I'll post my big question first, so if you want you can skip my justification for asking and just post.
What team build is required to beat STF?
I made a fourth attempt at Statesman with my 50 claws / dark scrapper last night. Like two of my previous attempts, we were forced to give up after reaching the inner circle.
First and second time, we were stopped by Mako's defense. (Second time we brought a sonic defender who either wasn't doing her job or it just wasn't enough). First point: it would be really nice to be able to see debuffs that your team applies to an enemy, so that as a leader I can tell if someone is not doing their job.
Third attempt the tank bailed in mission 4.
Last night we finally had a great (so I thought) team going. Dark Defender, plant / thermal troller, empath, storm defenders, fire tank, two scrappers and a blaster. All 50s.
A little light on damage, but we've got the right (again, so I thought) set of debuffs and buffs to compensate.
So we start, and once again reach the inner circle. We kill Mako this time, no problem. Same with Scorpion. Their health just melts like any other AV. Next we pull Ghost Widow.
Ultimately we couldn't figure out how her heal worked. After first 20 minutes fighting her we figured out she was healing (as opposed to just insanely high regen). A quick search of the boards today seems to indicate that she heals off of targets within a cone, so standing behind her circumvents the problem. We had never heard of such a power, so it was assumed that it was a PBAEO target drain.
We spent an hour trying different tactics, even bringing her to the boat to have the turrets chip in, and her health bar didn't move, so once again, we gave up.
I'm thinking Kheldians are the key, just based on both their inherent powers and the inherent defense / recharge debuffs attached to their powers. Of course, Kheldians are extremely hard to come by.
Maybe trading our empathy defender for another blaster would have been enough damage?
< rant>
But why should it have to take a fifth attempt to be successful at Statesman? Why should I have to give up before starting because I can't find the exactly correct combination of power pools needed to take down those Villains?
Does it make sense to anyone else that an entire team of the most powerful hero players in the game is needed to take down any one <i>henchman</i>? Or that sometimes an entire team isn't enough?
Why is the entire inner circle standing in a line as they are? You aren't supposed to fight all of them at once. I'd like to see the team that could. But they line them up all dramatic like, like it supposed to be an even match between all four of them.
Strictly from a design standpoint, why is this mission so hard? Yes, it's supposed to be the climax of the game, the mission where you finally stop Recluse, but is the difficulty curve like running headlong into a brick wall to anyone else?
It's a common MMO mindset that the upper-level content should be nearly impossible because it creates lasting challenge for players. Maybe I'm alone on this one, but I'd enjoy running Statesman frequently if it were just easier. For me, any dramatic tension that might have come from stopping Recluse was killed the first time I fought Mako and had to give up. There's no consequence, the world keeps spinning regardless of my failure, so why bother? Granted, I've wanted to retry for the badge, the accomplishment and to see Recluse in battle, but when I do beat it my reaction isn't going to be "We saved the world!". Rather, I'm going to think "hooray, our numbers were finally better than theirs."
So, do we just need the "right" team build? Do we just need to understand our opponents better? If so, why couldn't we have been told this before we started? Couldn't Statesman say, "you need to have 8 players, including a radiation defense pool, to start", or even better, "go to the library before you start and access read through our database on the inner circle"?
I would have really like to have done more to get from 45-50 than continue failing the same task force.
