Ways to speed things (in all cases, if you're going to use these tips, you should make sure the team knows what you're up to):
1: Skip spawns not containing hostages (this can sometimes be difficult, and it may be better to just steamroll them all, depending on your team); skip the mountain path and jump/fly/teleport up the side of the mountain; avoid killing the enemies at the top of the stairs to avoid the Nictus ambush, try to keep everyone behind the altar to ensure that Sister Psyc-- Solaris actually goes to the altar, instead of bubbling people and fighting.
2: Split the team up to fight the Shadow Cysts. This can range anywhere from everyone going to find their own cyst (very hard), to splitting the team in half for each of the east-west branches in the map (hard). Ignore ambushes unless they block your path/attack you (they'll often get bugged and lose aggro, ignoring you until you fight them)
3: Skip to the bridge. This lets you dodge an ambush, skip several spawns, and might help you lose an aggro monkey ally (Past-a-tron). Pull Generals down the mountain to the bridge, to avoid Lag Mountain. Skip the mountain to the computer (Assemble the Team helps here). Gang up on the computer until it's ded (+def and area denial/knockdown patches may all prove useful). Pull Romulus/Requiem down from the top platform and squash them.
4: Deal with the ambushes near the entrance, fly straight to Romulus and dispatch him. Fly up to the tops of the towers to finish you kill counter
-OR-
Buff up Imperious and travel the long way (either side), with Imperious' Foot Stomp and Zeus' Lightning Bolt mopping up enemies. (Imperious with a fully-saturated Fulcrum Shift is scary)
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/36641/My-Little-Exalt
There was a previous thread on various ways to defeat Romulus.
1) Dogpile
2) Split Healing Nictus
3) Snipe Nictus
4) Use roof to split healing Nictus
Could be others.
A lot of the missions can be stealthed, but it's more fun to steamroll, and it's quicker if you think you can stealth it, but just end up dying a lot.
My fastest ITF was on a team consisting of some serious rad/sonic/kin/kin buffing and debuffing action. The team leader mused about getting more scrappers. Another team member piped in that "with all the debuffs, we're all scrappers!" He was right. Enemies melted in front of us.
www.paragonwiki.com is a great source of information for this game.
New or returning to the game? Want advice from experienced players who want to help YOU?
The Mentor Project: Part of the New Player Council.
Oh, the methods on defeating Rommie I'm not worried about. Those are everywhere.
I just want to make sure I don't eff up the rest of the TF.
Storm Summoning is great because it makes you better than everyone else in the game. - Camma
Knockback is mitigation. It won't be removed just because meleers ***** and moan. - Chaos Creator
what server are you on, I like to run one a day, I know plenty of skilled ITF'ers 
Combat Kangaroos, Justice Server. First 50's
Jirra Roo Plant/Storm/Stone/Musculature Controller
Combat Kangaroo Rifle/Energy/Mace/Spiritual Blaster
Kung Fu Kangaroo Martial Arts/Reflexes/Body/Spiritual Scrapper
Tribal Arc Shield/Elec/Mu/Spiritual Tanker
Alas, my Peacebringer is on Virtue, which doesn't seem to be on your list.
Storm Summoning is great because it makes you better than everyone else in the game. - Camma
Knockback is mitigation. It won't be removed just because meleers ***** and moan. - Chaos Creator
Join your server's TF/Badge channel. The servers I'm on seem to run multiple ITFs daily.
I personally don't like the speed run ITFs. They're usually a bloodbath on the non-armored players or those who don't know what is expected. This is especially so on the second mission where multiple ambush materializations can happen on top of team members who can't keep up, stand still too long, or can't invis/phased through a blocked corridor. The stubborn, but dedicated support players usually get it pretty bad trying to keep up with the tanks and brutes who are already aggro capped so they absorb all the extra aggro along the whole path.
Teams are the number one killer of soloists.
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A lot of the missions can be stealthed, but it's more fun to steamroll, and it's quicker if you think you can stealth it, but just end up dying a lot.
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This. I ran it back to back once, the first time with a steamroll team. It took us about 1 hour 45 minutes to complete. The second was a team that insisted on stealthing everything. Took two hours and fifty minutes.
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Originally Posted by eltonio
This is over the top mental slavery.
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a competent stealth team will always be faster than a competent steamroller team.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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a competent stealth team will always be faster than a competent steamroller team.
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That being said, the bar for competence on a stealth team is so much higher than the bar for a steamroller team.
I would think that if you're not too experienced, steamrolling will be faster for you.
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Alas, my Peacebringer is on Virtue, which doesn't seem to be on your list.
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Let me know when and where you plan on doing it, and I'll see if I can join you. I have several characters on Virtue that can do it (though they are not all level 50's).
Ice/Ice Tank
Earth/Earth Tank
Grav/Rad Controller
Earth/Kin Controller
I think I even have a lvl 37 or 38 Stalker, if you need Stealthiness. ;-)
My memory's not as sharp as it used to be.
Also, my memory's not as sharp as it used to be.
"The tip of a shoelace is called an aglet, its true purpose is sinister." The Question
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Let me know when and where you plan on doing it, and I'll see if I can join you.
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Same. I have a bunch of 50's on Virtue I can drag out to join you with. Also have a Warshade and soon an Earth/Storm in range.
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I don't like to go in blind or be responsible for taking people on a sucky TF, though, so I'd like to get as much info/tips beforehand as possible. So to that end, how do people prefer to do the ITF these days, if at all?
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For your purposes, I wouldn't bother with a speed version. A true speed run is painful for SKd lowbies, squishies without appropriate buffs and (most importantly) less experienced people. So if you've only done it once ever, then forget the speed run.
Virtue does have plenty of ITFs running. Subscribing to the badge channel (virtuebadges2009 or something like that) will let you know what's up.
My global is @frosted o's if you would like to get one done. We usually have a core of 2 to 3 IO'd out toons and can pretty much PUG it from there. Most of us roll redside, but we'll gladly take anyone with us.
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A lot of the missions can be stealthed, but it's more fun to steamroll, and it's quicker if you think you can stealth it, but just end up dying a lot.
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This. I ran it back to back once, the first time with a steamroll team. It took us about 1 hour 45 minutes to complete. The second was a team that insisted on stealthing everything. Took two hours and fifty minutes.
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Your definition for "steamrolling" hurts.
My group "steamrolls" (our definition of it--everything in the way must die) and pull out 25-40 minutes on a better team and 40-60 minutes on a more average team (or the mission #2 layout that has the cysts all over the map).
Blue: ~Knockback Squad on Guardian~
Red: ~Undoing of Virtue on [3 guesses]~
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a competent stealth team will always be faster than a competent steamroller team.
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So I have heard, but I've never seen that actually manifest.
I simply no longer believe stealthing to be a good tactic for any TF or SF and won't participate in it any more. I have yet to see any instance where stealthing actually saved more time than it ultimately cost. The best stealth team I've seen has finished a TF exactly five minutes LATER than a similar steamroll team.
I just simply don't believe it any more.
And besides all of that, I find stealthing immensely BORING to boot.
So, no significant time savings, less XP from fewer kills, and boredom.
No more stealthing for me.
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Originally Posted by eltonio
This is over the top mental slavery.
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A lot of the missions can be stealthed, but it's more fun to steamroll, and it's quicker if you think you can stealth it, but just end up dying a lot.
[/ QUOTE ]
This. I ran it back to back once, the first time with a steamroll team. It took us about 1 hour 45 minutes to complete. The second was a team that insisted on stealthing everything. Took two hours and fifty minutes.
[/ QUOTE ]
Your definition for "steamrolling" hurts.
My group "steamrolls" (our definition of it--everything in the way must die) and pull out 25-40 minutes on a better team and 40-60 minutes on a more average team (or the mission #2 layout that has the cysts all over the map).
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In that run, we even took breaks between missions for people to go to market, take bathroom breaks, etc. It was kinda disorganized until we got everyone on the map. But getting more than half the team back into the mission was sometimes painful and slow.
After that, we just plowed through and killed everything. And all groups of foes in our way were annihilated. We killed everything we saw that was in our path. No stealthing.
We had two /kin corruptors, two brutes and an MM, so plowing through the missions was fast and easy. I never saw Rommie go down so fast. The team was almost all villains except one defender.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by eltonio
This is over the top mental slavery.
|
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
a competent stealth team will always be faster than a competent steamroller team.
[/ QUOTE ]
So I have heard, but I've never seen that actually manifest.
I simply no longer believe stealthing to be a good tactic for any TF or SF and won't participate in it any more. I have yet to see any instance where stealthing actually saved more time than it ultimately cost. The best stealth team I've seen has finished a TF exactly five minutes LATER than a similar steamroll team.
I just simply don't believe it any more.
And besides all of that, I find stealthing immensely BORING to boot.
So, no significant time savings, less XP from fewer kills, and boredom.
No more stealthing for me.
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Conversely, I find stealthing more fun than just steamrolling because it's something besides the "run around and beat everything that moves till it stops" paradigm of playing.
I usually run an ITF a day on Virtue... never have problems finding one.
Make sure you also join the VirtueTFs channel..lots of them (TFs) advertising there.
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a competent stealth team will always be faster than a competent steamroller team.
[/ QUOTE ]
So I have heard, but I've never seen that actually manifest.
I simply no longer believe stealthing to be a good tactic for any TF or SF and won't participate in it any more. I have yet to see any instance where stealthing actually saved more time than it ultimately cost. The best stealth team I've seen has finished a TF exactly five minutes LATER than a similar steamroll team.
I just simply don't believe it any more.
And besides all of that, I find stealthing immensely BORING to boot.
So, no significant time savings, less XP from fewer kills, and boredom.
No more stealthing for me.
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I prefer to fight it out on the highest difficulty, but I have been on stealth/speed runs that finish in under 30 minutes. Never been able to steam roll one that fast.
Probably been done, I've just never been apart of one.
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a competent stealth team will always be faster than a competent steamroller team.
[/ QUOTE ]
So I have heard, but I've never seen that actually manifest.
I simply no longer believe stealthing to be a good tactic for any TF or SF and won't participate in it any more. I have yet to see any instance where stealthing actually saved more time than it ultimately cost. The best stealth team I've seen has finished a TF exactly five minutes LATER than a similar steamroll team.
I just simply don't believe it any more.
And besides all of that, I find stealthing immensely BORING to boot.
So, no significant time savings, less XP from fewer kills, and boredom.
No more stealthing for me.
[/ QUOTE ]
Conversely, I find stealthing more fun than just steamrolling because it's something besides the "run around and beat everything that moves till it stops" paradigm of playing.
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Yes, it's the "avoid playing the game as much as possible" paradigm.
I can do that anywhere at anytime. I generally log into the game to, well, actually play it.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by eltonio
This is over the top mental slavery.
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I usually run an ITF a day on Virtue... never have problems finding one.
Make sure you also join the VirtueTFs channel..lots of them (TFs) advertising there.
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You generally can just hang out by Imperious and find a team. Or if you start one, do a search in your level range and you'll find plenty of search descriptions that say "LF ITF" or something similar.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by eltonio
This is over the top mental slavery.
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I see ITF's run on virtue all the time. Nights especially but I was on 2 already this am.
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Yes, it's the "avoid playing the game as much as possible" paradigm.
I can do that anywhere at anytime. I generally log into the game to, well, actually play it.
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Not fair. I'm still playing the game--just not in the same way you are.
edit: [removed the quote pyramid]
So I've decided that I want my Peacebringer to be "heroic Romulus" for his next costume, which requires that I do the Imperious Task Force. I've only done it once before on my Storm Defender, and I wasn't the leader. Trouble is, no one else seems keen to do the ITF anymore in favor of AE business. To that end, I'm contemplating starting a pick-up ITF myself and getting it over with.
I don't like to go in blind or be responsible for taking people on a sucky TF, though, so I'd like to get as much info/tips beforehand as possible. So to that end, how do people prefer to do the ITF these days, if at all? As a speed TF? What is the key to running a speed ITF if you choose to? Other than the various strategies for taking out Rommie, what other efficiency points do I need to know? Do I need a specific team makeup, or can literally any team do it with the right tactics?
Thanks in advance.
Storm Summoning is great because it makes you better than everyone else in the game. - Camma
Knockback is mitigation. It won't be removed just because meleers ***** and moan. - Chaos Creator