What's relaxing to solo on?

Okay, so, all sorts of things CAN solo.

Sometimes, I've had a long day, and I just wanna run around killing stuff. Were I playing World of Some Other Game, I'd just go find a zone a couple levels low and pursue old quest chains, or farm materials, or something. Now, I could just go to a lower-level hazard zone, but I want to be getting SOMETHING for my time -- even if it's not very much.

In CoH, the closest I've got to ezmode thus far is MMs (bots/traps, DS/dark), but they do require a bit more attention to detail, because the pets can actually die occasionally. I'm sorta wondering what might be a good combo or build for more relaxed soloing. Ideally, I'd probably prefer something that would be effective at, say, -1/x3 or something -- I enjoy the big swarms of enemies, more than I enjoy actual difficulty per se, when I just want to relax.

Suggestions? Archetypes that might be a good fit? Specific builds? Particular missions or zones?

SS/WP Brute

I'd say masterminds with an aura heal + defensive mode. I would suggest melee toons but they take a little time to be awesome.

I'd agree with a /wp brute or scrapper...pretty much anything/wp, though for larger groups primaries with more AOE are more fun and effective.

later in the game, my softcapped def melee toons are pretty relaxing to play on lower difficulties. They just don't get hit hard or often enough to matter. This is on an ice/fire tank, fire/shield scrap, claw/invuln scrap.

Getcherself a Widow. Lots of damage and defenses, and that alpha strike is a sight to see. A bane or crab might be fun too, but I like taking 1 of my 2 widows out on the town when I want to see lots of baddies drop quickly...

(Anything but Energy or Dark Melee) / Willpower Brute. With Willpower, the more enemies you have around you the harder you are to kill... hordes of -1 foes would be easy to handle. Super Strength is good for AoE with lots of recharge, but if you want to keep it cheap while still having good AoE you may want to go Electric Melee. But really anything but Energy and Dark has at least moderate AoE. I personally like Battle Axe because... well, you get to clobber people with a big axe.

Perhaps the ultimate in relaxing (at least at high levels) is a Bots / FF Mastermind. Just re-bubble the bots every four minutes and stand there with Dispersion Bubble running and none of them die. You can easily softcap all the bots, so the Protectors can keep them healed pretty well. Aid Other can help patch up the occasional damage between fights, but since you essentially have six Super Reflexes henchmen they just don't get hit enough to need a lot of healing.

Mastermind with mostly ranged pets (Thugs, Mercenaries, Robotics, Demon Summoning), and an AoE heal in the secondary (Thermal Radiation, Pain Domination, Dark Miasma). Unless you're on a higher difficulty, all you have to do is keep your pets in follow/defensive and walk into the spawn of enemies, using your AoE heal as needed. For primaries with healer pets that aren't suicidal (I'm looking at you, Medic), you probably don't even have to use the heal from your secondary, you could just read a book instead.

my MM used to be nice and relaxing to solo vast hordes of mobs, but now I get irritated after 5-10mins of pets insisting on running into melee every second they can, so now my Widow is my fun time soloer, followed by my wp/dm tank (althought the killing can become slow and tedious after a while).

If the pet melee AI issue gets fixed, then I'll be back on my MM having fun doing RWZ mishes again.

I find running around smashing the hell out of rikti on my ss/electric brute very relaxing. I put on some music, grab a borea, and just zone out.

If your looking for Ezmode my 1st 2 suggestions would be;

SS/WP Brute - An amazingly fun combo, great power and great survivability. I rolled one up for GR and fell in love. He's currently
farming Dark Astoria solo. Only toon I've rolled that can do so.
At level 24 I can stand in the middle of a large group of BP all yellow con... and my health never drops!

OR

Dark Melee/Regen scrapper - This has to be one of the most boring combos. Only because for the 1st 40 levels you don't have any fear.
It's just click, click, click attacks with the random heal in between.
I jump on this guy whenever I wanna feel uber or I just wanna mindlessly
bash some heads in. Alternating between Instant Healing and MOG allows for amazing possibilities when solo.

A high level Fire/Rad Controller is CoH on easy mode. Have your Choking Cloud and Hot Feet running, and Fire Imps out. Spot a group, and use Flashfire+Fire Cages, then run in and stand there. While Choking Cloud holds them, Hot Feet and the Fire Imps do the damage while you don't have to do anything other than an occasional Char if any foes break out of Choking Cloud's Hold.

I can do Trick or Treat missions on my Fire/Rads by clicking on the door and just using Char on any boss. I just let the Imps and Hot Feet do the killing -- when I'm feeling lazy.

For the lowest rate of button-mashing, I'd go Robots/FF MM, and take the Medicine pool. Bubble up, have the pets on Defensive/Follow and just walk into groups. You may have to occasionally use a heal, but your bubbles stack with the Prot Bots' bubbles. I never got my Bots/FF to 50 simply because it got so passive and boring by level 40. So it's not my cup of tea but might be just what the OP is looking for as it's the nearest to full autopilot I can think of.

My personal fave is my kat/da that is IO'd out quite nicely. Radios at -1x4 for relaxation. +1xmore than 4 for a little bit of a challenge. I also like jumping on AV teams and then just parking right next to the AV and going through my attack chain several times for my moment of Zen.

I rolled a KM/DA stalker recently, for the express purpose of soling Praetoria content. I've been REALLY REALLY enjoying it, both the toon and the content.

Never teamed her. Never fought an enemy I didn't need to to complete the mission. Took on as many contacts as I could. And the best part was I could log on for 10-15 minutes and go through 2-3 missions, just enjoying the story. More like an interactive novel than an MMO.

I don't find Brutes "relaxing". There's too much of a need to keep pushing forward, maintaining Fury. While it can be fun, I find it a little too fast paced for when I just want to play and kill things for ten or fifteen minutes or so.

I would suggest either a Tanker or Scrapper. I know folks complain about Tankers, but if your criteria is "relaxing" and not "speed", then I think they're fine. There's little to threaten a Tanker, you just wade into a spawn and begin wailing on it. As long as you slot your Endurance so you don't have to worry about it running out, you can keep going forever.

Scrappers are similar but more fragile. I'd also go with Masterminds, although again, relying on the AI to deal with threats and not micromanage with greatly reduce your capabilities. MMs are perfect for Trick or Treating, though. Just post them outside the door, click on it, and let them clean up. Talk about casual play.

While SoA can get pretty tough at higher levels, I find Wolf Spiders a bit too much like Blasters or Defenders in the early levels, and Widows are just plain fragile. You're going into melee with an AT that dies at the drop of a hat. Not that fun. If you can survive the climb to 24, though a Crab is pretty tough (I'd go with a pseudo-melee build with Fortification slotted out the wazoo) and from what I hear, Widows get a lot tougher after Mind Link and Foresight. (My Widow's not 24 yet, unfortunately, Crab is the only one I can speak from experience)

The same applies to Kheldians as well. Fragile getting up to 20, but once you have Dwarf form, you can go Human/Dwarf for a fairly relaxing meatshield build. There is the shapeshifting, but with a predominately Dwarf build you can keep that to a minimum. Warshades in particular will benefit from the -1/x3 difficulty.

Actually, for taking on huge crowds of foes that con green to you, a Dark/Dark Corruptor can be pretty solid and safe as well. Just walk into the group, drop Tar Patch and Darkest Night on them, open up with Tentacles and Night Fall, and watch them melt. If you take any damage, Twilight Grasp. I suggest Corruptor and not Defender because it'll have plenty of defense, but the Corruptor will provide the better damage.

In fact, I don't play my Dark/Dark so much these days because he began to get boring.

Personally I find stalkers to be the lowest stress soloists. They have hide, so any battle you are in (except ambushes) is something you decided to pick. You don't have fury, so there's no 'RUN RUN RUN' pressure like on a brute. With Assassin Strike, any single irritating mob can be leveled before the fight really starts (Master Illusionist downgraded to lieut goes away immediately on a BU+AS).

If you pick one of the few really strong AOE stalker sets, you can even kill in bulk effectively. My ElM/SR stalker has been quite good. I use that one for hero merit collection now.

I like to 'relax' with my SS/WP brute, but I've actually fallen ASLEEP playing a /Pain Mastermind!

Yeah, I do actually sort of enjoy stalker; I have a km/nin at level 20. Spent an hour or two on my dark/dark tank last night, ToT would be fun except everything's neg-resistant. But it was fun on a team. On groups with less dark resistance, though, that would stay pretty fun for a while. I might see if I can get him up closer to 30ish so he can have better enhancements, I think he still has at least one level 16 IO (not counting special procs).

Kat/wp scrap is a joy from 1-50, easily able to handle large spawns of low lvl enemies quite easily, while still being able to crank up the diff if you want to challenge urself.
I found claws/sr to be the "zen" of scrappin. Of course you have to get to higher lvls before you get to the "zen" stage.
just my 2 inf.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shadow Ravenwolf My favorite combo is Faceplant/DebtCap with the TeamWipe Ancillary

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dispari Yeah, I like Blasters too.

KM/WP Stalker. Stalker's in general are EZ to solo, very relaxing, and you can go as fast or slow as you choose. Perfect for story content if you are trying to go through all the arcs, and can easily drop EB's. Since solo, you should not get AV's unless you change your settings, but then that would not be relaxing. Good badgers in general. The only problem with stalkers is when you decide you want the MoSTF badge one day. It will be hard to get an invite, but if you don't care about certain badges, they are great fun.

Scrappers are also generally relaxing as they are one of the easiest AT's to play until you start to up your enemies/levels to challenge yourself. At initial settings, they are super easy and good learning toons for the game.


Not relaxing but fun anyway: PB/WS/Blasters/Tanks(if you are a good tank who protects the team)/any healer AT/kins (please sb meh requests)/Earth trollers(best controller, but the control becomes obsessive, and you eventually find yourself locking down everything on the map or I did. It got to the point where if someone could run, I felt a sense of fail)/BRUTES (fury bar sucks me in, so I always want to stay on the hunt)