New efforts!

[umber]

I had a theory that with the right build and tactics, Mind/Earth dominators were what I called maximally soloable.  Meaning, if it was soloable at all, Mind/Earth could solo it.  If Mind/Earth couldn't solo it, it wasn't soloable.  Not for all content that could possibly exist, but for all content the devs were ever willing to create.

Would love to hear that thought expounded upon!  What made the combination of Mind Control and Earth Assault a soloing monster?

Memory perusing, I'm guessing Mass Confusion plays a big element.  If all else fails, make the baddies work for you.  Or the mass sleep then pick folks critters off one at a time (LRSF), possibly with the help a singular confuse.  Not sure about the Earth Assault set though, can't recall anything in that powerset as a standout option.

[Eskreema]

Would love to hear that thought expounded upon!  What made the combination of Mind Control and Earth Assault a soloing monster?

Memory perusing, I'm guessing Mass Confusion plays a big element.  If all else fails, make the baddies work for you.  Or the mass sleep then pick folks critters off one at a time (LRSF), possibly with the help a singular confuse.  Not sure about the Earth Assault set though, can't recall anything in that powerset as a standout option.

My guess:  least resisted damage and least defended against  type together with the secondary with most amount of -damage res, -defense and -regen.  I could see it.  That and rad/earth were good.

[Waffles]

Would love to hear that thought expounded upon!  What made the combination of Mind Control and Earth Assault a soloing monster?

Seconded. I would figure plant/fire to be the god-dominator.

[FloatingFatMan]

Seconded. I would figure plant/fire to be the god-dominator.

I think god's probably more the giving kind, that the taking... :P

[Winter Fable]

I've seen Plant/Psi/Fire Doms do missions where I just watched because they could wipe out mobs faster
than our whole team.I wanted to make one but Doms cost too much make.

[themamboman]

I've seen Plant/Psi/Fire Doms do missions where I just watched because they could wipe out mobs faster
than our whole team.I wanted to make one but Doms cost too much make.

Perma-dom was THE MOST EXPENSIVE build I'd ever had.  I think mine was fire/psi/mako.   Was fun running around the shadowshard.

The most FUN build I'd ever had was taking my original blaster (energy/energy) and slotting him with positional defenses that were better than super-reflexes scrapper.  Those IO's were amazing.  More than once, mine was the only character still standing against AVs because they couldnt' hit me very often.  And if things REALLY got rough, popping a single purple (small) put me at the cap.

Oh, how I miss those days...

[Arcana]

Would love to hear that thought expounded upon!

It has to do with a lot of things, but its a combination of Mind/Earth being good enough in all the right areas combined with being especially good specifically where the devs tend to leave vulnerabilities.  I don't think Mind/Earth is necessarily the best or fastest soloer in general, but I think where it might be only average in soloing many kinds of content, it doesn't seem to run out of ways to solo increasingly difficult content.

For me, it was obvious that the best soloers in terms of being able to solo the most things, not necessarily the fastest or the strongest soloers but the ones that had the fewest things it couldn't solo at all, were going to be the controllers and dominators.  You need enough offense to be credible, you need a proven ability to take down strong AVs, and you need a lot of control to deal with content with a lot of troublesome critters (think the Cims in ITF).  The question was which one was going to be more important: domination-enhanced control, or the utility in controller secondaries.  Ultimately, it came down to control.  With enough control, almost anything is possible.  You don't need heals and you don't need defense if you have enough control.  You just need enough offense to kill the target.  And the devs give Dominators enough offense to make it very difficult to make something only a brute or blaster could kill, but a dominator couldn't (eliminating all other factors).

Mind is a pretty obvious choice.  It has a ton of control, and moreover its control that isn't often resisted.  Having so much sleep means you can neutralize almost anything - witness Mind Control in LRSF.  And Mass Confusion is practically cheating: its the singular tool for taking care of large dangerous spawns.  Earth Assault is a more thoughtful choice.  It came down to a number of factors in its favor.  First, it has power boost.  Second, of the sets with power boost (Earth, Ice, Energy) it had the most mez: more reliable knock than energy, and also a max 3/4 hold. 

Why not Plant/*?  Plant has more interesting effects and a similar AoE confuse, but in my opinion it has less overall control.  It cannot stack holds as well as Mind.  And the combination of sleep, confuse, fear, knock for me beats out the effects of Plant.

Personally, I think my Ill/Rad solos far better than Mind/Earth in general, and it has much better general utility.  Its useful in more ways in more places.  But there are some things it just can't do.  It cannot put six AVs to sleep simultaneously and permanently.  It cannot confuse an entire room and have it destroy itself.  Its pets cannot be controlled so its limited in environments where you have to deploy its power in very specific ways.  The PA can be significantly neutralized by geometry (meaning, they are difficult to deploy in the way you want if you are restricted in where you go and where they are supposed to go).

If I was thinking of winning in more straight up fights rather than trickery, I might be thinking more Plant/Psi.  Plant has more exotic offensive potential, and in a real fight Drain Psyche is the fighting equivalent to Mass Confusion: practically cheating.

Now why did I think Mind/Earth was maximally soloable, in the sense the devs would not make content it couldn't solo?  When I look at the bag of tricks Mind/Earth uses, they are the bag of tricks the devs tend to leave alone.  They will make things with a lot of defense, and certainly with a lot of offense.  They will even make critters immune to certain effects like knock or hold.  But they don't make critters that are immune to hold, sleep, confuse, fear, and knock simultaneously.  They can't, or they toss most normal controllers out the window.  The main weakness of Mind/Earth is that it isn't an offensive powerhouse: its theoretically possible to make content that a Fire brute, say, can kill but Mind/Earth can't.  However, if we're talking about unlimited building, that's very difficult.  With a strong enough build Mind/Earth can deal a significant amount of damage, and on top of that the Dominator's damage mods make it difficult to completely bypass them on damage.  In fact, Dominators have the second highest melee mod (at 1.05 only Scrappers had a higher mod at 1.125 - Blasters had 1.125 ranged mod, but only 1.0 melee).

The devs main way to make content more difficult was to stack an increasingly amount of debuffs.  Eventually, critters could stack enough debuffs that only the SR scrappers and Granite tankers were left standing, if that.  If you're going to approach this exercise from the "I will simply out-tough the devs" then you're unlikely to always win.  The devs will keep stacking until you lose.  You need to be able to reduce the numbers until they are manageable, then kill whatever's left. 

Why couldn't the devs simply realize all of this one day, and change tactics?  Specifically make things that Dominators, and my Mind/Earth in particular, found more difficult than everyone else, just to balance things out?  Because the devs painted themselves into a corner with Dominators.  Dominators were bracketed by Controllers on one side and Blasters on the other.  Its extremely difficult to make content difficult for Dominators that isn't even harder for Controllers or Blasters or both.  Think of a way to make something easier for Controllers, easier for Blasters, but harder for Dominators.  I can make content specifically harder for Blasters, specifically harder for Masterminds, specifically harder for Scrappers.  I don't think its possible to make content specifically harder for Dominators and no one else.  Dominators exist in a blind spot for devs making hard content, and Mind/Earth lives in the hardest part of the blind spot to target.  Without trying to articulate years of thought, that's what makes me think Mind/Earth is maximally soloable. Not because its the best anywhere, but because its never the worst everywhere.

[blacksly]

I had a theory that with the right build and tactics, Mind/Earth dominators were what I called maximally soloable.  Meaning, if it was soloable at all, Mind/Earth could solo it.  If Mind/Earth couldn't solo it, it wasn't soloable.  Not for all content that could possibly exist, but for all content the devs were ever willing to create.

Mind / EARTH? Why not Mind / Psy?
Earth does more DPS in general, but when you're looking at edge cases, having a Regen shutdown power seems more relevant than more DPS. Mind/Earth does add more control, but is that important enough to beat out Drain Psyche?

To put it another way... Mind/Psy could solo an AV who has 10x the normal amount of HPs, since he'll still have 0 Regen unless DP misses. But in that case, Mind/Earth just couldn't beat its regeneration even with a boss permanently Confused to help add to DPS.

[Twisted Toon]

Seconded. I would figure plant/fire to be the god-dominator.

Great...now I need to make The Burning Bush

Stop it, people!  Stop giving me more character concept ideas!!!!!

[Nyx Nought Nothing]

Great...now I need to make The Burning Bush

Stop it, people!  Stop giving me more character concept ideas!!!!!

You (and the rest of us) also need functioning servers. When the servers were up if i got a character concept at 4 am that i absolutely needed to make i could just log on, find a server with an empty slot, make the character, and be back asleep by 8.

[Aggelakis]

You (and the rest of us) also need functioning servers. When the servers were up if i got a character concept at 4 am that i absolutely needed to make i could just log on, find a server with an empty slot, make the character, and be back asleep by 8.

(Emphasis mine.) It's so true.

[Arcana]

Mind / EARTH? Why not Mind / Psy?
Earth does more DPS in general, but when you're looking at edge cases, having a Regen shutdown power seems more relevant than more DPS. Mind/Earth does add more control, but is that important enough to beat out Drain Psyche?

To put it another way... Mind/Psy could solo an AV who has 10x the normal amount of HPs, since he'll still have 0 Regen unless DP misses. But in that case, Mind/Earth just couldn't beat its regeneration even with a boss permanently Confused to help add to DPS.

The question is: do the devs ever do that?  They've been burned before by making critters with regeneration that's too high; its too easy to make regen so high whole teams can't bring the target down.  When that happens, they always back off.  So while shutdown levels of -regen are certainly useful (its one of the reasons Ill/Rad is one of the best single target killers around) it didn't seem likely to me that would ever be the determining factor for soloing hard content in CoH.

On the other hand, Earth doesn't just have single target DPS, it also has power boost.  Power boost synergizes well with Mind because it has such long duration sleep and confuse effects in the first place.  In fact, power boosted mass confusion under domination can actually be made perma.

[Arcana]

Here's a thought experiment.  Suppose we look at all of the combat tasks involved in acquiring all of the CoH badges.  Some of those badges cannot be soloed simply because of time gates or other impossible to solo tasks (like clicking two blinkies at the same time).  But suppose we look at the tasks involved for all of that content, and ask which archetypes and powerset combinations are capable of performing the most of them.  So for example Master of ITF has no barriers to being soloed intrinsically, so we will only count archetypes capable of accomplishing the entire task.  Its not possible to solo Dr Q (because you have to click two blinkies at the same time) so we'll judge any archetype capable of soloing Dr. Q except for using a filler for the click gates.  It doesn't seem mathematically possible to solo an entire mothership raid because its not possible to defeat the pylons fast enough to initiate it, so we'll only count the ability to bring down pylons and hypothetically defeat the critters on the ship.

Given those parameters, which archetype or archetypes and which powerset combination or combinations have the best chance of completing the most such tasks with reasonable probabilities of success (for example, if you can complete a TF at all, there's always a chance at a master completion, but its not reasonable to need a thousand cracks at it to get lucky).  I propose Mind/Earth, even over my beloved Ill/Rad.  Given unlimited resources to build it any way desired, is there a combo that can complete more tasks, and if so which combo and which tasks is it likely to be more successful at?

[Lupur]

*snip*

I'm going to have to say..

Anything // REG  Tanker.. *stares longingly at the sunset due to lost proliferation opportunities whilst shedding a single manly tear..*

Seriously though, I would imagine that there would have to be some sort of clutch survival aspect.

Controllers / Doms seem like the obvious choice, as long as they have some sort of near-constant "Power Boost" / big debuff happening, since survivability should never really be an issue.

I mostly played Melle, and scaled my toons to ridiculous defence ( WP tank with 52 def + darkest night + hp cap + silly big regen numbers ) or just all out 'deeps for the lols'.

My vote goes to Dark // Dark Corruptor ( the only 'real' ranged toon I had).
Did some quick MIDS-ing, and with SO's i can get ~ 32% def vs all, and 2 hits from one of the cones is ~-14% def, as well as having darkest night on top of that, and fluffy, and the pile of shiny toys from //dark to help with control / -res / -reg, and all that.

Very cruisy, very safe build that should be able to do just about anything.

o7 lup

.. still.. /tear

[Winter Fable]

I remember reading on the forums that people were talking about soloing TF's with Tanks,Scrappers and Brutes.If we are talking about no time limit and being safe then Dom's,Trollers and Masterminds have an almost unfair advantage.I've watched them go
through mob after mob while I'm dead and they do that walking against the wind thing.For those of you that not only survived
but killed all the mobs while the rest of us were dead....Hated You!!!!! :)

[Void Huntress]

I remember reading on the forums that people were talking about soloing TF's with Tanks,Scrappers and Brutes.If we are talking about no time limit and being safe then Dom's,Trollers and Masterminds have an almost unfair advantage.I've watched them go
through mob after mob while I'm dead and they do that walking against the wind thing.For those of you that not only survived
but killed all the mobs while the rest of us were dead....Hated You!!!!! :)

I was a single encounter away from being able to solo ITF on my blaster on Live. It should be easy to guess the one. Never quite found a reliable way to get through it.

[Arcana]

I'm going to have to say..

Anything // REG  Tanker.. *stares longingly at the sunset due to lost proliferation opportunities whilst shedding a single manly tear..*

You would do better with an SR tanker.  I know a lot of people wanted Regen tankers, but Regen would be a problematic choice for tankers because Regen's performance would lack stability: it would be far more powerful than most tankers much of the time, but in many scenarios it would fall apart like wet tissue.  I'd be nervous even taking a Regen tanker to the Storm Palace.

On the other hand, when they handed SR to Tankers, I don't think the possibility was around long enough for people to realize the full potential.  I assumed that when the devs proliferated SR to tankers they would have to make changes to avoid certain problems.  They didn't.  SR tankers are soft capped pretty much right out of the box.  Their scaling resistances still go from zero to 60% but now they get the benefit of Tanker caps which means they can stack resistance up to 90% whereas Scrappers top out at 75% (Tanker slotted tough gets to 23.4%, which means all by itself Tanker sliding resistance for S/L tops out at 83.4%, and there's lots more resistance you can build for with inventions).  You're just missing a heal, and SR/DM would give you that.

To be honest though, come I24 Bio Tankers were going to be just plain stupid.  I recorded and uploaded this video of a Bio tanker in I24 beta tanking the aggro cap of +5 Rikti with common IOs at level 32, just to show beta testers what my calculations were implying (which, in a repeat of Willpower, no one seemed to fully believe).  No invention sets, no Hamis, not even all my slots.  Nobody does that at level 32.  Not Regen, not Willpower, not even perma-Eluded scrappers back in the day.  This is the only tanker primary that legitimately gives Granite Armor a run for its money, and its strong against psi.  Oh, and I think this was after they toned it down a bit.

I had plans to roll a Bio/Staff tanker the instant I24 landed.

[Auroxis]

I remember reading on the forums that people were talking about soloing TF's with Tanks,Scrappers and Brutes.If we are talking about no time limit and being safe then Dom's,Trollers and Masterminds have an almost unfair advantage.

Do they? Melee classes get close to unlimited use of their godmode in that case. Just godmode, kill stuff, rest, repeat. And DPS with all the incarnate stuff was pretty high near the end, so the godmode might actually last long enough for the entire final encounter.

[Arcana]

Do they? Melee classes get close to unlimited use of their godmode in that case. Just godmode, kill stuff, rest, repeat. And DPS with all the incarnate stuff was pretty high near the end, so the godmode might actually last long enough for the entire final encounter.

"Might" is a tricky evaluation if your tier 9 crashes.  Crash protection was coming to I24, but now you have to consider the build costs of going that route relative to what the opportunity cost of those powers and slotting are.

Also, not all melee defensive sets had "god mode" powers.  Some had useful but not the same kind of power: Willpower and Shield had weaker buffs that didn't fully crash, Dark and Fire had rezzes (albeit an interesting one in Soul Transfer).  What you call "god mode" powers were given to Electric, Energy, SR, Ninjitsu, Invuln, and Stone.  On top of that, Elude was less useful in the age of inventions, and Electric's was arguably not worth the cost for scrappers and stalkers (because of resistance caps).

Also, curiously every single one of them was vulnerable to mind control, from Granite to Elude.  A room full of mind control critters would instantly nullify the usefulness of all of the genuine tier 9 "god mode" powers (things like Strength of Will would be useful, but its not considered a god mode).

[Codewalker]

Crash protection was coming to I24, but now you have to consider the build costs of going that route relative to what the opportunity cost of those powers and slotting are.

Are you talking about Unrelenting? That part of it was scrapped in early I24 beta, maybe even before it went to beta.