Kosmos

Between beta and live I've soloed this arc 40+ times with a wide variety of characters and have used a number of tactics to defeat him. I've passed the strategy to several friends by cut-and-paste in PMs and e-mails and the advice has worked for them, so I decided to go ahead and turn that document into a mini-guide...

Soloing Trapdoor

I've been called on to provide this advice a number of times now, so I decided to write a mini-guide to point to instead of cutting-and-pasting repeatedly in PMs and e-mails.

The various tactics that I have found to be successful against Trapdoor can be characterized as follows...

A) STEAMROLLER: This method relies on overpowering Trapdoor's Regen. Many high damage characters can just take out Trapdoor while ignoring his bifurcations. Characters with significant -Regen (including Envenomed Dagger temp powers) can substitute that for damage, since most of Trapdoor's difficulty arises from his bifurcation's Regen buffs. Use what you have to boost your burst damage and just pound him flat before he gets to be too much of a crowd. If you go straight at Trapdoor he'll be at 69.6 HP/s Regen right off and that will go up 58 HP/s roughly every 33 seconds as he bifurcates (that's if he's a level 50 Elite Boss). You need to do a net 4016 pts of damage to him to defeat him. So to beat him in 33s you need roughly (DPS - 69.6) * 33s > 4016 HP or DPS > 192. To beat him in 66s while ignoring the bifurcations you need around 160 DPS. After 66s the DPS needed starts going up rather than down, as his Regen will be 185.6 HP/s at that point. So, you need an effective DPS (including -Res, -Regen, -Rech which effectively works as -Regen by delaying his bifurcation, etc) of about 160 damage/second to make this workable. Note that an Envenomed Dagger will do -250% Regen for 10s with a 1.2s cast time (ArcanaTime). Add in the 160.6 pts of Lethal and Toxic damage and that means Envenomed Dagger has an effective damage of 276.6 if Trapdoor has no bifurcations and an astounding effective damage of 740.7 if he has one or more. So if you use it every 10s that means your average DPS otherwise needs to be DPS * 0.88 + 74.1 > 160 or DPS > 98. So with an Envenomed Dagger (used optimally and with perhaps as many as 7 charges) you need around a 100 equivalent DPS from other sources to beat Trapdoor using this tactic.

B) CLONE WARS: This method is based upon minimizing Trapdoor's Regen by eliminating the bifurcation buffs quickly. High mobility or ranged characters with moderate damage can have success by taking out the bifurcations as they appear and working on Trapdoor in between. Nothing fancy here, and presumably the intended method of defeating this nuisance. Note that Trapdoor's base Regen is only 11.6 HP/s, so if you spend half your time defeating bifurcations you only need to average around 85 DPS to do more damage to him in those 16s of attacking him than he regenerates with his base Regen plus a bifurcation buff up half the time. The DPS needed being DPS > (11.6 + 58 * percent of time spent on bifurcations) / (1 - percent of time spend on bifurcations). That value approaches the 160 DPS needed for the "Steamroller" tactic if you take more than 22 seconds to defeat a bifurcation. So if you can't manage to defeat the bifurcations and re-engage Trapdoor in, say, 20 seconds or less on average (this requires 120 DPS during the 13s period where you're fighting Trapdoor), then this tactic isn't for you. If you can defeat the bifurcations and return to Trapdoor in 15s you only need about 70 DPS to succeed.

C) BIND-AND-GRIND: This method simply stops Trapdoor's bifurcation +Regen buffs altogether. Characters who can stack Mez to prevent Trapdoor from bifurcating can concentrate on mezzing Trapdoor (don't worry about damage in this phase, just stack mez as fast as you can) to the point where he will stay mezzed while you take out a bifurcation and then you can grind down Trapdoor at your leisure. Make sure to keep him mezzed constantly once you have him under control - this means defeating one bifurcation at a time if he somehow managed more than one. Trapdoor has normal EB status protection, so to use this method you need to be able to stack 7 Mag of either Hold or Stun and maintain it. Though I can't personally confirm it, Confuse has been reported to work as well. The disadvantage of that is that he will still summon the bifurcations, but the advantage is that as long as he's Confused he shouldn't get the buffs (this is the part I haven't confirmed with a Power Analyzer), so maintaining the 7+ Mag constantly shouldn't be as important with Confuse.

D) LAVE IN LAVA: (NOTE: THERE ARE MULTIPLE REPORTS OF THE LAVA DOING NO DAMAGE TO TRAPDOOR - I haven't tested this to see if happens all the time or whether it is an intermittent bug as occurs with the lava in Who Will Die Episode 1.) This method is a way of supplementing your damage output using the lava so that you can overcome Trapdoor's Regen. As stated in the "Steamroller" section, you need an effective DPS of 160 or higher to overcome Trapdoor's Regen while ignoring his bifurcations. The previous tactics are for those that can manage that DPS, or that can deal with the Regen buffs from the bifurcations in one way or another. Basically, that means low damage toons lacking holds or the ability to quickly acquire and defeat the bifurcations probably will need help either from a teammate, a temp power, or the lava. The latter is always available (though can be problematic for Masterminds - I suggest temp powers and the "Steamroller" tactic for them). So...

1) Aggro Trapdoor.

2) Immediately take out the bifurcation he summons.

3) Try to drag Trapdoor to the lava. This can be tricky at times since he may move while you're defeating the bifurcation, but it's usually not too hard. You're a level 50, you should have plenty of practice with making the AI critters dance to your tune. If you're having trouble then I suggest you duck under a catwalk till he jumps in, then move to a rock in a manner that keeps him from leaving the lava when he follows you. The latter, in practice, just means that you make sure there's an unbroken stretch of lava between where he is and where you move to. The key is that you have to take out the bifurcation fast, locate Trapdoor and then move to a location that is out of his line of sight and will lead him to move through the lava to reacquire that line of sight to you.

4) If you can't get him to the lava within about 25 seconds or so then drop back to a good vantage point and wait for the next bifurcation.

5) Repeat steps 2 through 4 until you manage to get him in the lava with no bifurcations and a bit of time to work on him. You may need to bring a fair number of green inspirations to offset the lava damage you will take. And perhaps purples and break free class inspirations to prevent Trapdoor himself from defeating you. However, it does help that most characters that need the damage boost provided by this tactic have either mitigation or healing of their own (or both).

6) Hit him with your best possible damage output (use reds, temps, whatever) and ignore any new bifurcations. Try to avoid a situation where you have to spend time defending yourself by using purple pills and break frees. This allows you to concentrate on doing damage. With this approach you don't need to do much damage however. If a new bifurcation shows 16s after you re-engage Trapdoor while he's in the lava you only need about 130 DPS combined between you and the lava to take him down to 25% in 50s. And the lava appears to do 145, though I'd heard 116 before and it's hard to time accurately. Even if he bifurcates just as you start attacking then you will only need at most 75 DPS for 33s to beat him. The central component of this tactic is to get him in the lava with a good amount of time to work on him while he has one or fewer bifurcations.

I had a friend who experience issues with the Windows + E key combo due to the ATI Hotkey Poller. (I suggested he turn the poller off and the problem went away, but I'm not sure if that's all he did.) Do you have that running?

Hover has a +50% speed buff and -51% unenhanceable speed debuff (it's actually split into a +50% unenhanceable buff and -101% unenhanceable debuff).

At level 50 the base speed is 21.48mph, so Hover has 10.74mph of enhanceable buff. So each SO would about 3.5mph mph and at the soft cap (+95%) you're adding 10.2mph to your Hover speed.

Swift's buff is 1/5th that of Hover.

I don't thinks it's practical to get to the fly speed cap without Siphon Speed or Accelerate Metabolism. My Rad Def uses Power Boost and Accelerate Metabolism and so is at the cap most of the time.

So, is it worth slotting for Fly Speed? On a ranged toon, maybe not, but I usually add a second anyway. On a melee toon I always add a second Fly Speed.

Here's the contact page for support.

WW, thanks for the update, and the emphasis on quality control.

How many slots do you have for powers?

If you're slot poor I'd consider Leviathan and Soul. With Leviathan you just take Water Spout, Hibernate and Shark Skin and use 3 extra slots in the last. Hibernate is handy for a /TA Controller, and Water Spout is useful even with a single slot. For Soul you get Dark Embrace and Soul Drain and maybe Dark Consumption. It requires more slots to get top value, but you can get by with just 2 power choices.

If you have more slots then you should decide if you can use END recovery tools (Soul, Mu) or not, and then whether or not you want to slot up an attack or pet.

Nov 3

There are three KB Protection IOs: Karma for Defense powers, Steadfast Protection for Resistance powers and Blessing of the Zephyr for movement powers (not including Sprint, prestige sprints, Swift, Hurdle, Lightning Reflexed, Quickness or the like).

You can also get KB Protection from 4-slotting Kinetic Crash (Knockback) or 5-slotting Gladiator's Javelin (Ranged) or 3-slotting Fury of the Gladiator (PBAoE) or Gladiator's Armor (Resistance).

CoHPlanner.com

I'd go for #2, as I find it very annoying to have to redo costumes that I like because textures or shades no longer match from piece-to-piece.