Solo stinks

Before I whine too much, I only have about 1 year played between my two accounts. One of my accounts was lost in a sense (I couldn't recover the PW) so I started a new one...my new one has 7 months played and my old one has 6 months (I think). The characters on my old one were around issue one so I never really wanted them back

Anyways,

Soloing stinks in this game. I teamed a lot this time back, but I just want to play my solo brute (Dark / Fire) sometimes. I have IO's equivalent to SO's in everything, but can't afford the 15-25million each set IO's. In order to have decent exp (which USED to make leveling take 2 - 2 1/2 hrs which I could live with) I had to set myself to equivalent to 3 villains, and fight bosses. As I approached 32, it became more and more difficult to solo, as I died more and more, especially versus carnival of shadows, CoT, and now Longbow...even PPD Swat are getting near impossible w/o eating inspirations like candy before a fight.

My resistance granting powers grant the maximum amount of resistance before diminishing returns sets in as well...it just seems like I charge a spawn now and BAM, I die before I can really kill 1/2 the guys with my AoEs. It's just plain not fun, and even IF I can finish a mission, my exp rate is slow enough so that it will take me 4 1/2 - 5 hours a level now all of a sudden...wtf?! (I'm not talking about moving at a Granny pace either, when I can kill rapidly through eating insp like candy it will take me this long to level).

This is not fun at all, in fact I had to unsub...I really wanted to stay (and actually perhaps you guys can convince me, maybe I'm doing something wrong that I don't see, I would love that!).

I can't live with:

(a) Having to set my #of villains equivalent up to 3 and dying constantly now.
(b) Taking 4+ hrs to level solo all of a sudden

Now if this is the type of game it's supposed to be fine, I unsubbed, I'll leave you guys alone for a year until I come back for a month or two to see if anythings change...but really this stinks for the type of gamer I am.

I am casual, and I LOVE the game...but it's just impossible to have fun as a soloist from my perspective. Now again, I DO team, in fact I have a Plant / Emp controller, a warshade, and a DP / Sonic Corruptor that I absolutely love to team with, but half my time is spent teaming the other soloing. I just need to solo sometimes, and right now it's not possible to have fun doing so.

I personally feel that is what is wrong with this game, if it was possible to solo meaningfully I would likely stick around but I just can't sub to the game if 1/2 the time I play it's just dying all the time, and when I don't die the exp is slower then molasses.

It makes me feel crappy for quitting, because you all in the community (well almost everyone) are really awesome people. I have fun RPing with fellow players, teaming with fellow players, and while soloing chatting w/ my friends and in broadcast for fun. You all are extremely helpful and knowledgeable...but it pains me to have to leave this MMO for another that I can solo in.

TLDR: If my brute is doing something wrong, what is it? I want to sub and keep playing but solo is impossible for me at a meaninful rate. If it isn't possible, I guess thanks for answering and sorry I won't be playing for awhile.

PS: No one can have my stuff because I will resub to try again about a year from now, I'll need it.

Not quite sure how or why you want to solo content designed for a 3 player team. Only some ATs and then some builds of ATs can solo a team's worth of mobs.

*shakes head*

I solo nicely at 1x player and +3 level and enjoy the challenge. Very few of my characters can solo anything more than that and only 1 (Thugs/TA) can solo x8 mobs at +0 level.

Besides, in a game like CoX, levelling is not all you aim for, do the arcs, read the stories, have some fun.

The higher level you get, the longer it takes to level, since the amount of experience required for the next level continues to go up as well. You might as well steel yourself for leveling that will take longer and longer.

Or you might try joining a team from time to time. You get an experience bonus on teams, and generally burn through missions faster. If you're all about the xp, teams are the way to go for a casual player.

--NT

I got SS/Fire no problems soloing anything except Arachnos on x3

jump in do 1 aoe + burn and around 2/3 of the guys are dead

Make soloing easier by picking your fights carefully. For example, Carnies are pure evil if you don't have some sort of hold. Rikti can be a pain for melee because of Drone squads. PPD Swat Ghosts are also to be watched out for.

My advice is to be sure of what you're going to face. The enemies in CoX are diverse enough that you can't just launch a few attacks and be done with them unless you're built for that sort of thing. Which is of course, the main point.

If you plan to solo often, the plan a solo build. I've never played a Dark/Fire Brute, but all i know is that it isn't something i've heard often being used as a solo build.

Also, from other posters, gaining XP takes quite a while longer than the previous levels that 'a level a day' is exactly that. Or at least, it has been for me. More often 'a level and a bit in about 6 hours in a team' ..

Thank you all for your kind replies, I will take everything you have said (especially checking the market forums out) and hopefully find some sort of solution that allows me to keep playing

Well, soloing is far from impossible in this game. it's one of the most solo-friendly MMO's to encounter.

Some things to consider:

1) You really REALLY aren't going to sustain the same leveling rate as the lower levels. Like all mmo's, leveling slows down as you get higher. That's nothing you're doing wrong and everything with how this is designed to be.

Leveling is fast early on while you're still "building" the character- when he doesn't yet have a fully-fleshed attack chain and defense set, then the curve sets in and things take progressively longer. You're complaining about 4+ hours? wait till you hit the mid-40's.

It's really best not to focus on leveling as the ultimate measure of your success & enjoyment- it's hollow and gets you nowhere. This isn't one of those games where 'the game begins at the level cap." The game is much more than looking for the next ding.


2) You don't NEED the tens-of-millions-of-inf IO's. If you tally up the math, you'll find that these- while nice- are all about giving a marginal edge to an optimized build offer rather marginal improvements. You can get very close to that performance with builds 'just a notch down' and save hundreds of millions.

3) This game is about the most solo-friendly MMO that I've ever found, and brutes are known to be INCREDIBLY solo-friendly.

4) Specific foes will be trouble for different builds, depending on your powerset selection. Knowing their strengths and weaknesses and playing against them are a must. That IS tougher to do solo, as your opportunities are limited, but it can still help, and discovering the "trick" to beating a foe can be a much more valuable reward than the treadmill 'ding' of the next level.

Some very sound advice in here, so I don't have much to add...
However, you might want to post your build (Powers and slotting) and/or look at other people's builds and suggestions for DM/FA Brutes.
While this game definitely allows you to come up with your own ideas and succeed, you may find some helpful ideas.

You may have already done this, of course. It's just one of the first things to check when someone is having difficulties surviving... Maybe their enhancement slotting is not serving them as well as it could (And I just mean regular enhancements).

So, check and make sure with the community that you're not missing some crucial powers and that both your defenses and attacks are slotted well. Then follow everyone's advice here and hopefully you'll find yourself enjoying the climb up towards 50.

You like the game. You enjoy it. And it tends to be a rather friendly, easy and casual game... So, it sounds like you should be sticking around!
I hope it works out!

Do you use Mid's Hero Designer?

Oh, and as someone who enjoys soloing a lot (As well as teaming), I definitely seem to shift my solo characters towards teaming as I get into the 40s. Not consciously... but I just seem to end up running teams and/or TFs/SFs often enough with them that the leveling through 40-50 goes well enough. Not that that's my focus, but sometimes I do just want to have all my powers!!
Hehe

I used to keep track of my time to 50 and I mostly solo.

#1 dm/inv scrapper: 481 hours
#2 fire/fire blaster: 599 hours
#3 inv/ss tanker: 422 hours
#4 bots/ff mastermind: 454 hours
#5 warshade: 345 hours
#6 grav/rad controller: 339 hours
#7 energy melee/energy aura stalker: 317 hours
#8 fire/fire brute: 174 hours
#9 fire/psi dominator: 175 hours
#10 ill/storm controller: 190 hours
#11 spines/fire scrapper: 157 hours
#12 arachnos soldier: 224 hours
#13 peacebringer: 255 hours

and my widow will get there sometime this week though I would have to check a civilian for time.

I'm not seeing any onerous efforts to solo to 50 especially in the past 2 years and if you can run at x1/+1 you level significantly faster than x1/+0 but even my peacebringer and Arachnos soldier didn't take that long.

I normally do nothing but soloing and got my Arachnos Soldier (Adrian Smith) to Lv.25 in one day. It's a fairly simple task.

To solo quickly:

1. Choose a solo style AT. Tanks solo slow, but safe. Stalkers/ Scrappers/Brutes/Blasters/Corrupters solo very well.

2. Set difficulty lower with MORE enemies. I often run at -1 x 8 so I can plow through faster and wrack up the points.

Where to go and how to do it.

Preatoria - just follow the arcs and roll them fast, kill as you travel between missions.

Heroside - Atlas Level 1-7 and take attack powers not much armor except healing powers. I tend to find lots of groups over by the Perez Park door. Level 7-12 head to Perez Park and slaughter the hellions by the millions. Level 12-16 Steel and do Scanner missions. Level 16-20 Boomtown! Back in the far end of Boomtown is huge mobs of Lost they spawn 16-19. Level 20-29 I would swap back and forth from Terra Volta and Dark Astoria. Level 30-39 head to Creys Folly.

After that just roll mission arcs and set your difficulty so that they caused you to be careful but not a constant threat.

Villain side - I just roll the missions and level fast never needed to do much more.

The fastest way to level? TF's or SF's by a long ways. I can go 10-15 on a Positron 1 easily and 15-19 on Part 2. Synapse 19-21/22. Sister psyche 22-25. Citadel 25-27 or 28. Moonfire or Hess will get you to 30.

Notice an ongoing theme? You can run TF's almost exclusively and zip to 50.

Thanks guys, I really appreciate it

I was so frustrated earlier today as I was pumped after getting to 32 last night. All of a sudden I seemed to hit a miserable wall. With your tips, I'm immediately on a better road to success!!

One of the ones that helped me immediately was dropping my level to -1, but simultaneously bumping my villain equivalent from x3 to x4. All of a sudden I'm doing well again! It's challenging (I have to pop inspirations sometimes, but not like 8 of them for one fight), but my solo character is not doing so badly any longer.

Sorry for sounding so upset earlier but I was, for me it (CoH) was something I was having a blast playing for the past month and half now (the grouping characters I made have never had a dull or boring moment). All of a sudden it went from challenging to impossible and I was angry...a game I had loved to play suddenly became frustrating and unfun near instantly, I didn't know what to do.

I've edited my post title to reflect your advice, thanks again guys for not berating me even though my initial post had some nerd rage in it. If I have any other questions, I'll be a bit more calm when I ask next time

Its all good, glad people were able to help you find the fun. the important thing is you stayed constructive, that helps on all sides.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

I agree with the previous posts of running -1x8 (if possible). It's less xp per kill, but you compensate by killing at lot in a short time. You also finish missions faster which translates to more mission complete bonus per hour.

Altitis, my friend. Give in, we all have.

Maybe it's me, but I don't have trouble soloing anything in this game. I don't have any trouble levelling every two or three days on the majority of my characters, in the 20s and 30s. When I get up into the 40s, it's noticable, I can get 1/3 to 1/2 of a bar that represents 1/10 of my way to the next level. It can be kind of jarring to go from filling the bar 3 times in a session to seeing it only barely move.

You've just got to accept it. That's the way RPGs are, as you reach the higher levels you get less progress for more effort. That's how they pull you in, the levels come easily when you are developing your character and concept, and then once your character becomes complete and more balanced in its capabilities you have to work harder and harder to get any stronger. A large part of it is that you are nearing the limits of what the game system can handle, once you hit 95% of the time, and are missed 95% of the time and take only 5% of the damage when you are hit, there is little else the game can do to make you any better.

At least this game isn't like some, that make you gain 10 more levels and do raids for several months, repeatedly, in order to gain about 5% in some stat. And it really is unique that you can just create yet another character, even on a server you have another character on, up to 12 more times, and even more if you pay for some more slots.

I'll also add that maybe you aren't as balanced as you believe yourself to be. You speak about the defensive characteristics of your character being past the ED limits (and you have IOs at this level, which suggests to me that your effort required is more than just levelling) yet you don't seem to mention your offensive capability. At 32 you should have a very balanced Brute built more for damage, the levels at which you were concentrating on defense in order to survive building Fury should have passed in the 20s.

Maybe you should switch out some of those IOs for more damage and recharge, instead of trying to cap defense so early. Especially with the changes to Fury, you can't leverage defense for that max Fury any more.

'Nuther quick point, another advantage of altitis is that Patrol XP really smooths over the levelling curve and lessens the frustration of dying. It's still frustrating, of course, but at least as long as you have Patrol XP left you know your progress won't be slowed any. It's simple enough to just play a character until you have no more Patrol XP, and then switch to another that is still full up.

If you have Going Rogue and are playing a hero/villain (as opposed to vig/rogue), alignment merits from the GR tips missions are a great way to either make money or get expensive IOs. I've been doing rare rolls (1 merit for 5 random rare recipes) and sometimes it's a bust but also have gotten stuff to sell for 50mil+ a pop or things I can use that would have cost me 50-100mil influence.

Beats the "reward" from radio missions, that's for sure.

My suggesting is to run Herostats and try various difficulty levels. Herostats will tell you exactly how much xp per hour you are earning and you can then make an informed decision.