Consolidated Thread: Statesman's Task Force
By
abnormal_joe,
Posted on: 2007-04-03 08:09 in The Market and Inventions
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The AVs are linked. Even if you DO pull one and only ONE, when that one dies, 2 more will aggro immediately.
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Not always. On my last run, our group pulled each of the four AVs individually. None of them approached us until sniped. Everyone was really impressed.
The time before, not so much. We tried to pull Mako, but Black Scorpion came along too and before either of those two had dropped, GW decided to join. So we were fighting three of them at once in that iteration.
First run we got Mako individually but couldn't beat him, so I don't know what it might have triggered. The last thing we tried in that case was dragging him all the way to the Longbow ship, but the moment we did GW and Scirocco appeared out of nowhere and killed every NPC in sight.
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The AVs are linked. Even if you DO pull one and only ONE, when that one dies, 2 more will aggro immediately.
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On two separate STF runs I was on, this did not happen. I don't think they are linked, I think they have very large aggro/alarm radii. But if you pull them far enough apart, and kill them quickly enough, its often the case the others don't notice.
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O.O I like that explanation better. hmm, will need to experiment more.
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....Makos defense is *roughly* between 75%, if you didn't have Fortitude on you, and 95%, if you did. ....
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That looks strangely familiar ...
Could it just be the equivalent of 6 slotted Elude ? = 72% Defense
Or 6 slotted Elude + 6 slotted SR Toggles ? = 94% Defense
If we want to assume they aren't cheating too bad ... then ... that would only leave the question of durations ? We do know NPCs cheat on their skills. But they also follow "some" rules ... so ... what if it's Perma Elude or Perma Elude with Toggles ?
We've all fought elude level targets, Paragon Protectors. But has anyone before fought a Paragon Protector with 24k HP and the equivalent of Instant Healing (AV regen) and Elude ? Maybe we're just getting a taste of the (Elude + Instant Healing) effect.
I think that might at least be a reasonable logic path to follow.
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....Makos defense is *roughly* between 75%, if you didn't have Fortitude on you, and 95%, if you did. ....
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That looks strangely familiar ...
Could it just be the equivalent of 6 slotted Elude ? = 72% Defense
Or 6 slotted Elude + 6 slotted SR Toggles ? = 94% Defense
If we want to assume they aren't cheating too bad ... then ... that would only leave the question of durations ? We do know NPCs cheat on their skills. But they also follow "some" rules ... so ... what if it's Perma Elude or Perma Elude with Toggles ?
We've all fought elude level targets, Paragon Protectors. But has anyone before fought a Paragon Protector with 24k HP and the equivalent of Instant Healing (AV regen) and Elude ? Maybe we're just getting a taste of the (Elude + Instant Healing) effect.
I think that might at least be a reasonable logic path to follow.
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It's very likely that the slotted Elude+slotted Toggles is the correct assumption. Even while Elude isn't running he has a decent amount of defense.
The only way I would like to see Mako changed is to dramatically increase Elude's recharge. Make it 10 minutes instead of 4 or 5 like it is now (assuming his elude lasts 3 of those minutes). With 3 slotted recharge and Quickness it would normally recharge in about 7:45.
That might work too. Since I've not been on a team that was leadership deficient I don't know how he behaves. If it's on/off .. then ... make it 3 slotted No-Hasten so it's the full 10 minute recharge but still the full 72% defense ? Is that basically what you're saying ? If so, that would sound reasonable. If you don't have leadership, you just have to survive him long enough for the elude to drop, then you paste him to the wall. Not easy, but doable ? And still a second path to sucess, even if a less desirable path ?
On pulling the AVs .... what if you try to double pull ? Pull to the first spot with max range and (double) stealthed snipe ... then fall back to the "L" and Snipe again with max range and (double)
stealth. Then kill him in the L ? Would that be far enough back to not pull any of the rest of the AVs ? But without having to try to pull all the way to the boat.
I think next chance I get (this weekend most likely) I'll try that.
I would ask if anyone has tried a range boosted snipe, but I don't think you can LOS more than a few yds beyond Moonbeam and Psionic Lance range anyway ?
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I would ask if anyone has tried a range boosted snipe, but I don't think you can LOS more than a few yds beyond Moonbeam and Psionic Lance range anyway?
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My Fire/Eng has three Centriole HOs (Dam/Range) in his Blazing Bolt, plus Boost Range. I can actually snipe things from farther away than I can see them rendered, by targeting them then moving away. I can LOS much farther than Moonbeam range though, on my years-old computer.
While I haven't taken him into the STF yet, I'm pretty sure I could snipe the AVs from a very safe distance. The Blaster I saw sniping them was doing so from the very top of the ramp down into their area, then retreating to our position about 100 yds away.
Please try MA arc ID 351455, "Shard Stories: Scavenger's Hunt." Originally created for the Dr. Aeon contest, it explores the wild potential of one of the City's most concept-rich but content-poor settings: the Shadow Shard.
Snipe single pulling is definitely possible. I've had a blaster on my team who said he was slotted with range HOs. He flew up on high, sniped one, and with some patience (and possibly repeated snipes) got them one by one to the boat.
I've also seen success at distances a bit closer too. Not at the ramp directly in front of the four - that tends to attract all of them. Slightly further back than half the distance of the flat plaza seems to work well.
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I would ask if anyone has tried a range boosted snipe, but I don't think you can LOS more than a few yds beyond Moonbeam and Psionic Lance range anyway?
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My Fire/Eng has three Centriole HOs (Dam/Range) in his Blazing Bolt, plus Boost Range. I can actually snipe things from farther away than I can see them rendered, by targeting them then moving away. I can LOS much farther than Moonbeam range though, on my years-old computer.
While I haven't taken him into the STF yet, I'm pretty sure I could snipe the AVs from a very safe distance. The Blaster I saw sniping them was doing so from the very top of the ramp down into their area, then retreating to our position about 100 yds away.
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All snipes except Moonbeam and Psionic Lance have a base 150' range. Moonbeam and Lance have 175'. With 3 range enhancements, 150'->234' and 175'->273'.
The 150' snipes (only ones Blasters can get) with Boost Range and range enh gets to 324'. Not sure if Power Boost affects it but if it did, it would bring it to 432' (I think).
Keep in mind the best snipes to pull with are the ones that don't do knockback. Extra damage (DoT) can be detrimental also. (not entirely sure on this, only one toon with a snipe.)
Well, I tried this again last night, and this time made it to Ghost Widow before failing. The team consisted of a Fire Blaster, a MA Scrapper, two tanks (Fire and Invuln), two controllers (Fire and Ice), myself (Dark/Rad), and an Empath Defender.
The early misions were easy enough, and even the Thorn Tree proved more annoying than actually difficult. We had some trouble with Aeon before we got the timing of the temp power down, but we managed to beat him after a wipe. We then moved on to the the last mission and cleared a path to the Patrons. We started with Mako and pulled him successfully, though Ghost Widow showed up after a minute or so. She killed several of us, but then lost interest and we pulled Mako almost back to the boat. With some close coordination and a few +To Hit powers we were able to drive Mako low on health, then several yellows let us finish him through his Elude. Since my last STF failed when we couldn't keep up with his Elude regen, I was happy to see him go. I still say he should have his total defense toned down a bit, but I was glad we were able to beat him without my having to respec into Tactics.
Next we went after Black Scorpion. Frankly, he was a bit of a pushover. He's tough and all, but really not much different than any of the minor AVs we had alreaady defeated. Next up was Scirocco. His AoE attacks caused some trouble, but after a few minutes we positioned ourselves a bit better and brought him down too.
That left Ghost Widow and her uber-heal. We started by trying to keep one tank close to him while the other tank and scrapper jousted at him, and the rest of us used range attacks. That worked poorly. We could hurt her, but too often she would either get lucky timing her heals, or overwhelm the tank's status defense, hold/kill him, and then move in on the rest of us. Any progress we had made was then lost. We tried this for some time without success, before we tried summoning pets and rushing her. That proved entirely innefective. Having spent something like 15-20 minutes clubbing her, we fell back.
As it was now around 3:30 in the morning, the Empath said he would need to log soon, but agreed to make one last try. Before we began, though, the Ice Controller left; I'm not sure if she was tired or was disconnected, but it left us short handed. Still, we went ahead and tried our new plan: we sent the Invuln tank in alone, focused all our buffs on him, let the Fire tank joust, and the rest of us clustered together (out of melee) to use ranged attacks on her. This time, we slowly began to grind down her health. But after about 10 mintues of this (with GW at about 20% health) the Empath left (again, not sure if it was voluntary). Without his buffs, the tank kept getting held and we could no longer get her health down. We gave up around 4:00am.
I'm sure if we had adopted this strategy sooner we could have prevailed, but with only 6 people there was nothing we could do. So I'd say Ghost Widow definately can be beaten. Still, I think she should be toned down a little. Her heal is so powerful it really cripples the ability of melee archetypes to fight her.
I think she could be made a little more melee friendly without making her easy, and without losing her unique feel. My suggestion would be to give her a lower than normal base regen rate for a level 54 AV, and let her therefore NEED to rely on her heal to make up the difference. That still leaves her as melee unfriendly, but it makes the hurdle they need to overcome a bit lower. It also makes some sense to me: she's a ghost, so she should be slower to recover and need her dark magic to keep her going. It's possible this will make it too easy to kill her with a ranged-hreavy party, but I think her extreme mezz powers will keep her difficult enough; she'd certainly still put up more of a fight than Black Scorpion.
Anyway, that's my suggestion. If and when I actually get to the Flier and Recluse I'll comment on them.
-D
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Since Black Scorpion is generally considered a 'pushover', it might be nice if the devs gave him something to give pause to teams, like they do for GW or Mako. Scirocco has his big electric nuke and dust devils...that's enough to wipe a team's squishies if they're not paying attention, or drain out some of the heavier targets too.
Granted, it seems everyone complains that Mako has too strong of a power and needs a slight toning down. I don't think GW's is really so much about the power as the tactics, so I really wouldn't complain too much about her. Mako...ya maybe.
But my point was to give BS a little something something. Not sure what, just pondering... 
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Well, I'm three wins for four attempts, now. I was the Dark Defender in a group that started with 3x Controller, 2x Blaster, 1x Scrapper, 1x Tank, 1x Defender. We basically lost our tank after the first or second mission; don't know if he crashed or had an emergency or what, but it was basically a seven-man tankless STF. We had Kin, Rad, and Dark but no Empath.
We completely wrecked everything up to LR's inner circle AVs, including Aeon, who hardly slowed us down. In Grandville, bad luck on the pull brought Mako, Scorpion, and Ghost Widow as a trio. Thanks to some well-coordinated teamwork and some well-slotted Vengeance, we took out Scorpion then Mako while PA kept GW occupied. Scirocco joined in as we were starting on GW, but he didn't cause much trouble this time. Ghost Widow's super-hold was annoying, but it wasn't as troublesome as her Dark Regeneration heal. Once we dismissed all the pets (Shivans, Dark Servant, Imps) and had only the one Scrapper and PA in melee, plus Vengeance for defense, she dropped quickly enough.
After that, LR was just a matter of determination. We took out the flier when it appeared (hurrah for Group Fly), dropped PA to distract LR, and tried to destroy one tower each time before the PA would expire. After a few such iterations and a fair amount of regrouping at the Longbow ship (no tank, natch), LR was defeated.
GJ to any of my teammates who also frequent the forums. That was an outstanding group.
Please try MA arc ID 351455, "Shard Stories: Scavenger's Hunt." Originally created for the Dr. Aeon contest, it explores the wild potential of one of the City's most concept-rich but content-poor settings: the Shadow Shard.
I was invited to a STF last night, and these are some of the thoughts I had;
Ghost Widow The best method for getting past Widow is to have a single -Def- based tank in melee, everyone else out at ranged. FF and Empaths, or anyone with +Defence buffs are exceedingly useful here. This lets the Tank be the only one she can possably feed off with her heal. The high defence makes it very hard for her to hit however. Ice and Stone in Granite are the best here for their high natural levels of defence. The only real concern is her 'Terror' effects.
Black Scorpion and Scirroco These two are in essence just standard dog-piles. Everyone goes in and hits them as quick and hard as they can. Scorpion is the easiest of the four AVs. Scirroco just has some nasty effects.
Mako For Mako, you want to treat his fight like a PvP encounter. Two Defenders with Tactics is exceedingly desirable for breaking through Mako's Elude. -Defense debuffs are far less important than +To-Hit it would seem. Once Mako activates his Elude everone wants to use 3-4 yellows (tier 1). It becomes a race of doing enough damage to bring Mako down before you run out of +To-Hit and +Acc. If an Elude Loop starts, don't try to stand there for an hour or more beating on Mako, it is a futile gesture. Instead let him run back to his spot and have the team go collect Yellows and perhaps even Nukes if you're really irked. One person will need to stay in the mission so it doesn't reset.
>.>
<.<
And if you're interested, the team I was on was unable to get past Mako. Our scrapper had 'To Go' at the start of the Vine mission. Then both tanks were Ice Melee, the single worst secondary for this kind of work. None of the defenders or the controller had Leadership. We did manage to defeat Scorpion and Ghost Widow though. But then we whacked Mako onna noggin for 1+ hrs. Team disbanded as we needed sleep. =+_+=
=. .=
Not sure if this has been asked because I have not read any of this thread, but is there a Storyline specific reason as to why Statesman is in Independence Port and not Peregrine Island? This sort of makes no sense for him to be there. It is already hard enough to recruit for it especially if all the level 50s are in a completely different zone? Is there any chance he could just be put in Peregrine Island?
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I've still only run the one STF, but when we killed Widow, we ... well, sorta cheated. In a way. Four Shivans and one Bio Nuke, and just rushed her. She healed to full maybe 15 seconds into the fight, but we were putting out so much damage that she died before her heal recharged.
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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.
Just finished this TF. Man it was nice. I only have 1 complaint, what is the deal with no rewards for the AVs? I felt kinda cheated in the end. I only got 3 recipes for the whole thing. If they dont trust us not to farm this TF then they at least need to put the rewards at the end of the mission if there are multiple AVs that dont trigger mission complete we still get something out of this. I do feel they need to beef up the first 4 misisons with the AVs because they die so quick compared to how they die on the Recluse Strike Force, I feels like we are cheating but we are not.
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Entoxicated Ninja/PSN Mastermind
Ninja Ryukenden Kat/WP Scrapper
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Thank You Devs for Merits!!!!
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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.
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Yeah, but your stone tank was a bossy pain in the butt....
oh, wait, that was me.....
Actually, yeah, I've run this 4 times so far and I have to admit, this is both a hard and fun TF. I really do feel like my character is being pushed to her limits, especially at the end when I'm the 'diversion' on Recluse while the rest of the team takes out the towers. I still have to call for buffs occasionally to keep ticking. That is an unusual experience for me.
Good job on this one, mission design team!
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I'm still 0-3 on attempts, twice on a kin def, once on a dark def.
We were stopped by the AVs in the final mission twice, and towers once.
I will say that the speed with which repairmen can rebuild a toasted tower (if they get repelled away from the tower currently being attacked) is frustrating.
We got one tower down, but then a singularity was stationed atop the tower we were working on... and it took like 10 seconds or something for the tower to be entirely rebuilt.
I can see my earth/storm's Volcanic Gasses playing a good role in the tower killing...
... and, kins and darks are fairly useless for healing tanks until the +def tower goes down on Lord Recluse. Even with Tactics and Vengeance.
Bring emps!
And stone tanks.
Invl and fire had a devil of a time with recluse without a dedicated empath.
Currently: 50s (5), 40s (3), 30s (5)
Red and blue side, mostly Infinity, Virtue, and Freedom.
Tried this again tonight: Ice Tanker, two DM/Regen scrappers, Ice/Fire Blaster, Illusion/Rad controller, Rad, FF and Dark (me) Defenders. As always, never even made it to Recluse. This time I suspect the team could have won, but our Tank dropped after he kept disconnecting in the Thorn mission. Our controller also disconnected a lot once we made it to the last map, and we had trouble pulling only a single patron. In the end we just lured all of them back to the boat and started pounding. We took down Black Scorpion, then (after some effort) Scirroco. The Controller logged here, and shortly after one of our scrappers called it a night too. The five of us pounded Mako for a while (Ghost Widow had correctly deduced we were no threat and left), but we couldbn't beat his god-mode, even with Vengeance.
Having tried to kill Mako a few times now, it seems as though his Elude ability recharges extremely rapidly. No matter how long it takes us to get him low enough on health to trigger it, it's ALWAYS ready to go. It sure seems as though you must kill Mako through his god-mode or you'll never be able to kill him. I think that is a terrible design, since it a) is a blantant cheat by the normal rules of the game and b) completely screws teams that just can't bring that kind of To Hit buffing to the table.
I still say Mako needs his Defense toned down. I know he's supposed to be tough, but there's nothing interesting about this implementation, and it just makes no sense to me that only Mako and Ghost Widow can really put up a fight. Scirroco takes a minimal effort to defeat and Black Scorpion is just a speed bumb; why would Recluse treat them as anything more than canon fodder?
Anyway, I'm now 0-3-1 on this TF. After something like 18 hours of my life wasted trying to complete it, I'm getting rather discouraged. As much as the fluff of the mission is great, there's really nothing enjoyable about spending hours on a bunch of easy missions only to bounce off the patrons every time. Very disappointing.
-D
Darkonne: Pinnacle's (unofficially) mighty Dark Miasma/Radiation Blast enthusiast!
Be sure to check out this mighty Arc:
#161865 - Aeon's Nemesis
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... and, kins and darks are fairly useless for healing tanks until the +def tower goes down on Lord Recluse.
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+Def tower?
I'd been led to believe that they were Red = Damage, Yellow = Accuracy, Green = Heal, Blue = Endurance. My last team didn't even worry about the blue tower; we just smashed red/yellow/green then went to LR himself. Am I wrong about one of them? It would make more sense as a purple +Def tower, since LR's blue bar is already practically infinite, but at any rate I wasn't aware of a +Def effect.
Please try MA arc ID 351455, "Shard Stories: Scavenger's Hunt." Originally created for the Dr. Aeon contest, it explores the wild potential of one of the City's most concept-rich but content-poor settings: the Shadow Shard.
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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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.
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That's great, South, but everyone has a full team when they start. I'd much prefer to be on a team that doesn't attrit during the TF, but there's not much I can do about it when it happens.
Besides, the one time I made it to the final mission with a full team, we couldn't kill Mako anyway. :-(
-D
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Be sure to check out this mighty Arc:
#161865 - Aeon's Nemesis
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Pulling works ... if you know how to pull. I find 9 out of 10 people that think they know how to pull, don't.
The AVs are linked. Even if you DO pull one and only ONE, when that one dies, 2 more will aggro immediately. But fighting One, then Two, then One, is much easier than 4.
As to needing to build the team, you can't have your cake and eat it too. IF this is supposed to be the hardest single team challenge in the game, then it can not also be so easy that any team with a random makeup and people that don't understand what working together as a team means can complete it also. To make it completeable by ANY team would mean to make it completeable by a team of 8 "healers" with only one single unslotted attack each. I don't want to see a LRSF where essentially only one recipe will work, but I also don't want the STF trivialized to where 8 people with nothing but brawl can complete it either. Where's a happy medium ? I don't know, but I think they are close to it. IF I had a major concern, I think it might be Mako, simply because the debuffs are so undervalued, and may skew teams to much toward leadership and buffs. But I personally think they have things close to "The hardest single task any one team can do in City of Heroes."
If I were looking to rebalance Mako, I think I would simply lower his resist to debuffs, and his resist only. That way both buffs and debuffs would be capable of defeating him. Leading to two paths instead of essentially one. I don't like the "ONE Answer" path, I don't mind a "preferred answer". Dropping his -defense resists to enable more effective debuffing would level that out some, without actually dropping his defense. I wouldn't drop the defense itself, only the resist to debuffing.