Soloing EBs, AVs and GMs. Your thoughts.

I'm at work and can't access YouTube to post a link, but, on that site, there exists a video of a Rad/Sonic Defender taking down the GM/Crey's Folly version of Jurassik. (She had enough recharge to have 2 Shivans out, as I recall.) It looked to be a very expensive build, the fight was longish, but it was amazing to watch.

Now, if you consider Shivans and Nukes and such a "cheat" when fighting AV/GMs, then maybe it wasn't so amazing.

Fascinating. I seriously thought it not possible.

Even before IO's, a Rad/Sonic defender was one of the "go-to" builds for soloing AV's.

I'm initially a touch torn by the question so I'll try and answer in my own way.

I tend not to be a min/max player and I don't actually consider myself to be much cop at soloing - partly because I don't enjoy playing the solo game and partly because I play squishies a lot. My main is an all elec blaster - that should tell you about where I'm at on that score.

I think there's two problems here: Design vs Concept.

Some people want to be able to solo all the content, which is fair enough it's how they want to play, and being able to do so should be achievable for them. Personally I don't, I want to be in a team that fights tough battles and comes down to the nail biting finish. The thought that we actually might not manage it in the final analysis gives a much bigger reward if we actually do. I don't specifically set out to fail, but steam rollering the "end of level bad guy" is a bit lame in my eyes.

Conceptually I love the idea of a team coming together to save the planet. That has lived with me ever since I read one of the earliest Fantastic Four comics when I was about 7 with the Mole Man's monsters on the cover. It was David vs Goliath and captured my imagination. 40 years later that feeling still resonates with me, the little guys vs the big. I love the concept and that's what many comics are about - Spider-man & Daredevil for example have very limited power but manage to win the day against most adversaries, and it's a challenge for them. Batman and Iron Man just get out their latest invention and blast the interloper to kingdom come with their industrial might. But it takes a team working in harmony to defeat Galactus, Proteus or some of the other great threats - and in many ways that's where the excitement comes from. This says it all for me:

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

I recently soloed EB Recluse on a brute of mine. Since the whole point of that arc is to show that you are capable of defying and defeating Recluse yourself, mano a mano, teaming would have cheapened it for me.

(I ended up almost having to anyway, because Recluse summons a potentially infinite number of bosses as adds if the fight goes long enough. Which is sort of justifiable, in the sense that "commanding the legions of Arachnos" is part of his resources, but... well, put it this way, I was THIS close to asking some folks to come along just to keep the adds off me so I could have my one-on-one showdown.)

I would never try to solo an AV or GM, and I vaguely don't think it should be possible, but I'm not going to force that opinion on others. (Unlike some of the ones I have.)

I actually have a somewhat different problem with GMs, in that they're set up so that they simply can't be defeated by any amount of force if you don't have a debuffer on the team. I still remember an incident shortly after GMs were buffed, because the Devs wanted to make defeating them a "zone event" - we had an entire zone's worth of players beating on Babbage, just like they wanted, and it didn't matter - his health bar didn't even flicker for ten minutes. When I finally gave up and swapped to my Rad, he went down within two. "All or nothing," "bring a (X) or you just can't do it" is bad game design, IMO.

Upward of 20, 30 people of various ATs - everyone that was in Skyway at the time. The lifebar didn't budge.

We didn't have IOs yet. That should provide both a timeframe and possibly an explanation.

If everyone present was of a level appropriate to Skyway itself, then yes, that could explain it. It's not just a matter of having IOs. It's also a matter of having enough attacks to sustain some sort of attack chain (not necessarily in the "formal" sense, just enough to be able to attack constantly) and enough endurance recovery to sustain them. That's a challenge sub-20.

I still think that's got to be a fairly unusual outcome for as many as 20-30 people, especially if some of them are able to buff the other people's damage, recharge, and/or end recovery.

It's important to recognize that GMs are hard to kill explicitly because they're huge bags of HP. That big bag of HP which means their regen rate, in terms of average HP/sec, is very large. Anything that significantly impacts their regen rate, therefore, is going to be disproportionately effective at helping defeat them. Since you ran into a situation where the DPS of the assembled players wasn't up to that on its own, the -regen made all the difference.

I promise you, though, that GMs are not indestructible without regen debuffs.

I solo ALLL the time. That's just how I am and where I find the most enjoyment from MMORPG's. Yes it goes against the grain of what an MMO is suppose to be. But I have found there''s many out there just like me.

I'm only into my 3rd month and still have much to learn. Already made it to 50 on my MM+mercs. Elite Bosses no problem for most of them. There's a couple who just do me in 'Nightstar?' Not so great on remembering names in my old age. AV's I can't even hurt.

Anyway I love it. Getting stronger and stronger until you're finally able to take down that EB or even AV. The way COH is designed nobody is really gaining anything from it besides their own self gratification. So what's the harm?

The difficulty system is awesome. It's flexibility allows you to ramp up NPC's at your own discretion. With the system in place I don't know why anyone would complain the game is too easy or hard. Just go adjust your difficulty level.

What you guys know already it's probably what keeps many people subscribed. People who've played this game for 5 years I can't imagine what keeps them going outside of rerolling or building an UBER character.

WOW had to spoon feed me content regularly for 5 years to keep me playing. Still have my WOW sub but am way more into COH now.

Nerfing sucks... We've all been there in other games. When your class gets nerfed you get mad. Once again the difficulty system should take out any reason to nerf anyone. I'm all for the making our heroes more heroic.

If you want a challenge. There's many challenges to be had within COH. Roll a new class combo or ramp up your difficulty level.