South_NA

Mmmmmm spices.

And racks.

Spice racks!

Golden AceHickman
Golden AceHickman
Golden AceHickman


(crickets)

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Basic Telepad
Clockwork Winder, Temporal Sands, Simple Chemical, Psionic Manifestation
Alchemical Silver, Symbol, Inert Gas, Black Blood of the Earth
Ruby, Destiny, Silver, Hamidon Goo


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Crap on a cracker. And here I was the one who was giving the devs the benefit of the doubt to NOT MAKE THE TELEPAD REQUIRE HAMI GOO!!!

Grr.

Criminy sakes...the new base costs are enough to make me wanna rebuild the base to recoup costs. Thinkthinkthink...if I expand the size of the base from 8x12 to 12x16, assuming that would recover the prestige for the 8x12 plot size...make a new secure teleport bay in the new space, move all my present telepads there (and not waste frickin' valuable salvage rebuilding 8 arcane teleporters!)...

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Godamighty. Teleporters going from cheap and easy to "Delete one of these and you are out of the SG in a heartbeat!" That was intelligent. What happened to "We want to make things easier."

We already have all of ours, but I'm crafting a dozen extras, just in case, before I13 goes live.

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If Teleporters cost the same to make why not make a bunch now with old salvage and hold unto them till you need to place them?

[/ QUOTE ]Thats what I am doing.

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Me too

I use Firefox normally (with Foxit for PDF's) but I uninstalled the Foxit plug and installed Adobe Reader. No good. I tried downloading it and opening with Adobe Reader. No good. I tried IE and Firefox. No joy.

I'm done mucking with software.

Downloaded freshest version. Says the file is damaged or corrupted or not a PDF.

It shows as being corrupted when I download it.

OMG!!!!


Squee!


A joint hero/villain TF! 1 Brute, 1 Stalker (think about it) and 6 Defenders. That will be total and complete pwnage. Teams of mix 'n matched Dominators and Controllers with stacking mezzes and pets everywhere. The "pets and pets" team of Masterminds and Scrappers.

This is going to be good!

Here's Hertz's youtube profile

It's showing as being there, but it's not (yet) available when you click on it.

A big red ball would be really fun!

The STF team I was on this morning had two Dark Defenders (one of whom was me). The double AV pull (Scirocco and GW) was not especially dangerous. Fluffy goes a long way to helping with adds. Darkest Night stacks so we pretty much floored acc any time we had both Dark Servants out.

We stacked Darkest Night on Lord Recluce after our tanker got his aggro and before we hit the towers. The only player on LR was our stone tanker. After we dropped the red and yellow towers, we moved our DN to the current targetted tower. That was the only point at which the tanker's health bar moved. I parked fluffy over with LR to help out and the Tanks health bar recovered.

The Flier can respawn very fast. Both shadow fall and steamy mist go a long way to reducing flier aggression.

Fearsome Stare really does a number on the repairmen. Fluffy hates them almost as much as I do. But then again, Fluffy is almost the perfect pet.

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Just failed an STF. As is usual for me, I learned a great deal more from failing than succeeding. I was not the leader.

The team composition was a little melee heavy with 3 defenders, 1 controller, 1 blaster, 1 tank and 2 scrappers. The tank was a very good stone/stone.

We called it at Ghost Widow.

What I learned today is that PuG scrappers will kill this TF. They are not used to following instructions. There is no room for a solo artist in the final AV fight, and we had two.

What was amazing was that one of the scrappers asserted that he led LRSF's daily. The LRSF requires a bit more from a team in terms of cooperation than the STF. I'd venture to say that if one of Scrap-Boy's (Not his real name) team mates went off on wild tangents as much as he did, he would never be re-invited.

I don't hate scrappers. But I have seen so many of these fail because of scrappers. It's such a solo friendly AT that it's easy to level to 50 and never learn to play on a team.

I think next time I lead one of these, I will not be inviting any scrappers that I do not know personally. Better to do without the melee damage, than deal with an idiot.

Failing a TF after 3+ hours invested is not especially rewarding. Even if doing so makes me look forward very much to doing it back on infinity with friends and SG-mates who are both skilled and fun to play with.

/rant

Great guide! Thank you for posting it!

All but one of the successful teams I've been on took about 3 hours. The unsuccessful teams generally took a lot longer. One of the warning signs I look for, for mission failure is to be at the Grandville dock in under 2 and 1/2 hours. If we aren't there in that time frame, then there are problems with the team and we will likely fail.

All that changes if no one has done it before. If the TF is new to everyone on the team, I could see it taking a lot longer than 3 hours.

I've done it 12 times so far (I think). I've won 7, and lost 5 (including 2 called for lack of time).

I think the most important thing, the thing you must have is a full team. The STF is challenging for 8, difficult for 7 and nigh impossible for 6 or fewer.

The other main factor has been communication and/or skill. The last team I was on had 6 players I absolutely knew for certain were skilled. I also knew they could follow instructions.

Of the five teams I've been on that failed, two failed due to lack of time. Once 2 members bail, you pretty much have to pull the plug. The other three failed because certain players were more interested in doing their own thing. A good team can tolerate one player like that, but more than one is worse than no player at all. One stone tanker (not Rachael) springs to mind in particular.

I'd rather have an all-blaster team of good players (which actually sounds fun to me) than have a team of 'the correct mix' of surly uncooperative players.

Just my $.02

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A mostly RO team won the STF today. We had a emp/nrg def, kin/Dk def, dk/dk def, ice/storm controller, MC/kin controller, Stone/SS Tanker, Invuln/SS Tanker and a Claws/Reflex Scrapper. Only two people had the leadership pool.

Having two tanks is definitely nice. When we aggroed more than AV in Grandville, the tanks would split the pull allowing us to gank one while the other stayed in a holding pattern. Ghost Widow took the longest, which is no surprise seeing as we were so melee heavy in damage. A blaster would have made a world of difference there.

No real surprises. Get a team of competent players and it's amazing how smoothly these things go. Total time was just shy of 3 hours, but we dawdled a bit on the way, especially on the thorn tree map.

Equally leveled opponents fighting using equal powers against equally well-slotted defenses should come out as a wash, around 50-50, but randomly, so if one gets 'lucky' then there's either a series of whiffs or a bunch of sequential hits, depending.

Starting from there, adjust according to level, powers and slotting. In the real world, accuracy depends upon skill, distance and the attack used. So a target shooter firing prone from rest with a rifle at a barn will not miss as often as a roundhousing drunk sailor in a fistfight with Chuck Norris.

I know this is a fantasy game, but it breaks my immersion to miss a really large target with my snipe. I'm cool with not doing damage, but missing a sitting duck really shouldn't happen all that often.

Sorry about the tangent.

Um, I'd pick a stormy up in a heartbeat for the STF. O2 boost alone pays the price of admission. Add the ability to play 'keep away' at the towers and you have a very desireable powerset.

Have we done the same STF?


/Confused

Excellent Guide! Thank you very much for posting it. And I love the diagram!

I've been reading the anti-Mako posts and a thought occurred to me. I'd love to know what the AT's and the builds are of the people who dislike Mako's Elude.

I run defenders, mostly. And my two favourite defenders are the only two I've taken on the STF. Both of them have Tactics, well slotted. On all six of the successful teams I've been on there have been at least one other person with Tactics as well. On those teams, Mako was a relatively straight forward fight.

Now Tactics is routinely picked up by teaming players, especially defenders (we get the best bonus for it). It's purposely designed for teams, not solo play. It occurs to me that Mako is the way he is to encourage less self centered builds. Solo artists do not have a role on the STF, nor should they.

Two of the STF's that I've been on that failed, failed due to an inability to follow directions and to cooperate with other players. Having a self-sufficient build is part of that.

I'm not the world's best player, and I'm not the world's brightest player, but I do know that for a task force to have repeatability, it has to be difficult. It has to demand more out of a player than they normally do. If it were just a series of scanner missions, then there really wouldn't be a point to it. As it is, when you win, you get a feeling of accomplishment. Which is exactly the way it should be.

There needs to be villains that challenge. There needs to be missions that require forethought and planning. Zerg rushing every mission ought to be rewarded with failure.

I've rambled a bit. But I think the STF and the LRSF both represent a step in the right direction for this game. A lot of us have wanted challenging upper level content and the STF is a welcome start.

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Throughout this entire thread there's one, almost unamimous thought: Cap'n Mako is borked! There's just something really wrong when one of Lord Recluse's flunkies is as hard or harder to take down than he is. The problem seems to be Mako's Super Elude. Tone it down or just remove it from him and we'll have a pretty enjoyable final mission.

At least with the RSF, none of the Phanlaxers have a "You can't hurt me" button they can keep hitting every so often.

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Apparently the 'M' in MC Hammer stands for Mako.

Who knew?

Very self-referential!

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However, TA does not have heals. I don't care how much debuff you bring, you're not going to be able to finish this without heals. TA support is fine, but an all-TA team would drown in creeped damage. (Well, I suppose the whole team could take the Medicine pool, but that seems perverse.)

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I'd still like to try. Maybe we'll just bring lots of green pills to the party.

More seriously, the hospital is very close to any possible fight scene for the final encounter. If you have a team willing to accept character death as a possibility, if not certainty, then the odds of completing this TF go up dramatically.

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Cool. Please do. Note that you'll have stacked buff/debuff on your side with 8 defenders, and ranged damage to get by GW, and probably lots of stacked leadership, but it'll be a fun accomplishment to watch all the same.

A fairer comparison would be to match a TA/ def's contribution to a team against say, a rad/'s. But I look forward to watching the all-TA STF anyhow. You can perhaps get some inspiration from the all-dom, all-MM, all-stalker RSFs.

And then maybe ask why people have to prepare specially for stuff like this to attempt proving a point, while other heavy debuff teams are running around finishing it in record time.

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Not quite sure what point you're trying to make here. If your goal is to set a time based record, then I would suggest that you assemble a team of 8 with at least one member from each of the AT's. Add the other three to suit your theory of min/maxiness (more tankiness, more blasting, more control, more defense). And then do the TF repeatedly until everyone knows their roles and what is going to happen.

If your goal is to have fun and finish the TF, then that goal may be achieved in other ways. For example, assembling an all TA team. Or all Stormies and Blasters. There are loads of possibilities.

Some team mixes are inherently more efficient. What I'm trying to suggest is that it's possible to finish the STF and have fun without min/maxing yourself into a migraine. Think outside the box. Hence the all-TA team. Probably not a record setter for time, but almost certainly going to be fun. TA defenders and controllers tend to be a little whacky.

And as I have over 72 characters and the majority of them are Rad, Dark and Kinetics Defenders, I like debuffers quite a lot and am up on what they bring to a team.

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poor TA is left out in the cold again except for oil slick wth?

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You've successfully challenged me! I'm going to get off my slacker, alt-loving butt and level my TA/A Defender to 50! I think an all TA team could do the STF in under 3 hours. Possibly much less than 3 hours with practice and co-ordination.

The mental image I want to leave you with, because it's inspiring me, is that of Lord Recluce on stacked Oil Slicks.

Tutelary,

I'd love to have a stormy on my team. I'm less interested in defenders with the Medicine Pool though. More leadership pool powers are always welcome on a defender. I am absolutely convinced that STF is viable with a Fire/* Tanker.

Any reasonable group of level 50's can handle the STF up to the final encounter. I say reasonable because I recently saw a level 50 scrapper who's handle was not, but should have been 'Pool Boy'. He had all of the Medicine, Concealment, Fitness and Speed Pools.

Here's my take on Stormies. I normally play either a Kin/Rad defender or a Dark/Dark Defender, neither of whom especially like knockback.

However, a Stormy would be a wonder worker in the final phase of the STF. The towers would be nice and clear of any nasty repairpersons and all of the miscellaneous adds that seem to occur would be swept into the chaos, debuffed and kept harmless.

I'd love to have a Stormy. I always like bubbles, as well. One of the things tankers havenoticed is how heavy a hitter Lord Recluce can be. A Bubbler can mitigate a lot of that without drawing AV aggro.

I'm getting the impression that folks are using LRSF tactics and forcing them to fit the STF. It's time to think outside the box, people. a team of 6 Rads, 1 Kin and a Stony will work. But so will a number of other combinations. I'd love to try an all Dark team. I'd love to try an all PW team. I think they would work and be very successful.