What AT & build best for solo play/leveling?

Hi all,

After a 5 years break, I'm back to the game and am a bit lost. I was wondering if you could advise me on what AT & build would work the best for leveling and solo play?

I tried several of them up to lvl 6-8 and noticed I survive (and level the fastest) with a corruptor fire/(errr... forgot but one I can heal myself with).

Thank you for your time!

First of all, welcome back!

Part of the beauty of City of Heroes is that anything CAN solo. There's all kinds of debate as to what's the BEST soloer. In my opinion, Brutes are the easiest to solo from 1->50. Scrappers are fairly close, in my experience they're a tad slower until they get SOs. Masterminds can solo fairly well as well, although controlling your pets can be a pain sometimes (there are some nice bind guides out there, look in the mastermind forum if you're interested). Certain combinations of corruptors or defenders can solo reasonably well as well (Dark Miasma and Traps are two that I have soloed with reasonably well). Tanks can solo, but it's slow going (you'll hardly ever die though).

I'll throw a few powerset combinations out there that I have solo'ed with reasonably well. Just about any brute or scrapper is going to solo just fine.

Brute:
-Stone Melee/Willpower- lots of single target damage, screen shake, a real SMASHy feeling. And you're durable and your secondary doesn't take a lot of micromanagement.
-Dark Melee/Electric Armor- Single target focused, self heal in the primary and secondary. Elec is probably a little less durable than Willpower and at higher levels you'll need to use your tricks (endurance drain, self heals) a little more to stay alive. But it's a combo that I had a lot of fun leveling up.

Scrapper:
-Kinetic Melee/Invulnerability- Lots of single target damage, durable secondary. Up to you if you like the KM animations or not.

Stalker:
-Dual Blades/Ninjutsu- I forgot to mention stalkers earlier. They're generally regarded as "less powerful" than scrappers and brutes, although I had loads of fun with this character. The dual blades animations give a graceful feel. As a stalker you generally start fights on your own terms, which could be helpful for a rusty player. Stalkers do very good burst damage, sustained damage a hair below brutes, but at the cost of survivability (lower hit points, defense and resistance are on a par with scrappers/brutes- but you will notice the difference). I should note that I have seen plenty of stalkers in Incarnate (end-game) raids and have not once had anyone give them a hard time, called them "gimp", or whatever. They did just fine.

Defender:
-Dark Miasma/Dark Blast- It's been a while since I leveled mine (Issue 4), but she was fun leveling and it's only gotten more powerful since then. Lots of debuffs and controls, relatively weaker damage and no status protection. But if you do team, you'll be just as useful as any other defender.

Corruptor:
-Assault Rifle/Traps- Currently leveling this guy. Lots of AoE damage, good debuffs along with a little defense and some status protection.

-Fire Blast/Dark Miasma- weaker debuffs than my defender (and it's noticeable), she takes more damage but dishes out a ton in return. If you want to play a defender or corruptor, you can't go wrong with this.

I think you're on the right track by trying a few and playing them for a few levels. Play whichever one you find fun. That'll level the fastest by default .

Wow, that is one long answer! Thank you for that, it's exactly what I was looking for. I haven't yet tried the Brute but that's what I'm going for next time I log in. I kinda like the idea of an enormous beast smashing everything in its way.

Of course, you're right about "chosing the most fun" but for example, although I like my stalker, it got quite annoying to die so often with it (right, I may not be the most skilled player) so I'm looking for something a little more solid

Thanks again!

Super strength / Willpower Brute

Be warned: It's so easy you'll get bored.

If you're going to try a brute, I'd recommend Smurphy's guide, http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...highlight=JoJo

Lots of good suggestions in there, maybe a little less relevant with inherent stamina, but still good stuff and the title takes the cake.

Willpower is a good secondary that you can turn on and forget about.

The primaries all have slightly different feels to them, but I don't think there's any that are truly hard to solo with. Stone Melee and Super Strength feel very smashy, lots of screen shake, etc. War Mace hits with a soul-satisfying CRUNCH and has a good range of AoE and single target attacks. Dark Melee has lots of tricks in the kit bag (fear, self-heal) but is single target focused. Claws is very nice on Brutes. Hard to go wrong really. The only ones that are probably less effective would be Energy Melee (some hard hitting single target attacks, but very long animations and little AoE to speak of), and to a lesser degree Axe (sacrifices the size of some of Mace's AoEs for slightly higher damage).

Remember, as a Brute, your damage increases with how often you are hit or are hitting things. Sometimes it can be counterproductive to stop and heal/rest. There's a sweet spot where you're moving fast enough to keep fury up but not so fast that you don't have a little time to regen health and endurance. It's a fun archetype though... The Pain Train is comin' woo woo!

You can solo with any AT but for me, my Masterminds have the easiest and most enjoyable to level solo with.

My best solo characters by far have been a Claws/WP scrap and a KinMelee/WP stalker... They've both been capable of taking just about anything the game's thrown at them with a little thought.

I can't really pick a favorite between them... The scrap's faster attacks and higher damage pretty much equal out with the stalker's different damage type, burst attacks and ability to stealth things if she needs to. It's hard to go wrong with either primary, and the WP secondary covers most of the important bases in a very non-intrusive, click-and-forget sort of way.

Especially through the lower levels I felt like my blaster was the best soloer. You'll fill out your attack chain faster than any other AT and if you're soloing on the standard +0x1 survivability shouldn't be an issue, since Blasters kill so quickly. I find that leveling up Melee's don't start to feel comfortable until SO level because you have to worry about slotting toggles, managing endurance, etc. without enough slots to do much with.

Claws/WP Brute and Fire/Dark Corr.

SS/FA and Claw/FA brutes are the fastest to lvl but they dont make amazing soloers overall. Invul or WP melee with AoE heavy sets (kat, claw, SS, fire...) are good soloers.

Some MM and trollers are also pretty impressive (bot/traps and ill/Rad coming first)

Best AT for leveling and solo play? An MM hands down. I don't PL or farm, and by far my fastest 50 ever has been my ds/poison MM (with my ds/dark MM is closing in on 50 fast, as well). I don't think I've teamed with either of them more than a handful times because I have so much fun soloing. I know that other MM's level equally fast (or faster), but for some reason I really love the demons.

/FA brute we r talking less than ten hours play to 50. No MM gets anywhere close .

As for troller. I wouldnt say IllRad xps slower than FireRad. Endurance is a pain in the butt on FireRad and Phatom army comes earlier than imps. Confuse is also incredibly powerfull to manage tricky packs or sucky teams. Tho I d say its close but considering how easy IllRad solos AVs whenever PA and AR goes perma i really would pick IllRad for solo toon.

I find SS/fire to be way to squishy. I can't even stay alive doing +1/x8 tips. I'm using ss/fire/mu and it's a fully purpled out farming build from ultrawatt a year ago. He has level shift spiritual but no other incarnates. He just dies way too fast.