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I know, making a complete 180 turn on my opinions is kind of hypocritical, but [censored], I just beat an LRSF which had honestly everything going against it.
It all began when I was playing my widow, and saw a broadcast for one spot left on an LRSF go out on my server's main global channel. This was the same person I teamed with two nights before during the failed LRSF that inspired me to create my whiny "LRSF is broken!!! BAAAAWWWW!!!!" thread. My initial reaction was to ignore him completely. There was no way I was putting myself through that again. But, I figured I didnt have anything else to do really, so I might as well give it another shot.
I asked what the team makeup was before I started, and it sounded very promising. Two brutes, one of which was stone, a widow, three corrs (two kins, one dark), and a dom. It sounded good, so I asked for an invite, and we were on our way.
The first warning light went off when it became apparent that half the team consisted of newbies. One of which came right out and admitted to being PL-ed by AE farms. Questions like "What are badges" "how do you get to nerva" "whats a GM" were all commonly heard.
We get to the first mission and things do not go well. The tech spawns in the first radar tower, which means I have to lead him all the way around, before I get ambushed by a massive wave of longbow. Deaths were happening left and right. But I consoled myself with the knowledge that they were only happening because we were so spread out. We get to crimson, and to my surprise he goes down very quickly.
Mission two begins with us taking on Kronos, as per usual. We have a death or two, but nothing too bad. Kronos goes down and we head in. I ask if anyone can stealth to the end. One teammate tries, dies, and has to be teleported back and rezzed. Eventually we get to the end, and the other widow grabs the orestes rifle. We take on slinger, and manage to take him down.
Mission 3 was a mess. We all gathered on the top of the atlas globe, I pulled numina, and she promptly hovered just out of melee range. Our dom fell off, and couldnt get back up. We all piled on babs, who was in range, until I remembered we could fight numina in the air. I hit my jetpack, but numina was promptly hit with a -fly and plummeted to the ground. About half the team attacked her while the other half sort of milled around on the atlas globe. Eventually we took them all down, and it was on to mission four.
I entered the mission, stealthed to the vindicators and waited for everyone to get in. Once they did, I team recalled them to me. Unfortunatley, our main brute had no idea what was on the other side of the doors, opened them up and waltzed right in. I promptly braced for a team wipe.
...which never came. We ran through the defeat order like clockwork, and I don't think we ever had a single death.
However, I ended up pulling a monumentally stupid move and shot myself in the foot by saying this:
"Wow, I am amazed. I end up with a team of complete newbies, and we still manage to completely kick the vindicator's [censored]. Awesome job all!"
It was a compliment...sort of...more like an insult followed up by a compliment. This had the effect of angering the newbies, angering the people who were not newbies, and making our other widow ragequit. The same widow who was carrying the orestes rifle.
Its a good thing I wasn't sitting at a desk, because my head would have rocketed into it.
With the entire team bickering, we managed to clear all the way to the codes (a group was standing right in front of the glowie), and headed to liberty. To my, and everyone elses surprise, she went down very quickly. (ba dum tish)
Before mission five began, I asked if anyone had shivans or nukes. Nobody said anything. Mentally sighing, I asked that everyone go to oro and pick up some inspirs.
We get into mission five, and person who formed the SF immediatley starts saying that we need nukes. I really don't feel like taking the time to get them, and I have confidence in our team. I am still worried as all hell though. Our basic strategy was to have the dom die, tp him back, fire veng with the two characters who had it, hit all our inspirs, and let the stone brute tp in.
Although we wiped on the first run, we did manage to get numina down to a sliver of her health. Seeing how close we were, we zipped back in, repeated the strategy, zoomed in, and took her down. We began attacking sis, but wiped when she was at about 50% health.
Round 3, we managed to take her down, and started on posi only to wipe again at 60%.
But round four...we managed to BEAT THE SF. Posi fell with a resounding crash, and we promptly ran through the defeat order, knocking over the phalanx like dominoes. Even the mighty statesman went down like a sack of bricks. Finally, manticore fell, and the "STRIKE FORCE COMPLETE!" message popped up.
All in all, it took around 2 and a half hours. But damn was it a fun time.
I now think the SF is balanced, as long as you assemble a well balanced team. I may have argued in the past that any team should have been capable of taking it on, but I now realize that if you think you can take any old ragtag PuG and rush into what has been advertised numerous times as the hardest thing in the game, you are deluding yourself. I still however, think the merit reward should be upped. 30 merits seems like a good number to me.
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Wall of text crits you for 3019 points!
We just completed a duo Lambda trial. I honestly didn't think it could be done. Especially not with my blaster...but we did it and here are a few screenshots. I was surprised how well I was able to get all of the grenades so quickly. We ran a blaster and trollor combo.
Level shifted Apex and Tin Mage
