Impyre

Unless I get reliable confirmation that there is nothing wrong with the STF or that the repairmen bug has been fixed since i15 went live, MSTF Thursday won't be run this week.

We had our first MSTF Thursday since May and ended up running two teams. Talbein and Jen were good enough to form the lead on the first team which fell short in the Vine room or during the real Chief search. I think they had just finished with the Inner Circle when I logged for the night; they still had only that one death.

I led the second which wasn't your typical team, but I went with it because "Master of" was possible. We had a rad controller, a kin defender, an emp defender, a sonic defender, 3 scrappers, and me as tank. Having 3 scrappers was possible in large part because 2 of them had ranged attacks from their epic pools. The team was patient with the long instructions and were good at following them. We had a few close calls along the way but prevailed in the end.

Congratulations to Endurance-Thief, Aoi Lunaris, Arion Elan, fire-balls, Amanyta, and onry stoker of Master's badge. Aoi Lunaris also earned her "Saved the World" badge last night.

Team or Team

Technically we had our first death at about the 2:45 mark when we went to drop the Flier a second time, (after we had completed the Task Force).

Sorry for the last minute change of schedule. I am going to be delayed this evening and will try to be on as early as possible to set up the team(s).

Boricua and Arion_Elan, the two of you are signed up for tonight's run(s). A few others have already voiced that they are itching to run again. We'll have to see how many people show up tonight.

Happy Birthday!

We're running again this Thursday. June 25th, 6pm Pacific

Toggle pull on the Cimeroran Wall, (upper areas are easier) --> superspeed past 2nd mob (being careful not to exceed Darkest Night's range and breaking Line of Sight) to let them partially stack --> superspeed past the 3rd mob (again breaking LoS) so the first 2 mobs run into the 3rd mob --> tarpatch --> drop Fluffy on the mob to get over agro cap --> Aim + Blizzard --> go back and clean up Surgeons from first two mobs.

Lucks help during the toggle pull.
It doesn't always go smoothly.
Patrols wreak havoc due to agro limits.
Bosses survive the Blizzard so they must either be avoided or planned for.

I won't be able to make it to the raid.
Good luck and have a great time in the jello.

team
Congratulations to Spinnaker, Heal Bot, Phoenix Prey, and Cairnstone on earning the MSTF badge. It was a smooth run, light on instructions and strong with buffs/debuffs, (2x rad, emp, cold, & kin).

In order to give myself and others a break, there will not be any planned MSTF run the next few Thursdays. Everyone should feel free to set up runs using "STF Masters".

I will post here when we start up Thursdays again. I'm not going anywhere so if anyone wants to set up other task forces in the coming Thursdays, let me and others know using the channel.

I made it a point to warn the team to expect to retreat from the towers due to Flier respawn. Because I didn't have a precise respawn time we were going to err on the conservative side. With the DC, it made the early retreat decision a bit easier so that Broken could rejoin us for the final fight. We marked time of entry but I did not remember what the difference was to my computer clock.

Congratulations to Judas Unchained, Hyperstrike and Delacroix. It was a smooth run; minimal instructions were needed for this run. team

We had two minor close calls due to lag. One was at the doorway to the Vine AV. (Anyone that runs with me regularly and most of those who have run this with me just once will tell you I worry too much. I nag about the tiniest things). I often wait to be the 'last to enter' in this mission. In this case it made a big difference since I ended up holding some agro until the lag went away and he was able to enter. We also had part of the initial ambush go after the last to enter the Aeon mission; Siren noticed them early enough to help out. In neither case was it Broken aka Chilling Prey with lag issues.

Let's relax and enjoy the smooth run Master's run that it was. There was nothing to be bothered by in the run; everyone did a great job both as individuals and as a team.

Congratulations all. I knew I had left the team with strong leadership and experience, even amongst those who hadn't earned the badge yet.

As to the Kheldian question: The rarity of the kheldians seems to be more a reflection of how few are played. The vets with such alts have sometimes been unable to run with them because they typically "play what is needed" to improve the chances for a given team to succeed. The team is already on heightened alert for dangers, so the risk of voids, cysts, etc. is greatly minimized just by identifying them before they become a problem. That I can recall, we havent turned down a kheldian for being a kheldian; they may have been asked to alt to fill a niche other than damage. Feel free to call me out if you remember a case when that wasn't true.

We had a late start on the runs because we waited to have enough to fill a second team. We managed to field 2 fairly strong teams last night but neither team won. Our team had a death, plus a sympathetic death at the Vine AV. The other team was good until just before the Red Tower fell.

Scrappy has voiced interest in running during the weekend with possible runs on Friday, Saturday and/or Sunday. Keep an eye on STF Masters for recruitment. I won't be on that much this weekend so "good luck" to all that run.

With 13 people showing up yesterday we decided to run just one team . This also gave a break to the vets I've been depending on to lead other teams. I took the 7 people that arrived first to the boat, based on the best info I could get, (again apologies to those that didn't get to run).

With just one on the team not familiar with our plan and a team high on buffs/debuffs we ran at a faster pace. Things went smoothly until we had Scirocco add to the Ghost Widow fight. Scirocco took a shot at Animated Stone, (that Agent Onyx-5 had the presence of mind to summon), before I got his agro. That unexpected dual AV fight felt long and there was a sense of relief when we finished them off. Scorpion and Mako went down without any drama. We dropped the towers in pairs because of bad timing with the flier. Lord Recluse and the Towers ended up being easier than Ghost Widow and Scirocco. An extra trip for inspirations and an unexpected afk on my part added time to the run or we’d have been done in under 2 hours.

Congratulations to Agent Onyx-5, Hesperus, Delrune, Power Ballad, Hesperus and to Angelic Rei. This was Hesperus' first time on STF though she's a long time veteran of the CoV side of things. Thanks to Wild Sonja and Jens Toxic Radiance for helping co-lead this run.

Talbein may set up a run during the weekend but doesn't know when it may be. Keep an eye on STF Masters channel if you're interested.

Two teams ran last night but no wins. I mismanaged my inspirations during the red tower and we failed.
The other team had a mishap in the Vine room.

In hindsight I didn't do a good job of balancing last night's runs when I had a few friends who were vets join me on my team. My apologies; I didn't realize I had left the other team so short of buffs/debuffs.

Even with i14's debut there was still so much interest in running that we had to turn away 3-4 people after our 2 teams were set up. Both teams came away victorious. I'll tell you about my team . They were another fine group that followed my directions to perfection. The members had all attempted MSTF with us previously; a couple of them had the badge on alts. Because of their familiarity I was able to keep instructions to a bare minimum.

Congratulations to Leather Doll, Bow Bunny, Winifred the Weasel (Squeek!), Kipland Durj, Phoebe, and Combichrist.

Our run was relatively smooth and speedy even with the minimum empathy/kin/radiation for support. Close calls were few and far between. We also got lucky with the key on the 1st Chief.

Again no wins last night; we had 2 teams run. My team fell short during the fight against Mako and Scorpion. We also had some issues with the Towers but the team (claimed to have ) had a good time anyways. The other team restarted after early trouble and failed in the Vine room.

Because of the great amount of interest we've been getting we've been able to run multiple teams each week lately.
**taps microphone** I'd like to ask that teams be respectful of the leadership I put on the other teams. I stack any team I'm not on with as much experience as possible. I'd like to thank those that have stepped up to lead the other teams and I am thrilled with the success they've had: Sio, Scrappy and Mortal to name just a few. I ask that teams respect their instructions; they are all highly experienced with STF. Communication and unity are keys to success. Neglecting little things may have no effect 9 out of 10 tries but these little things have led to failures on my own teams in recent weeks. Above all have fun and make it fun for the entire team.

No wins last night. We had very good attendance again last night. As we were organizing the two teams, we had a couple more show up and ended up with 4 people that I couldn’t get on a team.

The other team suffered an early mishap possibly due to lag and a non-responsive Ouroboros portal. They also ended up having to run with a team of 7 in the final mission. Because it was late and we had a situation in which we couldn't handle more than one AV when they had become linked, we decided to call it a day. Thanks to everyone that participated and especially to those who stuck it out in difficult circumstances.

Our team ran into issues in the vine room when I had issues clearing the AV area in a timely fashion. That resulted in many respawns of vines and in an extended clearing time leading to the death.

On the positive side of things, Suriel was able to join in on a MSTF attempt. We also had some fun in the end by joining in with Lord Recluse in the cut scene.

Next scheduled run will be the usual Thursday night one. Keep an eye on the "STF Masters" global channel since we have a few people that have been proactive in getting a weekend run going, usually on Saturday.

Here's the team

Congratulations one and all!

Congratulations on the successful master's run.

We'll be running tonight at 6pm pacific as usual.

There was no victory last night; we finished with 3 deaths (the final 2 most likely wouldn't have happened if Master's was still possible).

The key death, to Ghost Widow's Soul Storm, makes one wonder. As far as we saw she never turned to face the team; I think she fired it at me and missed, catching the team in the process, (the team was positioned behind her). After the battle, I did a rough measure of the distance by setting a teammate as waypoint and he was over 45 feet away, which should be well outside of a Targetted AoE on me.

It was a preventable death. The Ghost Widow fight went really long because we had 2 other melee that were held out of the battle to avoid Soul Storm plus we had a DC during the fight. As such, I was very focused on my attack chain and agro. In hindsight, the team was much closer to her than I would like but I didn't see how close they were until a teammate was dying.

We had 2 blasters, 1 emp defender, 1 rad controller, 1 rad defender, 1 scrapper, 2 tanks.

The run was smooth until Aeon. A regular had recently hit 50 on his shield tanker and I let him take the lead through much of the early AV fights. In hindsight I probably should have tanked Aeon due to his unpredictability but I didn't. It was one of those situations where Aeon KO'd the tank before anyone had a chance to react.

One bright side of the failure was it provided more opportunity for the tank to test his limits and find out what he needs to do for the final mission. After the failure we took a few more chances and pushed some for speed. We finished in 2:15 or so, quick for us.

Talbein took the leadership reins for last night's run, which I greatly appreciate. If I seemed to have long pauses where I stood around during some battles it was due to an abundance of tells. I'm sure a lot of it was repetitive and other parts unnecessary minutia. The vast majority was to the tank and Talbein. Hopefully the various tidbits will pay dividends in future runs.

The team consisted of 2 tanks, 1 scrapper, 1 blaster, 1 emp defender, 2 rad defenders, and 1 kinetic defender. With the team make up, Ghost Widow figured to be the biggest obstacle; we just took that battle slowly with the scrapper and myself staying out of melee. She turned out to be not much of a problem. We finished with 5 deaths total.

All in all, it was a fun time and it was nice to have a rapid run.

I won't be around much Saturday so it will be up to others to set up a run. A few voiced interest in running during the weekend and Talbein and Scrappy will probably take the lead on getting a Saturday run set up. Ask and listen in on "STF Masters" Saturday morning to see if a run is organized.

Normal schedule. Although I was on Monday during the day, I didn't initiate a run nor were there any requests.

No MSTF badges were earned last night but it was still a successful run. I was expecting to have enough to field 2 teams last night so I stacked the first team with as much experience as I could manage. The tank, while a veteran of many runs on other alts, was tanking MSTF for the first time. The team had 5 buffers/debuffers, 2 blasters and a fire tank (not me ). They had a really good run but had a single death at Ghost Widow when she Black Holed the tank. It was an excellent run with much promise for future runs. Thanks again to everyone that stepped up to get that first (and only) run going.

In hindsight, I suggested that Inferno create a bind for the Black Hole situation in future runs. It is not uncommon for this to happen. Any regulars that are able to should monitor the tanks buff icons and help alert the team of "Black Hole" on the tank in the future.

The 2nd team run didn't happen due to the lack of a viable team. I was expecting a couple of regulars to log back on but they had RL intrude. Having 3 tanks and a scrapper and trying to fill with buffers/debuffers wasn't going to happen in a reasonable time so we ran an ITF instead.

Standard 6 pm run tonight. If we have a good turnout, I hope someone will take up the leadership for a second team.

Advanced notice: A run on Monday the 16th is possible; we get to off for President's Day.

We did run the previous Thursday, the 29th. Despite the hurdles which included having a cyst spawn too close to Aeon for my taste, the run went smoothly. That is until we had Mako decide to join the party we were throwing for Black Scorpion. The team gave warning but he had defeated a Controller before I could find him and react. With the death the scrapper felt encouraged to be more aggressive and we finished with 5 deaths or so. A lesson learned or remembered for us is to deal with Mako before Scorpion because Mako can be very hard to see until it's too late when he adds to a fight.

Welcome back Talbein Vikshus. Talbein aka Wiki Gravbot organized the team 1/31 last Saturday that went so well. It was nice to be able to relax and have another person give out the bulk of the instructions and lead. Congrats to that team and to Talbein for leading the run; may he lead many more.


I still wasn't feeling well last night, (been sick since the weekend), but decided to run anyways. My goal was to get the run in and log early but that wasn't to be. We ran with a team 2/5 that had very strong defensive buffs. It turned out to be the second longest winning run to date at just over 4 hours; Flamewrath, your record is still safe . We had timing issues both with afks and with disconnects on top of longer than normal instructions given for those unfamiliar with STF. We had some scary moments due to miscommunication during a called retreat from Lord Recluse for a Flier respawn but it worked out.
Congratulations to the MSTF and Saved the World badge earners: Nightcutter, Zues Tank, eagle beak., and Delphinia. Congratulations to Zealblaze on MSTF. Zues Tank had never gotten past the Vine AV room previously while Nightcutter and eagle beak. were on their first STF attempts ever.

I probably won't be around this Saturday but it's possible someone will organize a run.

I'm sorry that last minute circumstances forced me to miss the Monday morning run. I'm glad to see the channel being utilized to form runs even when I'm not available. Unfortunately we haven't had any winning runs this week including our regular run last night. Ghost Widow picked the other tank out of the crowd and Soul Stormed him.
After that death, the scrapper took more chances and was the other death in melee to one of the Inner Circle. It was a good run with just 1 kin, 1 emp, 1 rad for support with a completion time at about 2.5 hours. A couple people had their first attempt with us and I think they enjoyed themselves despite the deaths.

Most likely no runs this weekend. Next run will be the usual Thursday.