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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I wonder if I can persuade any RO'ers to try this? 
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TMK, our first scheduled day to do the STF is not until next Saturday (4/14).
Of course, there's a chance of a spontaneous attempt before then.
I created a Rad/Rad months ago just for the STF and she's looking forward to meeting Mr. Mako.
Repeat Offenders
Anyone going to run the TF today? I'd like to get in on that with my Scrapper.
Sgt Liberty - 50 Martial Arts / Super Reflexes
Verdigris Eagle - 50 Archery / Energy Manipulation
Stormeye - 50 Storm Summoning / Electric Blast
I can start it around 5-6pm myself, but if that's too late I understand. Tempted to bring my FF/Psi this time, and should give plenty of time to make it to tonight's Hami raid. 
Team 1:
Stone/ Tank
Invul/ Tank
Mind/Emp Controller
Mind/Storm Controller
Ice/Rad Controller
Ill/Rad Controller x2
Fire/ blaster
This team basically steamrolled the TF. Invis and recall friend made it very fast. Very minimal deaths (usually accidents). The tanks and PAs easily kept the AVs occupied and the multiple controllers kept the ambushes under control easily.
For the last mission, one of the illusion controllers succesfully pulled the patrons one by one up to the platform. Debuffs were dropped onto Recluse and the Stone tanker tanked him easily with help from the /emp controller. The towers taken out yellow, green, red, blue.
Team 2:
Invul/ Tank
Ill/Rad Controller
Dark/ Defender
Rad/ Defender
Emp/ Defender
Elec/ Blaster
Claws/ Scrapper
MA/ Scrapper
The missions were done in a more traditional way of clearing through spawns, but it was very fast finishing everything before the last mission. It was pretty easy and the tank/controller were diligent on managing the AVs and ambushes.
A botched pull on the last mission resulted in all four AVs attacking the team, but some well-placed PAs resulted in minimal deaths and the AVs were taken down in the order Scorpion, Scirocco, Mako, Widow.
There were a few wipes at Recluse. There was a lot of difficulty keeping the invul tank alive. Unstoppable and the empathy defender healing him kept him just topped up, but once Unstoppable dropped, he would die in seconds and Recluse would wipe the rest of of the team, before even one tower could be disabled (or just after the tower was disabled).
After reorganizing the tactics a bit, with debuffs on Recluse and PA helping the tank out, and a scrapper tanking in elude for a while... and enthusiastic rezzing of the tank.. the towers were taken down yellow, red, blue, green.
Lycaeus:
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We stalled a little on the towers, mostly because I was unable to tank Recluse without unstoppable on and an empath joined at the hip. Which is about 3 mins leeway at best.
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Maybe I should have just followed you around with shadowfall, but I don't think that will be enough either. And that sounds even more contrived than being attached to an empath.
Thoughts:
1a) Recluse does too much damage. The empathy defender fully dedicated to the tank, could not keep him alive long enough for the team to take out the towers. Not all tankers are stone, and not all teams will have illusion controllers.
OR
1b) The towers have too much resist/hitpoints. We kept the repairmen away from the towers, but it took forever to drop one tower even with 3 -res powers (defender EF, controller EF, tar patch) and three dedicated damage dealers.
2) Unbalanced difficulty between everything else and Lord Recluse/Towers. Tweak the earlier encounters to be more challenging to balance the reduction in Recluse/towers. Even after the towers were down, Lord Recluse was incredibly tedious to kill.
3) Currently this TF leads to certain ATs (and powersets) being favored greatly compared to others. That a balanced team had greater difficulty compared to a extremely skewed team should be a source of concern for the devs.
"Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty." -- Plato
Playing Gods (51106) - Heroic Lvl 5-20
What Rough Beast (255143) - Villainous Lvl 40-50
The TF I was on yesterday rocked cuz my character is an illusion controller with force bubble and our Stone Tank had -get this- WHIRLWIND. A stone tanker with whirlwind was a sight to behold, lemme tell ya. I was able to confuse most AVs that I tried to confuse. It just takes a few tries is all.
I'm not sure if I'd wanna do the TF without a stone tanker and an illusion troller. Even so, the stone tanker alone couldn't take on Recluse without a healer by his side, and I couldn't take out the towers alone without damage dealers - I could only keep the repairmen at bay with my secondary powerset - bubbles. So I think there's still a need for a balanced team. Strategy would be more diffcult without those two archetypes is all.
It's like with most GMs you can take them down without radiation characters. It's just easier with them.
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I can start it around 5-6pm myself, but if that's too late I understand. Tempted to bring my FF/Psi this time, and should give plenty of time to make it to tonight's Hami raid.
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If this is EST, count me in with my dark/dark .
Just ran it again. Our team was:
Inv/SS tank
Kin/NRG def
Grav/Kin troller
Emp/elec def
Spines/regan scrap
BS/regan scrap
Fire/* blaster
Elec/elec blaster (had to leave in the middle of the last mish)
The first 4 missions were pretty easy, no real problems.
Recluses inner circle were also fairly easy, we managed to pull GW and got her down to about 25% health before Scirroco came over. We killed GW then went on to kill Scirroco. Our next pull brought both mako and BS, we killed mako first and he was really easy, all we had running were 2 tactics. BS dropped in a couple mins.
Recluse gave us a lot of trouble. Our tank could only handle recluse while unstopable or eye of magus was running. So we only had about 3 minutes at a time to drop a tower. It took us a bit to get it right but eventually we started downing towers. At one point the repairmen were giving us trouble so the grav troller dropped his sing right on top of the tower, it would instantly repel any repairmen that spawned and gave us time to think.
We managed to down all the towers and LR and got the win with only 7 people, no stoner and no rads. I was impressed with our team.
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
I ran it this morning. We started with 8. One of our Dark/Dark defenders left just before Lord Recluce.
We started with 2 Dark/Dark Defenders, 1 Dark/Psy Defender, 1 Kin/Rad Defender, 1 MA/Reflex Scrapper, 1 Invuln/SS Tanker and an Ill/Emp Controller. I was leading and playing my Dark/Dark. We were all level 50 so death is meaningless.
We blew through all of the missions until the end with relative ease. Total time was around 2 & 1/2 hours. The AV's all came on the first pull making a reseting of aggro and regrouping necessary. The second pull was amazing. Black Scorpion, Mako and Scirocco all came. The only person who freaked was me. MY team concentrated on Black Scorpion and took him down. Then we went for Mako and defeated him quickly (3 sets of Tactics make a huge difference!). After that Scirrocco was toast. Ghost Widow would have been simple, but we still had pets. She does heal off of pets. Once the pets were gone she went down swiftly.
The Arachanos Flier went down quickly after that.
I wanted to see what happened if you didn't do the green tower first. The answer is that it goes a lot slower. Do the green tower first. Trust me. However, starting with blue just meant that the end came slower for Lord R, not that it wasn't any less inevitable. Our Tanker and Controller Kept Lord R busy while the rest of us took the towers out one by one. The first tower caused the most party deaths as we learned and got our stride. The last two went very smoothly, and Lord Recluce was almost an afterthought.
I have to give a big shout out to a terrific end team XianXi, who I knew already and is a top notch scrapper, Theta Chi, Dark/Psy Defender supreme, BurningAnger, excellent blaster, Stellar Agent, A good Tank, he knew what to do and when, Spextra (Spelling?) an amazing controller, and Hawksley our very skilled kineticist. I had teamed with only one of them before. This was very much a pick up group. But they all knew what to do and did it, even the ones that were new to the Task Force!
Have ran a number of RSFs and im quite impressed, its not insane but its in no way easy, have used optimal and badly balanced teamed to get the feel of it and if Im seriously going to approch it for the last mission I would take
a ice or stone as primary tank, res sets just dont seem to shine
a fire/fire blaster in crazy [censored] aoe spec, hotfeet, blazing aura and burn, just watch those towers fall 
and repairmen die as they spawn
1 if not 2 empaths
1 if not 2 rads
and pretty much anything else, I would say vengence is obviously nice and 2 people with rezes is pretty minimum though we did do it today without anyone who could rez.
It possible with pretty much any combo of decent players (within reason) and I really do think this is a very nicely balanced TF
I haven't seen it mentioned before, but it would be nice if on the second mission (the one in PI) the cutscene code was hacked to load up to the AV spawn textures prior to running the scene. As is it causes slight lag for each AV as the textures get loaded for the first time.
I want an answer to a burning question.
Why does Ghost Widow hold through Mag 34+ status protection?
Why does she heal roughly 2K from even a single target in melee?
My team just burnt out trying to fight her.
2 Tankers (Inv/SS and Inv/EM)
2 Scrappers (Spines/Regen and MA/Dark)
1 Blaster
3 Controllers (Ice, Mind, I forget, with Rad, Kin, and Emp secondaries)
We cruised through the TF up to the Patrons. We smacked around Black Scorpion. We beat Sirocco with Mako as an add. We then beat Mako (couldn't overcome his Elude regen while the Spines scrapper was AFK) with 1 Shivan and a Chemical Burn Nuke just to make sure Elude wasn't going to be a problem.
But Ghost Widow is just unstoppable. We even tried a 7 Shivan approach - useless. She's just crazy, holding through any status protection possible (Uny+Uns+Stacked Buffs).
This team would have torn through any other Heroside TF in the game, but GW was just an insurmountable wall. Something needs to change here, in my opinion.
I hear ya GA! I was the MA/DA scrapper (yes we exsist at lvl 50 ) on your team tonight.
We smoked all of the patrons up to GW, as GA said. GW was just rediculous. We had a really well balanced team, good tactics, a few folks with knowledge of the TF, and commitment from everyone that we'd finish. I really thought it was in the bag tonight. All of a suddon, we come up against an opponent where, not only were certain ATs not helpful (the melee folks), they actually *hindered* the encounter. I thought we had taken notes from the LRSF, no?
Bottom line, I had a blast up until then. It was challenging, and pretty comical at points, but GW needs to be toned down a tad. I wont even mention her PBAoE hold that was holding our tanks through their mez protection *and* their tier 9's...well I guess I just did 
So, yeah 2k heals + crazy mag hold = sit this one out melee, you're only going to hurt your team for even being here.
Something wrong with this picture
Just finished our TF with this team makeup:
Elder Kren - illusion/radiation controller
Blast Babe - fire/fire blaster
Spark-1 - force field/energy defender
Steel Wrangler - invulnerabily/super strength tank
Nurse Blue - empathy/radiation blast defender
Hypnotizer Zero - mind control/radiation controller
Abolished - spines/regen scrapper
Betty Sizzle fire/fire
We went through the first few missions with few deaths and did fine against Aeon.
We actually didn't have too much of an issues against the patrons. We took out GW first (we did use a bio nuke), then Mako, Scirocco, and Scorpion in that order.
It should be noted that we had 4 sets of tactics and against Mako we had a vengance also. GW, well, i don't know how we did it. Must of been the two rad debuffs.
When our tank was tanking Recluse he wasn't having too much of an issue, but even having our empath sticking to him and my bubbles also, every once in a while he'd take our tank out and chaos ensued.
Of a strange note we were able to take down two towers our first time but one of them was respawned. The other one never respawned at that point. I guess it was the location of the towers and if any of my pbaoe kb/repel powers were shoving them the wrong way.
Also, on another note: My detention field worked on the towers! I was actually locking one of the towers down which may or may not of helped out the tank in the long run.
We were having issues during this fight though. The flyer would every once in a while come over and start shooting our scrapper and drop it's spawns (which would eventually overwhelm him, even with our mind controller's help). I'm sure we would of done fine the first time on the towers if we just didn't get overran.
After three tries, taking down the flier at least 5 times (including once while we were right in between our last two towers), and who knows how many times those towers respawned we were able to get to Recluse. Now, I don't know how we would of done without temp pets (Although I'd wager good), because I took all my temp pets and released them with a chemical nuke.
Also, for my teammates: Our finishing picture!
One thing that might speed this up would be perhaps a raid SG created specifically for the purpose of hoarding EoE's and a teleporter to Eden, as the drop point is next to the Woodsman and a skip away from the Hive.
If a raid SG is going to attempt Hami nightly, why not try to duplicate running a raid SG? And even if some players can't participate they can drop their EoE's off in a SG vault or something.
Just throwing ideas out there.
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Of a strange note we were able to take down two towers our first time but one of them was respawned. The other one never respawned at that point. I guess it was the location of the towers and if any of my pbaoe kb/repel powers were shoving them the wrong way.
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Yeah if a rogue repairman goes to a dead tower he will rebuild it in seconds which is why my fire/fire blaster is my favourite to run the STF with, I can solo the towers and repairmen with blazing aura, hotfeet and burn (burn is so good here ) with that much aoe going the repairmen are dead as soon as they spawn.
Im not sure its been mentioned but to bring the tower down to earth the only way I know is to TF it before anyone has applied any immobs/-fly, the immobs/-fly actually keep it in the air so the best bet is for anyone with TF (tank/blaster/defender) to TF it and then all jump it, it dies really fast.
The best way to deal with Ghost Widow (in my experience) is to have a Tank Taunt her at range. If the Tank isn't close (and Taunt actually hits), she won't use her AoE heal. This weekend, we had a "bad" pull that brought Black Scorpion, Mako and Ghost Widow. Luckily, Widow hovered above us while we took down the other two. We had an easier time when we brought them back to the boat...do the Longbow folks on the boat add perception/+to hit?
Also had pretty good luck using PA to tank Recluse until a tower or two were taken down. The best anti-repairman power we had? Burn...go figure...
Fire Brick - Fire/Stone Tanker
Plasma Brick - Fire/Fire Blaster
Dark Brick - Dark/Regen Scrapper
Electron Transfer - Kin/Elec Defender
Zeake Ferrari - PB
Mr. Rick - Inv/SS Tanker
Einsiedler - Bots/Traps MM
Ice Brick - Ice/EM Tanker
One man's paranoia is another man's engineered redundancy.
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I want an answer to a burning question.
Why does Ghost Widow hold through Mag 34+ status protection?
Why does she heal roughly 2K from even a single target in melee?
My team just burnt out trying to fight her.
2 Tankers (Inv/SS and Inv/EM)
2 Scrappers (Spines/Regen and MA/Dark)
1 Blaster
3 Controllers (Ice, Mind, I forget, with Rad, Kin, and Emp secondaries)
We cruised through the TF up to the Patrons. We smacked around Black Scorpion. We beat Sirocco with Mako as an add. We then beat Mako (couldn't overcome his Elude regen while the Spines scrapper was AFK) with 1 Shivan and a Chemical Burn Nuke just to make sure Elude wasn't going to be a problem.
But Ghost Widow is just unstoppable. We even tried a 7 Shivan approach - useless. She's just crazy, holding through any status protection possible (Uny+Uns+Stacked Buffs).
This team would have torn through any other Heroside TF in the game, but GW was just an insurmountable wall. Something needs to change here, in my opinion.
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I was the ice/rad controller on this rendition of the STF, and I have to say that, for the most part, the team was a success. I thought we were evenly spread out in the various builds (though there might, MIGHT have been too little ranged dmg, but that shouldn't matter....should it?).
I must say, though, that any team, at any point in a TF, that has to resort to methods that are not part of the original process, that there is something that needs to be examined. Ghost Widow, from the concensus of 7 of the 8 TF members, felt that she was way overpowered. We resorted to attempts with Shivans and even warburg nukes, but nothing was wearing down GW's soul drain. We'd knock HP down a few grand, but then she'd come right back to full health. It was almost like a bad hami raid episode...really!
Anyways, I don't have hard numbers to go along with what I am saying, but two other team members have posted their frustrations about the seemingly overpowered GW. Now, I certainly applaud all other teams that have successfully passed through the STF without any problems. But what was so different between those teams and ours, aside from the small lack of ranged damage? From what I could gather from the other team descriptions, they were very similar to ours in most respecs.
Is GW too strong for her own good? Anyone else share these same sentiments?
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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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This blew chunks for me since I was playing my Storm/Psi and we had no trouble until the last mission and fighting Mako first. Didn't matter anyways even after he got blocked in a corner once and the other time was surrounded by temp pets(Shivan, Werewolf and Snowman were out) and the leader finally told me to go ahead an use the rain.
1 Inv/SS
1 Grav/?
1 Emp defender
1 Energy blaster
2 scrappers
1 Storm/psi
1 Kin defender
A couple times we got Mako down to a fraction but we could not take him down completely even after an hour of pounding on him. We had even led him to the Longbow boat and were dismayed we had to get Mako's AoE to hit them so they would attack. Any NPCs that did not take damage, even though they were only a few feet away did NOT attack. Not to mention the two turrets that did attack did not last long.
He was level 54 so I would like to see if they cannot lower him one level to at least lower his attack rate(Snow Storm might as well been off) so I'm not trying to heal every 5-8 seconds(just supplementing the Emps but if some members were not healed full they could not take advantage of the one-shot coding) and would be able to attack more.
I could not tell much between healing and keeping up other attacks but the team mentioned they were not hitting much and think Mako would have went down if we had Tactics. Freezing Rain would lower defense, basically same effect but I can't use it. Tornado was slotted with two -Def but per the team's comments I guess it wasn't doing enough(makes me wonder then if two Tactics would be needed) so all I can think of that would have made me more useful for the team was to re-slot Tornado for 3 Rcchg 3 -Def.
DEVs can we change it so AVs don't run from rain effects? I don't put out much damage, am a subpar healer, my debuffs fall way short compared to rad and one of my biggest defense option (Hurricane) does not matter when the AV is such a high level and they already have high accuracy. My thoughts anyways.
Failure. 0 for 1 right now. Any suggestions for Storm defenders or are they more likely to be passed up for this SF? I really don't play this character much anymore so not really a big deal but just wanted to add my feedback for the SF(my defender was the only one that made it to test by the weekend or else I would have played another AT).
I wouldnt know. I've attempted the STF 3 times. But the team mapserving and having to start missions over and over and over again gets pretty sucky.
Happened 4 times one night when we were on the last mission. killed GW and 3 others. MAPSERVED. MAPSERVED. MAPSERVED. Then GW wouldnt take one hit point of damage. None....I got a cramp in my trigger finger. We all threw up our hands and gave up.
Would just like to add I would like to see something a little different in missions so for the SF it would be nice if someone could control the turrets(maybe a stealth side mission to get control for the team?)
And maybe we could see something change when a fight goes too long.
For the AV, after a half hour for example, he would actually start to lose more endurance, damage, or accuracy or some type of combo of those.
For my turret idea, after completing the side mission, you see a countdown for the ship's nuke(and if one doesn't work for some reason, the countdown restarts at only 15 min then 10 then 5min).
Or how about teams that don't have the optimal make-up could lead the AV to a debuff area? Of course you would have to clear the mobs around them. Maybe make a few debuff areas, one that debuffs regen, one that debuffs damage, one that debuffs defense, etc so any team make-up can decide their weakness and lead the AV to the appropriate area.
Having done this several times now (including the first five failed), I'd really recommend a balanced team like this:
<ul type="square">[*]1 tank, any kind will do. Seriously, any kind. My first success was with a fire tank as point. [*]3 damagers, mix of scrappers and blasters. Again, any kind but a mix of both AT's. Less than three and I find the end battle to be extremely difficult, but more than four and you eat into the support team too much. [*]4 team support (defenders and controllers), with a variety of dark/kin/rad, at least one empath, and at least one controller in the mix. Defense buffs and tohit debuffs are especially helpful all around (and tohit buffs for Mako).[/list]The key to the last mission is honestly this: Work with what you have! Be creative and look for ways to solve whatever is stopping you (kiting, distraction, ping-pong agro, terrain, novel uses of powers, etc). If the team is well-balanced and covers the basics I mentioned above, you'll do fine.
Each time we've done this, we've employed slightly different tactics on the end fights, as we had different mixes of abilities.
Keeping up a full 7-8 people is also essential, so make sure you're all in it for the long term. A balanced team that has no holes and covers the essentials will have a fun and challenging time. Temp powers and shivans are not needed, nor is any specific powerset. Certain powers are extremely helpful, but lack of any one in particular does not fail you to doom, as long as the overall team mix compensates.
-Sandolphan
"When heroes fail, the Angels will save you."
MASTERMIND NUMERIC KEYPAD PET CONTROLS
HAMIDON NUKE RAID GUIDE
I was the Inv/SS tanker that Spacio mentioned on the successful run above. From what I've seen so far:
1. Taunt GW from range. She goes down easy that way.
2. Tactics x2 or more is enormously helpful.
3. Tanking LR is painful for a Inv/SS without unstoppable, eye of magus, or inspirations. Only after 2 towers were down was I able to survive between unstoppables.
4. Crowd Control at the towers is critical. Doesn't matter how you accomplish it, but someone needs to keep those repairmen in check.
Sentinel
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DEVs can we change it so AVs don't run from rain effects?
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I thought they did change this, it seems like they might have missed rains (or maybe they didn't include rains on purpose).
From April 5ths patch notes:
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Archvillain and Monster class critters should now be more courageous when faced with Caltrops or similar powers.
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I noticed that I could keep Hot Feet on without making them run away, but it and Caltrops use some different mechanics than Freezing Rain.
I would bug it when an AV runs from my Freezing Rain, it may not be the intended behavior anymore.
Why Blasters? Empathy Sucks.
So, you want to be Mental?
What the hell? Let's buff defenders.
Tactics are for those who do not have a big enough hammer. Wisdom is knowing how big your hammer is.
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DEVs can we change it so AVs don't run from rain effects?
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I thought they did change this, it seems like they might have missed rains (or maybe they didn't include rains on purpose).
From April 5ths patch notes:
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Archvillain and Monster class critters should now be more courageous when faced with Caltrops or similar powers.
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I noticed that I could keep Hot Feet on without making them run away, but it and Caltrops use some different mechanics than Freezing Rain.
I would bug it when an AV runs from my Freezing Rain, it may not be the intended behavior anymore.
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Nope, they ran from Freezing Rain for sure. The leader told us from the start not to use them but when they were pounding on Mako and his health wasn't budging much, I tried one....he ran....fast. I got another don't use Rains. When we got him to the ship and had him trapped a couple times(read previous posts) then I was allowed to use rain. After the half hour point no one seemed to care when I used Rain and Mako DEFINITELY ran each time. He didn't run far and sometimes he would run back into FR just for a second. On the ship there were more obstacles so maybe that was why he ran back and forth so much. When we were in an open space, he would run much further away before stopping.
I will bug it when I get home today then since I did not know they were not supposed to run.
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Then BOOM! Mish ended, and I got a recipe for Tech Wings, followed by a Fear/End IO recipe.
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Whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa.
The Tech Wings are in the Task Force pool? Significant info!
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I got bone wings on STF
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I got bone wings as completion reward for the 44 (villian) respec trial.