Guide to the Imperious Strike/Task Force
By
Alexandria2000,
Posted on: 2008-05-15 24:15 in Player Guides
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
. I dont like TF's that favor certain AT's more than others for most of the team slots but when you do this TF you should have at least 1 healer and a kin or kin/healer, Debuffer and or buffer. 1 meatshield and one Dominator.
[/ QUOTE ]
I disagree. Any random assortment of fairly competent players can easily accomplish this Task Force. No tank, healer, nor dominator required. Don't even need to be "competent." Merely "close to competent" is enough.
[/ QUOTE ]
Okay let me rephrase what I said b4 since i forgot about the time the tank dropped. I have beat it without a tank(still had kin and a healer though)and with 5 peeps. Somehow i ended up holding aggro on the healing nic, (so there shows another way to hold aggro). I just kept spamming my BOI on it nand i held aggro while the rest killed rom and the other nics this took 3:26 min. So yes it can be done with a wide variety of toons but it will be done quicker with at least the 4 types of toons I talked about earlier.
please note my BOI is slot with 3 Acc/mez HO's 1 Chance for smash purp and the other Chance for negative purp, so that may have had something to do with it.
The first people to do the TF didn't have guides either. But they figured it out after a few tries (and defeats). That's the fun of not having guides, the real chance for defeat, learning from mistakes, and figuring it out for yourself.
If you don't like that, read a guide or do the TF with an experienced team.
WRT TAUNT: You don't need it. Anyone beating up on the Healing Essence can get its attention and draw it away from Rommie. And as long as the others are beating on Rommie, he won't follow.
Now, if the other players are using AoE attacks, then they get the aggro of all four AVs and then it becomes difficult for someone without Taunt to pull the Healing Essence. But let me make this perfectly clear: I, as a Dark/Dark Defender, was able to pull off the Healing Essence from Rommie while the others were attacking Rommie and pull it out of range so it stopped healing Rommie.
Taunt is not *needed*.
The key to pulling the Healing Essence is getting in close and attacking and then backing away. Long range snipes do nothing to pull. Breaking LoS can really make it run after you once you've got its attention.
And if you're having trouble pulling the Healing Essence, then have someone melee it (or immob it... AVs are weak to immob) and then pull Rommie. Rommie really likes to move around and will oblige in following you while the Healing Essence is preoccupied.
Or, as Turbo_Ski points out, pull Rommie around the tip of a corner with the Essences following behind and everyone stay in front of Rommie and don't AoE. If you don't aggro the Essences, they'll stay behind the corner and if the Healing Essence can't see you, it can't heal off of you.
There are a lot of tactics that work, you just need to adjust to the one your team is capable of. I was on a team last night with an unusual mix (no Tank, and Dark Defender was the only source of healing). After two team wipes with the AVs, we figured out a way to do it and then Rommie went down four times in quick succession. It was frustrating and gratifying. And I loved it.
Speeding Through New DA Repeatables || Spreadsheet o' Enhancements || Zombie Skins: better skins for these forums || Guide to Guides
Thought I would add since i saw some inquiries about this stuff.
Yes I have seen Romy perma Dentention Shielded. I think something happened, and it dropped for a few. I also think the FF def must have had a pretty stout build with IOs and global recharge.That FF def, said i have a plan for the AVs, and when he fired it up, it worked like a charm. He captured Romy. Took out the nictus with out issue. I know very little about FF in general, the set does not appeal to me. His strategy was quite effective.
I have also seen Romy slept and confused significantly for a portion of that battle, again I know nothing about mind builds. Suspect that was a pretty tweaked build. Again a isolate Romy and kill the nicuts run. Both of those were on test, and I am guessing, overall, not really good players but probably great players in general. People on test, knew not to break a sleep. On live, you will get someone who the fireball the nictus right next to Romy who is asleep.
I was just informed, the DS of Grav was nerfed, and perma shifting AVs specifically due to LRSF. I don't know for sure about that one. If this is true, then I would like the devs to change DS back, if after LRTF, STF and now this, the third TF with multiple AVs in on it, that would Grav a uniqueness, and justify its late blooming.
In beta, was able to pull the ITF repeatedly, and we had all sorts of team composition, no tankers sometimes, not healers etc. Very random complete PUGs. And people would drop on it all the time, so have done the last battle with 5 a couple of times. I was a stauch defender that this tf could be done by almost any PUG. But as the more successes, I began to wonder, if it was very very slick players involved coming to see the new content. Not average good, not just good, but some that were slick as could be. Something, not very common on live. Had 2 or three successful runs out of like 7, which is a sharp contrast to the many success runs on test. So I have run this tf 10 or 15 times at this point with live and test combined. And seen it work easily at times. Other times, it is just a disaster.
On live, the max/min team is taking over, and I routinely see people wanting to do it, and the max/min teams not inviting people. I don't want to see this trend continue.
[ QUOTE ]
On live, the max/min team is taking over, and I routinely see people wanting to do it, and the max/min teams not inviting people. I don't want to see this trend continue.
[/ QUOTE ]
That is what I saw last night, and why we mins made our own group. And we failed, giving further proof to 6 of us you need to max this TF. Had I played my l50 ill/rad i bet we would have won, even exemped down to 36.
I don't envey the devs, the builds, powers, and skills of the players are all over the place. TFs should be hard, but they need to invest into some better ways to scale a fight so the mins have a more reasonable chance of success, and to bump up a fight if the team is full of maxes.
Bots/Traps Guide for I19.5
RO Network
Do you consider the Imperious Task Force as harder or easier than...
1) The Statesman TF
2) The Recluse SF
3) The Lady Grey TF
I consider it easier than 1 and 2 and on par with 3. Is it a problem that it matches up with difficulty like that? Is my rating far from the general consenus?
I agree and see what you are seeing.
But have done this tf, without tanks, without healers, all sorts of pugs. So i keep trying it, to find a fool proof way. I am thinking, isolate the healer, kill the summon nictus, then kill romy, and let him res eating the rest. Eliminate the slows to first to prevent the adverse effects of the slows on teams, so people can fight back. Being out of inspirations, and not being able to trade them cross faction is quite irratating. Without slows, people get their powers back and can do things without inspirations.
Hind sight, says also alot of the successful runs on test used alot of these tactics they are people are talking about. Splitting them up somehwat, using immobs etc.
I am wondering, if the Devs designed this for purely strategy as opposed to max/min teams. Max/min teams/builds seems to me, would not be what the devs would be aiming for it. They seem to want a game most people can play, with very few exploits. Max/min just leaves alot of the casual players out.
Just shoot Romulus!
[ QUOTE ]
Just shoot Romulus!
[/ QUOTE ]
This is what I keep telling people and they keep NOT LISTENING...
LOL i have and killed him 4 times! let him eat things. Lots of times. That does work.
And kill the nictus and then romy...lots of times.
I am looking for a way to pull it off with any team, ignoring max/min and ignoring players experience. Some people don't understand the LoS concept at all.
[ QUOTE ]
I am looking for a way to pull it off with any team, ignoring max/min and ignoring players experience.
[/ QUOTE ]
Shoot Romulus
my best time i achieved was in the 1.5 hour mark. the last time this happened which was yesterday, was with 4 LV 49-50 mentors, and 4 SK's, some being in the mid 30's and low 40's. i played my tricked out mind/rad troller lv 50, and i saw that we didn't have a brute or tanker, and thought to myself.. no way we are gonna finish the last mish. i think we had like 3 veats running their team tactics, assault, (not quite sure the name). we blazed through the first 3 missions. no one was in any harm of dying except one veat SK that kept on dying, lol
the final battle w/rom, one of the veats drew aggro from healing nictus, and out of line of sight from rom. we killed rom 2 times its took out the nictus around him. i told my teammates to just go out of line of sight when he dies so as to not get stunned, they didn't listen buti digress. then we killed rom, he didn't rez because the healing nictus was out on LOS. then we poiunded on the nealing nictus easily.
it surpried me. 4 mentors, and 4 SK's matching my best time of 1.5 hours, whihc was done previously with 8 lv 50's balanced team. i dunno about you, but veats seem overly powerful in groups.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I am looking for a way to pull it off with any team, ignoring max/min and ignoring players experience.
[/ QUOTE ]
Shoot Romulus
[/ QUOTE ]
Yes, it's really that simple.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I am looking for a way to pull it off with any team, ignoring max/min and ignoring players experience.
[/ QUOTE ]
Shoot Romulus
[/ QUOTE ]
Yes, it's really that simple.
[/ QUOTE ]
Agreed. Any time I've tried the silly tricks mentioned in this guide, we've failed. Utterly failed. It's not the complexity of pulling the dreaded healing Nictus away or what-have-you.. it's just the fact that it's so much simpler to, as they say, Shoot Romulus.
It's an easy encounter with an interesting difficulty twist. It doesn't require any special tactics outside of your average "beat the crap out of the AV" fight. Just save AoE crowd control powers for when the Cyst Nictus spawns its horde, try to keep away from the Damage Nictus, and out-DPS the Healing Nictus. Not difficult.
Doom.
Yep.
This is really doom.
Using Surveillance here are the Nictus Essence (Damage resistance was all zero percentage and Base stats were normal levels)
Note how my Surveillance only took out from Base Defense but none of the typed values like it normally does. Also Surveillance did not subtract any Resistance from it, proving they are completely immune to Resistance debuffs as well.
Also Romulus Augustus
Only thing worthy of noting here is the Energized Shield ability found on all Cimerorans
I just quit an ITF at the last mission, couldn't kill him at all.
Virtue: @Santorican
Dark/Shield Build Thread
QR
Just failed it for the 10th time in a row. Hurrah quitters!
The Healing one seems to indeed get a heal for every person it hits. Which Sucks. The AoE one didn't actually do much to my crab but often it would kill the Scrapper on the team.
When I ran it The Essences seemed to Attack the tank until Rom was in Danger, then they would run heal him and then return to standing next to the tank. Makes no sense to me. This tf is hard as heck though. Thats for sure.
Good thing too, or magic salvage wouldn't be worth jack anymore post-35...
QR
Weatherby_Goode - "Heck, Carrion Creepers negates the knockdown from Carrion Creepers."
[ QUOTE ]
QR
Just failed it for the 10th time in a row. Hurrah quitters!
The Healing one seems to indeed get a heal for every person it hits. Which Sucks. The AoE one didn't actually do much to my crab but often it would kill the Scrapper on the team.
When I ran it The Essences seemed to Attack the tank until Rom was in Danger, then they would run heal him and then return to standing next to the tank. Makes no sense to me. This tf is hard as heck though. Thats for sure.
[/ QUOTE ]
Yes quitters don't help.
The Heal nictus uses Twilight Grasp and can send enough tendrils of darkness to hit an 8 man team and it has approx 70 to 80ft range on the tendrils.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I am looking for a way to pull it off with any team, ignoring max/min and ignoring players experience.
[/ QUOTE ]
Shoot Romulus
[/ QUOTE ]
Yes, it's really that simple.
[/ QUOTE ]
Agreed. Any time I've tried the silly tricks mentioned in this guide, we've failed. Utterly failed. It's not the complexity of pulling the dreaded healing Nictus away or what-have-you.. it's just the fact that it's so much simpler to, as they say, Shoot Romulus.
It's an easy encounter with an interesting difficulty twist. It doesn't require any special tactics outside of your average "beat the crap out of the AV" fight. Just save AoE crowd control powers for when the Cyst Nictus spawns its horde, try to keep away from the Damage Nictus, and out-DPS the Healing Nictus. Not difficult.
[/ QUOTE ]
The team I was on tried to just "Shoot Romulus". We wiped. Several times.
We ended up with about 64k debt on each team member before we decided to just give up.
Barely even scratched Romulus.
An MMO closure is definitely not a joke, and I have no intention of making light of it. And it can be a tough and emotional thing for players to go through, speaking from personal experience. And I know that it's often much harder on the developers than on the publisher. However, I also know that it doesn't necessarily turn you into a sad, depressed sack of tears for the rest of your life. People can move past it, and heal.
The trick isn't to just "Shoot Romulus".
You need to get him out of line of sight of the healing nictus.
THAT is the tricky bit. But... it does work.
"City of Heroes. April 27, 2004 - August 31, 2012. Obliterated not with a weapon of mass destruction, not by an all-powerful supervillain... but by a cold-hearted and cowardly corporate suck-up."
We did this yesterday with 2 Controllers, 2 Scrappers, a Tanker and a Blaster.
We completely cleared the area around Romulus and the Nicti and then started in on them.
We tried multiple times to immob and pull Romulus and then the healing Nictus. We were completely unable to immob any of them, and that's with 2 Controllers. We tried to pull Romulus and Taunt a Nictus away from him it never worked. With all 6 of us and 6 Shivans all simulatneously attacking Romulus we were completely unable to scratch him at all. His health bar never even moved.
After we all used all 5 Shivans we finally gave up and quit the Task Force.
Ran it twice tongiht. Four in the last two days. And just calling the tf...ambush here in 20 seconds...ambush there after/on this group...yawn.....Just calling it. Blow by blow on both teams, in advance as I saw it. Avoid lag here...if you listen. Listening and understanding? Listening? They listen after completely call things, but does it matter?
First attempt failed miserabley after pulling the healing nictus away, which worked, and almost killing romy. We were so close, it just fell apart after the team wipe. How do you tell a tanker to pull and keep something away? I just don't know. I have a 50 tank, but....???? I am too busy playing what I have to try to....
Second crew, kill the nictus out right. The healing one was one helluva fight but they all fell. Then Romy. Sure some deaths but went well. Not a nuke in sight or shivan. Actually never seen a shivan or nuke used on a good run, on test or live. Shivans and nukes don't count if you ask me. Didn't need inspirations for the avs at all on that run. When it goes right, either method, not needing insp seems to the rule, from what I have seen on live and test.
Team and player experience, and the abiltity to focus and know what your role on the team (and doing it well) seems to be really important.
Same toon each time, but the way I had to play was based on the teams. I was kinetic, therefore completely "situational" in the extreme, on both teams. PUGs both times, same member of my sg on each run. Basically random teams, except the sg mates. We had three kins on the first team, and it just fell apart. There is no way......not with that kind of power.....possible 3 double stacked Fs? and more with triple stacked SP x3? that was just not happening. Ambushes would kill us at times on the first team?
Then there was the second team that lacked that and excelled. We actually had a hard time in the third missions, going from AVs to the generals. Uncoordinated and inabiltlity to focus seem to the issue. Add in those old coh biases, with scrappers and the blaster mentality.
But drops and the lotg 7.5 made the first run totally worth it.
I am so frustrated and puzzled at this. This seems so doable. It just isn't turning out that way on live. Scrappers thinking they are tanks, and the suicidal blaster, who just couldn't learn. Blasters.....your nuke ain't all that. Screwing up triple stacked FS and people not stacking SP? Neither is savng the day, just deing. Teaming, on the other hand, is. SB? who needs it? SB is a joke.
Tell me about it. I have attempted this TF twice so far. the first time was a difficult team to be sure it was a tank 6 scrappers and a brute. there was enough 50 mentors to bring everyone up. It was a gigantic wipe fest for the first mission or two. Casualties every fight, ambushes flattening us but we pressed on, adapted and got better. The Tank and one of the scrappers quit after the first mission. The 3rd mission went well but in the 4th mission we were entirely unable to damage Romy. we had a scrapper who was probably one of the best kiters ever dragging romy around but we could not separate him and the nicti. This seemed like the beat down team from hell and it struggled every step.
My second time through was myself a 50 scrapper, a 50 dominator, and a 50 crab spider with 5 barely 30's we were having to switch Sk's occassionaly but we rolled through right up to Romy where the Stone tank tried to separate them again but could not. Even though this team was not a success either it seemed to be a lot closer to this mythical ideal or we just had really good players. My point is sometimes you can never tell how these teams are gonna go.
Master Gabriel
wierd , so far i did this 6 times.. all successful, the best times were 1.5, and the worst was 2.5 (1st attempt, no one knew anything really, except me of course).
[ QUOTE ]
QR
If you have a tank taunt run up the left side and taunt the healing nictus, and immediately fall off the top step to the left side, you can pull the healing nictus out of line of sight of romulus. At the same time, the rest of the team should aggro romulus and prevent him from following (easy if you have a second taunter).
With the healing nictus out of line of sight, romulus wont be healed by the nictus, and you can put rom down four times easy.
Just as a warning, before romulus goes down the third time, you need to bring the healing nictus back into line of sight of rom. If you do, rom will rez and the healing nictus will disappear, which makes for an easy fight. If the healing nictus does not have LoS to rom, then rom dies, does not rez, and you have to fight the healing nictus instead.
The healing nictus is a much more annoying fight than rom. I'm not sure what this business is about the healing nictus not healing itself; I'm darn sure it works like stygian circle power that works on living enemies because the more characters in range of it (i.e. in melee range), the more green healing numbers above it.
[/ QUOTE ]
The teams that I've been on, including one I tanked, have beaten the ITF easily using this method 3 out of 4 times.
The fourth time, the MM wouldn't keep his pets away from the healing nictus and the tankerS couldn't separate Romulus from the nicti. Everyone quit.