I don't doubt the effectiveness of -res ... in fact, as an SD/DM Tanker that runs just a few percent below damage cap, I'm a -res crack addict.
I just don't get how your whole team isn't wiped constantly (assuming a full group and full spawns). What are the average pack sizes? Are you pulling in 2-3 at a time or the whole pack?
(I'm not doubting you btw .... I'm genuinely interested)
I'm curious as well. Do you assemble teams 'like the pug STFs' (we need this and that and that)?
Because on Kruunch's mission any 30+ team can quickly dispatch the bosses as long as there's a Tanker or two (when my 28 Tanker went over the aggro cap on his mission the squishies started dying, so we called another Tanker and it was ok).
I'm thinking so long as the pulled groups remain in the debuff zones (with coordination), enough stacked debuffs and maybe some sort of control it should be enough for that type of run. But this is speculation on my part. I've always put off running lvl's because I honestly thought the reward/time ratio was less than 52's. But if it's close as it was explained above, I think it would be worth giving it a shot. Kioshi, make a defender and join us on Justice. 
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I just don't get how your whole team isn't wiped constantly (assuming a full group and full spawns). What are the average pack sizes? Are you pulling in 2-3 at a time or the whole pack?
(I'm not doubting you btw .... I'm genuinely interested)
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Typical spawn is 11 or 12, and hostage guarding is 5, so usually pulling either 5, 10, 12, 17, 22, or 24... yes, entire spawns at a time (stragglers come along after the main spawn hits the team)... I try to keep around 20 in camp.
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I'm curious as well. Do you assemble teams 'like the pug STFs' (we need this and that and that)?
Because on Kruunch's mission any 30+ team can quickly dispatch the bosses as long as there's a Tanker or two (when my 28 Tanker went over the aggro cap on his mission the squishies started dying, so we called another Tanker and it was ok).
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... really, a RO network member is asking how you kill +4's without a tank?! 
If the 54's are eating your SO invuln, just get a defense buff to get you to 45%.
For team creation, it's a pug, you get what is available and what fits the need. I aim first for 4 -res debuffs if I can find them, and that gives me a lot of options. I like to have a kin. I don't look for emps much - though usually there's spare emps and kins floating around. I try to get at least 2 dedicated damage dealers, preferably of the AOE kind, and I prefer scrappers, but a mix is fine. I can dip into the extremely low levels for buffer/debuffers at times.
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... really, a RO network member is asking how you kill +4's without a tank?! If the 54's are eating your SO invuln, just get a defense buff to get you to 45%.
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My SD Tanker is above the soft cap and with adding in the debuffs from DM, I still get hit constantly by L52s (L54s that much moreso). I'm still not getting how you stay alive (not to mention killing fast enough to make it worthwhile).
Do they just not hit you (and are you all hovering at max range or something)?
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... really, a RO network member is asking how you kill +4's without a tank?! If the 54's are eating your SO invuln, just get a defense buff to get you to 45%.
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My SD Tanker is above the soft cap and with adding in the debuffs from DM, I still get hit constantly by L52s (L54s that much moreso). I'm still not getting how you stay alive (not to mention killing fast enough to make it worthwhile).
Do they just not hit you (and are you all hovering at max range or something)?
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I've never been on a team with G_Tanker (heck, I don't even know what server he plays), but you can definitely make groups that just neuter enemies. For example, two colds will softcap the entire team. A couple sonics/thermals could resistance cap the team. Now add in debuffs like rad, dark, or Kin to reduce enemy damage even further.
Survivability anecdote: 6 dark Defenders and 2 storm defenders vs Ghost Widow on the STF. We had so much resistance (Shadow Fall, epic shields) and damage debuffs (Darkest Night / Twilight's Grasp) that her 400 dmg/tick hold ended up doing 10 damage per tick... when it hit (we were softcapped). Heck, we tanked 3 AVs with pretty almost no issue. (There may have been 2-3 deaths total.)
Then look at the buffs (Accelerate Metabolism, Fulcrum, etc) and debuffs (Enervating Field, Lingering Radiation, Sonic Disruption, Tar Patch, etc) that turn enemies into jelly.
Support heavy teams are really a sight to behold.
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... really, a RO network member is asking how you kill +4's without a tank?! If the 54's are eating your SO invuln, just get a defense buff to get you to 45%.
For team creation, it's a pug, you get what is available and what fits the need. I aim first for 4 -res debuffs if I can find them, and that gives me a lot of options. I like to have a kin. I don't look for emps much - though usually there's spare emps and kins floating around. I try to get at least 2 dedicated damage dealers, preferably of the AOE kind, and I prefer scrappers, but a mix is fine. I can dip into the extremely low levels for buffer/debuffers at times.
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Ah, 4 -res debuffs, nice. And yeah shame on me for asking being on the RO network, I was away from the game for 4-6 months and only played for 5 days or so since I returned. Now the memories of the all-squishie ITFs on invincible I used to do with RO returned after you wrote that I just haven't been playing high-level toons lately and been focusing on lowbie melee toons, ya know, a change to try to stop me from being burned out 
Anyhow I asked because this is a new level of challenge to me, I just did those 54 boss farms thrice or so and came back to the 52 lvl. But I never had too many debuffers to test it, all you see on AE freedom are kins and emps with the occasional rad.
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Kioshi, make a defender and join us on Justice.
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Sure I'll send you a tell if I go play in Justice, thanks
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... really, a RO network member is asking how you kill +4's without a tank?! If the 54's are eating your SO invuln, just get a defense buff to get you to 45%.
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My SD Tanker is above the soft cap and with adding in the debuffs from DM, I still get hit constantly by L52s (L54s that much moreso). I'm still not getting how you stay alive (not to mention killing fast enough to make it worthwhile).
Do they just not hit you (and are you all hovering at max range or something)?
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I've never been on a team with G_Tanker (heck, I don't even know what server he plays), but you can definitely make groups that just neuter enemies. For example, two colds will softcap the entire team. A couple sonics/thermals could resistance cap the team. Now add in debuffs like rad, dark, or Kin to reduce enemy damage even further.
Survivability anecdote: 6 dark Defenders and 2 storm defenders vs Ghost Widow on the STF. We had so much resistance (Shadow Fall, epic shields) and damage debuffs (Darkest Night / Twilight's Grasp) that her 400 dmg/tick hold ended up doing 10 damage per tick... when it hit (we were softcapped). Heck, we tanked 3 AVs with pretty almost no issue. (There may have been 2-3 deaths total.)
Then look at the buffs (Accelerate Metabolism, Fulcrum, etc) and debuffs (Enervating Field, Lingering Radiation, Sonic Disruption, Tar Patch, etc) that turn enemies into jelly.
Support heavy teams are really a sight to behold.
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Oh yeah I've totally seen hand picked Tankerless teams in action that make me wonder why I play a Tanker in the first place.
But G_Tanker has been maintaining that he's doing this with PUGs, which is astounding to me (even moreso when you considered we're talking about speed as well as survivability for a farm).
Now it might just be the server I play on (Justice) ... I'm lucky to get the right mix of DPS to control much less being able to handpick the AT combos that I'd prefer. If he isn't having that issue (say playing on Freedom or Champion since they have higher pops) then that would explain to me how he can get these groups on the fly and why L54 farms might not be as onerous as they have been for me from a speed point of view (survivability usually isn't an issue running a couple of Tankers through those).
BTW I've noticed a proliferation of really squishy Tankers coming up through the AE lately .... L50 Stone and Invuln Tankers should not be dropping dead before my Shield Tanker (which never dies) or even more sadly, my Spines/Fire Scrapper.
Then again I've seen a plethora of brand new players (to the game itself) as well so that would explain it I guess.
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Oh yeah I've totally seen hand picked Tankerless teams in action that make me wonder why I play a Tanker in the first place.
But G_Tanker has been maintaining that he's doing this with PUGs, which is astounding to me (even moreso when you considered we're talking about speed as well as survivability for a farm).
Now it might just be the server I play on (Justice) ... I'm lucky to get the right mix of DPS to control much less being able to handpick the AT combos that I'd prefer. If he isn't having that issue (say playing on Freedom or Champion since they have higher pops) then that would explain to me how he can get these groups on the fly and why L54 farms might not be as onerous as they have been for me from a speed point of view (survivability usually isn't an issue running a couple of Tankers through those).
BTW I've noticed a proliferation of really squishy Tankers coming up through the AE lately .... L50 Stone and Invuln Tankers should not be dropping dead before my Shield Tanker (which never dies) or even more sadly, my Spines/Fire Scrapper.
Then again I've seen a plethora of brand new players (to the game itself) as well so that would explain it I guess.
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I play on freedom, virtue, and pinnacle with some characters scattered all over.
This morning we had 2 rad defenders + 2 kin defenders tankless (and controllerless) for a while vs 53s - not pretty, but we were fine for the period where we looked for a tank (lead kicked the afk tanker). Earlier I was in a team vs. 52's (first run, second run upped it to 53's) with a 15 dark, 18 rad, and a 40ish plant/rad and 40ish fire/kin which went tankless and did extremely well... although it was pretty amusing to see the 45 blaster scared to try something tankless.
*shrug* Neither of these teams were with me leading, I just showed up and did work. Second one was at a decent pace, first one was pretty slow even with tanker. Both were vs 53's.
As far as terribly built (& played) tanks go, yes, there are lots out there... which is part of why I don't look for tanks until I'm filling that last slot or two, at which point they're optional.
another reason why i tank..i honestly dont trust anyone else too.
I definitely think you can go tankerless.
I disagree, however, that 54's are better. Everything that scales your ability to kill 54's also works against 52's. If you have a bad group then you're either going to kill 52's slowly or you're going to kill 54's that much more slowly. Either way, 52's tend to be better for tickets and, IMO, experience as well.
The only argument I see for 54's is that, if you're leveling up, it maximizes the amount of xps you can gain per mission. This can be useful in the case where you're PUG'ing and it's hard to find groups but that's about it. Otherwise I think you just want to do 52's and simply do more missions.
As for tankers versus defenders (or controllers for that matter), I'd merely challenge the notion that a good tanker would be less efficient. A well built tank is going to be doing decent damage and is a very efficient way to group up mobs and concentrate on killing them. It's not a matter of whether you can lead a team without a tank (you undoubtedly can) but rather a matter of whether you wouldn't still be better off with a tank-focused group. Defenders have some great abilities to keep groups a live and having a good defender in your group can let you do some amazing things ... but they're not gods and if they're spending all their time keeping the party up, they're not going to be as efficient as a tank that can quickly herd aggro and then focus on damage.
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another reason why i tank..i honestly dont trust anyone else too.
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QFT
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Defenders have some great abilities to keep groups a live and having a good defender in your group can let you do some amazing things ... but they're not gods and if they're spending all their time keeping the party up, they're not going to be as efficient as a tank that can quickly herd aggro and then focus on damage.
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Couple of nitpicks;
A) Scrapper with taunt aura therefore > tank if the scrapper can handle the damage, no? Since they can also gather agro for the brief period the mobs live, and do more damage? (I'm asking it rhetorically; I already do this on my invuln brute and scrapper)
B) Static debuffs (tar patch, sleet, freezing rain) are tremendously powerful in that they can be double stacked with themselves with enough recharge, but on the flipside are weak because if you're in a moving group it's hard to have them up every spawn moving spawn to spawn - therefore you need to herd multiple spawns together or regularly pull to a killspot to get maximum usage from them. This is actually an argument more to use them against 54's - 52's just die too fast to get good usage out of them. Just my observation from these runs - I feel like in a 52 run with my style group half the debuffs go to waste because things evaporate too quickly.
Excellent suggestions.
TAG for later.
Nothing against using MA/AE to farm, Krunch.
But Lvl 1-50 in 10 days?
I can get to lvl 50 in 10 days, just running the following...
1-8 Sewer Team
8-10 KR Radios/Safeguard (for temp travel)
10-16 Positron TF
16-21 Synapse TF
21-25/26 Sister Psyche TF
26-28/29 Moonfire TF (rugged difficulty)
28/29-29/30 Hess TF (rugged difficulty)
29/30-30/31 Citadel TF (rugged difficulty)
30/31-31/32 Speeding through last two arcs in Croatoa
31/32-32/33 Manticore TF
32/33-35 a few Katie Hannon TF
35-36 (37 if really lucky and high enough difficulty) Numina TF
36/37-50 ITF (you can throw in a Kahn and/or LGTF lvl 45+ if you want).
There I just got merits from lvl 10+, get at least 1 really great IO one would want (and if you want can sell if IOs arent your thing, but want the influence for gen IOs/SOs/costume fees)...
I can do all that in less than 10 days with the right team. 
OH how I loved that 2hour Posi and 1:14 (kill all) Citadel.
BrandX Future Staff Fighter
The BrandX Collection
Never said this was the fastest or best way to level. Just a quick way to try out that tank build you came up with in Mids
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Never said this was the fastest or best way to level. Just a quick way to try out that tank build you came up with in Mids
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Awww...but it'd be funner to run them through the TFs
Sadly, the ITF has ruined me on some tankers *glares at DA & FA* Love the TF so much, and I've yet to see a decent DA or FA tank survive that TF on their own.
BrandX Future Staff Fighter
The BrandX Collection
What? FA can't tank ITF?
Who the hell lied to me?
@Viper Kinji
Currently working on:
Turtle Snapper - SD/MA/Ice Tanker
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Never said this was the fastest or best way to level. Just a quick way to try out that tank build you came up with in Mids
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Awww...but it'd be funner to run them through the TFs
Sadly, the ITF has ruined me on some tankers *glares at DA & FA* Love the TF so much, and I've yet to see a decent DA or FA tank survive that TF on their own.
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Fire and Dark Tankers do just fine in the ITF. Badly built Tankers of all varieties do not.
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Fire and Dark Tankers do just fine in the ITF. Badly built Tankers of all varieties do not.
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Either your approximation of a well built tank is a ton of IO's or you're oblivious to what support does for you (my guess is the latter, given our discussions) while playing a fire or dark on the ITF.
Dark and Fire are resist based sets with no defense debuff resistance and low base defense. Even if you get them up to 45% S/L or melee (I've got builds planned for both of mine to hit 45% S/L defense) they suffer from cascading defense failure that makes standing in a crowd of 4-8 roman bosses for an extended period unsupported, well, an unwise endeavor. My mitigation route has been to bring oranges to cap my resists (the extra 20% reduces damage significantly and gives the team time to come bail me out and dark regen/healing flames time to refresh) and I tend to run on support heavy teams, so my tanks do fine... but neither can stand in a crowd of bosses and EB's for an extended period of time unsupported. Just because I run on teams that routinely pummel the ITF doesn't mean I'm oblivious to the mechanics involved.
My invulns (scrappers and brutes, mind you, all softcapped on the cheap to S/L) laugh at Cims, they're less dangerous than 54 boss farms (thnx for adding defense debuff resist to tough & rpd!) ... but for a pure resist set like Fire or Dark, Cims will eat you alive by design. Go herd up the towers on a fire or dark (you know, drag 2-3 spawns into one location for efficient aoe) and show me how easy it is with no support or insps to hang out there for a minute or so
I have both sets of tanker and have run approximately a billion ITF's, which is my basis for disagreeing with "A well built fire or dark tanker will do just fine" ... no, they'll do fine with support, but they're just not designed to handle that type of punishment. It's sort of like suggesting invuln's a great set to kill the CWK with - there's no way to 'properly build' an invuln to handle it without ridiculous IO investment. We're not talking about faceplanting WP tankers that forget tough and weave, here - darks and fires don't have tools available to them to handle cascading defense failure plus extremely low defense before IO's, and that's by design. Get some help capping your defense (or invest very heavily to softcap yourself) and you're much safer, but still need to be on your toes for the cascade.
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Fire and Dark Tankers do just fine in the ITF. Badly built Tankers of all varieties do not.
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Either your approximation of a well built tank is a ton of IO's or you're oblivious to what support does for you (my guess is the latter, given our discussions) while playing a fire or dark on the ITF.
Dark and Fire are resist based sets with no defense debuff resistance and low base defense. Even if you get them up to 45% S/L or melee (I've got builds planned for both of mine to hit 45% S/L defense) they suffer from cascading defense failure that makes standing in a crowd of 4-8 roman bosses for an extended period unsupported, well, an unwise endeavor. My mitigation route has been to bring oranges to cap my resists (the extra 20% reduces damage significantly and gives the team time to come bail me out and dark regen/healing flames time to refresh) and I tend to run on support heavy teams, so my tanks do fine... but neither can stand in a crowd of bosses and EB's for an extended period of time unsupported. Just because I run on teams that routinely pummel the ITF doesn't mean I'm oblivious to the mechanics involved.
My invulns (scrappers and brutes, mind you, all softcapped on the cheap to S/L) laugh at Cims, they're less dangerous than 54 boss farms (thnx for adding defense debuff resist to tough & rpd!) ... but for a pure resist set like Fire or Dark, Cims will eat you alive by design. Go herd up the towers on a fire or dark (you know, drag 2-3 spawns into one location for efficient aoe) and show me how easy it is with no support or insps to hang out there for a minute or so
I have both sets of tanker and have run approximately a billion ITF's, which is my basis for disagreeing with "A well built fire or dark tanker will do just fine" ... no, they'll do fine with support, but they're just not designed to handle that type of punishment. It's sort of like suggesting invuln's a great set to kill the CWK with - there's no way to 'properly build' an invuln to handle it without ridiculous IO investment. We're not talking about faceplanting WP tankers that forget tough and weave, here - darks and fires don't have tools available to them to handle cascading defense failure plus extremely low defense before IO's, and that's by design. Get some help capping your defense (or invest very heavily to softcap yourself) and you're much safer, but still need to be on your toes for the cascade.
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You're being obtuse.
Of course I'm talking about IO'd sets. Anyone with even minor experience in tanking and the sets we're talking about should have understood that.
And yes, Fire Tankers would need some type of support (I believe Dark can resist cap S/L or close to it so not as important for them), but in a full group, the chances of their being no Defenders or Controllers (or Corruptors, or MMs, or Doms) is fairly minimal.
Someone who's run the ITF a billion times on a Fire and Dark Tanker would know this ... just by purview of that statement.
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You're being obtuse.
Of course I'm talking about IO'd sets. Anyone with even minor experience in tanking and the sets we're talking about should have understood that.
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Actually you were being obtuse in your statement, which is why I had to correct you. I eschew obfuscation, to steal a phrase. It is not a fair expectation that the average fire or dark tanker has hundreds of millions of influence in IO investment. You subjectively view that as the threshold for a well built tank, but my experience is that most people don't share your opinion - and people hardly have that expectation when looking for a tanker to run the ITF, or at least I've never seen "Looking for tanker for ITF - if you're fire or dark please have 30%+ smash/lethal defense!".
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And yes, Fire Tankers would need some type of support (I believe Dark can resist cap S/L or close to it so not as important for them), but in a full group, the chances of their being no Defenders or Controllers (or Corruptors, or MMs, or Doms) is fairly minimal.
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Dark and Fire both get to 70% S/L res with tough. I recently ran a 1:15 ITF at challenge level 4 with 2 corrs (kin and storm) and a 48 defender (bubbles) with 3 low level (37-45) shield brutes. (I was on a fire/invuln scrap). I think we ended up with ~50 deaths. Mostly experienced players (1 newbie, 2 semi newbies), 43% of the team on support characters, yet with all that "support" the shield brutes spent half their time flat on their back during mission 2 and 3. Making the assumption that just having a defender or two along = the right type of support is silly.
As much as I dislike empaths (simply from their tag as 'healer' rather than buffer), they're probably the single most useful powerset to pair with dark and fire for the ITF, with cold and FF right behind. Sonic and thermal are also both fantastic - 90% res is significantly less damage than 70% res and gives dark regen and healing flames more time to recover.
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Someone who's run the ITF a billion times on a Fire and Dark Tanker would know this ... just by purview of that statement.
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Which is exactly why I had to correct you. A leveling fire tanker with a solid build will do very poorly on the ITF without significant support, while solidly built sub-40 invulns and granites will do fine. People don't ask for a fire tanker with 300MM in IO's, they ask for a tanker. If you're the tanker in question, you should know what type of support you need to do well.
my fire tank must be in a league of its own then *shrugs*
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my fire tank must be in a league of its own then *shrugs*
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with the amount of influence it would take to build it again, yes it is.
Mine will not be as good as yours because I do not have the time or influence. Dont misconstrue this hate because of a have/have not ordeal. I am very much a capitalist and believe you work for or towards what you have. You have earned your tank and its capabilities and I think it gives goals for those looking for better.
YMMV---IMOIce Ember
*snip long post since that wasn't the point*
Long story short, even against +4's, debuffs have a *huge* impact, most especially when stacked. I'm sure there are more efficient ways to do things, and mind you I primarily put together PUGS for this, but it's worked for me. The only hard data point I have is some 50 herostat'd a run at 340K inf/min iirc, and that was not a terribly optimized team.
Anyhoo. It works for me, so I do it. I do not advocate building a team of damage & tank + 1 emp + 1 kin and trying to kill 54's - it just takes forever. I'm sure you could optimize a team to kill 52's faster - it's the nature of the purple patch, but I've been quite satisfied with the speeds I've leveled my toons at.