My First Thoughts on Reichsman Strikeforce

I share majority of the SF gripes JJ and others have brought up, but I also wish to know when will we see some truly villainous Strike Forces, along with LRSF?

The BSF starts up well, but gets horribly down-hill during 2nd mission.

But I guess I'm the minority thinking that CoV is stuck too much on the Bad Guys VS. Bad Guys mode.

Did the Reichsman SF last night - 2 brutes, grav/en dom (*gasp* a lvl 50 BEFORE the dom-mod), bots/dark MM (me), merc/poison MM, SoA and a Widow. We were cruising along (taking our time, semi-RPing and being generous with bio breaks and girlfriend aggro), until we hit the last mish.

Wave after wave after wave after wave of 5th Column. Between somewhat poor planning on our part (why we chose to fight them off in the t-junction right outside the machine room... 3way ambushes, oy), the brutes not understanding that the MMs alone can rez people and if you want to be rezzed you have to stay nearby, and several people jumping back into the mission singly instead of en masse to clear the now-hot door... we were ready to scream after an hour and a half of this. THEN we get to Reichsman.

Who went down in like 15 minutes. Even without working MM temp powers, and using only one set of nukes (I can't remember which one it was, but we didn't use all three, I think it was chem). It was "pound pound pound hide in the machine pound pound pound someone dropped the chem nuke pound hide in the machine pound pound oh look he's dead."

Was glad to see that this time (as opposed to how it appeared on the test server), Mueller gets killed for his presumptuousness (we were making jokes that we wanted to be the ones to kill him and then Reichsman beat us to it).

AFTER we were done, we realized a lot of what we should have done to make it go smoother, so we will probably try it again. And apart from the repeated massacre by the 5th Column, I enjoyed it.

Personally (and YMMV), when we finally cleared out the ambushes and saw the machine room just packed with Columnists, we ALL went, okay, now if THIS is all we had to deal with (hell, cram another 200 in there), and not as ambushes? We'd have been FINE. We were totally into the cinematic idea of strolling into the machine room, seeing 400 Columnists turn to look at us, and go, "WHO WANTS SOME?!"

(BTW - if anyone has Nectar? Toss that into the mobs of Columnists and watch them tear themselves apart - we stood there laughing and picking off the stragglers.)

Yeah, I'd do it again.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

In the first mission, you cannot always use teleports inside City Hall. There are just some areas of City Hall that give you the red circle. This is confirmed hero side, but not villain side.

Why? Shield Charge and Wormhole are pretty staple powers and Wormhole is especially important in the hero version in that first foyer where three groups are in close proximity.

Open question: How have (or haven't) people's opinion changed now that this SF has been out for a while?

Done it now at least 3 times on each side. Villainside 3 times with my lvl 50 bots/dark MM. Heroside with lvl 45 en/en blaster, lvl 47 dark/psi def, lvl 50 grav/kin troller.

Done them in beta, again just after release, and then again in the last two weeks. Different experience each time. Third time villainside was the easiest of the three once we got through the endless spawns of 5th Column. The key? Not nukes... not the patron temp powers... not even a perfectly balanced AT team.

Nectar, baby.

Once we cleared out the ambushes and all that was left was the 5th Column still in there with Reichs, we chucked that in and watched the bloodbath start.

And it didn't matter that the MM power didn't work... I came in with a slew of the temp powers I get from doing mayhem missions (tear gas, long bow, etc etc etc) and just kept debuffing Reichs. Worked like a charm.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

First time I ran BSF it was pretty easier. We got completely wiped out by the ambushes but that meant we could easily pull them from Reichs, then we had our MM's block the entrance. The team was really good though

Ninja/DM MM, Bot/Trap MM, Dark/Thermal Corr, Ice/Dark Corr, Fire/Storm Corr, two Banes and a Dom.

Only took about 2 or 2 and a half hours to finish for us.

I'm not high enough in level yet but I'm heavily looking forward to the redside version. This is my outsider opinion but it seems like they attempted to add some innovative twists to an AV fight and got crucified for it rather than people breaking out of their usual habits and experimenting a bit. My only real concern with the patron powers is that the MM power is a one hit wonder (my same problem with the DGR blueside...more on that later) which effectively makes either the MM power too good or makes Unbreakable itself too good. It's also the power has the least stackability if there are multiples of the same AT. Stalkers can coordinate alternate killswitch runs, doms and corrs get to run a hold/dust devil combo, brutes get the ability to protect against the end drains. It also seems like some of these need to be better described (mainly the dust devils) so that people who get the powers know exactly what they do.

Blueside seems to suffer from being to easy to steamroll in parts from what I've read. There's even been suggestions like buffing the portals in Boomtown so that they can't be one-shot so easily. In the final mission, rather than have the Dimensional Grounding Rays act like the MM power and be single use, they should merely increase the recharge time on Unbreakable and perhaps lower his overall resistance. This will help the issue of stackability (8 players with 10 charges each means 80 chances to weaken him).

As far as the "Countess Crey, I choose you!" problem with the final fight blueside, I think that the devs missed the perfect chance to make a few new enemies. Having a brand new "Team Nazi" would help mix things up for people who are used to fighting the other AVs countless times and it would help clear up the story loophole of "how did Reichman get powerful so fast?" by implementing that they had a part in it.

And everyone likes fighting Nazis, right?

I've only played through the blueside Reichsman TF once. It was just dull. If there ever is a complaint that AVs are just big bags of hitpoints you slowly work through, Reichsman is its best example. What's worse is (the way we did it) saw the team switch targets to take out the new AV, which gave the tank-occupied Reichsman time to regen some of his health. It really was a case of backsliding with every new AV.

I do get the idea behind trying something new, but you know what would have been interesting? If the captured AVs escaped to take on Reichsman as well. That way he could have been the big bag of hitpoints but we would have at least got some AV pets to help.