Have they fixed the bug in that last mission dealing with the engineers? If they haven't, then I really don't recommend running this TF.
You should have at least one Defender or Controller helping you out as support. That would really help to start out with, even if the Def/Cont just put up their debuffs on Recluse and then went to help with the towers.
I've never seen Recluse just start his summons without being damaged first, but I would have definitely tried to kill those guys as soon as he summoned them.
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
"I was just the one with the most unsolicited sombrero." - Traegus
For LR you need a non damage toggle on him to interrupt his Bane summoning, We usually use RI with max -tohit which also helps get his tohit spike under control.
As for his fluctuating tohit I think it comes in pulses from Blue Tower, I dont believe Blue gives a constant +30% tohit as stated in the Wiki. We usually go Blue then Red not the way listed on the Wiki, just for that reason. Use a few purples for the first 3 minutes of the fight and when the Blue tower is down you can use standard buffs from your team ( Fort from the Emp glued to you 
)
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For LR you need a non damage toggle on him to interrupt his Bane summoning, We usually use RI with max -tohit which also helps get his tohit spike under control.
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Whenever I'm on this TF with my Dark/ Def or /Rad Cont, I always try and place my toggles on LR to give the tank some help, even though the debuffs are resisted...anything helps. I'm always in range of LR since the tanks usually stays near the center so the debuffs don't detoggle.
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How much defense should I maintain to floor his chance to hit? Between inspirations, buffs and temp powers, I hovered between 60% and 120% defense to all.
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Laevateinn: While the Blue Tower is up, you need 75% def to floor Recluse. Keep your def monitored, he does have def debuffs that could drop you below that and substantially increase his tohit chances. Once the Blue Tower is down, the standard 45% def will floor him.
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Have they fixed the bug in that last mission dealing with the engineers?
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You should have at least one Defender or Controller helping you out as support.
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Aett: Nope, not yet. By support, you mean healing, right? If you're having survivability issues that would be ideal, but right now killing the towers is a dps race. It'd take even longer to destroy them if you took one more person off to help keep the Tank alive. Unless you're on a heavily optimized team, I can see that last fight being very ugly / tedious.
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I dont believe Blue gives a constant +30% tohit as stated in the Wiki.
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Brakner: The Blue Tower definitely gives a static +30% tohit. I've run this TF so many times, sometimes just scraping the min def required to floor him, and he has never had bouts of insane tohit. (That and I've looked the power definition, the buff is set to not self stack.)
As I mentioned before, some of his attacks have a def debuff, which would yield a better tohit chance for him.
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Whenever I'm on this TF with my Dark/ Def or /Rad Cont, I always try and place my toggles on LR to give the tank some help, even though the debuffs are resisted...anything helps.
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Clouded: Btw, Enervating Field does essentially nothing to help the Tanker's survivability until the Red Tower goes down (Recluse will have 100% s/l/e res, so the dmg debuffs are fully resisted). Imo you'd be better off putting EF on the Tower to bring it down faster so Recluse isn't buffed as long.
I guess I should have noted I was toggleing DN and Rad's -tohit toggle.
Softcapped SLEN with 1 foe, wow!
You were BETTER than a granite tank.
AND you had to tank him over 40min, that is a very long time.
I've done STF (mostly on my granite), and i've been killed a few times on less than optimal teams (dr aeon and his horde of clones, recluse). In fact, in granite (-70% recharge), I used earth's embrace 4 times, all my inspirations, and begged the team to have someone run over, drop inspirations on me, then go back to the towers (and this was before the tower nerf).
Suriving the STF for 40 min, with only 3 deaths is way beyond the scope of most tanks. Nothing wrong with that.
on a side not, you can usually find 1-2 regular mobs after the hencmen AV's. You 'might' be able to taunt them over and use them for invincibility fodder to make your softcap defense even higher (though, I think that will only add 9% at most)
50 Tanks: Invul/ss, Fire/ice/fire, Ice/em, Stone/fire
WP/Stone, dark/dark, shld/mace
50 Other: WS, SS/dark/sc brute, BS/Regen/WM scrpr, fire/fire/force blaster, rad/kin corr, mind/rad ctrl, ill/storm cntrl
LR is perfectly doable with a well built Invuln, even with zero support. Here's the basic method:
First, as long as the blue tower's up you'll need 75% def to floor his tohit; purple candy is the key here. Also, as long as the Red tower's up he does double damage... this can really smart so a few oranges aren't out of order. Finally I always carry a couple-three big greens for when LR gets lucky and Dull Pain isn't up.
Ok, you've cleared the courtyard and the Flier... eat a few purples to get 75% def (I recommend watching your combat stats), then pop a few oranges to get your Energy resist up a bit and immediately jump into melee range of him. As long as you're in Melee with Invincibility running he will NOT summon banes. As soon as you've established aggro (taunt is a near-must here) your team should immediately jump the Red tower.
I say that because while the red tower's up his damage can really hurt badly, even with capped resists. Make sure you keep your def above 75% via purples while the team kills the red tower and, optionally, the blue as well. Personally I don't usually have problems with surviving his attacks without purples once the red tower's gone but if you have them you may as well use them.
Positioning... I usually draw LR back into the corner behind the Green tower, this way we don't have to worry if the Flier respawns while we're fighting him.
I've tanked him several times without support using this method... if you run low on purples I have a teammate come by and drop some on me. I don't often need the greens but when I do I need them badly.
Here's my "basic" inspiration loadout for LR:
10+ purples, preferably medium or large
2+ big greens for moments when he gets lucky
3-4 big oranges, needed until the red tower dies.
That usually handles the entire encounter quite nicely. I do restock from teammates before LR though, I carry a couple of big yellows for dealing with Mako.
COH has just been murdered by NCSoft. http://www.change.org/petitions/ncso...city-of-heroes
CMA, while your strategy is flawless, he did say he had to tank over 40 min ...
30 min per inspiration, he'd have 5 min of cap to LR time.
I'd have to say the team wasnt optimal or suffered from the repairman bug is the problem, and the tank suffered from it.
50 Tanks: Invul/ss, Fire/ice/fire, Ice/em, Stone/fire
WP/Stone, dark/dark, shld/mace
50 Other: WS, SS/dark/sc brute, BS/Regen/WM scrpr, fire/fire/force blaster, rad/kin corr, mind/rad ctrl, ill/storm cntrl
Thanks for all your comments.
When we did it last week, the bug wasn't fixed. A friend on the team said she had done it successfully despite the bugged repairmen, which is why we decided to give it a try. In the end we could not complete, although we came really close - at one point all but the Yellow tower was down.
There was an Emp on the team. I thought I could get away without support, and for awhile it looked that way. Then I would promptly die without warning.
I did get into melee with him at once and he was in range of Invincibility at all times, and I didn't damage him either. I have no idea what caused him to spawn banes.
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on a side not, you can usually find 1-2 regular mobs after the hencmen AV's. You 'might' be able to taunt them over and use them for invincibility fodder to make your softcap defense even higher (though, I think that will only add 9% at most)
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It's a good idea and normally I would try that. However, with LR's banes around, Invincibility was saturated nearly all the time.
I hope they fix the bug soon, I want another go at this. I'll remember the bit about debuff toggles. 
To add to what Sarrate has said, I usually recommend having one support person with you. With support, most well built Tankers can hang against LR indefinitely so even the less then optimal DPS teams have time to get the towers down.
Unfortunately the bug with the repairmen (repairmen healing towers before actually visibly spawning) makes it so that you might need to take down the same tower more then once. The STF takes longer now due to that, but still doable if you're set on doing on it now. I would expect this fixed by I16.
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As for his fluctuating tohit I think it comes in pulses from Blue Tower, I dont believe Blue gives a constant +30% tohit as stated in the Wiki. We usually go Blue then Red not the way listed on the Wiki, just for that reason. Use a few purples for the first 3 minutes of the fight and when the Blue tower is down you can use standard buffs from your team ( Fort from the Emp glued to you )
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The wiki guide to playing the STF is horrible and needs to be removed.
That said, the Blue Tower, at the introduction of the STF, used to function in the way you described. Except the +ToHit portion of the pulse was a 1 second buff instead of the 15.25 seconds it was meant to be (resulting in "WTF!?" moments for some people before it was fixed where LR would suddenly hit them with a 95% chance) and currently is.
Blue: ~Knockback Squad on Guardian~
Red: ~Undoing of Virtue on [3 guesses]~
Some good advice in here. I tanked LR once on my Ice tanker. With a couple of close calls in health dipping, I never died (I'd guess I had to tank him for 20-30 minutes, possibly less). I was already self-capped at 45% S/L/E/N without EA.
IIRC my support was a /Kin, and 2 /Empathy and a quite a few purples (and hibernate). Would have loved a bubbler.
The OP did well for a 40 minute tango with the big bad.
Glad to see some more feedback about the buffages to LR, I was wondering.
53 Bots/FF/Mace Mastermind | 53 NRG/FF/Electricity Defender | 50 Time/Dual Pistols/Soul Defender | 50 Demons/FF/Mace Mastermind | 51 Necro/Dark/Soul Mastermind | 50 Thugs/Time/Mace Mastermind | 50 Ice/Ice/Arctic Tanker | 50 Plant/Rad/Earth Controller | 50 Illusion/Trick Arrow Controller | 50 Gravity/Force Field Controller
Yes, I like Force Fields.
We pulled off an all scrapper stf sunday. Not sure about the repair men bug. It wasn't painful until the tower part. No shivans or nukes. 121 total defeats. I forgot the time but it wasn't that bad. Anyway, what about hover tanking? I've seen it done a few times but not with invul/. Would that be a better/safer option? I was thinking of trying this with my invul/dark tank but I don't want get to that part thinking I'm about to do something and get dropped out the sky it 3 seconds.
"All problems can be solved by throwing enough scrappers at it."
@Riez on Virtue, Protector, Champion, and Exalted server.
LR will jump at you if you are gonna do the hover tank method. So, it will reduce the amount of melee attacks aimed at you but he does have some ranged attacks as well. But it might be possible.
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As long as you're in Melee with Invincibility running he will NOT summon banes.
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This is, sadly, not the case. Everything else you mention is spot on, but I have seen plenty of Invuln tankers and scrappers in melee with LR and he summons banes unless you also add a debuff of some sort.
There is also no shame in pulling out after a tower is destroyed to restock on inspires as needed before making a run at the next tower. If the team is already having a rough time or is on the edge, I will often take out the Blue or Red tower, then pull out to regroup, get inspires if needed, and then finish off the other offense buff tower. Usually once both the red and blue tower are down, he is manageable.
Far too often people are reluctant to pull out and get a fresh inspire load. That is how tower rezzing happens, IME.
Why Blasters? Empathy Sucks.
So, you want to be Mental?
What the hell? Let's buff defenders.
Tactics are for those who do not have a big enough hammer. Wisdom is knowing how big your hammer is.
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As long as you're in Melee with Invincibility running he will NOT summon banes.
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This is, sadly, not the case. Everything else you mention is spot on, but I have seen plenty of Invuln tankers and scrappers in melee with LR and he summons banes unless you also add a debuff of some sort.
There is also no shame in pulling out after a tower is destroyed to restock on inspires as needed before making a run at the next tower. If the team is already having a rough time or is on the edge, I will often take out the Blue or Red tower, then pull out to regroup, get inspires if needed, and then finish off the other offense buff tower. Usually once both the red and blue tower are down, he is manageable.
Far too often people are reluctant to pull out and get a fresh inspire load. That is how tower rezzing happens, IME.
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His bane summon isn't being interrupted by Invincibility anymore? Well, that's new with issue 15; the last STF I ran it worked just like it always has... I admit I haven't run one since i-15 thanks largely to my work schedule limiting my game time and the reports of the bugged repairmen.
Now, if you exit melee range of LR he'll sometimes pause in chasing you and summon a bane but I never had him summon while I was toe to toe with him. Admittedly a toggle debuff like RI is a safety net but I've done it without and without him summoning many times. I wonder if that's a bug like the repairmen?
Oh, about hover tanking him... he has a huge end drain attack that he'll use if you're out of melee; last time I tried that method he drained me dry in about 5 seconds and I fell to his feet with no toggles. Needless to say that didn't end well 
. I haven't attempted it again from greater altitude... does anyone know what the range of that drain attack is?
COH has just been murdered by NCSoft. http://www.change.org/petitions/ncso...city-of-heroes
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I haven't attempted it again from greater altitude... does anyone know what the range of that drain attack is?
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Channelgun has a range of 110 ft.
Taunt has a range of 70 ft, so the ED softcap for range is 109.2 ft (+56%). It's possible to push that a little bit further by enhancing it beyond the softcap, of course.
There is also the range debuff, so that would help a bit. It should be effected by the Purple Patch, which would drop it from 75% debuff to 36%, so Channelgun's range would drop to 70.4 ft. (This is speculation, I have not tested it.)
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His bane summon isn't being interrupted by Invincibility anymore?
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I think you are misremembering, but maybe I am. As far as I am aware, Invincibility never interrupted the summons. RttC and AaO work for sure. I believe Chilling Embrace and Mud Pots will also work, but anytime I ran with those type of Tankers, we also had another Toggle debuff, so I am unsure. The power seems to require a Debuff component in addition to the auto-hit nature in order to interrupt (and I think the tick rate has to be faster than two seconds, as I have seen him spawn inside Hot Feet, but I do not have conclusive evidence on Hot Feet's failure to stop him).
Why Blasters? Empathy Sucks.
So, you want to be Mental?
What the hell? Let's buff defenders.
Tactics are for those who do not have a big enough hammer. Wisdom is knowing how big your hammer is.
Fun fact: standing next to a tower (on its base) counts as having a foe next to you for the purpose of raising your DEF. It also, for some reason, makes Recluse go bonkers and he rarely uses any attacks. He runs around, gets in range, throws a melee attack, runs around, tries a ranged attack, comes back... it's almost like having a slow on him because he doesn't know how to hit someone 4 feet above him. Also, if you have a Kin or Dark supporting you, it makes it easier for them to heal you because they can heal off the tower and not Recluse.
The ONLY thing you have to worry about is too many banes, and/or Recluse getting a braincell and spamming Chaingun (which he rarely does... but when he does, it hurts. A lot)
-STEELE =)
Allied to all sides so that no matter what, I'll come out on top!
Oh, and Crimson demands you play this arc-> Twisted Knives (MA Arc #397769)
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His bane summon isn't being interrupted by Invincibility anymore?
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I think you are misremembering, but maybe I am. As far as I am aware, Invincibility never interrupted the summons. RttC and AaO work for sure. I believe Chilling Embrace and Mud Pots will also work, but anytime I ran with those type of Tankers, we also had another Toggle debuff, so I am unsure. The power seems to require a Debuff component in addition to the auto-hit nature in order to interrupt (and I think the tick rate has to be faster than two seconds, as I have seen him spawn inside Hot Feet, but I do not have conclusive evidence on Hot Feet's failure to stop him).
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I guarantee that Invincibility did in fact interrupt LR's bane summon in issue 14 and before; I ran the STF probably close to 30 times with my Invuln tanker. I never had him summon a bane as long as I was in melee with him irregardless of weather he had a toggle debuff on him. Now a Fire or Dark tank was a different story since their aura isn't autohit but from personal experience I know both Invincibility and Mud Pots DID work to prevent the bane summon.
Just to clarify, I'm talking about the normal summon, NOT the "pet nuke" summon he does at 20% health. So far as I know there's no way to prevent the pet nuke... but it goes away in a hurry with a Kinetic's Fulcrum Shift 
COH has just been murdered by NCSoft. http://www.change.org/petitions/ncso...city-of-heroes
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I guarantee that Invincibility did in fact interrupt LR's bane summon in issue 14 and before; I ran the STF probably close to 30 times with my Invuln tanker. I never had him summon a bane as long as I was in melee with him irregardless of weather he had a toggle debuff on him.
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Same here. I tanked LR multiple times with my invul scrapper in I13 and I14, Recluse never summoned once while I was in melee, no other toggles were on him.
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I think you are misremembering, but maybe I am. As far as I am aware, Invincibility never interrupted the summons. RttC and AaO work for sure. I believe Chilling Embrace and Mud Pots will also work, but anytime I ran with those type of Tankers, we also had another Toggle debuff, so I am unsure. The power seems to require a Debuff component in addition to the auto-hit nature in order to interrupt (and I think the tick rate has to be faster than two seconds, as I have seen him spawn inside Hot Feet, but I do not have conclusive evidence on Hot Feet's failure to stop him).
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The really interesting part is his summoning powers do not even appear to be interruptible. A wild guess would be that the summons are controlled by the AI to occur if he hasn't been attacked for X seconds (attacks including pulsing debuffs/damage ticks from toggles).
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I think you are misremembering, but maybe I am. As far as I am aware, Invincibility never interrupted the summons. RttC and AaO work for sure. I believe Chilling Embrace and Mud Pots will also work, but anytime I ran with those type of Tankers, we also had another Toggle debuff, so I am unsure. The power seems to require a Debuff component in addition to the auto-hit nature in order to interrupt (and I think the tick rate has to be faster than two seconds, as I have seen him spawn inside Hot Feet, but I do not have conclusive evidence on Hot Feet's failure to stop him).
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The really interesting part is his summoning powers do not even appear to be interruptible. A wild guess would be that the summons are controlled by the AI to occur if he hasn't been attacked for X seconds (attacks including pulsing debuffs/damage ticks from toggles).
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I'd agree with that train of thought, Sorciere; I'm 99% certain that's what we're seeing.
I'm not sure if you read the Scrapper Forum (if you do, you've never posted there), but Powerforge actually was the first to really document it. He (Claw/SR) kept trying to find ways to kill Silver Mantis solo with minimal inspiration usage (eventually used a tray of reds iirc). The key was to never, ever let up attacking. If he did for a moment (ex: Aid Self) Silver Mantis would use Dull Pain and/or Build Up. While under pressure, her AI would be quirked and never use it.
It's why I never even knew she had either power despite doing the STF umpteen times. (Similarly, Black Scorpion has Rage... I had no idea.) It's kind of funny that way; some of these AVs have powers that could be pretty potent, but where they should be using them most (against teams) they're too stupid to.
Black Scorpion should have Fury. He's such a joke compared to the rest of the Patrons it's almost painful.
Granted, the whole Patron encounter is a joke. Their lackeys should be used there rather than as silly cannon fodder early on.
Blue: ~Knockback Squad on Guardian~
Red: ~Undoing of Virtue on [3 guesses]~
Last week, I tanked the STF for the first time. Since it was also my first and only tank, I was kind of nervous despite 90% SL res and softcapped S/L/E/N with 1 enemy in range.
Actually, that second point didn't matter - the moment he saw me he started spawning Bane Spider bosses, which I've never seen happen before and had no idea how to deal with. I had to tank him for a very long time (around 40 minutes), during which he killed me thrice. The second death happened when the Bane Spiders stunned me through mez protection. The 1st and 3rd times, I honestly have no idea: between Dull Pain and 300% regeneration, my health was full or held steady for very long periods, then all of a sudden he would start landing multiple hits in a row and kill me.
Looking at the logs, at some point his chance to hit jumped from ~10% to 55%. I can only assume some combination of buffs/inspirations/temp powers wore off, but I remember popping a large purple when it happened - it didn't seem to help.
How much defense should I maintain to floor his chance to hit? Between inspirations, buffs and temp powers, I hovered between 60% and 120% defense to all.
What inspiration loadout would you recommend for a Tanker without support?
Should I have attacked? I tanked him the way I've seen other Tankers do, not attacking and with Taunt on auto. I couldn't hit him, but Weaken/Sweep on the Bane Spider bosses might have helped.
In hindsight I should have swallowed my pride and asked for support, but the team had difficulty taking down the towers and I was worried that 1 less character on that side might turn the outcome. They were trying to kill towers while letting the flier shoot them - things were that desperate.