Funny thing I was trying this during the beta phase with a battle axe/EA scrapper and he was doing "all right" damage against back alley brawler and manticore. Granted I had an arachnos heavy blaster helping me and my toon was only slotted with SOs. I feel that EA has potential but needs to be paired with something other than BA.
Why do you say MA puts out low damage? All smashing, yes that's an issue. But raw damage hasn't been for me at least.
Moonlighter
50s include MA/SD, MA/SR, DP/Elec, Claw/Inv, Kat/Dark, Kat/Fire, Spine/Regen, Dark/SD
First Arc: Tequila Sunrise, #168563
PS: I'd try something with Parry; maybe Katana/Elec.
Moonlighter
50s include MA/SD, MA/SR, DP/Elec, Claw/Inv, Kat/Dark, Kat/Fire, Spine/Regen, Dark/SD
First Arc: Tequila Sunrise, #168563
Stalker with snipe to pull and use placate to get rid of the second AV. then you only have 1 to deal with. A bit easier than using a mind dom on Auto.
Now, can a stalker solo a RV AV?
no idea, but dark/nin/?? might have the tools with two heals, and a decent tier-9 to make up for the low defense. Probably needs -regen though. Not sure on that bit. envenomed daggers?
"Hmm, I guess I'm not as omniscient as I thought" -Gavin Runeblade.
I can be found, outside of paragon city here.
Thank you everyone at Paragon and on Virtue. When the lights go out in November, you'll find me on Razor Bunny.
All RV AVs can be pulled from each other, with sufficient enough running. Easiest way is to use the usual tactic: attack once and let both of them come to you, wait for them to lose aggro, attack the closest one again while they're running back to whatever tower they were hitting.
Throw a Heavy into the mix ; congratulations, you win.
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Comparatively speaking, it does. And here every little bit helps. If you are around the 170 dps that MA seems to do with good chains then against a +2 AV, which you can get with Alpha and an ultimate, your damage is down to about 135 dps not counting resistances. That is only 35 dps above the 100 dps regen rate of a level 54 AV. Even very small increases in damage above that rate are noticeable because you are operating so close to the regen rate. Fire Melee is a whole lot faster because of that.|
Originally Posted by Moonlighter
Why do you say MA puts out low damage? All smashing, yes that's an issue. But raw damage hasn't been for me at least.
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The Lore pets can make that moot, though. They aren't affected by DR, and even something like tactics can radically increase their damage output due to their base 50% chance to hit.
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Pre-ED I used pulling to try to solo them on my blaster: you could pop some lucks for survivability and just drone one to work on the other. Post ED I couldn't stack enough insps to make that viable on a blaster, even with range-boosted snipes: it was too unpredictable when they would catch up to you and take a shot at you, or break off aggro. A melee archetype could do it though.|
Originally Posted by Nihilii
All RV AVs can be pulled from each other, with sufficient enough running. Easiest way is to use the usual tactic: attack once and let both of them come to you, wait for them to lose aggro, attack the closest one again while they're running back to whatever tower they were hitting.
Throw a Heavy into the mix ; congratulations, you win. |
Separate from that though, a heavy all by itself doesn't seem to do enough damage before it gets killed, unless you draw all the aggro onto yourself and then the question is can you make a build that is survivable enough and that has enough supplemental damage. Moreover, we're talking about the Heroes in AV, not the Villains, which means you'll be using the spiders not the mechs. Their punching power seems a bit lower.
Have you actually done it with a villain + mech, and if so with what villain?
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For no particularly good reason, I was trying this in RV the other day, fighting Black Scorpion with my DM/Regen. (I didn't need the badge, I was just fighting him because I found myself alone with him.)
With a Cataphract, my T3 Vickie, and Barrier I was pleasantly surprised to be making pretty good headway on him. I was soaking his attacks surprisingly well. Then, at around 80% HP he hit me with his tail blast, apparently before I had healed up from some previous hit, because that took me down. I was sad, because soloing him on a Scrapper, even with a heavy, would have been ridiculous bragging rights.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
I tried on my Fire/MM blaster. Was messing around with three (GW, Scirocco, and Mako), ran off to grab a heavy (for badge) and then log off when Scirocco chased me without the other two and killed me. He then stayed there so I rezzed, grabbed the heavy, dropped lore pets, a shivan, and a warwolf, popped insp and went at him. Got him below 50% but was drained on insp from earlier fights so I ran out and he killed me. With Drain Psyche both buffing me and debuffing him it was working so long as I had some heals and purple/orange backup to keep me alive.
I had to log so I didn't try anything else. I thought with his super fast speed you could drag him over to the groups of longbow then pile on with pets but never tried it.
Seems if any blaster is going to do it it would be a /MM due to the regen debuff it puts out.
I took out RV NPC heroes on a DB/Inv brute in I19.5 (alpha level shift already, but before further incarnate slots) with a spider. Spiders actually hit higher than mechs I believe, if you make sure to position them in melee for their "nuke", a PBAoE move that does well above a thousand damage IIRC. For most AVs I happened to have help, but I soloed a few.
Thinking about that specific case, what might have helped is that DB can slot 2 -res procs, which might have boosted spider damage a fair bit. I was using BF AS SS AS with a minimal gap ; as for survivability, I had (outside of PVP zones) S/L softcapped and 33-35% F/C/E/N, with reasonable resistances (cardiac + normal slotting) and Unstoppable. I can't remember if I had Aid Self or not, but I probably had it, and made liberal use of inspirations.
Another few things coming back to my mind (not that it's necessarily needed, but I've found it helpful on some occasions): sitting in the +def bubble from pillboxes, luring AVs to NPC helpers.
The one hurdle was Statesman, most likely would not have been able to kill him solo, spider or not, due to the speed at which his Unstop recharges. That was before the change to prevent him from having 100% res most of the time and before I20 slots, so now, who knows. I'm thinking with judicious use of Lore pets he should go down.
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Interesting. I thought the purple patch would shift the res procs too low to be effective, but its worth a second look.|
Originally Posted by Nihilii
I took out RV NPC heroes on a DB/Inv brute in I19.5 (alpha level shift already, but before further incarnate slots) with a spider. Spiders actually hit higher than mechs I believe, if you make sure to position them in melee for their "nuke", a PBAoE move that does well above a thousand damage IIRC. For most AVs I happened to have help, but I soloed a few.
Thinking about that specific case, what might have helped is that DB can slot 2 -res procs, which might have boosted spider damage a fair bit. I was using BF AS SS AS with a minimal gap ; as for survivability, I had (outside of PVP zones) S/L softcapped and 33-35% F/C/E/N, with reasonable resistances (cardiac + normal slotting) and Unstoppable. I can't remember if I had Aid Self or not, but I probably had it, and made liberal use of inspirations. Another few things coming back to my mind (not that it's necessarily needed, but I've found it helpful on some occasions): sitting in the +def bubble from pillboxes, luring AVs to NPC helpers. The one hurdle was Statesman, most likely would not have been able to kill him solo, spider or not, due to the speed at which his Unstop recharges. That was before the change to prevent him from having 100% res most of the time and before I20 slots, so now, who knows. I'm thinking with judicious use of Lore pets he should go down. |
To soft-cap defense under DR requires about 75%ish defense. I *think* the pillboxes offer 25% defense, so a soft-cap scrapper plus the pillbox might have gotten there or close to there. That would be helpful, as would the Regeneration buff. A scrapper or brute sitting in the bubble might have the survivability to tank at least one AV without insps. If you can lead them there, that then makes it a straight up damage race.
The big problem with a brute is DR really hurts fury: if you manage to get something like say +170% from fury and about +100% from slotting that +270% damage (370% total) would be reduced to about +170%, or 270% total. That's rather low for a brute: it would be the equivalent of a scrapper under-slotted with +80% damage. I guess the spiders do deal a lot more damage than I give them credit for.
You know, although I knew about the bubbles, I didn't think to use them. Must have completely slipped my mind. Now that the badge-pressure is off, I might give that another go.
I figured if anyone else had found a way to do this, you'd probably be one of the few.
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I think the -res procs are granted powers, which effectively puts them at even level to the target - much the way Bruising works.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Interesting. I thought the purple patch would shift the res procs too low to be effective, but its worth a second look.
To soft-cap defense under DR requires about 75%ish defense. I *think* the pillboxes offer 25% defense, so a soft-cap scrapper plus the pillbox might have gotten there or close to there. That would be helpful, as would the Regeneration buff. A scrapper or brute sitting in the bubble might have the survivability to tank at least one AV without insps. If you can lead them there, that then makes it a straight up damage race. The big problem with a brute is DR really hurts fury: if you manage to get something like say +170% from fury and about +100% from slotting that +270% damage (370% total) would be reduced to about +170%, or 270% total. That's rather low for a brute: it would be the equivalent of a scrapper under-slotted with +80% damage. I guess the spiders do deal a lot more damage than I give them credit for. You know, although I knew about the bubbles, I didn't think to use them. Must have completely slipped my mind. Now that the badge-pressure is off, I might give that another go. I figured if anyone else had found a way to do this, you'd probably be one of the few. |
Comrade Smersh, KGB Special Section 8 50 Inv/Fire, Fire/Rad, BS/WP, SD/SS, AR/EM
Other 50s: Plant/Thorn, Bots/Traps, DB/SR, MA/Regen, Rad/Dark - All on Virtue.
-Don't just rebel, build a better world, comrade!
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Hmm, so they do. Makes me wonder, now, what a tanker could do by triple stacking Fury of the Gladiator, Achilles Heel, and Bruising. You can't stack more than one of each, and the procs have only a 20% chance of going off themselves, but it looks like you could average having bruising and at least one of those procs up at any one time. That's potentially a lot of damage boost if you're amplifying pet damage, and a tanker could be build to tank two RV AVs even without insps, I believe.
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Originally Posted by Smersh
I think the -res procs are granted powers, which effectively puts them at even level to the target - much the way Bruising works.
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You're locked into a /DB tanker if that's what you want to do.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Hmm, so they do. Makes me wonder, now, what a tanker could do by triple stacking Fury of the Gladiator, Achilles Heel, and Bruising. You can't stack more than one of each, and the procs have only a 20% chance of going off themselves, but it looks like you could average having bruising and at least one of those procs up at any one time. That's potentially a lot of damage boost if you're amplifying pet damage, and a tanker could be build to tank two RV AVs even without insps, I believe.
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Comrade Smersh, KGB Special Section 8 50 Inv/Fire, Fire/Rad, BS/WP, SD/SS, AR/EM
Other 50s: Plant/Thorn, Bots/Traps, DB/SR, MA/Regen, Rad/Dark - All on Virtue.
-Don't just rebel, build a better world, comrade! I am shocked that nobody came along and ganked any of you when you were trying this in RV. Maybe the PVP scene really has gone dormant. What server?
I know on my Fire/SR scrapper. I built for ranged defense since that's most of what you will get hit with. Without elude, I have about 40% ranged defense. With elude it jumps all the way to 50% :/
Outside of a pvp zone I have 115% ranged defense.
Your character does not have capped defense. Depending on your AT the cap is between 175% - 225%. Your defense is not teal in the combat window, it can go higher. STOP SAYING IT IS CAPPED! The correct term is Soft Cap.
I enjoy playing in Mids. I specialize in Melee Characters, other AT's usually bore me.
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I did this on Triumph in the dead of the very early morning. The only player that spotted me that I'm aware of recognized me and decided to help me out with them.|
Originally Posted by Granite Agent
I am shocked that nobody came along and ganked any of you when you were trying this in RV. Maybe the PVP scene really has gone dormant. What server?
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There were actually several players that spotted me in RV during the times I was testing strategies that decided not to engage for one reason or another, in at least a couple cases it was because they recognized me, but in other cases it might have simply been common courtesy. It is a PvP zone, though, so I was prepared to be shot at, which the other players had every right to do if they chose to.
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Not really, you can slot Fury of the Gladiator in any PBAoE, and any set can go energy master and take laser beam eyes for the achilles heel. LBE isn't a great attack, but since the lore pets are doing most of the damage reducing the res is worth it.
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Originally Posted by Smersh
You're locked into a /DB tanker if that's what you want to do.
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Quote:
I'm getting around 250 DPS (to the Rikti pylon, assuming I am doing the math correctly) with no lore pets. But that's with the boost from /Shield. That's why I ask. I realize, though, the the smashing resists are pretty brutal.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Comparatively speaking, it does. And here every little bit helps. If you are around the 170 dps that MA seems to do with good chains then against a +2 AV, which you can get with Alpha and an ultimate, your damage is down to about 135 dps not counting resistances. That is only 35 dps above the 100 dps regen rate of a level 54 AV. Even very small increases in damage above that rate are noticeable because you are operating so close to the regen rate. Fire Melee is a whole lot faster because of that.
The Lore pets can make that moot, though. They aren't affected by DR, and even something like tactics can radically increase their damage output due to their base 50% chance to hit. |
Moonlighter
50s include MA/SD, MA/SR, DP/Elec, Claw/Inv, Kat/Dark, Kat/Fire, Spine/Regen, Dark/SD
First Arc: Tequila Sunrise, #168563
Quote:
But that's outside of RV, with the full benefit of full strength damage enhancement and buffs. That will drop substantially in RV due to DR. Assuming you're getting something like say 250%-300% total damage buff (i.e. +150% to +200% above base damage including slotting) on your attacks DR will reduce that to 215% - 240% total damage enhancement. You're going to lose about fifteen to twenty percent of your damage due to DR on or around those levels of damage buff. My guess is you'll probably be around 200 dps in an equivalent situation in RV. That's not "low" in the absolute sense, but its low relative to what you can do with other primaries besides MA. I'm pretty sure Claws, Katana, and especially Fire can do better (well, I know Fire does better because I specifically tested and used it).
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Originally Posted by Moonlighter
I'm getting around 250 DPS (to the Rikti pylon, assuming I am doing the math correctly) with no lore pets. But that's with the boost from /Shield. That's why I ask. I realize, though, the the smashing resists are pretty brutal.
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Freedom for me... But people who try to gank me more often than not end up being the ones getting killed, especially when I have a spider on my side.|
Originally Posted by Granite Agent
I am shocked that nobody came along and ganked any of you when you were trying this in RV. Maybe the PVP scene really has gone dormant. What server?
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Zone PVPers are overall pretty bad and rely on builds rather than skills (and builds other people made rather than themselves) as well as "fight club" like rules, even those who pretend to be better than that. Most won't be able to adapt if you use temp powers, insps or the environment.
Some examples: use a jetpack and fly straight up. Jump into a group of NPC allies. Direct your heavy to attack the enemy and run around in circles acting like you're trying to flee, up until your heavy gets a hold or enough damage so you can swoop in for the kill. Phase, phase, phase, use the temp phase from warburg. Phasing often leads to PVPers stopping to do anything and trying to think of a snarky one-liner, at which point you can often drop phase and kill them.
As silly as it sounds, doing just that will leave most would-be gankers impotent, blubbering on broadcast about you being a cheaty mccheat person. If you type reasonably fast, trolling them is also a good way to keep them talking in their base hosp rather than coming back to fight. Keywords: carebear, scrub, sad, overpowered... Call them out on anything, from insp usage to powerset selection ; they will take the bait.
Ultimately, as I alluded to I've often had people join me fighting the AVs and we shared our time between killing heroes and killing AVs. A smart PVPer can put enough pressure to make RV AV fighting tough by attacking at the right time, but thankfully the smart ones are very few and far between.
There are two situations when you have to throw the towel rather than stubbornly stay and waste time:
- other side being ridiculously stacked. If there's twice or three times as much players against you, regardless of how dumb they play they will probably prevent you from getting any defeats out of sheer number power.
- sneaky pillbox grabber. It only takes one guy to take pillboxes and despawn your AVs, and there's not a whole lot you can do about it, unless your own side is ridiculously stacked.
I smell someone's misthinking himself/pretending to be a gosu rather than what he really is.
Let's hope this doesn't tickle the bottom of your heart. :P
You know what you really are if it does.
Someone naming himself TheGodOfGods calling out an alleged ego trip, while using the word gosu seriously. The jokes practically write themselves.
Winning in an environment largely void of competition isn't an indication of skill. Pointing out basic strategies that anyone can reproduce shows the opposite.
Regardless, thanks for your illustration of my above point regarding zone PvPers sensibilities to trashtalking.
A long time ago I solo'd a couple of them with nukes and shivans on an EM/EA brute (this was before Energy Transfer got 'fixed').
I know those powers don't really constitute properly soloing in the scrapper forum, but if you have to kill them quickly before someone despawns them or ganks you, they would be helpful.
SG: Guadians of Paragon - VG: Paragon's Darkness
The Usual Suspects: Fimboolvetr (Icer Tank), Tsukiyomi (Mind/Psi/Ice Dom), Smiting Dragon (Dm/Sr Scrap), Widow Mortis (NW)
Up and Comers: Ameterasu (Km/Reg Scrap), Arrhymian (Elec/Nin Stalk), TDMKII (Bot/Traps MM)
So, I've been working on getting the Hero AV defeat badges in RV for quite some time on my main, and I finally got them. A very long story that involves an awful lot of in-game testing and an actual kill with a triple-box solution** that ends with a kind soul coming along and helping me duo the rest of them and negating the need for that level of craziness. But in the process I thought long and hard about whether its possible to solo them, and if so with what.
Many conventional solutions to soloing AVs don't work in RV. For example, if you are a blaster like my main is, you are pretty sh-- out of luck. DR is set unusually for squishies in that defense is not on a diminishing returns curve, its actually on an asymptotic limit curve: you cannot get past about 22% defense with infinite defense buffs. And that's going to get you killed as a blaster unless you can kill them mighty fast. I think even Incarnate pets are not fast enough unless buffed. If someone can solo them on a blaster reliably, I'd like to know (I figured out a way to do it *unreliably* but you have to get extremely lucky to make it work). But popping insps, nukes, whatever, is not likely to get you there in my opinion. DR is too harsh, and especially on defense for blasters (and most squishies).
You need a lot of damage to take them out and a Brute can generate a lot of damage with Fury. Except in RV. In RV, damage is on a DR curve that makes it difficult for them to generate enough damage all by themselves, it seems. With Incarnate pets, though, I think they could do it. The problem here seems to be that you will always draw at least two AVs, and you have to draw aggro from both of them to prevent them from wiping out your Incarnate pets. That seems problematic, but doable in theory.
Controllers seem to have the best shot. Particularly Illusion controllers with the PA. The problem here is that its virtually impossible to get perma-PA in RV with recharge also on a DR curve, so you have to act fast. You can also throw in the Phantasm's decoy, but you have to be careful controlling two separate AVs. With just one controller even with Incarnate pets its tricky to control aggro that well, and most controllers don't have the damage output to kill them very fast. And under the best of conditions you're going to face them at +2 (they will be 54, with level shift Alpha and a level shift insp you will be 50+2).
I think Masterminds will have a lot of trouble due to the purple patch scaling their pets down too far vs the level 54 AVs, but its possible Masterminds could do it. I just haven't figured out how to do it myself on an MM yet.
Perma-doms could probably do it, if they could retain perma-domination in RV. But I don't see how to do that. Outside of perma-dom, they have the same squishy problem that blasters have: no buff can give them enough defense to not be a pinata, at least so far as I've been able to determine.
That leaves Scrappers as the archetype I think has the best shot at it. They can reach high levels of both resistance and defense in RV (albeit significantly attenuated under DR) and they can generate a lot of damage without resorting to high damage buffs. I know with sufficient buffs I can do it on my MA/SR. But "sufficient buffs" is a kind of ludicrous amount of inspirations, packed into my tray and email. Given the low level of damage MA puts out, all smashing, I'm guessing something with more offensive punch would need less insps, and probably do it quicker.
My question is, has anyone actually tried to do this recently, on a Scrapper or anything else? Is it something that is commonly done and I just haven't heard about it, or am I the only crazy person that has been trying.
** My triple-box solution: send in a mind dominator with sleep on auto to sleep one of the AVs and take them out of the fight, send in a Fire/Shield Scrapper with luck insps to take on the other, and deploy Cims buffed with a nuke from my blaster main while putting power bolt on auto, because the Fire scrapper doesn't have tier 4 Lore pets yet. It works, and two of the three accounts are just on auto, and it is the worst abuse of the term "soloing" I can think of.
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