some reason. She killed me once, but that's not that uncommon. She did take a long time to finally take down, but as long as I didn't stand in the caltrops, it wasn't that bad. Looking at her powers, though, I can't figure out *why* it wasn't that bad, seeing the amount of defense debuffs she has! Perhaps I just got lucky.