As the Rikti attack in I10 (and continue to make attacks in later issues), we will be provided the chance to clean up UXBs and deal with ground forces. However, some of us may want to take a more proactive approach to the coming invasion. This guide will help you to take down the attacks at their source.
This guide is still very much in development. Any comments to this thread may be added in to improve the guide.
Knowing the Enemy
The Rikti dropship is a potent force; it was made especially to counteract the various super-forces, whether individual exceptional heroes or forces such as Longbow or Arachnos. Even the Freedom Phlanax would have a hard time doing it. But we're not talking about Statesman doing this. We're talking about you.
The Rikti Dropships move at a fairly fast clip; faster than running or Group Fly, but not faster than unslotted Fly. If you cannot defend against this, you will have a chase scene on your hands. This also means you are fighting against the clock; every second you have to spend flying is one less second you have fighting, and one less second you'll have to fight all the other dropships.
They are fairly defensive, having a modestly-high Defense and very good Regeneration. They have poor offenses, compared to the power of their bombs and the troops they teleport down -- however, their cannons are very accurate and potent, able of taking most squishies out in two hits and tankers in three.
Dropships come in groups of nine. Who knows why nine and not then. Maybe Rikti only have thumbs on their right hand. They come in predictable patterns, always the same in every zone; they may come in more than one group at a time, and they always come in two distinct waves, a bombing wave then a ground assault wave.
Getting in the air
The biggest problem is getting in the air. Obviously, you're fighting a spaceship; you have to be in space. (There is a strategy that gets around this discussed later, but for now, let's assume you want to do this the easy way.)
If you're a Kheldian, feel free to skip this part. Lucky punks.
If you are going to have any chance at all in the air, you will need to be able to fly. That is a given. Luckily, taking the Flight power pool isn't too bad; the bonus defense of Hover helps out builds that need a little more defense, while I often hear scrappers gush over the power of Air Superiority.
Hover, however, may be the best choice for several reasons: Low Endurance cost, a Defense buff, no suppression after attacks, and not needing any other prerequisites. With speed boosts (including the Kinetics power Speed Boost, as well as powers like Radiation Emission's Accellerate Metabolism), you can reach the Fly movement cap without any suppression at all, with a Defense boost, with a reduced Endurance cap.
Since we have to follow a moving target, scrappers should probably stay on the ground and help the 'ground forces' clean out EBs and UXBs. However, no archetype is useless; almost all builds have at least one ranged attack, and almost all builds have one debilitating attack.
Group Fly, or the Mobile Weapons Platform
The alternative to taking Hover or Fly, however, is relying on someone who took Group Fly. One character can provide Flight for eight people, which can help specialized builds, people without the ability or will to respec, and random members who join your raid to get in the air and do some damage to the Rikti menace. This is where the villains will have an advantage, as many Masterminds have discovered the joy of being able to turn their pets into a flying weapons platform and just fly through missions and zones alike.
There is a nasty side effect, however: Group Fly drains extra endurance from the fly boy for everyone held aloft, and it causes major accuracy debuffs. Tactics will be a must for any team to counteract this debuff (and unless you play solo and don't like to do extra damage more often, you should have Leadership anyways). The 'fly boy' should concentrate on defense, to keep their endurance from getting too low and suddenly dropping them out of the sky, and let their entourage do all the damage; when they do attack, it should be a debuff, and they should watch their endurance. The Group Fliers should each take a large number of blues to make sure they keep flying; powers like Conserve Power will be invaluable. But don't think of this 'passive' role as being a taxicab; think of it as piloting a giant superpowered weapons platform!
Additionally, Group Fly isn't as fast as normal fly. If you can't get the ship slowed, you'll be in trouble
If you are in a group relying on someone else's Group Fly, for pete's sake, be nice to your pilot, and listen when they say someting! In the original Steel 70 event, I told my team to have me on autofollow, and that we would be doing tests; about half the team followed this instruction, and were able to contribute versus the spaceship. The rest did not, and were not aware of the 100-foot radius of Group Fly; two of them wound up falling out of the sky. The rest, however, were able to enjoy uncapped Fly speed (from the multiple stacked AMs and SBs) with no endurance cost on their part, and were able to blast, tank, and scrap away happily.
Cannon fire
The dropships have only one direct defensive method: Their main cannons. As listed above, they can two-shot most builds (three-shot tankers), in most situations; for this reason alone, soloing the dropships is a bad idea.
However, despite the fact that they do massive damage, mitigating their damage output is not a serious concern to a modest sized group, and almost no concern to a large one. Why? Because they can only hit one target at a time. Rikti dropship damage is effectively a sniper attack, not a AoE; they don't even have forcefields. Even any random smattering of heroes will have enough self-heals and PBAoE heals to cover everyone; damage mitiagtion will not be a problem.
This is very different compared to other giant monster raids. No longer will we need to build dedicated ressurection teams or will every team need their own dedicated Empathy defender. Instead, defenders should heal as needed, but instead concentrate on their more potent abilities: Debuffing.
Debuffs
After reading the logs of the original Steel 70 event, it seems that debuffs on most abilities are effective, although the ship may have some slight resistance to debuffs. This includes, for sure, Resistance of various types and speed.
Obviously, hitting both of those caps is going to be very handy. In the first ship in the Steel 70 raid, we thought of debuffing as a secondary afterthought behind our main attacks; we were astounded, all of us I think, to see the large ship slow down to a halt -- with its damage per second quickly going up... Every ship after that, more of us caught on, and fired our debilitating effects first; that made every ship faster than the last. But we still have incomplete numbers (this will improve as logs are analyzed).
What we know works: -Resistance, -Defense, -Speed.
What we think works: -Accuracy, -Damage, -Recharge.
What we think does not work: Confuse, Disorient, Immobilize, Hold.
-Fly is a special situation. It seems that ships do not follow the normal flying rules -- or the clipping rules, possibly as a side effect of whatever allows them to move through the War Walls unlike normal objects. When you defeat a dropship, it will fall under the ground. If -fly is worthless, then the point is moot; if -fly works, it's entirely possible that (somewhat like the old Arachnos Flyer bug) it will fly under the stage!
Good sources of -Resistance are the Sonic sets. Good sources of -Speed include any Cold or Ice themed set and Spines. Sources of -Regen are rare, but include Poison and Thermal Emission (both villains-only). And of course, the Radiation Emission and Trick Arrow sets can debuff just about everything, and are available to three archetypes each.
Slowing and non-fliers
The greatest benefit of slowing seems to be by design. It seems that every Rikti ship comes to short range of a certain landmark or piece of ground, perhaps intentionally. Almost all characters have at least one attack that can reach that sort of range -- even Super Strength characters can throw rocks, and many scrappers have taken a Super Jump-recharge-repeat policy towards attacking airborne foes.
If your group has a large number of characters with minimal or no melee attackers, or if you just want your raid to be open to all comers (like our Steel 70 was -- at least 30 of those 70 just heard about it by running by), using Slows bring a Rikti ship to a crawl will be invaluable. They aren't that fast to begin with, and this strategy will limit the amount of time you have -- but since travel is no longer a problem when you let the ships come to you, you could have many more attackers at once.
Buffing
Leadership, as always in 8-man teams, will be handy. Tactics is a must in Group Fly teams due to the accuracy debuff incurred by Group Fly, and Assault will be very useful for everyone (solo or group). Maneuvers are not necessary, however, as the ship seems to attack random targets.
Other PBAoE defenses and buffs will be great -- in a recent fight outside a hospital, I was hit by five different Accelerate Metabolisms almost as soon as I walked out the door, peaking at 8 later. And this was just from a modestly sized group fighting randomly.
Additionally, keep in mind that two SBs or a number of AMs (or some combination of these two) can let people with Hover or relying on Group Fly move at the uncapped Fly speed -- an invaluable asset.
Endurance
An important consideration in this fight is Endurance. In addition to (1) having several people with a highly taxing Group Fly that we Just Can Not allow to drop to 0 endurance, we'll be (2) running lots of copies of Leadership and other toggles, and (3) nobody can attack for the 1000 or so hits you'll need without running out of Endurance eventually. (Fortunately, -Resistance abilities drops that number significantly, and you can run all three togglable Leadership powers for less than the cost of keeping a travel power going, and with Group Fly we shunt the cost of the travel powers over to one designated 'pilot.')
Thus, we'll need endurance out the wazoo. This, of course, is where the Defenders, Controllers, and Corruptors come into play -- specifically, Accellerate Metabolism (Radiation Emission), Transference (Kinetics), and Recovery Aura (Empathy). Since two of these are PBAoEs, and the third is a targeted AoE, these will work great with multiple teams coming to one common point.
Where to gather
Each area probably has an ideal point, for ease of reference, accessability (to both hospitals and transporation), and ease of support.
Atlas Park: The airspace immediately above Ms. Liberty. Characters without fly but with decent Jump (or a friend with Recall Friend) can stand on top of Atlas's head and fire at ships that skim nearby. Additionally, you can get support from the ground below -- you can even use sniper attacks or some regular attacks at that distance.
King's Row: The airspace immediately in front of the Paragon Police Department, near Blue Steel, behind the 'coin.' It looks like it may be possible to stand on the coin and fire at the ships as they pass, but this is not confirmed.
Steel Canyon: In the Steel 70 attack, we waited on the skyscraper in the extreme NE quadrant of the zone, aside the War Walls and near a construction site. One group of the second wave first breaches the war wall there; you can see it in the Steel 70 video on Youtube.
If you have anywhere else that is good to go, please leave a message so we can get 'perfect' locations for every part of every zone!
Proud member of the Steel 70! | Global @Radmofet ; usually on Pinnacle, sometimes on Virtue.
As the Rikti attack in I10 (and continue to make attacks in later issues), we will be provided the chance to clean up UXBs and deal with ground forces. However, some of us may want to take a more proactive approach to the coming invasion. This guide will help you to take down the attacks at their source.
This guide is still very much in development. Any comments to this thread may be added in to improve the guide.
Knowing the Enemy
The Rikti dropship is a potent force; it was made especially to counteract the various super-forces, whether individual exceptional heroes or forces such as Longbow or Arachnos. Even the Freedom Phlanax would have a hard time doing it. But we're not talking about Statesman doing this. We're talking about you.
The Rikti Dropships move at a fairly fast clip; faster than running or Group Fly, but not faster than unslotted Fly. If you cannot defend against this, you will have a chase scene on your hands. This also means you are fighting against the clock; every second you have to spend flying is one less second you have fighting, and one less second you'll have to fight all the other dropships.
They are fairly defensive, having a modestly-high Defense and very good Regeneration. They have poor offenses, compared to the power of their bombs and the troops they teleport down -- however, their cannons are very accurate and potent, able of taking most squishies out in two hits and tankers in three.
Dropships come in groups of nine. Who knows why nine and not then. Maybe Rikti only have thumbs on their right hand. They come in predictable patterns, always the same in every zone; they may come in more than one group at a time, and they always come in two distinct waves, a bombing wave then a ground assault wave.
Getting in the air
The biggest problem is getting in the air. Obviously, you're fighting a spaceship; you have to be in space. (There is a strategy that gets around this discussed later, but for now, let's assume you want to do this the easy way.)
If you're a Kheldian, feel free to skip this part. Lucky punks.
If you are going to have any chance at all in the air, you will need to be able to fly. That is a given. Luckily, taking the Flight power pool isn't too bad; the bonus defense of Hover helps out builds that need a little more defense, while I often hear scrappers gush over the power of Air Superiority.
Hover, however, may be the best choice for several reasons: Low Endurance cost, a Defense buff, no suppression after attacks, and not needing any other prerequisites. With speed boosts (including the Kinetics power Speed Boost, as well as powers like Radiation Emission's Accellerate Metabolism), you can reach the Fly movement cap without any suppression at all, with a Defense boost, with a reduced Endurance cap.
Since we have to follow a moving target, scrappers should probably stay on the ground and help the 'ground forces' clean out EBs and UXBs. However, no archetype is useless; almost all builds have at least one ranged attack, and almost all builds have one debilitating attack.
Group Fly, or the Mobile Weapons Platform
The alternative to taking Hover or Fly, however, is relying on someone who took Group Fly. One character can provide Flight for eight people, which can help specialized builds, people without the ability or will to respec, and random members who join your raid to get in the air and do some damage to the Rikti menace. This is where the villains will have an advantage, as many Masterminds have discovered the joy of being able to turn their pets into a flying weapons platform and just fly through missions and zones alike.
There is a nasty side effect, however: Group Fly drains extra endurance from the fly boy for everyone held aloft, and it causes major accuracy debuffs. Tactics will be a must for any team to counteract this debuff (and unless you play solo and don't like to do extra damage more often, you should have Leadership anyways). The 'fly boy' should concentrate on defense, to keep their endurance from getting too low and suddenly dropping them out of the sky, and let their entourage do all the damage; when they do attack, it should be a debuff, and they should watch their endurance. The Group Fliers should each take a large number of blues to make sure they keep flying; powers like Conserve Power will be invaluable. But don't think of this 'passive' role as being a taxicab; think of it as piloting a giant superpowered weapons platform!
Additionally, Group Fly isn't as fast as normal fly. If you can't get the ship slowed, you'll be in trouble
If you are in a group relying on someone else's Group Fly, for pete's sake, be nice to your pilot, and listen when they say someting! In the original Steel 70 event, I told my team to have me on autofollow, and that we would be doing tests; about half the team followed this instruction, and were able to contribute versus the spaceship. The rest did not, and were not aware of the 100-foot radius of Group Fly; two of them wound up falling out of the sky. The rest, however, were able to enjoy uncapped Fly speed (from the multiple stacked AMs and SBs) with no endurance cost on their part, and were able to blast, tank, and scrap away happily.
Cannon fire
The dropships have only one direct defensive method: Their main cannons. As listed above, they can two-shot most builds (three-shot tankers), in most situations; for this reason alone, soloing the dropships is a bad idea.
However, despite the fact that they do massive damage, mitigating their damage output is not a serious concern to a modest sized group, and almost no concern to a large one. Why? Because they can only hit one target at a time. Rikti dropship damage is effectively a sniper attack, not a AoE; they don't even have forcefields. Even any random smattering of heroes will have enough self-heals and PBAoE heals to cover everyone; damage mitiagtion will not be a problem.
This is very different compared to other giant monster raids. No longer will we need to build dedicated ressurection teams or will every team need their own dedicated Empathy defender. Instead, defenders should heal as needed, but instead concentrate on their more potent abilities: Debuffing.
Debuffs
After reading the logs of the original Steel 70 event, it seems that debuffs on most abilities are effective, although the ship may have some slight resistance to debuffs. This includes, for sure, Resistance of various types and speed.
Obviously, hitting both of those caps is going to be very handy. In the first ship in the Steel 70 raid, we thought of debuffing as a secondary afterthought behind our main attacks; we were astounded, all of us I think, to see the large ship slow down to a halt -- with its damage per second quickly going up... Every ship after that, more of us caught on, and fired our debilitating effects first; that made every ship faster than the last. But we still have incomplete numbers (this will improve as logs are analyzed).
What we know works: -Resistance, -Defense, -Speed.
What we think works: -Accuracy, -Damage, -Recharge.
What we think does not work: Confuse, Disorient, Immobilize, Hold.
-Fly is a special situation. It seems that ships do not follow the normal flying rules -- or the clipping rules, possibly as a side effect of whatever allows them to move through the War Walls unlike normal objects. When you defeat a dropship, it will fall under the ground. If -fly is worthless, then the point is moot; if -fly works, it's entirely possible that (somewhat like the old Arachnos Flyer bug) it will fly under the stage!
Good sources of -Resistance are the Sonic sets. Good sources of -Speed include any Cold or Ice themed set and Spines. Sources of -Regen are rare, but include Poison and Thermal Emission (both villains-only). And of course, the Radiation Emission and Trick Arrow sets can debuff just about everything, and are available to three archetypes each.
Slowing and non-fliers
The greatest benefit of slowing seems to be by design. It seems that every Rikti ship comes to short range of a certain landmark or piece of ground, perhaps intentionally. Almost all characters have at least one attack that can reach that sort of range -- even Super Strength characters can throw rocks, and many scrappers have taken a Super Jump-recharge-repeat policy towards attacking airborne foes.
If your group has a large number of characters with minimal or no melee attackers, or if you just want your raid to be open to all comers (like our Steel 70 was -- at least 30 of those 70 just heard about it by running by), using Slows bring a Rikti ship to a crawl will be invaluable. They aren't that fast to begin with, and this strategy will limit the amount of time you have -- but since travel is no longer a problem when you let the ships come to you, you could have many more attackers at once.
Buffing
Leadership, as always in 8-man teams, will be handy. Tactics is a must in Group Fly teams due to the accuracy debuff incurred by Group Fly, and Assault will be very useful for everyone (solo or group). Maneuvers are not necessary, however, as the ship seems to attack random targets.
Other PBAoE defenses and buffs will be great -- in a recent fight outside a hospital, I was hit by five different Accelerate Metabolisms almost as soon as I walked out the door, peaking at 8 later. And this was just from a modestly sized group fighting randomly.
Additionally, keep in mind that two SBs or a number of AMs (or some combination of these two) can let people with Hover or relying on Group Fly move at the uncapped Fly speed -- an invaluable asset.
Endurance
An important consideration in this fight is Endurance. In addition to (1) having several people with a highly taxing Group Fly that we Just Can Not allow to drop to 0 endurance, we'll be (2) running lots of copies of Leadership and other toggles, and (3) nobody can attack for the 1000 or so hits you'll need without running out of Endurance eventually. (Fortunately, -Resistance abilities drops that number significantly, and you can run all three togglable Leadership powers for less than the cost of keeping a travel power going, and with Group Fly we shunt the cost of the travel powers over to one designated 'pilot.')
Thus, we'll need endurance out the wazoo. This, of course, is where the Defenders, Controllers, and Corruptors come into play -- specifically, Accellerate Metabolism (Radiation Emission), Transference (Kinetics), and Recovery Aura (Empathy). Since two of these are PBAoEs, and the third is a targeted AoE, these will work great with multiple teams coming to one common point.
Where to gather
Each area probably has an ideal point, for ease of reference, accessability (to both hospitals and transporation), and ease of support.
Atlas Park: The airspace immediately above Ms. Liberty. Characters without fly but with decent Jump (or a friend with Recall Friend) can stand on top of Atlas's head and fire at ships that skim nearby. Additionally, you can get support from the ground below -- you can even use sniper attacks or some regular attacks at that distance.
King's Row: The airspace immediately in front of the Paragon Police Department, near Blue Steel, behind the 'coin.' It looks like it may be possible to stand on the coin and fire at the ships as they pass, but this is not confirmed.
Steel Canyon: In the Steel 70 attack, we waited on the skyscraper in the extreme NE quadrant of the zone, aside the War Walls and near a construction site. One group of the second wave first breaches the war wall there; you can see it in the Steel 70 video on Youtube.
If you have anywhere else that is good to go, please leave a message so we can get 'perfect' locations for every part of every zone!
Proud member of the Steel 70! | Global @Radmofet ; usually on Pinnacle, sometimes on Virtue.