What is the best non-conventional solo'er?

I've run several characters to 50, some solo, others on teams. My solo characters tend to be scrappers or brutes so I got to wondering what other ATs are effective solo'ers.

After talking with some friends we came up with a few like a fire/kin (or rad) troller, dark/dark defenders came up as well. But I'm sure there are others out there so I'm wondering what everyone else thinks.

If you could, would you please explain why you pick the AT you do.

Thanks in advance!

I love soloing with my stalkers..... i find that the only way for me to really enjoy stalkers is solo.


i never levelled one, but i know that MM are great for soloing


also whenever i start use IO sets and working up my build at lvl 30, i found that i can solo with any AT....

Like you I tend to lean more towards the melee toons, but if I were to go with another AT I'd probably pick a dominator (even though, technically, they can be a "melee toon").

Great controls, massive damage and mez protection (when using domination). Get a good amount of recharge and you can have domination up all the time. And with the hero epic pools now available they just got worlds better.

I only have two doms ATM, a lvl 45 earth/fire and lvl 50 fire/psy. Neither really get played much anymore but logged on the earth/fire for about an hour last week and I had almost forgotten just how crazy powerful they can be.

I found my Elec/NRG Domi to be more effective doing Praetorian arcs solo than my BS/Fire scrapper.

He even soloed that mission with a bunch of Metronome clockwork lieuts at the end fairly easily (all hail Sleepy-nighty-snoozey-snooze).

Dominators. My personal favorite is a Mind/Psy, but there are a ton of different builds you can try.

Dominators are a fun dichotomy: squishy if you look at the stats, but with you in the groove and some knowledge of targets and their threat levels, you can be among the most survivable archetypes in the game. Rather than toggling armors on and forgetting about your worries, dominators freeze/confuse/stun etc. their foes, then poind the helpless foes into the dirt. The control sets have a ton of variety, and all offer some pretty different strategies to make mobs helpless. Likewise, the assault secondaries are varied. Some make your controls better, some make your attacks better, some refill your health and energy. Alongside that, all give you the chance to both shoot blasts, let loose AoE's, and smack things in the face. There's a lot of variety.

Second choice? Masterminds.

This bends the 'solo' rule, as you are always teamed. Getting to know how to best use minions takes some awareness and management, but if you do it well you can be unstoppable. My first 50 mastermind was a robotics/forcefield mastermind that's so hardy I fell actually dozed off soloing a x8 mission, and still never lost a bot. (The bots slowly cleared a triple spawn at that time.) Note, /forcefield is all about survival. You may want something a bit more interesting/involved like /dark, /traps/ or /thermal if you would like to contribute a bit more.

As an aside, you can also try a stalker.

While stalkers are more suited to precision than mass destruction, they are fun solo because you can take your time eliminating targets and doing setups. If you like stealth games, try a stalker. While many archetypes have to slog through crowds, stalkers can slip past unaware foes to the targets they really want. They are assassins. Note, there are some mechanical frustrations, like ambushes that can hunt you down regardless of your visibility, and some foes that see through you invisibility.

You haven't lived until you've tried a warshade.

Check out the guide in my sig.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison At its height, The MFing Warshade will have 300% damage bonus, 85% resist all, well over 50% tohit bonus, three damage dealing pets in tow, a ranged AoE attack chain, and the ability to refill both bars more often than I blink. It can also perma stun ten targets, perma hold one, and even stun bosses in a single shot. It has mez protection with an 80% hitpoints bonus on demand. It can even shrug off defeat twice every five minutes.

Assault rifle blaster. It is one of the most versatile sets. It is not however a top performance set. Do not take devices with it. You want build up. My personal favorite out of the secondaries is elec manip. Most encounters (+1 to +2 level difficulty set for one person) its build up, snipe a minion, burst and slug on another minion, and electric fence, beanbag (or shocking grasp by itself) and ignite on the last minion. As a plus when you do get the itch to join a group you can hose things down with flamethrower, m30 grenade, buckshot, and full auto. An added benefit of being elec manip is power sink. Its a free endurance bar every 60 seconds if you've got 4 enemies to leech from without any slotting. If 6 slotted with 3 end mod and three recharge its a free bar with just 2 enemies every 30 seconds.

My fastest run to 50 was my Crab Spider and that was easily 98% solo. Toggles + pets = good.

I'll jump on the Mastermind bandwagon.

And I can definitely recommend /Traps for general all-round soloing.

A well played /Traps MM can solo a GM, let alone a standard high-difficulty mission... plus when paired with a low-maintenance Pet set such as Bots, Demons or Thugs you get to be as active as you want with your own powers while your pets do their thing. Loads of optional clicks such as Web Grenade, Caltrops, Trip Mine, Triage Beacon, Poison Trap, Acid Mortar, Seeker Drones... and if you take the Medicine pool and Maneuvers you're even more resilient.

Dark's essentially just as powerful as traps, but you tend to need to be more alert due to the lack of the "fire and forget" nature of Force Field Generator versus Dark's Foe-Targeted Heal + Darkest Night/Fearsome Stare.

Another option might be a /Dev Blaster with both Cloaking Device and Superspeed or a Stealth IO. Completely different playstyle to a normal Blaster, but loads of fun and able to do some really crazy stuff solo (albeit with long setup times).

I think best is a bit too subjective, so I'll just put up a combo I like:


Fire/Dark Corr


Great solo, great on teams.

Good out of the gate, and just keeps getting stronger on the way to 50.

Non-conventional soloist? Defenders. Rad/Sonic, for example, solos quite nicely and can crank up difficulty to +2 rather early as it works wonders dealing with hard targets and its toggles and heal keeps it rather safe. At the other end of the spectrum, a Dark/Rad Defender can crank difficulty in terms of more opponents easily as it throws out lots of AoEs and is rather hard to kill between its to-hit debuffs and strong heals.

My Elec/Fire Tanker surprised me in how well it solos certain AE maps. Why?

1. Two high damage PBAoE's that recharge quickly due to Lightning Reflexes.
2. Damage aura.
3. Not having to worry about surviving or losing endurance lets me fill my insp tray with reds which keep me at the damage cap most of the time.

Masterminds are great, though I would hardly call them non-conventional since they are among the most popular solo ATs (and the best). I personally love Blasters... they can be dangerous to solo but still a lot of fun, and with a decent mid-range IO build you can grab enough recharge and ranged defense to really boost your performance (I haven't tried a high end build yet on a Blaster).

Controllers are another fun solo AT if you pick the right power sets. Fire and Plant both provide good damage, and Illusion is awesome if you can afford to toss a few billion inf at it for perma-PA (sadly, I can't). Just be sure to pick a secondary with debuffs... it speeds things up a lot. I like Storm for the -resist and added damage, but Rad is also quite good. Or jump on the bandwagon and go /Kin, but you said unconventional, not omnipresent.

Dominators look fun too, but I haven't really tried them much. Same with Warshades.

A well-built Fire/Rad Corruptor can solo pretty much every AV, every GM and most +4/x8 spawns.

If you have extra respecs (vetspecs, freespecs), once you've got nova form, you can start slotting the nova form powers at level 3 on a respec, giving you four more slots for them.

And you can do pretty well for teams just floating around in nova form, being an extra blaster, until you're ready to go be all things to all people. No one seems to object at all to having me fly around killing everything for them.

Every AT can solo, given the right build and power sets. Soft cap S/L defense as a minimum and you have a pretty good chance of surviving most enemy groups. Avoid enemies that use damage types you are weak against. Also, avoid enemies that make your defense worthless, like Devouring Earth, Resistance, and debuffers.

Fire/Kinetics Controller is a popular farming build.
My Kinetics Defender and Corrupter both have soft-capped smashing, lethal, energy, and ranged defenses.
There was a post in the Blaster forums bragging about soloing Giant Monsters.
Dominators used to be popular farming characters. I'm sure some still use them for farming, but not as much with Domination not giving a damage boost now.
Almost every stalker I have met loves to solo, so they aren't really a non-conventional soloer. Besides, they are the least-desired AT to have on a team.