Talking to another enforcer the other day, I mentioned I can solo city ground. The other enforcer seemed impressed by this, so I figured I'd write a guide here to show how you can fairly easily do this.
I've soloed quite a few city raids with the setup and tactics described here, killed each type of general at least once, and got a few lead bots for my effort (among others, 2x supple).
First some basic tactics:
There are two important aspects to soloing city ground: damage and survivability.
Damage should be obvious: If you don't kill fast enough you'll get stacking waves and die, or your CC will drain so you don't get a boss. You need _enough_ damage, but you don't need to go overboard on it.
For survivability, I've chosen to focus on evade close and AAD. All the other enf survival tricks such as cocoon, mango HoT, heal perks, and layers should be obvious, and available regardless of what gear you choose.
Gear:
When killing the waves, I use this setup. I've chosen not to use combined in most slots, as even 1% crit chance is worth more damage over time than the +10 damage from strong armor. Also, DB skirt and arms have more AAD than strong armor. I'd like to wear 2x DB sleeves, but I only have one, so I'm wearing CM as a second best on my other arm. In Utils, the two other AAD devices from alba would be far better than Boon and Star. Hands is the only slot where I think CM is better than any of the alternatives.
When the general spawns, I swap armor on head, feet, right finger, and sometimes wrists, ending up with something like this setup.
There are tons of ways my setup could be improved. I'm posting my setup not to brag, but to show how you don't need to be stinking rich to achieve a useful setup for this task. Indeed, I think combined armor is worse than the (cheaper) alternative in most slots.
Tactics:
I always fill the CC to 100% before I start. In my experience, this puts the CC at about 20% when the general spawns. I once thought I'd be smart and save some CRU by filling only to 78% -- this is my only "failed" raid so far, as the CC ran dry during one of the last waves, so no general showed up. Moral of the story: CRU is cheap, so don't be greedy.
The hacker waves are very easy with my setup. I usually hit cocoon at the beginning of the fight, so that I can safely use challenger for a little extra damage (I also use the challenger-like LE procs all through the raid). Mango once in a while should be all the healing you need for this, so don't waste Lifeblood or Bio Regrowth unless absolutely necessary (but feel free to frivolously spam Bio Rejuvenation and Blessing of Life whenever you feel like it). At some point during these waves, I usually remember to use my reflect graft. Sometimes I get an add with a lot of HP so that I don't manage to kill it before the next wave. In these cases I switch to the hacker, and continue killing the adds once the hacker is dead. I can't remember having had more than one mob stacking like this, but I think it's theoretically possible.
Once the boss spawns, I immediately hit cocoon to give me time to swap to the defensive setup from the gear section. Now, the generals come in different difficulties. In my experience, the ankari, jaax, and xoch are fairly easy. At least the xoch is semi-afkable, especially with an SL essence up. I can stand next to my computer playing bass, and just hit mango once in a while to top up the HP.
Ilari, rimah, and cha are in my experience fairly hard, which cha possibly being the hardest. For these guys, I will get busy spamming layers, keeping the mango hot running, and hitting cocoon and the tiny heal perks as soon as they refresh. I generally use offensive perks only as time allows during nano recharge, or when cocoon is up. I still find that I usually don't need Lifeblood and Bio Regrowth, but save them for emergencies or when I need a short break from the survival work. I also find that I can run out of nano when city advantages disappear, and the two perk HoTs are useful for letting my nano pool refill.
Remember that for the general, your damage no longer matters, as short of falling sleep or LDing, you'll win as long as you outdamage their natural regeneration. (and you can't alpha kill these guys).
So that's it. I don't believe I'm in any way especially good at this -- it should be doable for any well equipped 220 PvM enf. While Opifex may have a slight advantage here with more evade close from trickledown, and effortless 781 psychic, there shouldn't be anything to stop a trox from doing the same. A trox might need slightly better gear, but there's a lot that can be done to improve on my setup. (like getting some symbs above 240 for starters). Thanks for reading, and I hope it was useful for some.
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Originally Posted by Achknan
