Seldom

This is what I tried...for instance, I jumped behind the train, she jumped over to target me (melee range) aaaaaaaand...crossbow. It was odd, and a bit buggy. I was practically begging her to hit me in the face with her sword, but all she wanted to do was shoot me in the eye, point blank.

Believe me, that's the way it's supposed to work. Hence why I posted this in the bugs section.

I spent a half hour with the team bouncing around in rotation, but she would not even activate her sword powers on me (Inv/ss, fully slotted taunt, softcapped) even for the exended periods of melee confrontation. The only way to get her to pusue was to be outside of her crossbow range, which was a great distance. The lack of cover made corner pulls difficult, but when done to get her face to face, she would use the crossbow. (Ignoring the sword.)

The fact that her iconic weapon was her sword, but her crossbow was her go-to weapon was frustrating, considering that it allowed her to root herself often.

As to immobilizes: the only immobilizes on the team were the blaster, and the possibility in the Ma/ scrapper. The controller did manage a few holds for containment, but that became counter-productive when the melees closed in and the fire always followed, so they had to clear out but she couldn't leave. See: rooting within blue fire problem for melee characters.

I'm well aware of the way the encounter is supposed to work, but refusal to go melee and pursue, using a slower attack chain to my tanker's face (crossbow>crossbow>crossbow>crossbow>etc.) seems buggy to me. Let me be clearer: in a situation where almost any enemy in the game with a melee ability would result in an enemy using said ability and using a melee mode, battle maiden did not do so in my encounter. She was 'stuck' in ranged mode for a half hour until the team quit the task force due to inability to progress. (Yes, I clocked it, as we'd cleared most of her ambushes, and were just working on her. Also note, this was after a period in the encounter before I'd begun clocking, but I won't play that in as it cannot be quantified.) She simply would not put het crossbow away.

The lack of pursuit on battle maiden's part and persistence in using ranged abilities in melee even with a hand to hand engagement for an extended period seemed counter to the design of the encounter. As such, I assume this was a bug, and a frustrating one at that.

Yes, we tried to do the pull circuit, but the limit of my taunt range compared to the ever-present crossbow mode meant I had to get closer to taunt than she had to to shoot; this meant she could be rooted for longer than I, and thus ended up standing cozily within her blue fire kill zones. I assume she is meant to be able to go into melee mode and pursue a tanker taunting, punching, and leading, yet her dogged crossbow training greatly inhibited this.

The part that really made me think it was a bug was this: when I was melee, there would be a long pause between her darts. Yet even if I was melee and she had to choose between a sword attack or the crossbow, she'd be idle until her crossbow recharged.

For half an hour, as she slowly regenerated amongst the very low damage we could deal.

Here was my process: move out of flame/wait until flame disipates.

When she was in the flame, taunt at as soon at it recharges, while ducking flames.

When she swas out of the flame, open with bruising, throw as high a damage string as possible, taunt when it came up, pulling back when the blue signal went out. She would use one attack while in melee, while at range, while she was moving, while I was moving: crossbow. She was simpling stuck on it.

As I said, standing melee as often as possible, pulling with taunts, corner pulling, the shiny sword of hers made its debut twice over a half hour period. Any pulling/stepping out of melee resulted in the crossbow. The longest string of honest-to-goodness melee attacks she used were three in a row. (I counted.) the rest; crossbow arrow, again and again. I'm not sure whether increasing the crossbow recharge, making her prefer melee, or what would fix this, but the way the AV would stand for extended periods in unresistable/autohit damage areas was pretty crippling to melee damage in the encounter.

I love the idea of a moving battle that keeps one on their toes..but the AV getting stuck in an immobile/ranged rut made the encounter seem a bit buggy, and hurt the whole of the movement. Having her try her best to close in on her targets at all points would help tremendously.

Slight adjustment on my part.

Hm. There are some skews I see...a lot of the suport types are female, the frontliners skew male. Not a rule of thumb, but it happens. Strangely enough, I tend to be a bit contrary on that, with my female knight tank, pipe-wrench wielding lady brute, and female frankenstein brute. Likewise, my support types skew male.

Hm. I can count on my hand the number of stone tanks I've seen that are female.

Eh, everyone knows "guided" education beats ignorance. Ignorance believes and follows anything. When you're the one painting the picture, though, you're much more likely to gain their cooperation.

On topic: for the Praetorian civilian/police/etc populace:

Handrails on inclines: counter to popular opinion, when going up a ramp/staircase, the handrails in the center do NOT present an irresistable force of entrapment. They are not magnatic, gravitational, or sticky. Just move along them, not into them.

Hmmm..not sure if this game is a good judge of popularity. Tankers are not the most popular archetype in-game. But doms have been upward-trending, starting with the AT's revisions and then once they could go blueside.