How not to solo a task force

I have a lot of very well-built scrappers, and I've always thought I could solo TFs -- the easier ones, at the very least. Manticore and Citadel always seemed like good first targets. So with the WTF being Manticore this week, I found myself looking to join one last night on my MA/WP scrapper Tiffany Blackheart, and for various reasons I didn't want to team with the guy who was forming the next one (I had some player notes to read, heh). And it occurred to me that now was as good a time as any to try it solo.

I logged in my 2nd account and recruited friends from a TF channel I'm in, and inside a few minutes I had the TF stared. One guy, a blaster, said that actually he wanted to run a Manti anyway, so I said he could duo it with me -- doesn't matter to me how much he contributes since I expect to be able to do it all on my own anyway. Everyone else quits, I log out my other toon, and off we go.

The first group is tougher than I was anticipating. It takes me a few minutes to realize that I'm only 35, but I'm fighting level 38 guys. A very large group of them, too. Oops. Forgot to check my settings! What am I set at anyway?

Me: I guess I'm set a little high.
Him: That would explain why they seemed extra crunchy. What are you set at, +2 / 4 people?
Me: Uh... +3 / 8 people...
Him: ....
Me: This might take a bit longer than I was planning...

But you know, I figured "Oh, it'll be a 20 minute first mission then I can reset". I didn't want to quit and start over and have to beg friends to help me start it up again. I'm a tough scrapper, I can do this. Right?

We ran into level 39s. The blaster accidentally aggro'd a 2nd group. My scrapper has high smashing/lethal defense but isn't softcapped, and really, even at softcap when you have multiple +4 bosses pounding on you you're going to get hit, and hard. So I go down a couple of times. The blaster goes down a lot. I stock up on inspirations, I lower my settings (which has no effect on the current mission), I pull out an Amy for healing, I pull one or two Paragon Protectors at a time... but the blaster, after a couple of more deaths, wisely decides to quit and find a real team to play with.

But I've come too far to turn back, and I'm still convinced that it's only a matter of 20 or 30 minutes to clear the mission. The first floor is huge though... and it seems every group has at least 3 Paragon Protectors in it. Some have 4. Especially with the level 39s, I can't damage them fast enough to prevent them from using their tier 9 defense powers, so the fights last forever.

I slog through and make it to the 2nd floor, which is also large and filled with countless enemies. Man, I never realized how many guys an 8 person team takes down when everyone's rolling and the enemies are only 1 or 2 levels above you at most. For that matter, I never realized how much more deadly a large group of Crey are compared to Council. After all, I'm set at +3/8 specifically for Council farming, which I can handle without any major problems. PP's can hit hard, take forever to kill, and whenever one of the rads would debuff me I had to kill him quick, since I was already at the upper limit of my ability to hit enemies and do damage and their debuffs hurt quite a lot.

I fall into a pattern: eat purples, eat any spare reds and yellows and oranges that come my way, occasionally use a green when a big hit gets through, eat blues because I'm constantly attacking and my endurance bar keeps going down (not a problem at level 50 I think, but kind of a problem at 35). Eventually I'll clear several groups, run out of inspirations and run into 3 or 4 PPs at once, and I die. Stock up on inspirations, run back, and start again.

Any sane person would have quit and started over or gone on to do something else. ^_^ But my scrapper is invincible! I can do this!

The third floor turns out to be the largest floor yet, with one of those "death rooms" where a less-than-phenomenal team can wipe out if they rush in (but my normal task force friends ignore these rules and are usually just fine, heh). I pull, and pull, and pull... and still there's tons of crey guys in there. It takes forever.

I had initially set TF settings for 2 hours and zero deaths, confident that I would finish well under 2 hours and not die. The "no deaths" challenge was failed very quickly of course, but eventually as I'm clearing the third floor I get a second "challenge failed!" message. Gawd, have I really been stuck in the first mission for two freakin' hours? Yes, I have.

This is not exactly something to brag to your friends about. In fact, I haven't said anything in the TF channel, heh. I don't want people to know.

I stealth and scout ahead, not sure if I even really want to slog through the rest. But I can see that I have 2 groups of level 39s left, and then several groups of level 38s which are almost infinitely easier to deal with.

So I finally clear the first mission, some 2 hours and 10 or 15 minutes after starting it. Bleah. So much for getting to bed on time -- I'm not gonna stop now. I set the second mission, run in, and it' almost shocking how easily the even-con crey fall before me. One hit, two hits at most. PPs stand no chance of getting off MoG or Elude. I'd almost forgotten how really powerful my scrapper was, after all.

I think the entire rest of the TF took less than half of the time I spent in that first mission, and that includes a pretty long AV battle. My friend MG noticed I was still on as I was heading to the last mission, so I had to explain why... lol. Okay, I'm an idiot. Someone said, "Sounds like something you''d do, MG." MG says, "No, I'd have it set at +4."

I think that's one mistake that I'll remember not to make next time!

Heh, sorry to hear about your long slog, but good on you for pushing forward.

FWIW, I make that same mistake every single time I start a TF. Thankfully I'm not in the habit of soloing them, though

Quote:

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

I didn't quit out; just logged off. If you'd have gotten my attention I could have come tanked that stuff and you could kill it for free heh

Heh, good story. Reminds me of the first time I attempted a solo ITF on my Fire/Traps. Everyone but one person quit, a friend logged an alt. Went into first mission, huge spawns of +4s.

Oops, forgot to turn my difficulty down.

Out of curiosity though, how do you know your Scrappers are "very well built"?

I plan builds in mids, I look at other builds and borrow from them, and money is never an object. My two shield scrappers are near capped to all three positions (builds that were capped to 3 positions before the changes to Blessing of the Zephyr -- I think both of them lack a full 45% AoE at the moment) -- my MA/Invulerable scrapper is softcapped for smashing/lethal -- my three MA/WP scrappers are all built using a build taken from the forums by Zen Foo Do that I liked quite a bit, offers about 40% smashing lethal defense plus good mix of resist/regen; Mouse Police is a fully purpled out katana/regen, Organica is a katana/regen without the purples but with very good recharge nonetheless; Maiden Knight is broadsword/regen with some purples and very good recharge...

I wouldn't try to claim my builds are the best they could possibly be, because I'm not hardcore number cruncher or min/maxer, but all of them can solo missions set for 8... at varying degrees of difficulty depending on the enemies involved. ^_^ None of them lack for Miracle or Numi uniques or LotG +recharges where I can fit those in. A few have PvP IOs where those seemed useful, though I've never slotted a full PvP set. But I think I could solo a TF like Manticore on any one of them, with appropriate settings of course.

Or to put it another way, I was set to +3/8 because I can load up a council map and clear it solo at those settings.

Ah, well, totally diferent question than I thought then. I know my Scrappers are well-built because I understand the rules of the game, I've seen a whole lot of builds, I know what's possible at the top end both numerically and in accomplishments, and I know I'm there both numerically and in accomplishments.

I don't think I'm a great player, in that I've seen other players do things with builds that I really don't think I could do with the same builds (oh, say, Iggy Kamakaze). But I'm at least good enough to pull great things off with a great build on my side.

As far as quantifying, I have both survivability spreadsheets and DPS spreadsheets. I also know the weaknesses of both and have a good feel for what works in game and when mere numbers could lead me astray. And when I've finished making what I think is good build, I go test it - RWZ challenge, AV soloing, +4x8, monster island, that sort of thing. It gives me a good feel for my and my build's strengths and weaknesses.

See, that's what I'm talking about The survivability/DPS spreadsheets are a pretty good and fairly objective way to find out just what your build is capable of.

Then of course, it comes down to player skill, which is a much trickier beast

See, my builds are "good builds" in that the average player, even the majority of heavy TFer's that I play with, would be very happy to have such a build.

My builds are not "Werner quality" good builds as a rule, I suspect. ^_^ But maybe not too far off, I hope.

When I'm working with a new set or something I haven't done before, I always read guides and check builds on the boards though. For my most recent project, I picked TopDoc's high end night widow build and tweaked it a bit since it was built before inherent fitness. But I basically did what the guide said. It was labelled as a ridiculously expensive build, and it was. Then at the suggestion of Chaos I added a PvP proc to Spin, which was another 921 million According to TopDoc this is a build that can solo AVs and Pylons, but unlike Werner I generally don't run off and try to do those things. But it's a very good build, perma Mind Link, softcapped to 3 positions at all times, but suffers from the usual defense-only problems, I can still get hit hard. But I consider it comparable to Tiffany's build or Mouse Police's build. It lets me play stupidly if I want to.

If by alpha level you mean the tier 3 slot and level shift, I only have that on Nina Ballerina, but I should eventually have that on Mouse and Tiffany too. Mostly I plan to get a tier 1 alpha on my other 50's... that seems doable... but I'm being kinda lax about it on the whole. I've run through the arc to open up the alpha slot on everyone, but after that I'm mostly playing like I normally do. Whatever shards drop, drop.

I need to update some of my builds as well. I ran through an ambush farm today on my electric melee/shield scrapper, (because I absolutely had to create yet another scrapper and level them up a bit!) and actually I'm not softcapped for either range or AoE. I had it set to +2/8, and that was fairly difficult. I probably need to add the PvP IO to that build at some point and rework it to be softcapped to all three positions.

I've been reworking my MA scrappers too. All of their builds rely heavily on Kinetic Combats and Obliterations for the smashing/lethal defense, and the problem is that MA is really endurance heavy and those sets don't help very much in that department (six slotted Oblit is something like 18% endurance reduction ). My MA/WP scrappers have quick recovery, stamina, physical perfection, performance shifter procs, Miracle uniques, Numi uniques, and still if you're spamming your attacks constantly (like in the AV fight I did up above), you run into endurance issues.

Typically I've paired 4 pieces Kinetic Combat with 2 pieces of Pounding Slugfest for the 8% regen bonus, and because I tend to be a set bonus *****. But I redid Shinobu Dragonheart and replaced those Pounding Slugfests with Mako's quads and triples, and in Eagle's Claw a Hectacomb acc/rech and dam/end. What I get for all of that is better accuracy, good recharge, and a lot more endurance reduction (and a 4% recovery bonus from the two Hectacomb, woo!). I decided today that I had to do that for Tiffany as well. ^_^ Probably should do it with Nina too, but even though Nina is an almost identical build to Tiffany, I don't farm with Nina so I haven't noticed those endurance issues yet, heh.

I qualify a "great build" as something that can come into a level 50 hero tip team full of level 6's and bring them through a +8/+3 or +4 mission of malta or carnies without letting them die and still complete the mission in a timely fashion. It's not about "lol you guys would be dead without me" it's about me knowing the limits of my build and what it's capable of (and not capable of). Insert something here about Sun Tzu and know thyself.

At the end of the day, that's why I play scrappers - because I know that if I'm on a big team and the defecation hits the oscillation, my build can handle it even if everyone around me dies because they didn't stick with me (Yes, I abuse AAO's taunt component ). It could be argued that I should be playing a tanker instead but with the broad range of IO set bonuses letting pretty much any build be any archetype, a scrapper can retain scrapper damage and still achieve close to tanker survivability.

When I'm on a really solid team I prefer playing debuffers because there's something about turning a big spawn of purple baddies and av's into mewling kittens (cold, how do i love thee let me count the ways), but for normal pickup teaming I'll take my DM/SD over just about anything - simply because there aren't many situations where I have to think "I'm not sure I can handle this".

Just to be sure, because, you know, I am aware a Scrapper would never do this... but you do know there are ways to reset the mission to different difficulty without reforming, yes?

For future reference i'm pretty sure if you log everyone out and back in you can reset the difficulty. Unless they've changed it since my clawls/wp's last attempt at 3/8 vaziloks on old posi

Well, that's good to know.

But hey, what's a few dozen +4 Paragon Protectors anyway?

I did reset another mission this week. I accidentally tried running Trap Door at +2, and this was on my weak-a$$ dual pistols/devices blaster. For what it's worth, I gave it a good try anyway, since my scrappers could certainly have done it, but no, it wasn't happening, so I exited and reset.

Friend in global says: If dual pistols/devices is so weak, why play it?
Me: Well... I'm already 50.
Friend: My condolences.