Katana Soloing AVs?

Ok I made a goofy build for fun ... Katana/dark armor and the toon is fun as hell and my goal with it was to solo AVs because I have heard katana does it so easily. But i finally got the damn thing IOd with purples and lotg 7.5s and its lookin sweet but... I got beat by chimera!!! wtf really chimera?? So my question to you is, what is the trick of soloing AVs with katana? damage proc's in attacks? achilles heel proc? I dont get it.

My attack string I used was divine avalance, BU, golden butterfly, soaring dragon, gamblers cut. I am not sure how i went wrong with these.

---

Katana alone doesn't allow someone to kill AV.. your secondary is also very important.

I never played /dark but IIRC it's more an +res build and some crowd control.
It might be possible to solo an AV, but they will hit you a lot since you don't have any way to prevent it (no +def). Even with the self heal of Dark, you'll have a hard time keeping up to the damage received.

You can have all the damage you want in the world, but if it only takes 2 hit to kill you, that damage is irrelevant.

---

Dark Armor benefits greatly from building for some sort of defense. Kat/DA and BS/DA are probably the only combinations that can cap to all three positionals (though the BoTZ changes might have changed that, most of the /DA builds that capped Ranged and AoE used a set or two of them, not sure how a build like that would look now). Resistance, the massive heal from Dark Regeneration, and some defense can make Dark Armor's survivability almost ridiculously high. Of some of the top end DA builds I've seen, the only thing that really is a danger are -Defense Debuffs like those from Cimerorans.

So, you might have some trouble soloing AVs with a Kat/DA without some defense because of the mitigation that that brings on top of Dark Armor's other strengths. I don't doubt that Kat/DA can solo AVs. I think it was Werner that soloed all 11 Praetorian AVs without a single death.

---

Chimera is a pushover at range if you can mitigate his mez, but in melee he is pretty deadly. He does quite a bit of damage and a lot of -def.

The question is prior to him cutting you down were you outdamaging his regen? If yes than it is a matter of upping your survivability. If no then you have a lot of work ahead of you.

---

First off, as an AV soloer, you'll want to build for two things primarily: Recharge and Defense. These will allow you to survive and pump out some nice DPS. As a tertiary goal, go for +Regen on any set that doesn't either have a frequent self heal and doesn't have any regeneration to speak of by itself.

As a Kat/DA you'll mostly want to focus on Melee Defense and get it to a degree where a single application of DA will get you to 45%+. Secondarily, go for +Rech and try to get Ranged and AoE def to the 20%+ region.

Werner has had quite a bit of success with his Kat/DA, and I believe quite a few others as well. I have only played Katana of the two sets up to 50 and IO'd heavily, so I can vouch for Katana's potential at least.

You should probably post your build so we could give some more precise help.

---

- @DSorrow - alts on Union and Freedom mostly -
Currently playing as Castigation on Freedom

My Katana/Inv Guide

Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either. -Einstein

Check out this thread: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=189427

It covers most of what you can do with Kat/DA or BS/DA.

Both mine and Werner's builds in that thread are capable of soloing AVs, with relative ease for most of them. Mine pimp slapped Chimera in about 6 minutes. Werner's killed 11 Praetorian AVs in a row with no deaths.

Note: due to the Blessing of the Zephyr change, neither build is softcapped anymore, but still more than capable.

I could tell you all about it, but it's a lot easier to just direct you to the thread where I already said all of it

---

Thanks for all the input fella's... Looks like i got some reworkin to do.

Special thanks to ClawsandEffect for giving me the link

---

Yeah, mainly, read through that thread. But here are some basics:

• Divine Avalanche -> Gambler's Cut -> Golden Dragonfly -> Gambler's Cut -> Divine Avalanche -> Gambler's Cut -> Soaring Dragon -> Gambler's Cut
  
• Achilles' Heel in Gambler's Cut
  
• You need at least your melee defense to be soft capped, and it helps to have all positions soft capped.
  
• Get the hit point and endurance accolades.
  
• Tough and Weave. Make sure you have good resistance values.

And Chimera might still be slightly problematic, because he debuffs defense while buffing his own defense (thus making it harder to land your own Divine Avalanche). I monitor my melee defense and my base defense. When base defense goes red, I know I'm debuffed. Then I make sure I use enough Divine Avalanche to stay above 45% defense, even if that means using it out of sequence. I also have sufficient accuracy and to-hit to make sure I connect.

AVs are only easy if you do everything right - build, planning, experience, knowing what to hit and when, and so on.

There are actually more than 11 Praetorian AVs, so I didn't solo them all. None killed me, but I don't have the DPS to kill all of them either (Nightstar, Siege, Diabolique, Dominatrix). So the 11 were the 11 I have the DPS to beat, and also that appear in the main Praetorian arc. That also means I didn't fight Anti-Matter. So the ones I beat with no deaths were:

Battle Maiden
Black Swan
Bobcat
Chimera
Infernal
Malaise
Marauder
Mother Mayhem
Neuron
Shadowhunter
Tyrant

---

"That's because Werner can't do maths." - BunnyAnomaly
"Four hours in, and I was no longer making mistakes, no longer detoggling. I was a machine." - Werner
Videos of Other Stupid Scrapper Tricks

---

---