Scrappers solo full strength AVs?

Blue_Centurion · 12-06-2010 04:59 PM

Can Scrappers solo full strength AVs? Not the glorified EBs found in story arcs. I mean the full strength ones you see in task forces.

I find it hard to believe that scrappers can put out enough damage to overcome a full strength AVs regeneration, but I may be surprised.

For this experiment assume you have enough tier 3 inspirations to softcap your def and hardcap your resistance, that they miss a lot, etc. Just, can it be done in theory?

TheBruteSquad · 12-06-2010 05:04 PM

Considering that some scrappers solo task forces... I'd imagine the answer is yes.

Weight training: Because you'll never hear someone lament "If only I were weaker, I could have saved them."

Reverence · 12-06-2010 05:16 PM

See my signature.

Thats just one of my scrappers that can solo AVs with no temps/inspirations.
And while building scrappers who can fight non-stop for 10+ minutes without dying, running out of endurance, and doing enough DPS to drop an AV isn't the norm... many on this board have scrappers who can do this.

Blue_Centurion · 12-06-2010 05:21 PM

Pretty amazing. I guess I have always built for tankier characters. I will start rethinking what I know about melee characters. I assume there are certain powersets that accomplish this better than others?

Nihilii · 12-06-2010 05:24 PM

Quote:

Can Scrappers solo full strength AVs? Not the glorified EBs found in story arcs. I mean the full strength ones you see in task forces.

There seems to be a misconception here. While different AVs have different strengthes and weaknesses, there's no such thing as "full strength AVs in TFs" and "glorified EBs in story arcs". An AV is an AV, with the same hit points, regeneration, damage and accuracy modifiers, everything. What makes the difference is the individual AV itself, the environment has nothing particular making AVs stronger (unless what you really meant is "can scrappers solo level +1, +2, +3, +4 AVs").

Emberly · 12-06-2010 05:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blue_Centurion

Can Scrappers solo full strength AVs? Not the glorified EBs found in story arcs. I mean the full strength ones you see in task forces.

I find it hard to believe that scrappers can put out enough damage to overcome a full strength AVs regeneration, but I may be surprised.

For this experiment assume you have enough tier 3 inspirations to softcap your def and hardcap your resistance, that they miss a lot, etc. Just, can it be done in theory?

People do it all the time. Feels good, man.

Blue_Centurion · 12-06-2010 05:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nihilii

There seems to be a misconception here. While different AVs have different strengthes and weaknesses, there's no such thing as "full strength AVs in TFs" and "glorified EBs in story arcs". An AV is an AV, with the same hit points, regeneration, damage and accuracy modifiers, everything. What makes the difference is the individual AV itself, the environment has nothing particular making AVs stronger (unless what you really meant is "can scrappers solo level +1, +2, +3, +4 AVs").

I seriously hate to start this way, but this is wrong. If you are running a story arc solo that has a Hero or AV in it, it is set up as an EB with specialized powers to mirror it's full strength build.

I believe there is even an option in the fateweaver to allow you to solo these at full strength. However, the default is EB level.

"I would like to fight Arch-villains at their full strength, not as Elite Bosses" yes, there is the exact wording.
I am taking people at their wiord they can solo 4 of these at a time.... mostly cause I hate to argue. seriously.

But i do find it amazing when I do a LRSF against a bunch of heroes and it takes 7of us to take down one, while our 8th keeps the rest slept..... And then a melee character is like "I eat them for breakfast' Good for you, but I want to see it, ya know. Not saying anybody is lying, but danged. Hats off to you if you got this kinda toon.

BrandX · 12-06-2010 05:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blue_Centurion

I seriously hate to start this way, but this is wrong. If you are running a story arc solo that has a Hero or AV in it, it is set up as an EB with specialized powers to mirror it's full strength build.

I believe there is even an option in the fateweaver to allow you to solo these at full strength. However, the default is EB level.

"I would like to fight Arch-villains at their full strength, not as Elite Bosses" yes, there is the exact wording.
I am taking people at their wiord they can solo 4 of these at a time.... mostly cause I hate to argue. seriously.

But i do find it amazing when I do a LRSF against a bunch of heroes and it takes 7of us to take down one, while our 8th keeps the rest slept..... And then a melee character is like "I eat them for breakfast' Good for you, but I want to see it, ya know. Not saying anybody is lying, but danged. Hats off to you if you got this kinda toon.

Hmmm...you'd need a really good build for that.

First off, you've run the LRSF, you know they tend to be linked...that's like 8 AVs you have to survive while killing one, with 7 others beating on you.

LRSF also has them at +4. While in missions, the level of the AVs tend to be even level or +1.

The linking is one of the reasons people put the AVs to sleep in the LRSF to begin with.

But you didn't mention one specific TF, you mentioned TFs as a whole.

And yes, Scrappers have gone about soloing some of the TFs with AVs in them.

BrandX Future Staff Fighter

The BrandX Collection

Flux_Vector · 12-06-2010 06:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blue_Centurion

I seriously hate to start this way, but this is wrong. If you are running a story arc solo that has a Hero or AV in it, it is set up as an EB with specialized powers to mirror it's full strength build.

I believe there is even an option in the fateweaver to allow you to solo these at full strength. However, the default is EB level.

This is false. The default NPC type is actually Archvillain. Elite Bosses didn't exist as an enemy type when many of the original story arcs were written. They were introduced later and the difficulty option to 'downgrade' AVs to EBs was an addition to the game.

Back in the olden days, if you were solo and you got into a storyarc with an AV in it, you would probably have to recruit a team to help you finish that mission. There was no EB option.

The conversion the game makes in storyarcs is thus from AV down to EB, not from EB up to AV. There's no difference in the powers available to them, either, only a difference in their hitpoints and rank modifiers for combat. EBs who are downgraded from AVs also tend to retain the "purple triangles of doom" that render them nigh immune to crowd control, just like full AVs.

Quote:

"I would like to fight Arch-villains at their full strength, not as Elite Bosses" yes, there is the exact wording.
I am taking people at their wiord they can solo 4 of these at a time.... mostly cause I hate to argue. seriously.

But i do find it amazing when I do a LRSF against a bunch of heroes and it takes 7of us to take down one, while our 8th keeps the rest slept..... And then a melee character is like "I eat them for breakfast' Good for you, but I want to see it, ya know. Not saying anybody is lying, but danged. Hats off to you if you got this kinda toon.

My nightwidow can solo most AVs. I often "off tank" the current target of the Freedom Phalanx in the LRSF, too, while the "main tank" is occupying most of them, simply because my DPS tends to outpace most of my teammates, thus grabbing me aggro over time unless one of them's a brute.

Some luck is involved in AV-soloing (it tends to hinge on being defense softcapped and then not getting hit twice in short timeframes), and it can be time consuming, but it isn't difficult for an offense-centric AT to put out over 150 DPS, which is about the amount needed to take down an AV's hitpoint bar.

It's more difficult to be able to generate 150 DPS while keeping your survivability and having enough endurance recovery. I19's inherent fitness and alpha slot though, trivialized those problems for my NW - I can now have every power I want in my build including Aidself to back up my softcapped defense, and the Cardiac boost alpha slot means I can ignore my end bar anymore.

"Experience is the mother of good judgement. Bad judgement is the father of experience."

Eva Destruction · 12-06-2010 06:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blue_Centurion

I seriously hate to start this way, but this is wrong. If you are running a story arc solo that has a Hero or AV in it, it is set up as an EB with specialized powers to mirror it's full strength build.

That isn't a "glorified EB." That's just an EB. And those EBs were AVs first, they were just scaled down to make them soloable. The default setting for them is AV. The difficulty slider defaults to "no AVs" because most players can't or don't want to solo them.

Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper

Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World

Nihilii · 12-06-2010 06:11 PM

Quote:

I seriously hate to start this way, but this is wrong. If you are running a story arc solo that has a Hero or AV in it, it is set up as an EB with specialized powers to mirror it's full strength build.

I believe there is even an option in the fateweaver to allow you to solo these at full strength. However, the default is EB level.

You have it backwards. These AVs were created as AVs and are identical in every way to the similar AVs you could meet in a TF. Some people complained they couldn't solo high-level content because AVs were in every story arc, so the devs introduced the option to lower them down to EBs to improve soloing experience a few years ago, and made that the default setting.

Turning them down to EBs doesn't even make them real EBs, they still retain the purple triangles of doom (50s up 25s down high mez protection to everything) and the high resistances to most debuffs AVs enjoy.

In comparison, a normal, real Elite Boss (i.e. Frostfire in the Hollows, or that warrior dude in Striga Island) has no such thing, and unless the particular EB you're fighting has powers/resistances against that, you can hold an EB in 3 holds, KB him/her all over the place, or put Darkest Night on him/her and /e dance without a worry.

Quote:

LRSF also has them at +4. While in missions, the level of the AVs tend to be even level or +1.

Only +3 now, for the same reason as the AV -> EB change. Lots of bwaaah this is too hard.

And that's the important part. +3. It's got nothing to do with TFs or story arcs, a +3 AV is an entirely different beast than a +0 AV... Just the same as with every kind of mob, really.

Edit : wow, sniped twice. Time to head off to sleep I guess !

Arbegla · 12-06-2010 06:14 PM

It also depends on the AV, but i guess thats a given anyways. I know Werner's been able to take on +2 or higher AVs, but most of those don't have perma capped lethal/smash resistance.

Honoree is pretty hard to tackle due to his psionic damage, his dull pain heal, and his unstoppable giving him over 100% resistance to lethal/smash, and pretty high resistances to everything else.

But on the flip side, Luminary is pretty easy to solo due to her lack of a T9 (she just Nova's) Energy based damage (which is third resisted damage type) Smashing attached to just about all her attacks (making the Lethal/smash softcap very nice) and just normal AV resistances.

Blue_Centurion · 12-06-2010 06:32 PM

Lot of confusing stuff, mostly from trying to figure out when people seem to be directly disagreeing with the post above them and never actually saying that. But i got the gist. Flux's explanation helped.

And no, i do not think anybody is gonna solo the LRSF. C'mon. really? But if you do, again, tip of the hat, wag of the finger. It was just my extreme example of how tough we all know this things can be.

But yeah, i know people do more than 150 DPS (my builds not so much, i go sideways and have fun), so yeah, i can see them killing these guys, given time. and I understand some people can really crank that number, although I find it hard to believe, i do in fact believe it.

Thanks for the help understanding some of this.

Werner · 12-06-2010 06:51 PM

As others have said, yeah, many Scrappers do this all the time. I've only soloed two full strength AVs at once. Others have certainly done more. I believe the record is up around eight or nine at once on specialized Dark Melee/Invuln builds fighting very specific combinations of AVs in Architect Entertainment missions, but they're still real dev AVs, not custom AVs. And this is with no temporary powers and no inspirations.

The thing with the task force AVs is that aren't they typically higher level, like +4? I've run like three task forces ever, so I'm not sure. Anyway, that makes them MUCH tougher than what you face in missions. Even if you crank the difficulty to +4, the AVs still spawn at even level.

The first video in my signature is of my Katana/Dark Scrapper, Alexei, soloing 11 Praetorian AVs in a row with no temporary powers, no inspirations, and no deaths. They're sort of low to mid range AVs as far as difficulty goes, though. I'd have much less success against many AVs. This was in I17. Most of the other AV soloing videos in the link are much earlier, I12 and I13. It should be easier now, particularly with the alpha slot and inherent Fitness.

The specifics can vary a lot, but here's the usual template for a no temps no insps AV soloing Scrapper:

soft capped positional or typed defense
some resistance, at least Tough
good hit points, like maybe 1700+
sustainable endurance
good attack chain
a heal from the primary, secondary, or Aid Self

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arbegla

It also depends on the AV, but i guess thats a given anyways. I know Werner's been able to take on +2 or higher AVs, but most of those don't have perma capped lethal/smash resistance.

I wish! I've actually not done that. It's great that people think I have, though.

How WOULD you go about setting up an uplevel AV to fight? I'd love to try it once I get Alexei's new build nailed down (and with the very rare for sustainable endurance, so who knows when that will be).

"That's because Werner can't do maths." - BunnyAnomaly
"Four hours in, and I was no longer making mistakes, no longer detoggling. I was a machine." - Werner
Videos of Other Stupid Scrapper Tricks

Nihilii · 12-06-2010 06:56 PM

You could do that in AE by creating a mission and setting the mission level to (i.e.) 51-51, I think. I haven't checked for sure and they do so many changes to AE, but I'm rather sure I got +level AVs to spawn in AE in the past.

A level 53 Marauder doesn't seem out of reach, if you ask me. Long, boring, but probably no big deal for someone who spent hours killing Lord Nemesis.

TheBruteSquad · 12-06-2010 07:02 PM

Simple. Use the Architect and set the minimum mission level to 52 and max to 52. Voila, instant +2 AV.

Blue:
My sm/wp brute has only been able to successfully solo one AV... Manticore. Other than the teleporting arrow attack (auto hit, about 1000 damage) it wasn't so bad. My endurance bar was my true enemy. My attacks have 88% end reduction, I have two perf shifters, and a 4.0 recovery. That's enough to solo a Rikti Pylon no problem, but an AV makes me want to use ALL my toggles instead of just the three needed to shrug off a pylon. Big difference between .7 end/sec consumption and 1.25 (mostly darkest night and weave). Your dark/inv should be able to handle a few himself.

edit: Beaten to the AE punch

Weight training: Because you'll never hear someone lament "If only I were weaker, I could have saved them."

Panzerwaffen · 12-06-2010 07:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blue_Centurion

And no, i do not think anybody is gonna solo the LRSF. C'mon. really? But if you do, again, tip of the hat, wag of the finger. It was just my extreme example of how tough we all know this things can be.