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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and then they would just starting running around like a super speeder on meth until they regened.
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Ah yes, be advised ... this is very important.
DO NOT use any power containing an "Avoid" effect on them; ie., anything that signals "leave this area." That includes Freezing Rain, Caltrops, Burn, and any others. Mako, at least, runs like a maniac and afaik cannot effectively be speed-debuffed, so if you drop Freezing Rain on him, by the time he settles down again he'll be half-regenerated.
I've run the States TF twice: one success, one failure. The failure was because we gave up after trying for a half-hour to kill Mako ... as a result of this exact problem. The next time we made sure no Avoid powers were used (having learned our lesson from forum discussion); Mako stayed right on me (the tank) the whole time, and he died in a heap. It makes a huge difference.
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With that one bit of knowledge we could have beaten the SF.
Somehow I don't see not using particular powers that cause an AI reaction as a valid tactical decision to be expected to make. Why would Mako be any more apt to stand and die just because particular arbitrarily selected powers were not used? If anything he should *always* retreat when he's losing and get reinforcements - and then his powerlevel should be balanced on that assumption.
Maybe I'm being way to idealistic here but enemies should behave intelligently and their (and our) powers balanced on that premise. It just feels so artificial to fight someone who could easily annihilate us all with ease - but win because they are a total idiot.
Of course that is true of the entire game. Our enemies stand around in tidy little packs waiting for us to kill them one by one, while their buddies watch from 20 feet away.
But as for Aeon - that is a cool fight. It also represents how AV fights should be. Previous to this SF I can only think of one worthwhile AV fight - infernal and his portal o' fun*. AV fights are so tedious and monotone. We find the AV standing in the middle of his/her squad of minions, pumping his/her fist while (s)he awaits our arrival. Then we dogpile said AV, after 5 minutes of constant blasting and bashing (with the AV enveloped completely in particle effects to the point where all that is visible is a glowing white ball) (s)he dies. If the game allowed me to set more than one attack to auto fire I could probably make myself a sandwich while this tedious exercise played itself out.
* Which is broken at the moment. It doesn't spawn any demons.
Oh and also - that special little encounter in the thorn tree mission was great - you guys really need to put more stuff like that into the game. Like into newspaper missions and such.
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The LR encounter is hard. He loves to drop a lev54 boss every 10 seconds. So when you have team mates dying, rezing and coming back into the fight via Recall friend, its quite easy to get 10 or 20 of these things up. And they get buffed from the towers. And then 1 shotting everything including the invuln tank that was with us.
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I heard secondhand (so credibility is shaky, but still) that the towers at first had a limited range, and by pulling LR outside of that range the encounter was more manageable. And the devs reacted to that tactic by buffing the tower range to relative-infinity.
I find that idea somewhat distressingly laughable, in that it parallels a sequence of events around the original Hami encounter that in part led it to so much of a mess that the devs felt they had to throw it out and redo Hami from scratch for i9. Also at first, the Hami mitos were designed with a limited range, which the players found to be something they could leverage to help mitigate how ridiculous the encounter was. And in the face of that behavior from the players, the devs also buffed the mito ranges to relative infinity.
Now, (and I'm still assuming my secondhand credibility holds), this pattern of dev behavior suggests to me that they still haven't addressed their glaring weakness in designing any mechanic or encounter that is based on precise global positioning. Anything that is meant to crucially depend on range checks, or knockback/repel effects, or even line of sight issues, has been being implemented far too weakly to have any meaningful appeal to players. As such, it's not surprising that things like range enhancements or tactical knockback have trended towards near zero value to players.
In any case, I hope the devs are taking the time every so often to improve their skills and shoring up their weaknesses as they progress with developing the game further.
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I heard secondhand (so credibility is shaky, but still) that the towers at first had a limited range, and by pulling LR outside of that range the encounter was more manageable. And the devs reacted to that tactic by buffing the tower range to relative-infinity.
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That WAS true. But that got fixed a couple of patches back. Rescluse is now buffed by the towers no matter where he goes.
So, the best solution still seems to be to have someone kite LR and keep him away from the team while you deal with the towers. That's what our group did (well, a Stone tank in Granite just kept taunting him in the corner). The towers have 30k HP and take a little while to knock down, but they don't have any direct attacks.
You'll also need someone to distract the flyer and the big spawns it drops.
I'd wager that if you don't take the towers down then LR is nigh-unbeatable. I mean he makes a big deal about them in his cutscene and everything.
Also the flyer respawns, almost instantly in fact. I don't even think the pieces from the old flyer were gone before the new one spawned, and we took it down twice for good measure (one of our players DCed right before it went down the first time and didn't get the badge).
I will admit that we had a high level of competence on my team, which helps a lot in running a smooth TF.
I guess I'm most intrigued by the widely opposing views on this TF. I'm assuming that those who had an "easy" go of it are the powergamers out there (and I do not mean that in a negative way), with an optimized build and near perfect team setup.
The "not-so-easy" opinions I tend to put more stock in because I think they reflect the majority of the games population. These are the PuG teams, the non Hammi-O'd builds, the average player if you will.
I look forward to running this soon. But I fear that this will become a "specialized" TF, needing certain ATs and team compositions to run well, I hope it's not the case, only time will tell.
Travel Suppression is this game's worst feature, well that and MetaHumans riding mass transit like tourists at DisneyLand.
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I look forward to running this soon. But I fear that this will become a "specialized" TF, needing certain ATs and team compositions to run well, I hope it's not the case, only time will tell.
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The problem is, if that is *not* the case, then Villains will cry foul, because that is how the LRSF works today. The team build requirements are less restrictive than they used to be, but they are still there.
Having done the STF (unsuccessfully) twice, I think I have a pretty good grasp of what's required to complete it, and it's not dissimilar to what's required on the LRSF. In theory, that makes the STF "easier" because there are more combinations that can deliver that recipe heroside.
The one tangible benefit I see heroes getting at this point is that Heroes do not need anyone who can resurrect. The hospital ship is on-map which means you don't lose load time if someone drops. On the LRSF, you'd be foolish not to take anyone who can rez.
There are some smart forum posters who disagree with me, though, so I'm not claiming to have the final word. I just haven't done enough runs to do a fair comparison yet.
- Protea
And for a while things were cold,
They were scared down in their holes
The forest that once was green
Was colored black by those killing machines
I ran the taskforce last night twice on my level 49 fire/rad both times successful on random PuG teams.
First run we had a fire/ss tank, a spines and bs scrapper, two
blasters, an emp defender, a ff defender, and me.
Second time we had a stone tank, inv/ss tank, ill/rad, fire/kin, an emp defender, dark/dark and me.
Both teams equally breezed through the taskforce. No shivans or nukes were used, although there was some vengeance popping but not on purpose just as players went down normally.
The second team which would probably be looked at as pretty close to an ideal setup, was slower then the first more balanced team.
Either way I think the TF was very fun and should be pretty open to any player on any AT.
Once I get my main to 50 (Katana/DA scrapper) will he be useful or desired at all for this, or will I have to be Vengeance bait?
I did this TF late last night. I can't remember the exact team make-up, but I believe it was something like this:
Myself (Emp/dark defender)
A peacebringer
A fire/kin controller
An Ill/rad controller
A fire/rad controller (not 100% on the primary)
A stone tank
An invuln tank
Had a blaster but he DC'd/quit after the first mish
We didn't have much trouble on any of this, which led me to believe this wasn't that hard of a task force. However after reading this thread, I'm thinking maybe it is tougher than it should be and that we either got really lucky or had a really good team.
We had some trouble pulling the AV's at the end without pulling them all, until I pulled with a snipe+stealth. I pulled Scirroco and Mako first. The stone tank kept Scirroco away from us while we fought Mako. His elude is REALLY annoying and it took us forever to beat him. I lost track of time but it might have taken 30 minutes?
The only way we finally beat him was when I decided to absorb pain-myself to death for use as vengeance bait, then he went down fast. We didn't use any Shivans or anything on him.
After that we went on to Scirroco and took him down in just a few minutes. From there I pulled Scorpion and he was a cakewalk. No pets/temps/veng used on either of them, aside from imps and PA.
Ghost Widow was a little more of a challenge. Once we realized she could heal off of any enemies near her, we moved back and let the imps die. She took longer than Scorp/Scirroco but nowhere near the length of time that Mako took.
After defeating GW we took on the towers and had no trouble keeping them from being repaired. The stone tank kept Recluse busy and the invuln tank stayed with us and helped with the flier spawns.
Once the towers were down we moved on to Recluse and had a couple of deaths when he summoned all the bosses, but vengeance helped, plus we had 3 people who could rez. Reclue went down surprisingly fast, so quick that the reward window popping up startled me.
I think a few factors really helped contribute to our win. First of all, as an emp, I was really slinging the buffs around. Was keeping everyone CM'd (even the tanks, just in case), used AB as soon as it was up, and kept fort on at least half the team. I noticed a difference in the speed the AV's health was dropping when I had to stop buffing in order to heal/rez/immob.
Secondly, we had two tanks. It really helped having the stone tank to keep the big boys at bay while we beat on the rest. Then, we still had the invuln tank to keep us safe.
Two rads. Did I read something about LR being nerfed a bit? At any rate, I think they helped. They both used AM regularly and debuffed the AV's with RI and the other one whose name escapes me right now.
Things that hurt us/slowed us down:
The kin wasn't speedboosting. The stone tank had to beg for it several times. It would have helped speed up our attack and brought my buffs up quicker so I could fort/ab more often.
No real damage classes. After our blaster DC'd, that left us with just tanks, defenders, trollers, and the PB, but we still did find. I think the extra damage would have been nice on Mako and Ghost Widow.
For the reward I chose the rare recipe. In addition to that, I also received another rare recipe.
Salvage drops were as follows in the TF (fighting lvl 50s, except for the lvl 54 AV's):
1 rare
6 uncommon
18 common
Overall this was a great TF and it was nice to have something new and exciting to do again. I don't see myself doing it that often because anything repetitive gets old to me, but I will probably do it at least once with each of my 50s since I'm not too worried about doing any crafting on them.
My team lost a member, so there were 7 of us at the final mission. We got a good pull on Mako right off the bat and lured him to the boat. After half an hour we started pulling out Shivans, used Geas, used Geas again, more Shivans...
We fought just Cap'n Mako for an hour or so before getting bored and giving up. We'd get him down, he'd hit elude, then heal back, then elude again and again and again with a minute of hittable time in between. We had 2 rad controllers and a dark def for debuffs. We were getting nowhere.
It was not fun.
Jeromus
My tank build is a semi-HO'd out build, no unstoppable, no REN, and no fighting pool and I was having trouble with the AV's as a group, not having trouble maintaining agro but staying alive for more than 10 secs, perhaps its just me, but my Invuln tank cannot stay within all 4 of those AV's without dying, being the only tank my death yeilds a teamwipe. The Granite tanks of course won't have problems here, and I assume Ice tanks can stay there long enough with energy absorption + Hibernate.
I know the obvious reason here is because Invulns are crap at resisting anything else that isn't S/L without inventions, the team's biggest problem was no real debuffer, I could see that. But if I am to stay in the middle of 4 AV's with no other tank to help agro even with 1 debuffer, I know I can still easily die.
So fellow Invulns, help me out here, what am I doing wrong? Have you completed this TF with non optimal build, non optimal team (No real debuffs) no shivas
In case you need further info these are my resists.
S/L 66.3R/14.5D
F/C 15.6R/14.5D
E/N 27.3R/14.5D
Tox 15.6R/0.0D
Psi 0.0R/0.0D
I just tried it and we just couldn't beat down the damn vines. That may seem pretty weak, but once a scrapper dropped out during the vines sequence, the leader gave up and that was it. We got down to 3 vines at one point, but that's as good as we got and the number just started climbing again. I think we were just to disorganized to pull off the weaken vine method. The team seemed balanced going in, but things just didn't work.
Too many alts to list.
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Controllers are well liked in this mission because of all of the ambushes. The developers never said that controllers would be more useful against AVs.
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Missed point there - I'm saying that kind of encounter is bad design in general; it's not about the desirability of controllers. I mentioned our troller secondaries specifically because the buff/debuff available on a team makes a difference in what the team can accomplish. i.e. I just included it for completeness' sake in my short review of what happened in our attempt.
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Then complain that AVs aren't controller friendly, rather than that this whole Task Force is controller unfriendly.
Still here, even after all this time!
Just ran try #2, a technical draw. This team:
2x ill/ff
emp/dark
ar/dev
2x claws/sr
elec/elec
ill/kin
No real problems till the last mission. Aeon was a bit tricky with the timing of the temp power to bring down his shield, but that was a coordination issue, not a powerset/build thing.
Last mission: stacked bubbles let us survive the AVs without too much trouble as long as we kept the buffs up (even all 4 at once, for a while). The kin and emp could easily heal the damage that got through. We killed the AVs and first tower, but eventually were forced to resign due to a d/c and dentist appointment 
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Observations:
1) Mako was insane - get his health down, elude+regen, start all over. I really think he needs to be nerfed; +4 AV Elude with no crash and fast recharge is just too much.
2) Fight Black Scorpion first - no god-mode or other serious problems, just tough resists and damage. Very straight forward.
3) Pulling - stealth, stealth, stealth. We cleared the map and were pulling halfway back to the ship. Our blasters were unable to pull a single AV with snipe until a controller started using Group Invis on them. After that we had no trouble with single pulls.
4) With -regen becoming resisted, and debuffs being more even, AV killing isn't as debuff-centric as it was in I7-8. We had only /kin, and did fine, if a bit slow. Buffs and damage were more important.
5) Phantom Army: with 3 illusionists, we had no trouble keeping PA out permanently when we coordinated our drops. Not a perfect solution, since we can't control what they attack, and they don't draw AV hate like they used to, but still, they were very helpful in keeping the team safe.
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Controllers are well liked in this mission because of all of the ambushes. The developers never said that controllers would be more useful against AVs.
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Missed point there - I'm saying that kind of encounter is bad design in general; it's not about the desirability of controllers. I mentioned our troller secondaries specifically because the buff/debuff available on a team makes a difference in what the team can accomplish. i.e. I just included it for completeness' sake in my short review of what happened in our attempt.
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Then complain that AVs aren't controller friendly, rather than that this whole Task Force is controller unfriendly.
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... which part of "it's not about the desirability of controllers" do you have trouble comprehending? My post had nothing to do with controllers at all.
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So fellow Invulns, help me out here, what am I doing wrong? Have you completed this TF with non optimal build, non optimal team (No real debuffs) no shivas
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Honestly I think that's more about buffs. I ran my first attempt with an Ice tank + Force Fields, and he did fine when the bubbles were on, but when they weren't refreshed he went down *fast*. Bottom line is, without serious buffing, anything but a Stone tank is going down hard. After all, we are talking about tanking 4 +4 AVs at once.
I really love this TF. The only thing that needs to be changed is MAKO, his regen extremely overpowered...break out the nerf bat on him plz.......
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I really love this TF. The only thing that needs to be changed is MAKO, his regen extremely overpowered...break out the nerf bat on him plz.......
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Always gotta complain about the stalkers, doncha heroes 
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Just completed my first attempt at this - success.
Our team:
2xfire/kin trollers
Grav/FF troller
2x bubble/? defs
Stone/axe tank
Invul/SS tank
Energy? blaster
Note very little debuffing.
Our issues - The temp item for nuking Aeon dropped on the granite tank, so we had problems keeping him hittable enough of the time, which might have been insurmountable without the 2 kins.
Many of the AVs were dropping nothing at all despite me having space for everything except insps. At least before, they always dropped a 53 SO. I only dropped 4 or 5 enhancements in the whole TF.
We only had problems with Mako and recluse really, Mako's MoG was as awkward as it always is, and took ages to get thru and recluse was just tough.
High spot of the TF - being asked by one of the level 50 participants where I got the custom costume piece from, while I was standing there in granite armor.
Mr Minotaur 50 stone/axe tank Freedom
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QFT
I was on this team yesterday, and I think it went pretty well.
Only weird thing I noticed was that in the final mission, the Arachnos Flier kept respawning. We started fighting it, then *poof*, it vanished, and we see a brand new on flying out of the tower. Then, as we were fighting Recluse, another spawned, but we just ignored it and it disappeared. But of course, as we were taking a final picture of the team when finished, 'Revenge of the Flier' occured, and wiped part of the team with one hit, since many of use dropped our toggles and such.
*Note* - The blaster was Archery/Devices, not energy. It was me!
I've ran it once. We had 3 invul tanks, a fire/rad controller some blaster and some scrapper and a Kin, but I dont know if they were a def or cont.
We breezed through everything up until the final mission. We managed to pull one AV at a time the first try, but somehow a second aggroed and lead to some deaths. Eventually we pulled and defeated each of the AVs besides Recluse.
At that point level 54 bosses kept spawning and the damage type was non smashing / lethal, which meant that the 3 invul tanks were more like paper weights. Between a horde of those bosses and Recluse, we wiped a few times.
At that point people started leaving due to RL requirements, with the remaining people suggesting to do a shivan run.
What happened after that I dont know since I left.
I am an ebil markeeter and will steal your moneiz ...correction stole your moneiz. I support keeping the poor down because it is impossible to make moneiz in this game.
I know it can be done but....
I ran it last night with a pug
3 trollers /rad /emp
1 def / dark
1 Regen scrapper
and a shload of blappers
We were a force of nature laying wast to all that would appose
Aeon took no more time then any other av, not even sure we used the temp power
Then we hit Grandvillle
full team of 8 we pulled GW all the way back to the dock so we had longbow backing us up and were right at hospital.
We maybe got her down to 90%
She held me at the door from the hold then One-Shotted my Troller
I popped Vanguard meddle and Gease and I still couldn't hold her
plus she was black holing threw CM
after an hour of sawing on her we walked away in discuss
on that note I killed the tree if I don't get a respec I should at least get thorn thief....
Is any one else afraid if they redo LRSF we will have to save the reactor........
That Pwning by widow aside loved it....
Being rich and power full means I don't have to say I'm sorry
Virtue:Too many at fifty
Did anyone else keep an eye on the Defeat Toxic Tarantula progress bar (for the badge) while running the STF?
I'm not 100% sure but I'm all-but-positive that my character's bar did not move at all from running it last nite. Are the toxics here considered "rogue" and dont count towards the badge?
Umber's Hall of Heroes & Villains
I've read this whole thread and am really suprised at how many people had problems with this TF. I don't think its easy or a cakewalk but any well organized team should be able to beat it no problem.
So far I have beat this TF 4 times and failed 0 times, 3 runs were with PUGs, the most recent was with my SG mates.
Some observations:
Dr. Aeon - 2 of my 4 runs I have been the one with the temp power. I have found that using it right at the start of the fight (right after tank takes aggro) is the best way to go, Aeon will go down quick. I've never had issues with this guy and am a little confused as to why he gives so many teams problems.
Pulling AVs - Pulling these AVs seems to be a little tricky, the only successful pulls I have seen are when a blaster or defender snipes from a long distance. The 2 times we had a blaster snipe we have been able to pull each AV 1 at a time, on the other 2 runs, we tried to pull with regular ranged attacks and failed.
Ghost Widow - Her self heal is a major pain. On my most recent run I noticed that if our tanker taunted while in melee range she would use her heal whenever her health got low, however if our tank taunted from range she didn't heal and we were able to kill her. Has anybody else noticed this?
Mako - I haven't had many issues with Mako other than the fact that he likes to run alot. -def debuffs and +tohit are the keys to beating mako.
Flyer - As others have said the flyer respawns but I've noticed that the respawn timer is about 5 minutes not almost instant like some have stated. I also believe that it should be destroyed before fighting LR, it can be a real pain if you get it aggroed while fighting LR.
Lord Recluse - He hits hard... real hard. On my run last night, LR 2 shotted our granite tank. The emp kept the tank alive while he taunted LR and his pets.
The Pylons - I think the best way to deal with these is to have a tank keep LR busy, while a kin, emp or anyother toon with a ranged heal keeps the tank alive. Everybody else attacks the pylons. Using AoEs and PBAoEs help for taking down the workers before they can heal the tower.
Global Handle: @ Spacio
G-Force Knight GRAV/FF Troller ~ 50
Cosmic Knight. Peacebringer ~ 50
Tackyon Knight SPINES/REGAN ~ 50
SnailTortoiseHybrid STONE/AXE Tanker ~ 50
Morbid Maniac NECRO/DARK Mastermind ~ 47
TRIUMPH
Forgotten Legion
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Just ran try #2, a technical draw. This team:
2x ill/ff
emp/dark
ar/dev
2x claws/sr
elec/elec
ill/kin
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I was driving the elec/elec.
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1) Mako was insane - get his health down, elude+regen, start all over. I really think he needs to be nerfed; +4 AV Elude with no crash and fast recharge is just too much.
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I just wanted to echo this, it's not the elude, or the regen, it's the fact that elude comes up so fast that there is a pretty small window for really beating on him without resorting to using yellow insps (not really an easy thing to get in the middle of a TF)
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3) Pulling - stealth, stealth, stealth. We cleared the map and were pulling halfway back to the ship. Our blasters were unable to pull a single AV with snipe until a controller started using Group Invis on them. After that we had no trouble with single pulls.
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It's worth noting that we didn't have to reset after all the AVs went back to their starting positions, we were able to disengage and start over. This is a welcome change from the RSF.
All in all I was way impressed that a PuG without a tank or a rad was able to get as far as we did. I'm 100% certain that if we hadn't lost the 2 members we did, we would have eventually succeeded.
Also another thing, are the lev50 vines suppost to be yellow? Also the lev50 minions dropping from the transport are also yellow... but I'm 50, arent they suppost to be white?