Infatum

I've been meeting quite a few new players as of late. I think they've been trickling in ever since the architect edition released.

Seems like a good sign to me

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So, again, anyone that would like, I'd be honored if you'd test Talen_Lee's critique yourself. In the mean time, this'll be the first review I've received that won't result in a single change to my arc. Some people simply can't be pleased.

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I just played it through myself with a friend. Honestly it felt like this would be a private super group initiation arc that you'd have new members run through to learn about the SG, not something you'd publish publicly. There are a lot of problems, but many of them stem simply from that alone. So I'll try to offer some constructive advice rather than leaving it at just that.

Issues
<ul type="square">[*]Far too many meaningless named characters. The amount of cameos in this arc both left precious little spotlight for the player as well as making none of them memorable in the process. I'd cut it down to just the contact, Captain Superior and one reoccuring named helper who dies in the second to last mission. [*]Why is the player working for Solus? Since this apparently isn't an SG initiation arc despite all appearances to the contrary, I'd highly advise coming up with better hooks and possibly pulling Solus out of the limelight a bit. Maybe make a Vanguard contact instead that has you work with Solus more and more culminating in the same climax.[*]The player isn't that important. This might be mitigated just by cutting down the plethora of cameos, but even some of the mission objectives feel weak by themselves. In particular the milk run (which the contact tries to assure you is more than milk run) feels very weak both from its initial presentation and from the fact you could probably just sit at the entrance and wait for the vanguard to kill everything. A less bad [censored] group would help here, or perhaps just lots of optional body bags and very few survivors.[/list]
Again though, this really feels like something you made for your SG, not for the bigger public and catering to both may simply be an impossibility. This is not a historical rikti war arc, it's a historical Solus arc, and it really shows.

If this arc included more focus on the overall war effort and Vanguard, with Solus playing less of a central role and more the "example victim" it *might* be fun, but as is I think you'd have to be a member of Solus or not really paying attention to the plot to really enjoy it.

I gave the arc 3 stars, but I was a breath away from 2. The writing is decent, and obviously a lot of work went into it, but the overall concept just isn't well suited for the general public in my opinion. *If* I was a member of Solus I'd probably be all over it, but I'm not and as a result it was a rather bumpy ride to an ending where my friend and I laughed and joked about some of the characters dying (including purposefully getting the allies killed). I'm secure enough in my manhood to say I've had other arcs actually make me misty, so what you're trying to achieve is possible it just fell very very flat as it currently is.

I think if you truly wanted to make a good arc you probably could, but I'm guessing having said arc revolve solely around Solus is too important to you. Which is fine, but won't result in good reviews or much fun for the rest of us.

If you do decide to make major changes, I'd be happy to replay it and offer more feedback.

I would assume he was only able to do one mission per arc because his ego took up the space necessary for the other four.

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Depending on how this is recieved, I'll either slink back to being a lowly lab assistant to Term, or continue doing solo reviews to supplement the lag between the official, Terminus sanctioned ones.

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I think you're doing a darn good job personally. We'll have to fix your peanut butter cookie ignorance though, I'm pretty sure that's one of the requirements for moving from mad lab assistant to mad scientist.

Favorite: Rularuu
Probably the most visually distinctive of all the current villain groups, and they're challenging in a good way.

Loathed: Thorn Casters
"OMG I cut my finger on a piece of paper! RUN!" "OMG the hero looked at me funny! RUN!"

When you factor in the fact that these guys are immortal spirits riding in borrowed bodies they probably don't even care about, they have to be the biggest damn cowards in the entire universe.

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Yeah, I didn't make it either. The Fatthim TF we did is gonna be my last hurrah for CoH. Keep up the good scrapperness!

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We're going to miss you on our TF Scranker runs Transhade. You're even crazier than me most of the time, which is of course a source of unending respect on my part

I somehow completely missed your earlier write up. I blame Monday &gt;_&gt;

Having just done a few ITFs recently I've seen some pretty bad performances even with debuffers and buffers on an otherwise competent team. Usually the main issues I see are ignoring the ambushes or letting Rommy clump up with his nicti (notably the auto-damage one). Even well supported teams can crash and burn fast when that happens, or end up stalling as no one can hit Rommy due to his phalanx fighting (while the leader continues to yell "All on Rommy! Ignore the ambushes!" *facepalm*)

I've tanked him without any support and a near wiped team, so an all scrapper ITF should be very doable. The big thing would be to pull him far enough away from the auto damage to a point where it doesn't want to catch up just yet, but you can fight Rommy without getting fried. Do that, and deal with the ambushes as they come (you may have already done that), and you should be golden. May not hurt to have some AoE heavy scrappers to purge the summons if they start to get bad too, but they're generally not an issue by themselves.

I see nothing wrong with a rocket launching witch. Sounds like a smart witch.

If you're curious *why* she had a rocket launcher, you should have asked rather than assumed it was for some meta reason (Munitions is hardly the best blaster EPP). I can think of many reasons a witch would have one, but the easiest is that she's able to summon/transmute things, and what better thing to summon when in a tough fight than some high explosive whoop [censored]?

I actually kind of like the fire, and I don't have any fiery characters. It doesn't feel any more difficult to justify than any of the other VFX associated with the costume change emotes, and if you're going to have a fire CC emote, the evil laugh does seem like a good choice for it.

Sorry to hear about the ITF guys. Admittedly once we canceled the STF I wandered off to greener pastures for the weekend. What caused the loss, Nicto-rommy?

Fantastic run everyone. 2:17, 21 defeats.

This was definitely the cherry on top of TF Scranker's Shadow Shard adventures. I honestly did not realize Overseers could wet themselves until I ran with this group.

As I mentioned in game I will be moving next weekend and thus not able to run another TF, but the weekend after that I'll be looking forward to pulling together another TF Scranker. This time something a little less Rularuu flavored, maybe something with swords and minotaurs

Thanks again everyone, it was awesome teaming with you all!

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If there's a spot open, and I can get 44, I'd love to be the token blaster-who-thinks-he's-a-scrapper on the TF, assuming such a position exists.

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If someone doesn't show you're of course welcome. It's the mindset that matters

Well from all I'm hearing I'm going to go ahead and call it off. Once the bug is fixed I'll definitely be up for setting up another date for this though.

And we're full, we usually have at least one no-show so if anyone else is interested feel free to send me a tell on the night when we're running and I'll let you know if we end up with room.

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It is all related to the MOB AI change which was bascially spawning mobs in the ready more to attack. That being said, I would still be game to try this.

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If it's just AI related then theoretically having someone with an aura at their spawn point might keep them from healing it. If everyone still wants to go for it, we can go for it, I'd just like to know we at least have a small chance of succeeding. Anyone know how the one team who succeeded in those quotes did so?

Unfortunately it sounds like I15 broke the STF. I was gathering some advice from the tanker forums when someone brought up that the repairmen are now basically unstoppable. They heal the towers right as they spawn, before anyone can do anything about them. We may have to put this on hold barring a patch before the weekend.

We were going to do it on Virtue this Sunday, there is a lot of interest in it on the scrapper boards so there's been talk of additional teams. If the repair men are unstoppable at the moment though we'll have to call it off for now, not exactly going to be able to take down recluse with his towers up.

Thanks everyone thus far, I really appreciate the advice

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I just hope your confront is well slotted with Taunt, and have a Ranged attack to multiply the effect.

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It is pretty well slotted, is a ranged attack necessary normally?

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Confront requires a “to-hit check” which will be a factor against +4 Arch-Villains. The purple patch will also shorten the duration of the taunt significantly too, but I don’t remember the scale.

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It's autohit, scrappers are actually blessed with pretty darn good taunts in our primaries, but most of us don't ever take them (I have a certain love for taunting people I've crane kicked away, but I'm strange like that )

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I don’t remember how much the defense debuff is, but it is significant.

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Good to know, I may plan for double purples while tanking him and switch off with the other scrapper when I run out.

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The repairmen are currently bugged; they are healing the towers as soon as they spawn, before they can be targeted/defeated. It would be best to wait for this bug to be fixed before you attempt your run.

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Was this introduced with I15? I did a STF shortly before then and didn't have any problems. Even if they can't be targeted is their repair ability interrupted by taunt auras?

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When we did the all-tank STF, we used the Ring of Pain temp power on Recluse to keep him from spawning Banes. That kept the confrontation less chaotic/easier. You get it on a low level arc, and it last 10 minutes I think.

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Would Rise to the Challenge work for that purpose? I'm trying to avoid using any temps if possible.

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Unless I'm misunderstanding, his comments about using Confront from range were to keep her from targeting/healing off the rest of the team while he would be outside of her melee heal range.

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That's the plan.

So we crazies on the Scrapper boards are planning an all Scrapper STF with no temps (we'll leave em enabled, but we're going to try not to use them if we can finish without them). Infatum is going to be playing main tank for this since he's silly and likes to tease villains about their weight.

I *think* I'm prepared for Ghost Widow, I can cap NE defense with one purple and I have confront to stay at max range while the rest of the team beats her down (I also have a backup "tank" to temporarily take over if things go badly, ie the hold hits).

What I'm not so prepared for is Recluse, I've read the guides, but some of the information is conflicting (Does he spawn banes if you hover tank him without an interrupt toggle on him?). So given that all we scrappers are trained to do is flip out and kill things, I figured I'd ask the experts what I can do to make it through at least the red tower stage in one piece against Recluse. Infatum is a willpower scrapper with a little over 2200 hp, 50ish S/L resists, piddly Energy resist, 40ish S/L defense and 30ish Energy defense. I have Eye of the Magus and SoW as the only click powers of relevance. Any advice that gives me more than a snowball's chance in hell would be very welcome

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Are we going to go get nukes and shivs or should we already have them? I already have mine locked a loaded lol.

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From all the people who have already mentioned having them (myself included) I think we'll be fine *if* we end up needing them. I am really aiming to just use inspires on this run though.

As to who people should bring, bring whoever you want. As Soul Fane mentioned it'd be nice to have some immobilizes for Ghost Widow, but even that is optional. The current plan is to run around wildly killing everything, with the only exceptions being Ghost Widow and Recluse, where I will hold my scrapperlock back as long as I can to play tanker on both counts, because the alternative is pretty much resorting to Shivans, and I'd rather not do that.

Soul Fane has the dubious honor of being my back up "tank" unless someone else has confront as well.

It's time for the finale of the Shadow Shard, courtesy of the everyone's favorite aspect of Rularuu, Faathim the Cellphoneless. Prepare for a whirlwind adventure of Rularuu, Storm Elementals, AVs and lots of waiting while I jog back to talk with our "Apparently gets no service in the Chantry" contact. The details:

Faathim the Kind Task Force
The Chantry
Saturday 7/4 10 PM EST / 7 PM PST
Levels 44-50
73 Merits
Scrappers, Tankers and equivalents only

As this is a TF Scranker run, I suggest you eat your wheaties and pack a few depends, because there will be plenty of chaos, debt and destruction. Probably a few team wipes too given what we're up against, but make no mistake... it will be GLORIOUS.

I've included some people who chimed in the previous thread or spoke to me in game, if you don't think you can make it please let me know so I can free up the slot.

Roster 8/8
Infatum
Soul Fane
Transhade
Sci-Fi Samurai
Brunhilda Tyrsdottir
Simplest Solution
Hellion Omega
Lapin Lazuli

Can we celebrate if we're half Canadian?

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Yes! It was GLORIOUS! We simply charged and obliterate everything we saw! And i got Hecatomb Dmg/Rech Recipe thee hee hee

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Glorious indeed. Was my first ITF on that difficulty level, and was a blast in every way. Well except for the fact that I *didn't* get a Hecatomb

Seriously though, lots of fun and a great team.