Soloed my first pylon with the NW!

I was trying to find a way to stress my NW's build and was having problems finding critters that would last long enough to determine if my endurance recovery (and to a lesser extent, hit point regeneration) were up to snuff for the longer battles. I asked the SG for ideas and someone mentioned trying to solo a rikti pylon.

I know from browsing the scrapper's boards that this is a massive endeavor that is taken very serious by some folks. I decided I would head over to RWZ and give it consideration: worse case scenario being I can't beat one of the game's toughest solo challenges, which is fine with me as long as I could get in a few solid minutes to see where the build stands. I activated the stopwatch on my phone, in the case that I was victorious I could record the time and use it as a basis to improve upon.

My first attempt at pylon #17 was a success (16 minutes 46 seconds), but with a lot of lessons learned. I had to use 6 small blues during the battle, and I didn't have indomitable will toggled on so when the pylon hit me I got knocked back about 50 feet or so (good thing was this allowed for a bit of end recovery while I re-engaged). Also, in my frantic button spamming I twice accidently switched pages when jumping between the attack chain. Good news though is I survived the encounter and discovered that while I was lacking in the end dept I had sufficient regeneration to recover from the pylon's few hits (27/sec).

The attack chain I employed was less than stellar: my generic PvE setup of FU/slash/eviscerate/lunge, filling in with poison dart and shatter armor as needed (yes, I'm the one NW in game who is envious of Banes!), in no real particular order... hit FU as it refreshed and just launch whatever attack was up and ready. My recharge rate was 107.5 global + 3 slotted hasten fyi and the only toggles I ran was TT:maneuvers and mask presence, along with mind link every 80 seconds.

Here's the best part of all of this: Most of my attacks were slotted for only 10-20ish percent end reduction. I burned a respec and got FU to 96% recharge and 87% end redux. Got slash, poison dart, shatter armor and lunge to over 90% end redux and plugged in the performance shifter +end proc into stamina. I then put together a chain a FU/slash/lunge/FU/dart/lunge/FU/slash/dart/repeat (dropped evicerate completely from the chain) and had shatter armor on standby duty because there were occasional gaps. These changes allowed me to now solo a pylon and not worry about the endurance issues.

Next two attempts: pylon downed in 11 minutes, 18 seconds and a later successful try at 9 minutes 58 seconds without any blue insperations and with IW toggled on! The NW is now 3/0 on pylon engagements and while happy with the wins I am even happier regarding the information it provided me in addressing my endurance concerns. Anyways, I don't recall seeing any posting about VEATs tackling pylons so thought I'd share the exciting (to me) news.

My question though about the engagements are whether the -regen in poison dart and the resistance debuff from shatter armor played a role at all in the defeats. I know the pylons have resistances and high regen so was curious how this factored in.

So my PvE NW was able to beat a pylon on 3 different occasions thus far... Now for the real challenge: figuring out a way to get my bane to do the same!

Well done. Top doc wrote a widow guide a long while back I think he's done pylons. I've done pylons and several AVs, there aren't many done-up forts/widows, but some are around.

I never bothered to look at the pylon stats, I always assumed they were similar to AVs. If that is a correct assumption the -regen from poison dart isn't significant enough to make a difference. It's only actually dong -3.75% regen (assuming 85% resistance from a +1). The -res from shatter armor does help however. It's easy to maintain the debuff for a constant -20% res.

As far as attack chains go, if you wanna push your character further, you really need to get poison dart out of there. The -regen is negligible and it has one of the worst dpa of any attacks available to widows. Attack chains I've come across that are most dpa efficient are..

FU > Lunge > Slash > Strike > FU > Lunge > Strike > Slash > FU > Lunge > Strike > Swipe
.86/2.1/1.98/1.3/.86/2.1/1.3/1.98/.86/2.1/1.3/.985 in 14.52s = 1.22 dpa

FU > Lunge > Slash > Strike > FU > Lunge > Swipe > Strike > Slash > FU > Lunge > Strike > Swipe
.86/2.1/1.98/1.3/.86/2.1/.985/1.3/1.98/.86/2.1/1.3/.985 in 15.58s = 1.20 dpa

Followup > Slash > Swipe > Lunge > Swipe
.86/.985/2.1/.985/1.98 in 5.808s = 1.19 dpa

Followup > Lunge > Strike > Swipe > Slash
.86/2.1/1.3/.985/1.98 in 6.072s = 1.19 dpa

I have dps calculations done up for some of them but not all. The highest one comes out around 212 dps (slotting variations will adjust this number) after factoring in mind link cast times and the constant 5% chance to miss. You can squeeze in another 20dps by using shatter armor every 20 seconds in place of 2 lower dpa attacks. You can also sneak in another 7dps if you don't have to use mind link. I'll post the dps example below as well as dpa values for common widow attacks if you're interested in toying with them yourself.

DPA Values
Swipe - .8 Lethal + 3x.08 toxic = 1.04/1.056 = 0.985
Followup - .91/1.056 = 0.86
Lunge – 1.82 + 4x.1 = 2.22/1.056 = 2.10
Slash – 2x1.37 +.4 = 3.14/1.584 = 1.98
Subdue - 1.73/1.848 = 0.94
Dominate – 1.39/1.32 = 1.05
Gloom – 8*0.22 = 1.76/1.32 = 1.33
TK Blast – 0.53*2 = 1.06/1.19 = 0.89
Strike – 1.44+.28 = 1.72/1.32 = 1.30
Poison Dart – 1.3/1.72 = 0.76
Mental Blast – 1.05/1.848 = 0.57

DPS Calculation
Widow Attack Chain
W/ Assault + Procs
FU > Lunge > Slash > Strike > FU > Lunge > Strike > Slash > FU > Lunge > Strike > Swipe
.86/2.1/1.98/1.3/.86/2.1/1.3/1.98/.86/2.1/1.3/.985 in 14.52s = 1.22
Follow up = (50.72)*(1+.9749+2*.3+.15) = 138.21*3 = 414.63
Lunge = (123.67)*(1+.9749+2*.3+.15) = 336.99*3 = 1010.97
Strike = (95.49)*(1+.9749+2*.3+.15) = 260.2*3 = 780.6
Swipe = (57.84)*(1+.9364+2*.3+.15) + 14.36 = 169.74
Slash = (174.86)*(1+.967+2*.3+.15) + 35.35 = 510.44*2 = 1020.88
((233.94*85)-905.14)/85 = 223.29
DPS = 233.94 – no ML, 223.29 w/ ML
DPS calculating misses = DPS * .95

Basically its just
base damage x (1 +damage bonuses) + proc average damage
Swipe as an example
Swipe = (57.84)*(1+.9364+2*.3+.15) + 14.36 = 169.74
Swipe = (base damage)*(1+enhancement slotting+2*followup+assault) + mako proc avg dmg = total damage

Then add the total damages as many times as you need to for your attack chain. After that divide by the time it takes to execute the attack chain. For factoring mind link I take the total damage done during a mind link cycle, subtract the damage missed during the mind link cast, then divide by the time of the mind link cycle. There's probably a better way to do it, but its easiest for me.

As a side note, if my assumption was incorrect and pylons do not have the -regen resistance that AVs do... The way to figure out the difference would be to compare the dps gained from the reduced regen to the dps lost in an attack chain by using poison dart.

Hey thanks for the feedback Fury and Luxun, I think my build is done for the time being (until i19 goes live anyways) but will probably re-visit a pylon before then and give it another go. I didn't take the t1/t2 melee attacks like your chain suggests (took instead dart and mental blast and frankenslotted for +hp/regen) but if i could smooth out my chain a bit I might be able to shave some seconds off of the attempt. And I have an idea of how to do this now I think (have my 3 attack chains on three seperate bars and alternate between them instead of dancing all over the same bar... should be a little more structured that way).

TY again for the replies!