54/x8-Knives of Veng-DA

Hi, I've been gone for a while a came back last month and have been going through the Dark Astoria arcs with various characters of mine trying to get a feel for how well they perform, and one thing I've noticed is that every character of mine gets steamrolled by Knives of Vengeance in Dark Astoria missions. Every character except my Super Reflexes one ends up with negative defense numbers within about 15 seconds due to the high amount of defense debuffs being thrown around and shorty after death follows. I was just wondering if anyone has had success against them with their characters on 54/x8 settings without the use of inspirations?

It's a personal preference of mine to not have to rely on inspirations and so far none of my characters can get through a Knives of Vengeance mission on these settings and no inspirations used without quite a few deaths. I'm fine using my incarnate powers but some are still T1 so they are of limited help. Any input any of you have or experiences you can share would be appreciated. Thanks.

Hard to give any specific advice without knowing which ATs you're playing with. But speaking generally, try to identify the particular enemies that tend to debuff you the most and attempt to take them out first, either with heavy single target damage or mezzes. A mezzed enemy obviously poses the least amount of risk to you. Even knockback or knockdown may give you the few seconds to take out an enemy debuffer. If you have a pet, let them soak a particularly nasty alpha. If you are straight up melee without any form of crowd control, try to time your destiny buffs with each spawn so that you are strongest when facing their first volleys of attacks.

Another tip is that Knives of Vengeance have some attacks that are targeted AoE attacks. Thus, once they use them, be vigilant and immediately get out of their area of effect.

That's all I can think of at the moment.

Thanks for your input. For AT's I'm using let's see...I've done the first few missions of the DA story arc on my...

Tankers:
WP/SS
DA/DM

Brutes:
SS/FA

Controllers:
Ill/Cold
Fire/Kin

Masterminds:
Necro/Dark
Bots/Traps

Scrappers:
TW/Energy
Fire/Shield

Dominators:
Plant/Psy

Stalkers:
Staff/SR

All have alpha and most have at least T1 of all incarnate abilities except hybrid. I usually pass around some more expensive IO's with them but all have expensive builds that focus on 45% defense, or 59% when possible, for S/L/E or positional, depending on the AT. So far all have gone SPLAT! against Knives of Vengeance.

That is with inspirations and he still had deaths. Not exactly what I'm talking about but thanks. I'm sure I could do it with all of my characters if I was using inspirations and didn't mind deaths throughout the mission.

The more I think about it the more impossible it seems though. Sometimes there will be groups with multiple bosses and with the defense debuffs, mez, to-hit buffs, and status protection buffs it seems they are able to exploit a weakness in every build I can come up with. Pets die almost instantly, defenses get debuffed into the dirt, characters get mezzed or can't mez the bosses, can't recover from the amount of hits that do get through, etc. Maybe there's something I haven't thought of though.

Well, you could always lower it below x8. Or get a teammate. Or use inspirations. Or resign yourself to going slowly and/or dying frequently. The DA content is intended to be challenging, more challenging than most normal content. If you're dying frequently at high difficulty settings while playing under self-imposed limitations you obviously want a challenge. You've got one; everybody wins!

Your answer to my question about if anyone has had success living through knives of vengeance missions on 54/x8 settings without inspirations is to lower the difficulty, get a teammate, use inspirations, and accept dying frequently. Interesting. Thank you for your input, I'll take it into consideration.

I've soloed the DA arcs, including Knives of Artemis, more than once on my DA/Elec Tanker. I used to run on 54/x8 and he can do it, albeit a bit slowly, but lately I've stopped doing it because I really don't have a compelling reason to slog through that other than the push the envelope of my build, so I usually run at +0/x8 for the drops nowadays so I can clear the missions quickly and easily.

Granted, this is with a very high-end build that makes use of HOs, many expensive IOs and tier 4 incarnate powers that I'm talking about here. Also, I don't add additional limitations on myself (i.e. I use inspirations and lots of them). I wouldn't say I rely on them to survive, however. He has Ageless Radial Epiphany on autocast, and the DDR there allows me to resist the Knives debuffs long enough to kill them all. I doubt I'd do nearly so well without it.

I dunno, I seem to do okay against most of these mob types with the Peacebringer. If I'm not savage with them, the Pantheon can give me heartache, but other than that it's not too bad.

My peacebringer is going to be my next project to see how it stacks up against them so I'm glad to hear you have found success with yours. Permanent Light Form looks fantastic but I think I'll need T4 clarion first.

They are very annoying - first, due to their resistance to be grouped up for aoes, 2nd due to their cheap 'threat' tactic of autohit aoes they use, which is a dev cheat if you ask me.

I really appreciate that link mauk2. I bookmarked it and will look through the rest of it tomorrow but this is just the kind of information I've been wanting to get my hands on. Thanks.

I've soloed at 54x8 on my Ill/Rad controller and my Inv/SS tanker... though the tanker was slow obviously due to less dps.

Wait a minute. You have a plant/psi dom. Just confuse every spawn and you'll never have to worry about their autohit attacks, debuffs, or whatever. I honestly don't know how to not solo 54 mobs on that combo. Seeds of Confusion + "Being awake and mashing your forehead on the keyboard" = Profit. It may or may not be the fastest, but it's that simple.

Not really. Your insulting comments make it obvious you don't know what you're talking about though, so I'll explain it to you. The plant/psi dom is extremely squishy and unless I'm able to get 10 enemies every time drain psyche is up, and keep all enemies in a tight enough group to get hit by seeds, I'll get dropped fast. With the way the mobs start to scatter due to my constant repositioning for the seeds cone, plus bosses running around, and various enemies being immobilized it starts to fall apart and if the enemies aren't all dead by the time I need to drain psyche again it becomes impossible.

Thank you for your clarification and advice. I do try to do what you've said but I inevitably get my defenses debuffed so I start getting cascading defense failure and there are always bosses that aren't mezzed that end up killing me. I'm not sure if it's from the Guardian's status protection buffs they have or what, but they can't be held and aren't being affected by seeds and bosses start running around like chickens with their heads cut off and are completely spread out and it becomes a mess and I end up dying.

Of course if I used inspirations it wouldn't be a problem but I've found that my character on it's own simply doesn't have the tools to reliably deal with them. I'll give it another try and attempt to slightly herd the enemies up to ensure constantly getting 10 enemies with drain psyche but I have a feeling this will only exacerbate the cascading defense failure problem and my aoe's will reach their target cap and I'll be left with loose enemies running around smashing me.

Edit: Here's the build I'm using:

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I have just been running through the DA content now for the first time. I was running it at +4/8 on my sd/fire tanker just long enough to open up my lore slot. I don't know how fast you are expecting to go, but I managed 2 story arcs in just over an hour with maybe two trips to the hospital... Now that it is open, I am going at +1 for the faster kill/drop rate.

Mind you, my defence debuff resistance really helps out. Well, that and the build is pretty tricked out.

I didn't rely on inspirations at any point, but I did not refuse to use them either. Converting to reds is always nice.

I'd say the single biggest suggestion is to get Lore and Destiny to t3 if they aren't already.

And give some consideration to using the Destiny that provides DDR, even if you only use it versus Def debuffers.


You mentioned that some of your incarnate abilities are only at t1, and if it happens to be one of the ones that provide the incarnate shift, that's a big disadvantage.

I play on Freedom and thanks for the offer, but right now I'm going to carefully consider which character I want to invest more time in and focus on maxing out all of my incarnate powers. Hopefully this, with some revised tactics, will be enough to satisfy my need to tear through these guys. Ultimately I'd like to mimic Werner's feats in his DA thread. I appreciate everyone's input so far, especially yours Schismatrix. Your advice has been particularly intriguing.

For the record, I think it's Glad Armour that does the +3% Def and Shield Wall does the +Res.