Consolidated Thread: Statesman's Task Force
Your post makes me sad for my Storm/Psi def, AR/Traps blaster and FF defender. . . .oh and I have a 50 fire tank too, LOL. Guess I really need to get my 42 Ill/Emp to 50 sooner rather than later if I want regular invites to the SF.
And your point 3 continues the trend of what others have been saying and my experience on the team last night. No one had tactics or focused accuracy. The only way I see my Stormie getting regular invites is by having Assault, Tactics and Vengeance....cya Medicine pool(currently have Aid Other, Aid Self, Resurrect for all the good they did).
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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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did it run in the same way minions do or did it run like a spaz across half the zone? Im sure the change doesnt make them just stay still on aoe damage effects just stops them going mental.
On another note Castle removed the immob protection the he put into the PTODs so you can just spam immobs to keep them stationary.
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.
It's not about forcing stuff to fit LRSF tactics. It's about which tactic is fastest given a high sack of hp, high sack of resist, high amount of damage "challenge." (aka Lord Recluse.) And debuffers are fastest in this respect and a stone tank (or enough PAs) stays alive with least trouble.
I think a storm debuffer is also quite valuable on this TF. With the exception of freezing rain on perma-speedboost AVs like Mako. I ran this with a stormie once before we crashed right after completing the second mission. The Aeon AVs wiggled a bit with freezing rain, but weren't hopelessly unmanageable. Mako would have just shot clean everywhere though, from a few ice storm experiments heroside and villainside experience with the jerk.
A bubbler would give you high defence. You'd be going for the unpredictable "will he get hit?" over the certain "if he gets hit, we can heal it up." Trust me, min-maxers will not chance an unpredictable lottery if they can have a sure thing fast.
I would seriously challenge all teams who have completed this successfully...
How many debuffers did you have? (2 rads, or 1 rad/1 dark seems common, more the merrier.)
How many buffers did you have? (emp, ff sonics - poor TA is left out in the cold again except for oil slick wth?)
Was your tank stone? If you completed it successfully with an invul or fire - see above - how many debuffers/buffers did you have? How many times did the tank die or allow a wipe at the towers?
Were any temp powers like shivans or nukes used?
And lastly, how long did it take if you answered yes to the questions above, versus if you answered no?
Invictus Est Level 50 Invul/Fire Tank
Malentis Level 50 Ice/Energy/Leviathan Dom (Freedom)
Black Jeremiah Level 50 Fire/Fire/Mu Dom
Sejanna Level 50 Dark/Dark/Elec Def (Virtue)
Arc #119664 - The MiniMech Cometh - Hess TF Mini-Sequel
I have to admit, my eyes glazed over a bit around page 8 of this thread, but one thing that helps a LOT when fighting Ghost Widow is to make sure each of your melee guys has 6-8 purples handy and keeps a couple of them up at all times. That will nerf her self heal and seriously improve your chances of clobbering her. The holds are pesky, but they appear to be on a reasonably long recharge so they're not insurmountable.
Mako is definatly annoying, but you only have to knock out that last 10% of his health through Elude. Yellow insps are great for that, not to mention the multitude of other +tohit powers.
I think the most important thing is to make sure your team is competent, decently built, and willing to stop and think about what is happening when they find they can't hurt something. If you're beating on an AV for more than 10 minutes and can't knock more than 10% off of their health, then it's time to stop and rethink your strategy.
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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.
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.
Invictus Est Level 50 Invul/Fire Tank
Malentis Level 50 Ice/Energy/Leviathan Dom (Freedom)
Black Jeremiah Level 50 Fire/Fire/Mu Dom
Sejanna Level 50 Dark/Dark/Elec Def (Virtue)
Arc #119664 - The MiniMech Cometh - Hess TF Mini-Sequel
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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.
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I think you're both wrong.
TA is fine against AVs if you know how to slot. The main thing you want is -res. TA has better -res than any other primary except Sonic. I rolled a TA/sonic specifically for AV fights, and though I only got him through the Faultline AVs, he performed as expected - the AVs dropped like lieutenants.
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.)
- 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
Oh, also, I guess I cheated a bit. I forgot the team had 3 stacked Tactics/Assault:
Lord Recluse Beaten. Mako was still obnoxious, but he wasn't unbeatable. I don't know about the other members of my team, but my build has Build-Up with 3 To-Hit/Recharge HOs, Focused Accuracy with 3 To-Hit/Endo HOs (and it's on all of the time), stacked with 3 Tactics and a Fortitude. This character was actually copied over to test before Croatoa existed (hence the old style mez resistance Insp in the tray), so I don't have the Gaes to stack on top of that. I did have a Shivan, but never bothered to pull it out.
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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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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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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.
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As an aside, and I know individual success will vary, but one thing that helped our last group a bunch was having two tanks. One tank played tag with LR and some of his summoned purple attendants. The second tank held aggro on the flier, its spawns, and a few more of LR's spawned companions. The rest of the team burned down the towers, dealt with the repair techs, kept the tanks buffed and alive, etc. It was very effective.
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.
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3) The strength of GW's and Mako's special abilities.
Admittedly, they provide flavor. However, the dark regen and perma-elude can really screw up a team that was not having problems in the first few missions, simply because no one pre-scrutinized everyone's powersets for tactics, focused accuracy, geas, stacked vengeance, etc. or realized that too many melee on the team may lead to insufficient damage against GW. Not sure that prescrutinization of powersets is desirable behavior to be encouraged either.
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Actually, you can buy a lot of lucks and counter her PBAOE heal, as they all require to-hits. We did that on our scrapper/tank heavy team.
Still here, even after all this time!
Did another STF yesterday, successfully!
Team-
Spines/Regen Scrapper
FF/Energy Def
Emp/Psi? Def
Ill/Rad Troller
Mind/Rad Troller
Fire/Fire Blaster
Fire/Fire Blaster
Invul/SS Tanker
(Can't remember the 8th build or AT - I think it was a scrapper...)
Anyway - The whole thing went really easily up to the final mission. How can anything not be easy with 2 rads and that much damage?
We used 3 shivans for the Zerg Rush, and venged off the dead ppl and instantly rezed them. In this order we took the patrons down-
Ghost Widow
Mako
Scirroco
Black Scorpion
We had 4 stacked Assualts and Tactics. 2 people with Vengeance. Both rads had their rez, and the Emp of course had hers. We ganged up on the flier and took it out fast.
Here is where it got tricky...
First try we went after the yellow tower to lower Recluses acc, so he wouldn't hit our tanker too much. We took it out, then on to green tower. But some how the yellow tower got repaired and the Arachnos Repairmen got to the broken tower and made a new one. (I think it was our FF'ers Repulsion or Force Bubble). So our tanker died, then recluse and his 4 lvl 54 Bosses came over and kicked us in teh rear.
Next we gathered up again, and sent the tanker/emp combo into LR again. We went after the red tower to lower Recluses Damage. Took that out easily and our tanker lived longer. Then while we were attacking the green tower, some how... Our tanker lost aggro on recluse and he came over and killed the Tower team.
Next we started out again and buffed up. Set our sights on green tower for a little extra try. We had our FF'er sit at the red tower with Force Bubble up to prevent rogue Repairmen from getting to it and making another one. We took out the green tower, and headed to yellow. Then the flier came at us. dropped off 3 units and I took them out with my AoE's on my scrapper. Then the flier killed me and the Tower Team. Before finishing Green Tower we killed the flier, and then the tower... Next was the Blue Tower, easy enough. We had 1 shivan out to speed it up.. (I was losing patience so I used my last one)... Then the fight with Lord Recluse - By that time everyone was tired and ready to get this over with. So we got LR debuffed to all unholy heck, and started to fight... That is when my screen filled up with soooooo many temp power Pets it scared me! 3 of them had Amy temps, 4 had Snow Beasts, 3 others had Shivans, and 2 had Warwolf Whistle! And then all the illusion stuff was everywhere... And someone used like 3 different nukes too... Lord Recluse went down fast!
It was funny, and I wish I had a pick of the screen when all those pets were there...
And - I got 2 rare recipes as well. Call of the Sandman, and one for fear duration stuff...
Relen OUT!
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If your goal is to have fun and finish the TF, then that goal may be achieved in other ways.
...
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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I was the ice tank in Lycaeus' team. Actually, what we were trying to do was not to "finish the STF" through tweaking the team into a min/max configuration, as you seem to have misunderstood (pardon me if I am mistaken).
1) After the difficulty Lycaeus had in tanking Recluse on his invul tank, I wanted to see how my ice tank would perform. But to stave off the possible frustration fest in the last mission, he would come along to pick up on Recluse. We also discussed the possibility of tag-taunting Recluse. If you can have 2 blasters, scrappers, controllers, defenders -- why not 2 tanks?
2) I did not make a strong effort to force the team to have certain powersets or AT ratios. I simply sent tells to some defenders/controllers, and when I felt I had enough, tried to recruit blasters/scrappers. It was just luck that nobody else was very interested so I just added more 'support' figuring they could scrape some blasts/pet-damage together.
3) It was also luck that it was mostly an empathy team. So another thing I wanted to see was if such as team could complete the TF, since such a team would have tons of forts and ABs.
Missions before last I consider decently done. The loose aggro was probably because I was rusty at tanking but our controller and Lycaeus were very professional picking up the slack. Deathwise I consider the number of deaths reasonable with the number of AVs there were, I thought the buffs helped a great deal, hehe... I had to leave for work so I didn't get to fight Recluse as according to the original plan. Oh well.
"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
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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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My guess is either they got them off Lord Recluse - or they are i multiple pools.
Orc&Pie No.53230 There is an orc, and somehow, he got a pie. And you are hungry.
www.repeat-offenders.net
Negaduck: I see you found the crumb. I knew you'd never notice the huge flag.
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Shame on a scrapper that comes to the STF w/o FA.
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I hit just fine in that TF w/o Focused Accuracy. Just because you had a hard time hitting doesn't reflect on other scrappers, and team builds. I don't like having FA or the body mastery pool in general. I like the Dark Mastery pool more.
Relen OUT!
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I like the Dark Mastery pool more.
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Hear, hear.
/two tanks
//no Energy Mastery
///yay for auto-hit in Taunt!
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.
what are the rewards for a completed Statesman's Task Force?
Does it give a Synthetic Hami Origin like the LRSF?
does it have a menu of choices recipe/sho/enhancement?
or is it just a recipe drop at the end?
http://tiny.cc/ArcaneDefenseItems
This is a bug, nothing more. Please put away the tin-foil hats, there's nothing sinister going on here.-Protea
http://tiny.cc/WhatBeatsADragon
When I did it, it gave one TF recipe, and also popped up a menu. Two of the choices were a Synthetic Hami, and a Rare Recipe. I chose rare recipe, so ended up with two recipes from the win. You could also end up with one recipe and one random SHOE. Or one recipe and one SO, I guess ...
Jerk 4 Life
In brightest day, in blackest night/No evil shall escape my sight/Let those who worship evil's might/Beware my power ... Green Lantern's light!/(Meowth, that's right!)
My Arcs: #4827: Earth For Humans. #6391: Young Love.
thank you
http://tiny.cc/ArcaneDefenseItems
This is a bug, nothing more. Please put away the tin-foil hats, there's nothing sinister going on here.-Protea
http://tiny.cc/WhatBeatsADragon
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Shame on a scrapper that comes to the STF w/o FA.
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I hit just fine in that TF w/o Focused Accuracy. Just because you had a hard time hitting doesn't reflect on other scrappers, and team builds. I don't like having FA or the body mastery pool in general. I like the Dark Mastery pool more.
Relen OUT!
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Well then, let me bring you back IN; to tell you that you did a marvelous job at jumping to a wrong conclusion.
Repeat Offenders
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Not quite sure what point you're trying to make here.
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My point, in case it wasn't obvious enough, is to provide feedback to the devs as to what team compositions (that I personally experienced) were successful at running the STF efficiently, quickly and with little problems, and which were not.
As well as the specific problems encountered by each team / potential solutions for making it fairer to a broader spread of teams.
Why? Because it is my belief that on Live, just like the RSF, it is human nature to want to gravitate to a sure thing and a sure win. The majority of people who want their reward at the end fast and now -will- pick and choose and discriminate.
The good news is that the STF has learned from the RSF (and heroside archetypes are more synergized) and we don't really have an all-out AT discrimination scenario or total impossibility of completion.
We do however have a potential powerset discrimination scenario after the last LR buff where he can no longer be pulled away from tower buff range, and it seemed sensible to highlight this now, while in testing.
If the devs are alright with this, that's their prerogative. I'm just providing data and feedback. The experiences I had, and how it's changing my personal mindset as to the 'best' way to run it successfully. Perhaps I'm representative, perhaps I'm not. Hope my point is clearer now.
Invictus Est Level 50 Invul/Fire Tank
Malentis Level 50 Ice/Energy/Leviathan Dom (Freedom)
Black Jeremiah Level 50 Fire/Fire/Mu Dom
Sejanna Level 50 Dark/Dark/Elec Def (Virtue)
Arc #119664 - The MiniMech Cometh - Hess TF Mini-Sequel
Ran it again today, learned some interesting lessons with a team that failed on LR's towers. Team composition:
invul/fire tanker
ice/ss tanker
ma/sr scrapper
elec/elec blaster
kin/energy defender
emp/rad defender
earth/emp controller
ill/emp controller
(And no, we didn't specifically go around badgering people asking 'r u kin,' 'r u rad,' 'r u healz0r.' It just turned out to be hilariously all buff and a lot of emps.)
From the start, it was obvious the team lacked sufficient damage. Even with multiple forts and fulcrum shift. You could feel it on the AVs. Their hp bar did creep downwards, but it was distinctly slower compared against teams which had a bunch of debuffers (mostly multiple rads, maybe a dark). We got through the first four missions slow but steadily, not exactly tortoise-paced, but close. Things were not helped by a mutual disconnect on mission 3, after we cleared the CoT around the tree. Mission reset. So we did it again.
There was a slight hiccup on Aeon. The team voted a tank carry the temp power, so I did. Only had one speed boost on (perhaps teams with /rad have multiple AMs in play?) and I took alpha which might have led to some psi blasts on me (if there were any fortunatas in the Aeon spawn, not sure.) The temp power did not recharge in time, and Aeon managed to phase for about 10-15 seconds of terror before I could zap him again with it. Other than that, he went down at a steady pace.
Mission 5: Cleared the plaza and had successful single pulls of the patrons via the snipe/recall tactic. Fought them somewhere in the centre of the plaza, Mako, BS, Scir, then GW. One good thing about our team composition was that we had very little trouble with Mako's perma-elude, given the forts and earth/ -def flying everywhere. We threw in a suicide-vengeance just to seal the deal.
GW was first attempted using the ranged-keep away tactic, and it was ridiculous. She wasn't even scratched enough to feel threatened into using dark regeneration. So we tried letting all three of the melee go in.
Again, one good thing about this team was that there was a lot of hold stacking in play the blaster had some, 2 controllers, and an epic hold or two. However, the prior successful debuff heavy team could apply just as much with the dark/ def, and the same blaster and epic holds too. And holds do not kill AVs. Hoping that the holds would stop GW's dark regen was more unpredictable than just debuffing her accuracy into the ground and watching her miss.
Also, I'm not certain that it was the holds as the prime cause of GW's fall, even with three melees surrounding her. Remember, one was an /sr, one was an ice/ tank, generally with one fort or more on, and the last was me with 2-3 fortitudes on me at any given point. That's a lot of defence. I did note that GW fired something conical and dark (which could have been dark regen), but there was no obvious jump of her health bar.
Long story short, she was brought down just like the rest. Slow and steadily.
The ice tanker had to leave due to RL at this point, it was already three hours into the TF, longer than successful team runs. We took down the flyer. (Which appears to be somewhat inconsistent in how it gets brought to the ground. -fly powers do not intuitively work, but odd powers here and there send it down. It would -not- be a good idea to have it stay permanently in the air though, as that would favor ranged ATs even more than it already is with GW's dark regen.)
PA was dropped on LR, once it wore. I took over in unstoppable with the empath alongside. Unsurprisingly, there was insufficient damage by this point, one man down, with no debuffs and the tower's high resistances. The tower dented perhaps halfway, before the crash took me down. Flyer also respawned.
Regroup, repeat. This time, we attempted me tanking with three forts spammed on me and no unstoppable. Good news, this worked! For 95% of the hits. Bad news, when you rely on defence, the 5% streakbreaker can really be noticeable. Most of the time, I took one bad hit of 1000+ hp damage, which the empath could keep up with, more or less, with a controller breaking off to give emergency aid now and then, and an occassional respite chewing. Then Murphy's Law struck, ran out of greens and I took two bad hits. Emps raced to keep me standing... the flyer respawned, wiped the ill/ controller, then hit me, I went down, and there was massive carnage at the red tower with a -sliver- of hp remaining on it. One last attempt only took it down about halfway before we wiped again.
3h 40min in, we called it a day. Note the contrast in time taken.
Uncomfortable Lessons Learned:
1) Forget politeness. Question defenders and controllers relentlessly on their powersets. Bring along two debuffers at the very least, preferably multiple rads. (Three or more rads = pwned TF.) One kin. Perhaps a dark if findable. Grab an empath to keep the tank alive for Lord Recluse. Illusionist controllers preferred for PA and invis/recall mission skipping, perhaps fire/ and earth/ for damage and def debuff if you can't find any illusionists.
2) Oh, and pick and choose the tank too. Stone/ tanks can stay in granite and taunt LR forever with no time limit, with one emp's assistance. If you have no choice, then go with invul or maybe fire, but make sure you've got plenty of accuracy debuffs to floor LR and/or can kill the towers in three minutes (and don't mind wipes after every crash.) If you have an ice/...you better have sonic fenders or a lot of rezzers and not mind aggro flying all over...(Our ice/ tank died 3-4 times in the first few missions, and another 3-4 times facing off with the patrons par for the course, apparently.)
3) By being thus picky, you open up more team slots for blasters (preferably hard hitters like fire/ or energy), and maybe a scrapper (but not too many for fear of GW) that will rocket your damage up fast and allow fast TF completion. Heck, if you took along a bunch of debuffers, you could probably get by with a scrapper as tank, and if you had 7-8 rads/, you could probably tank with a blaster or defender.
Couple things which might want to be looked at:
1) Accuracy of the AVs.
Felt quite sorry for the ice/ tank. (This coming from the "unstopp crash = 50% chance dead" tank.) Having hoarfrost on allowed him to survive and hibernate. Hoarfrost off = two shot and dead. Our emps had a field day with their rezzes.
2) Recluse's damage or the tower's resistances/hp.
Overly favors powersets with high resistances, and heavy debuffing of acc and res. It was rather ironic that our elec blaster was able to completely drain a tower's endurance and have it still continue to provide buffs to Lord Recluse.
3) The strength of GW's and Mako's special abilities.
Admittedly, they provide flavor. However, the dark regen and perma-elude can really screw up a team that was not having problems in the first few missions, simply because no one pre-scrutinized everyone's powersets for tactics, focused accuracy, geas, stacked vengeance, etc. or realized that too many melee on the team may lead to insufficient damage against GW. Not sure that prescrutinization of powersets is desirable behavior to be encouraged either.
Honorable mention goes to GW's unbreakable, unresistable hold and her phaseshifting black hole. Bit of a nuisance, can cause death, but not really horrible -horrible-.
Invictus Est Level 50 Invul/Fire Tank
Malentis Level 50 Ice/Energy/Leviathan Dom (Freedom)
Black Jeremiah Level 50 Fire/Fire/Mu Dom
Sejanna Level 50 Dark/Dark/Elec Def (Virtue)
Arc #119664 - The MiniMech Cometh - Hess TF Mini-Sequel