Statesman's Task Force - Issue 9 Beta

Update: 070429

[u]Statesman's Task Force 2007-04-15[u]

Printable PDF Diagram

You'll need about 3 to 4 hours, minimum. You could however spend 6 to 10 hours if you don't know what you're doing and where things are ahead of time.

For the most part you'll need an AV capable team and you'll be taking on L52 to L54 AV's. This means you'll want some -regen from Primarily Rad, Kin, Dark, TA primarily. You'll also want some Buffs from FF, Sonic, or Emp as Buffs are not effected by AV resists. Finally you may want repel capabilities or Storm, Kin, FF. I strongly suggest 4 defenders or controllers, preferably 2 of each. Then the rest of the team can fill as you like, however a taunt capable tank will be very valuable in the final encounter, but is not required. Honestly, I can't think of any AT Primary or Secondary that would not be valuable at one point or other, it will all depend on the rest of the team. The only major bias I see is the need for at least half the team to be defcon.

The initial missions are hardly worth mentioning, just your typical AV killer missions. If you're AV capable these should be a push over.

Later in the missions you'll be taking on the Villain Respec. It's important to note the trick on making two passes around the room. The first pass to weaken but do NOT kill the vines. Then on the second pass kill the vines, and finish the mission. Some teams with greater AoE capability will not need this trick, but many teams will. You will want the support person that's least likely to die and has the most endurance to take the temp power at the end of this mission.

Next, In the DR Aeon Mission, you should have had the support person least likely to die and with the most endurance take the temp power from the previous mission. Aeon will be INVINCIBLE until this power is used on him. That's the only trick to that one. If Aeon gets his sheild back up, he'll say something inane like "You'll never take me!" ... just zap him with the temp power again and finish the job. He's a wimp without his sheild.


The Final Mission

In this last mission, you'll be facing 4 L54 AV's at once, then later a L54 invincible LR. Many teams find it beneficial to have Nukes, and Shivans. These can help ease the load tremendously, especially if you pull all 4 AVs at once.


The Patron Avs
First, You'll want to clear the area south of the statue square, then it tends to work best to pull one of the straggler AV's up to that area with a good long snipe. You may get one, you may get all 4. We got 3 and managed well enough (Vengeance FTW). Stoney (earth pet) Tanked GW, the most dangerous of the AV's, while I supported him.

The greatest danger among the 4 Patrons is GW Followed by Mako.

Ghost Widow has a Dark Regeneration type self heal. This means you want to keep as many people out of melee range as possible. Then you need sufficient buffs and debuffs to make it hard for the heal to-hit. If you don't find some way to stop the Dark Regeneration, GW will be impossible to defeat. As if that wasn't enough, GW also has a Soul Storm hold that appears to be near Mag 100 Hold with 4100 neg energy damage. She held our scrapper thru integration and dispersion. That means she can cut thru even the best unsupported status protection. You WILL need to buff your tank with status protection. We've now learned her hold is mag 100. That's 8 levels of Clear Mind. It will be a full time job to keep a tank buffed. Alternately, use controller pets, or use a pair of tanks alternating tanks and vengeances. Make sure if using alternating tanks, that the backup tank remains outside the 10' radius of the Hold. It won't do you any good to have alternating tanks if they both get held and killed simultaneously.

Mako Has the equivalent of Elude and SR Toggles combined for approximately 94% defense. You will need sufficient buffs and debuffs to bring this down to reasonable levels. We had 6 x Tactics, 2 x Rad, and 2 x Earth Controllers. That put us in the +120% to +180% Tohit range. He fell over like a limp noodle. However, a team with no -def and no +tohit will be very hard pressed to take him down. It may even be impossible without either buffs, debuffs, or controls. Considering AV resist, the +tohit buffs are highly preferable. Primarily Fortitude, Tactics, Buildup, Aim, Yellow Inspirations.

The other two AV's I didn't even notice, we killed them by accident I think.

Note, as one AV dies, there seems to be a good likelyhood 1-2 more AVs will aggro randomly if they have not already.


The Flier and Statue Square
Next you'll want to clear the sqaure around the statue, and probably take out the flyer while you're at it. If you can get all the troops and avoid the flyer, that is best. The flyer respawns gwad awful fast. You can't keep rid of the menace. You need to clear this area, as LR will call them as reinforcements into your backside if you don't kill them first.

Next, let the flyer respawn, then take down the flier. One less menace on your backside. It turns out that the flyer does respawn quickly. Regardless, It is a good idea to take the flier out right after you clean the statue square and just before starting in on LR. This will give you a decent period of time to start the attack before it can respawn again. I will say, the flyer did account for about half my deaths the time we didnt' take it out.

That done .... it's time for LR himself. Unfortuneately I can't give a perfect strategy here. I'll give two.

Split Team Strategy

EDIT: Now someone mentions LR teleported to them to defend the towers when their tanker died. More testing is needed here.

Split the team into a Pull Team with taunt tank and enough buff/heal support to keep him alive, and the rest of the team as a Damage Team. If you plan to use the pull team, you'll need to have cleared most of the map to the ship. The entire team engages LR long enough to clear out his support minions. A pair of controllers to help manage the pack of L54 Boss Level Minions are highly reccomended at this point. Then pull team lures LR near to the Long Bow Ship and keeps him taunted there if at all possible. At the minimum you gain time between the damage teams attack and LR attemtping to protect the towers, and at most you keep him entirely occupied.

Be Warned LR can hit for 4695+ flattening even a stone tank in short order, unless that tank has some support. I don't know what his damage cap is, but he can all but one shot most tanks. Support is a requirement here. With enough support any AT can do the job, but tanks of any variety will be prefered.

Then the Damage Team Attacks the Yellow Accuracy Tower First. Meanwhile it is crictical that you KILL ALL REPAIRMEN ASAP. The repairmen can heal the towers very quickly and may even ressurect a defeated tower. Storm, FF, Kin with repel powers can be very valuable in keeping repairmen off towers. Keep an eye on all towers for repairment and do not allow any to live or respawn. Once the first tower is destroyed your defense buffs and accuracy debuffs should be more effective helping your team and tank survive LR.

Then Attack the Red Damage Tower Second. Once this is defeated further pressure should be releived on your team and tank as LR will be doing significantly less damage. Then clean up the rest of the towers, and then spank the unbuffed neutered LR like the wimpy little baby he is.

Note: There is speculation that the blue tower is defense instead of endurance. Depending on team makeup, you may want to reprioritize the various towers.

Tankless Team

For us tankless, it ended up a battle of attrition.

Stonies (earth pet) tanked LR some, but he was too unpredictable, and the stonies couldn't hold him. In the end I (DDD) was tanking LR with (3 luck + Vengeance + FF bubbles + Night Fall + Shadow Fall + Howling + Twighlight Grasp), and he still took me out more times than I want to count. That means his to-hit buffs (until you take out the towers and make him vulnerable) are probably in the +50 range, or I was incredibly unlucky. But so long as I was super defense buffed I was able to hold him for a while.

Finally thru a great deal of attrition (Glad I'm 50 and debt is meaningless) we took out all the towers, then LR Fell in a blink. GW was actually harder than the unbuffed LR. It's all about managing all the spawns from 20 directions till you can take out the towers. Once the towers fall LR is a wimp.


Conclusion
Does that mean, ANY team can do this ? No, I'm afraid not. It requires too much teamwork and planning. While there is no one perfect mix, and many teams will work, for every workable team, I can think of at least one unworkable team. PuGs given their lack of cohesion, teamwork, and general complete random makeup are probably completely doomed.

For organized teams, I think you'll need an extra dose of AV capable defenders or controllers. I recommend at least 4 Defenders or Controllers, but preferably a mix. The AV capable Defenders and Controllers, as well as FF and Stormers will be in key positions to work on this TF, but any Defender or Controller will be a sought after asset. Leadership Capable players of any AT will also be very useful, if not required.


Addendum

Somethings to think about when building the team.

0) Teamwork

1) Normal Anti-AV team, hopefully including some -regen.

2) Some way to counter Mako and his 94% defense.
<ul type="square">a) Vengeance
b) Fortitude
c) Tactics
d) Targeting Drone
e) Buildup and Aim
f) Insights
g) Any +tohit
h) -defense (only 15% normal effectiveness)[/list]
3) Some way to counter Ghost Widows Mag 100 Hold including 4100 neg energy damage.
<ul type="square">a) Clear Mind x 8
b) Increase Density x 8
c) Clarity x 8
d) Stimulant x 8
e) See +Defense (4) Below
f) Animated Stone
g) Phantom Army
h) Other Pet
i) Two Tanks, rotating deaths and vengeance.
j) other[/list]
4) Some way to counter Ghost Widows Dark Regeneration
<ul type="square">a) Only one person/Pet in Melee
b) Vengeance +def
c) Force Feilds
d) Fortitude
e) Lucks
f) Elude+SR toggles yourself
g) Maneuvers
h) +def
i) -tohit (only 15% normal effectiveness)
j) -resists for multiplied damage
k) Multiple Fulcrums for Additional damage (less effective with only one target)
l) any +damage to try to overwhelm the Dark Regeneration (very hard to acheive, but not impossible)
[/list]5) Some way to counter LR's +50 tohit (estimate)
<ul type="square">a) Pet/Tank/Scrapper Taunt and Buffed
b) Vengeance +def
c) Force Feilds
d) Fortitude
e) Lucks
f) Elude+SR toggles yourself
g) Maneuvers
h) +def
i) -tohit (only 15% normal effectiveness)[/list]
6) Some way to counter LR's 4500+ damage
<ul type="square">a) See Above Defenses (5)
b) Sonic Bubbles
c) Any other +resist
d) -damage
e) -recharge (only 15% normal effectiveness)
note) Any character attempting to tank LR will require at least
some support, regardless of AT Primary or Secondary.[/list]
7) Some way to pull and separate the 4 AVs.
<ul type="square">a) double stealthed long range pull that doesn't KB or DoT.
b) some other method.[/list]
8) Some way to deal with two AVs at once.
<ul type="square">a) See (5) +Def
b) See (6) +Resist
c) Buffed Controllers (at least 2) and Immobilize (this will not currently work on test, but will be fixed before live)
d) Controller Pets
e) Taunt Tank
f) Buffed Scrapper
g) Double Buffed anything
h) other.[/list]9) Some way to handle all four
<ul type="square">a) See (8) Above
b) Nukes, Shivans, and every other trick in the book, all at the same time.
c) other[/list]
070429 - Updated GW's Hold Information

Iakona Wrote:[ QUOTE ]

Ghost Widow's Soul Storm
Accuracy: 1.0
AttackTypes: AOE_Attack, Negative_Energy_Attack
Area Affected: Targeted AoE
Range: 80 feet
Radius: 10 feet
Recharge: 45 seconds
Hold Magnitude: 100
Hold Duration: 22 seconds (vs. level 50 hero) (ignores resistance)
Damage: 10 ticks of 410 (vs. level 50 hero) Negative Energy per tick over 10 seconds

[/ QUOTE ]

Great guide! Thank you for posting it!

Things to add:

Geas of the kind ones works wonders v Mako.

We had no buffing to hit other than a couple of tactics, and not much debuffing (only defender sets present were kin and FF) and rolled this fairly easily so not even the debuffing is mandatory.

A stone tank is a big help as he can fight recluse without taking accuracy/damage towers down if bubbled a couple of times. He can also tank Aeon and all his clones which simplifies that fight.

A second tank prepared to jump in on GW if she holds the first one is also useful, but mainly allows one tank to keep all but one of the AVs taunted, while the second one and the rest of the group kill them one at a time.

Mr Minotaur 50 stone/axe tank Freedom

GW's hold is mag -30, actually. That's enough to cut through a stone tank with granite+rooted, or a regen with integration+MoG. Put a mez protection buff on a stone tank, and you should be fine. Alternately, but a few on any other tank

Fighting 4 AV's at once? Question those who have done the RSF and the STF. Isn't fighting 8 Hero/AV's all at once more fun?

Very nice guide.

How do the 4 initial AVs compare to their RV versions? (from your description LR and his towers sound completely different from his RV appearance)

Update: 070429

[u]Statesman's Task Force 2007-04-15[u]

Printable PDF Diagram

You'll need about 3 to 4 hours, minimum. You could however spend 6 to 10 hours if you don't know what you're doing and where things are ahead of time.

For the most part you'll need an AV capable team and you'll be taking on L52 to L54 AV's. This means you'll want some -regen from Primarily Rad, Kin, Dark, TA primarily. You'll also want some Buffs from FF, Sonic, or Emp as Buffs are not effected by AV resists. Finally you may want repel capabilities or Storm, Kin, FF. I strongly suggest 4 defenders or controllers, preferably 2 of each. Then the rest of the team can fill as you like, however a taunt capable tank will be very valuable in the final encounter, but is not required. Honestly, I can't think of any AT Primary or Secondary that would not be valuable at one point or other, it will all depend on the rest of the team. The only major bias I see is the need for at least half the team to be defcon.

The initial missions are hardly worth mentioning, just your typical AV killer missions. If you're AV capable these should be a push over.

Later in the missions you'll be taking on the Villain Respec. It's important to note the trick on making two passes around the room. The first pass to weaken but do NOT kill the vines. Then on the second pass kill the vines, and finish the mission. Some teams with greater AoE capability will not need this trick, but many teams will. You will want the support person that's least likely to die and has the most endurance to take the temp power at the end of this mission.

Next, In the DR Aeon Mission, you should have had the support person least likely to die and with the most endurance take the temp power from the previous mission. Aeon will be INVINCIBLE until this power is used on him. That's the only trick to that one. If Aeon gets his sheild back up, he'll say something inane like "You'll never take me!" ... just zap him with the temp power again and finish the job. He's a wimp without his sheild.


The Final Mission

In this last mission, you'll be facing 4 L54 AV's at once, then later a L54 invincible LR. Many teams find it beneficial to have Nukes, and Shivans. These can help ease the load tremendously, especially if you pull all 4 AVs at once.


The Patron Avs
First, You'll want to clear the area south of the statue square, then it tends to work best to pull one of the straggler AV's up to that area with a good long snipe. You may get one, you may get all 4. We got 3 and managed well enough (Vengeance FTW). Stoney (earth pet) Tanked GW, the most dangerous of the AV's, while I supported him.

The greatest danger among the 4 Patrons is GW Followed by Mako.

Ghost Widow has a Dark Regeneration type self heal. This means you want to keep as many people out of melee range as possible. Then you need sufficient buffs and debuffs to make it hard for the heal to-hit. If you don't find some way to stop the Dark Regeneration, GW will be impossible to defeat. As if that wasn't enough, GW also has a Soul Storm hold that appears to be near Mag 100 Hold with 4100 neg energy damage. She held our scrapper thru integration and dispersion. That means she can cut thru even the best unsupported status protection. You WILL need to buff your tank with status protection. We've now learned her hold is mag 100. That's 8 levels of Clear Mind. It will be a full time job to keep a tank buffed. Alternately, use controller pets, or use a pair of tanks alternating tanks and vengeances. Make sure if using alternating tanks, that the backup tank remains outside the 10' radius of the Hold. It won't do you any good to have alternating tanks if they both get held and killed simultaneously.

Mako Has the equivalent of Elude and SR Toggles combined for approximately 94% defense. You will need sufficient buffs and debuffs to bring this down to reasonable levels. We had 6 x Tactics, 2 x Rad, and 2 x Earth Controllers. That put us in the +120% to +180% Tohit range. He fell over like a limp noodle. However, a team with no -def and no +tohit will be very hard pressed to take him down. It may even be impossible without either buffs, debuffs, or controls. Considering AV resist, the +tohit buffs are highly preferable. Primarily Fortitude, Tactics, Buildup, Aim, Yellow Inspirations.

The other two AV's I didn't even notice, we killed them by accident I think.

Note, as one AV dies, there seems to be a good likelyhood 1-2 more AVs will aggro randomly if they have not already.


The Flier and Statue Square
Next you'll want to clear the sqaure around the statue, and probably take out the flyer while you're at it. If you can get all the troops and avoid the flyer, that is best. The flyer respawns gwad awful fast. You can't keep rid of the menace. You need to clear this area, as LR will call them as reinforcements into your backside if you don't kill them first.

Next, let the flyer respawn, then take down the flier. One less menace on your backside. It turns out that the flyer does respawn quickly. Regardless, It is a good idea to take the flier out right after you clean the statue square and just before starting in on LR. This will give you a decent period of time to start the attack before it can respawn again. I will say, the flyer did account for about half my deaths the time we didnt' take it out.

That done .... it's time for LR himself. Unfortuneately I can't give a perfect strategy here. I'll give two.

Split Team Strategy

EDIT: Now someone mentions LR teleported to them to defend the towers when their tanker died. More testing is needed here.

Split the team into a Pull Team with taunt tank and enough buff/heal support to keep him alive, and the rest of the team as a Damage Team. If you plan to use the pull team, you'll need to have cleared most of the map to the ship. The entire team engages LR long enough to clear out his support minions. A pair of controllers to help manage the pack of L54 Boss Level Minions are highly reccomended at this point. Then pull team lures LR near to the Long Bow Ship and keeps him taunted there if at all possible. At the minimum you gain time between the damage teams attack and LR attemtping to protect the towers, and at most you keep him entirely occupied.

Be Warned LR can hit for 4695+ flattening even a stone tank in short order, unless that tank has some support. I don't know what his damage cap is, but he can all but one shot most tanks. Support is a requirement here. With enough support any AT can do the job, but tanks of any variety will be prefered.

Then the Damage Team Attacks the Yellow Accuracy Tower First. Meanwhile it is crictical that you KILL ALL REPAIRMEN ASAP. The repairmen can heal the towers very quickly and may even ressurect a defeated tower. Storm, FF, Kin with repel powers can be very valuable in keeping repairmen off towers. Keep an eye on all towers for repairment and do not allow any to live or respawn. Once the first tower is destroyed your defense buffs and accuracy debuffs should be more effective helping your team and tank survive LR.

Then Attack the Red Damage Tower Second. Once this is defeated further pressure should be releived on your team and tank as LR will be doing significantly less damage. Then clean up the rest of the towers, and then spank the unbuffed neutered LR like the wimpy little baby he is.

Note: There is speculation that the blue tower is defense instead of endurance. Depending on team makeup, you may want to reprioritize the various towers.

Tankless Team

For us tankless, it ended up a battle of attrition.

Stonies (earth pet) tanked LR some, but he was too unpredictable, and the stonies couldn't hold him. In the end I (DDD) was tanking LR with (3 luck + Vengeance + FF bubbles + Night Fall + Shadow Fall + Howling + Twighlight Grasp), and he still took me out more times than I want to count. That means his to-hit buffs (until you take out the towers and make him vulnerable) are probably in the +50 range, or I was incredibly unlucky. But so long as I was super defense buffed I was able to hold him for a while.

Finally thru a great deal of attrition (Glad I'm 50 and debt is meaningless) we took out all the towers, then LR Fell in a blink. GW was actually harder than the unbuffed LR. It's all about managing all the spawns from 20 directions till you can take out the towers. Once the towers fall LR is a wimp.


Conclusion
Does that mean, ANY team can do this ? No, I'm afraid not. It requires too much teamwork and planning. While there is no one perfect mix, and many teams will work, for every workable team, I can think of at least one unworkable team. PuGs given their lack of cohesion, teamwork, and general complete random makeup are probably completely doomed.

For organized teams, I think you'll need an extra dose of AV capable defenders or controllers. I recommend at least 4 Defenders or Controllers, but preferably a mix. The AV capable Defenders and Controllers, as well as FF and Stormers will be in key positions to work on this TF, but any Defender or Controller will be a sought after asset. Leadership Capable players of any AT will also be very useful, if not required.


Addendum

Somethings to think about when building the team.

0) Teamwork

1) Normal Anti-AV team, hopefully including some -regen.

2) Some way to counter Mako and his 94% defense.
<ul type="square">a) Vengeance
b) Fortitude
c) Tactics
d) Targeting Drone
e) Buildup and Aim
f) Insights
g) Any +tohit
h) -defense (only 15% normal effectiveness)[/list]
3) Some way to counter Ghost Widows Mag 100 Hold including 4100 neg energy damage.
<ul type="square">a) Clear Mind x 8
b) Increase Density x 8
c) Clarity x 8
d) Stimulant x 8
e) See +Defense (4) Below
f) Animated Stone
g) Phantom Army
h) Other Pet
i) Two Tanks, rotating deaths and vengeance.
j) other[/list]
4) Some way to counter Ghost Widows Dark Regeneration
<ul type="square">a) Only one person/Pet in Melee
b) Vengeance +def
c) Force Feilds
d) Fortitude
e) Lucks
f) Elude+SR toggles yourself
g) Maneuvers
h) +def
i) -tohit (only 15% normal effectiveness)
j) -resists for multiplied damage
k) Multiple Fulcrums for Additional damage (less effective with only one target)
l) any +damage to try to overwhelm the Dark Regeneration (very hard to acheive, but not impossible)
[/list]5) Some way to counter LR's +50 tohit (estimate)
<ul type="square">a) Pet/Tank/Scrapper Taunt and Buffed
b) Vengeance +def
c) Force Feilds
d) Fortitude
e) Lucks
f) Elude+SR toggles yourself
g) Maneuvers
h) +def
i) -tohit (only 15% normal effectiveness)[/list]
6) Some way to counter LR's 4500+ damage
<ul type="square">a) See Above Defenses (5)
b) Sonic Bubbles
c) Any other +resist
d) -damage
e) -recharge (only 15% normal effectiveness)
note) Any character attempting to tank LR will require at least
some support, regardless of AT Primary or Secondary.[/list]
7) Some way to pull and separate the 4 AVs.
<ul type="square">a) double stealthed long range pull that doesn't KB or DoT.
b) some other method.[/list]
8) Some way to deal with two AVs at once.
<ul type="square">a) See (5) +Def
b) See (6) +Resist
c) Buffed Controllers (at least 2) and Immobilize (this will not currently work on test, but will be fixed before live)
d) Controller Pets
e) Taunt Tank
f) Buffed Scrapper
g) Double Buffed anything
h) other.[/list]9) Some way to handle all four
<ul type="square">a) See (8) Above
b) Nukes, Shivans, and every other trick in the book, all at the same time.
c) other[/list]
070429 - Updated GW's Hold Information

Iakona Wrote:[ QUOTE ]

Ghost Widow's Soul Storm
Accuracy: 1.0
AttackTypes: AOE_Attack, Negative_Energy_Attack
Area Affected: Targeted AoE
Range: 80 feet
Radius: 10 feet
Recharge: 45 seconds
Hold Magnitude: 100
Hold Duration: 22 seconds (vs. level 50 hero) (ignores resistance)
Damage: 10 ticks of 410 (vs. level 50 hero) Negative Energy per tick over 10 seconds

[/ QUOTE ]

note on the repairmen: they are grey, but, if bounced out by knockback, they will go a good distance and this is how they set about resurrecting the towers. it seems they don't have a preference towards towers and simply repair the nearest one. we had a tower resurrect twice before realizing what had happened. good guide

I've had a lot more people say they had better success taking the red tower first. Most of those were tank centric teams that lacked the buffs and debuffs that are more common in my own teams.

While I still say, what tower to take first is dependent on your team, including what buffs, and debuffs you have available. It WILL vary from team to team. However, it appears that more teams are having better success with taking the red tower first. I admit my average team does not resemble most other players average team, with that in mind, I also admit that for many of those teams lacking the buff and debuff levels I'm more accustomed to, that the red tower may well be of the higher priority.

If you have an FF, multiple fortitudes or other +def capable of covering the entire team, multiple darks or other -tohit debuffs, or multiple rads or other -damage debuffs, then I'd prioritize the yellow tower and relieve the overall pressure on the entire group, allowing your defenses to drop LR to 10% to-hit, then take the red tower reducing the damage he does when he does get lucky and hit by half.

If you have a heavy taunt tank, but don't have +def or -tohit covering the entire team, then I'd prioritize the red tower to relieve some of the pressure on the tank first by halving LR's damage, then the yellow tower to lower the pressure on the rest of the team making it a bit more likely LR might miss.

However, I can't stress enough how important +def, -dam, can potentially be, when used in sufficient quantity. Neither are resisted and can go a long way to putting the nerf on LR even when all his towers are up. -tohit is also important, but less so due to the massive resists.

Excellent things, but a few notes:

1) The blue tower appears to be Endurance, and has been shown to be critical to Lord Recluse activating a certain RFED(tm) [Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies] power. The last STF team I was on took down Red/Yellow/Green and left Blue, and had no trouble hitting or hurting him. The trouble was that when we got LR down to about 1/4th health (which I suspect is the trigger condition)...he spawned a ridiculous number of LEVEL 54 BANE SPIDERS of ALL types (Minion/Lt./Boss). I didn't even really have the chance to count them up, but I distinctly remember thinking "Where did all these guys come from!? Time to clear some space!" (*Activate Aim + BU + Nova*) [minions are cleared, Lts. and Bosses proceed to continue destroying team]. At first, we couldn't figure out what was causing this ambush spawn (none of us had seen it before). So we tried to plan for it and simply stay focused on Recluse and stick tight together for healing...the plan was on the verge of working, but we couldn't get LR below 1/8th before getting punked by the Bane hurricane. I suspect that a team with a large amount of buff/debuff (along the lines of 2 Rad using all debuffs on LR and a Kin or two waiting until the spawn to activate Fulcrum Shift) could actually BENEFIT from this spawn by using it to buff their damage for the final stretch, but I have in no way confirmed this and don't recommend it to any team without 2 Rads and 2 Kins to test it out. Needless to say, once we dropped the tower that REFD(tm) power didn't happen and things were fine.

2) While its effectively impossible to keep the Flyer out of commision, its aggro needs to be effectively managed. Any team with a secondary tank can use that tank to keep the flyer away from heroes taking down towers, but otherwise I advise a strategy that includes the tanker keeping LR and his Executioners busy while staying in position to handle the Flyer and any add-ons it decides to drop. Not every team will have to worry about it, but many will.

I'd like to add that taunting GW from range while the rest of the team is pummeling her in melee has worked well for me on a few runs. Tho without protection her Soul Storm would take me out. Rez or hospi and right back to taunting and she goes down fast.

Having a good split team strategy is very useful. If you can manage a 3 man tank/5 man tower set up, you are sure to do well. Stone tanks are best, i found. You dont need but one good empath. Ill/ trollers are good for helping with aggro and damage mitigation.
To me, a great set up would be:
1 emp defender (or a dedicated /emp troller)
1 rad defender (dark also has uses)
(note: vengance and leadership makes a HUGE difference)
1 stone tank
2 trollers (illusion is a great primary, mind is suprizingly helpful if spec'd right. Rad is an awesome secondary. also, having a backup emp couldnt hurt.)
a good mix is here, I liked having
1 energy blaster
1 fire blaster
1 spines scrapper
note that ALL 5 AT's are represented. I have NO IDEA how kheldians could help or hurt.
Your results may vary.
I would love for someone to post a thread (and link it) listing the winning teams and what they had.
You have to have a good mix of damage, taunt or aggro control, and heal-buff-debuff.
that is what makes this TF so great. your personal build will be tested. pvp builds dont help, but we pulled it off somehow.
(took a good 10 min for GW)

Dark Dark Defenders have two AoE stun powers... Howling Twilight and Dark Pit. Together, they can overwhelm even bosses.

And so, by myself, I was able to take care of the banes that dropped from the flyer and the banes that LR spawns by hitting them with the double AoE stuns (followed by Tentacles to keep them from moving, Tar Patch to weaken them, and then Night Fall, the cone damage).

All controllers and most defenders should be able to provide the same protection if they hold back their group control powers waiting to spring them on what's supposed to be an ambush.



WRT Ghost Widow: The Tentacles from me and my dark servant were enough to immob her and most of the AVs for about 80% of the time. AVs' PToD do not protect from immob. Thus we were able to keep her in one place on top of the Tar Patch and away from the taunting tank. Thus, she wasn't able to get her heals off. Though, in the end, we had to pull off our scrappers so that she was totally isolated and wasn't healing at all to defeat her. Just like everyone uses Geas v. Mako; get everyone to fire off Crey Pistol on GW if she moves around too much closing in on you.



Also Note: Big difference from doing the STF on Invincible compared to Heroic. I highly recommend Heroic... it takes three hours off the length of time.

As a side note on pulling: I've done two STF where I pulled the AV's using Kin's Siphon Speed and managed to pull one AV at a time.

My Siphon speed is normally used as a travel power so its 6 slotted and I believe I have 2 range SOs. That's it. Also if it hits you have the speed to get out of dodge

I was about to say that I managed to pull one AV down towards the ship where you emerge. Oddly..it works well in helping take down the AV. Managed a pull of LR also down to the ship, same deal..he fell. Leave the ship to the last if you can. The mission will be done, you defeat the ship and all is good. Took 2 hrs. to do the TF. We had one tank, two trollers, two defenders two scrappers and Me the blaster the first time. Two hours total. Peice of cake.

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It's doable in 3-4 hours on invincible. Lowering the difficulty wouldn't cut more than an hour off that. With the right travel powers I'm sure someone will get it down to 2 hours eventually. Of course most people agree my average team isn't the same as your average team, so mileage will vary.

3 defcon teams successful.
3 tank enabled teams successful.
2 tank enabled pugs failures.

Three teams without tanks, and two without any empaths and they all won, it must be some strange fluke of the universe.

The defcon teams actually struggled less in general, but had more trouble with LR. While the Tank teams struggled more overall but less with LR.

Zero for 2 on pugs, but then I originally said pugs would be mostly hopeless.

Between a DDD or a good AoE controller or two, depending on build, the megaspawns can be locked down pretty effectively. (I mention them separately, because a DDD can be the defender version of a controller, but is not a controller per se. )

I ABSOLUTELY DO NOT want this to turn into a Must have X, Must have Y, guide.

GW and LR can both splatter a stone tank so fast your head will spin. If you use a tank, they need support. Without support what does it matter what type of tank you use if they are dead anyway. With support any tank will work, and live.

Empaths are very handy and only ONE of 8 ways to help with the problem. Yes empaths with their strong single target emphasis mesh intuitively and simplisticly with tanks, since a tank is a single target. But a well played empath can cover more than one tank. And two well played empaths can cover an entire team. Two Bubblers could do that, as well as many other combinations of defenders and controllers. There really is more than one way to skin a shark, soulless witch, or over grown cybernetic spider.

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

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

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

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

I was on this TF with South (and for once, I wasn't the tank - I was the peacebringer).

My thoughts on this.
<ul type="square">[*]"Be Here Now" - The STF is not something you can "autopilot". Any one char can be a point of failure in the STF. You need to be reading chat and following directions. Be aware of the situation. This is demanding enough that I'm not sure I'd even want to do this on a computer I was not familiar with. If you are on the Statesman TF, for the sake of the team, give it your full attention.[*]"Know Your Character" - The details of your character and what powers do can really make a difference. I would rather have 8 kins who know their character backward and forward for this than a "perfect team", whatever that is.[*]"Follow the Leader" - Someone needs to be the "Leader" of the TF. They need to have the plan down and be able to issue instructions. Everyone else needs to keep an eye on chat for warnings and general tactical instructions. If the leader says "Back up!", do it.[/list]I ran this several times on test and I've run this almost every day since it went live at least once. My teams have failed it and we have won it. In fact, I've won it more times than I failed it.

Our points of failure almost always have ended up to some variation of "This player didn't work with the team". "They didn't pay attention", "they didn't pro-actively buff/debuff/whatever their power is", "they ran off and aggroed 8-10 mobs (very easy to do if you aren't careful)".

I won't stick my head in the sand and say there aren't powers that are *very* desireable; but I've got to agree with this STF guide.

This morning, we stomped it with this team
1 Rad/Psi Defender
2 D3s
2 Scrappers (1 kat/regen &amp; 1 dark/dark)
1 En/En Blaster
1 Peacebringer (me)
1 Tanker

I agree with the above. We had some PL'd kid who had a ill/rad who had no idea what he was doing or what all of his powers did. he couldn't understand or follow simple directions. we carried the team until LR. We had to call it a night, as 4 OF US INCLUDING A TANK, couldnt keep L.R. at bay. it was so damn sad. I have beaten it once with a great team. A good mix combined with competent players will win every time. I hope you all have better luck than I. I will say I heart my first hami-o :-)

If you use a couple of the tricks floating around out there for this, it's doable within or under 2 hours easily...and that's with a team who is taking their time.

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1) Start on Heroic difficulty at first. Work your way up to Invincible. The strategy doesn't change and honestly the AV's don't change that much as you'll still use the same strategy regardless of difficulty levels. Just spawn sizes and collateral damage issues change. We did our first one at Heroic and finished OK even though we lost 2 players prior to the final mission. The other two were at unyielding and Invinc respectively. +RCHG powers and -DEF/-RES powers seem to be more important at higher difficulty levels.

2) Clear the map on the last mission up to the 4 patron AV's before you engage any of them. Then it's pretty easy to pull them up to the raised platform and engage them without fear of NPC spawns.

3) Use a snipe on the 4 patron AV's youencounter before the LR confrontation. Stand next to the wall and break your LOS to all but one of them at a time. This is easy to do if you stand to the left of the dividing barrier between the two ramps that lead down to the AV's. I don't suggest using the little corner areas of the AV platform itself....too easy to draw more aggro. Once you've isolated your LOS to just a single AV, Snipe (slotted for range) from a Def or Blaster and you'll almost always bring just one. We've been going left to right...GW first, Scirroco, Scorpion and then Mako. On one occasion, we pulled Scorpion and Mako at the same time but engaged both simultaneously and still beat them down. PA's are very useful for this.

4) Pull LR up away from the towers up to the first ledge above his area (on the building behind the towers). Engage him there with a tank, give the tank a dedicated healer. Try to convince the tank to not use Tier 9's without +DEF accolades and/or inspirations. The Tier 9 crash is almost always fatal unless he pops purples first. This has worked with a Fire/Fire and a Ice/Ice tanker btw, so I know it should work for almost all the others also. Everyone else on the towers. If you have a Kin on your team, put them on buffbot duty for everyone to keep up SB and everything else recharging quickly (esp AM's from the Rad's). You don't need damage class AT's (blasters/scrappers) on the team, but they sure as heck make the killing go faster. May as well bring along a pet scrapper/blaster or two.

5) Nukes/Shivans aren't required. At all. Unless you simply lack the synergy of -DEF/-RES debuffs with +RCH/+ACC buffs. I'd say 1 Kin, 1-2 Rads, 1 Emp, 1 Ill troller (any kind), a tanker (with fly is helpful) and throw in an extra damage class AT and another player (your choice) for fun and you've got a solid team. I've done it 3 times now with different team makeups and all were successful. Make sure your Def's have ranged attacks and at least one of them needs Snipe and you should be gold.

6) I've yet to experience the dreaded "black dawn" of LR spawning a bunch of helpers when he's almost dead. We've always taken down all 4 towers first then he was just beat down...rather quickly each time. So not sure what that event is all about.[/list]
Really, I was hoping and expecting something more on par to the difficulty of the LRSF, but this is far easier to complete overall.

Here's one tip that I used on two teams successfully against Ghost Widow to get significantly more use out of scrappers.

Try to hold her repeatedly, and have the controllers declare when she was held and when she wasn't. The teams I was on called it "The Archvillain Hokey Pokey". When held, the scrappers went in and used their biggest attacks as much as possible. When she wasn't held they pulled back. The tank was the only individual that stayed in melee range while she wasn't held.

Pulled this off on a team with 3 scrappers, a tank, only 1 blaster, 2 controllers and an empath. She went down faster than Cap'n Mako did with his insane defenses. In both teams I used this on we didn't have much for debuffs and didn't have any shivans.

I've run this TF twice now with my SG, the first time on Invinceable, the second on Tenatious difficulty. Both times we took it down in just over 2 hours. Actually, we were faster the first time thru on max difficulty for some reason

The TF up to the final mission is pretty standard AV fare, if you've got a good AV killing team this is a cakewalk. In the final mission is when it gets interesting.

We cleared the entire corridor south of the AV's, then everyone set up way back down the corridor, about 2/3 of the way to the boat. We had an invisible character move in and toss an attack on GW to get her attention, then beat feet back to the group. I had our kin keep a couple of ID's on me, I was playing my Stone tanker and when GW got in range I started taunting her, staying OUT OF MELEE RANGE, and keeping her pointed away from the team. At that point the team hit her with the debuffs and took her apart like a soggy kleenex... it's important to know that if you taunt from out of melee range GW will NOT use her heal... and with the debuffs, scrappers &amp; fire imps she goes down real fast.

For the rest of the AV's it was simply a rinse/repeat thing, if you get more than one AV simply alternate taunts on them while the team takes them apart one at a time. Mako is really easy if you bring some Tactics to the party, between the debuffs and tactics we never really noticed his elude. The other two AV's were no problem at all, just standard AV fare.

We took out the flier the first time thru, but it's fairly pointless since the thing respawns so quickly. The second time we ignored it and had no problem.

With LR himself, first I got his aggro, then took him over close to the Red tower (buffs his damage) where the rest of the team was taking it down. This accomplishes two things, first it keeps LR occupied and an occupied LR doesn't spawn as many of his pets, and second it keeps the tank close to the team so they can toss the occasional heal my way as LR slowly wears me down. It's vital that you keep LR facing away from the team or his cone attack can take out the squishier members of your team.

Once the Red tower is down we move to the Green tower (heals him) and repeat the process... it's much easier now since LR's hitting for so much less damage. After the Green tower's down it's on to the Yellow tower (accuracy). In both cases we left the Blue tower (endurance); since we've never run across an AV with end problems it seemed pointless.

With the Red, Green &amp; Yellow (optional) towers down LR was debuffed and we took him out without a lot of problem. When he got to around 10-15% he spawned a bunch of henchmen, but a Fulcrum Shifted nuke from one of the blasters handled things nicely and LR bit the dust a few seconds later.

Its crazy how powers like fulcrum shift and vengence turn the tide in some fights. I haven't heard of having LR tag along during the tower tossing. (as opposed to taking him to the boat with an empath tag a long. keeping him in the square with the team isnt a bad idea at all. when i got my badge, we did just that, except we took him to the opposite of whatever tower was being attacked.
any good guides on the new hami yet?

Well, we're still working on strategies, there's a rough strategy in the Guides section now, and looking it over it's pretty close to what I and the other Guardian raiders have been pondering. Once we settle on the exact strategy I'll write a guide as to what we're doing.

I will admit, the new Hami isn't an easy nut to crack. Sure, you can do it easily if you throw enough EoE inspirations at it; the trick is to come up with a reliable, polished method that has very little dependence on them.

i guess the one thing i like/hate about the statesman TF is that if you have a weak link, a lost player, or a few poorly spec'd toons or bad players, it can not be finished. Now that i think about it. most if not all TF's are like that. never mind.