Wow, when did the Vanguard Rogue's get stupid hard?

Always found Vanguard hard hitting from first time i encountered them in the RWZ revamps

And good that they do as the game needs enemies that can challenge us

Vanguard are melee Kryptonite, but they're entirely beatable in melee with melee characters provided you're careful and stay mobile.

... and keep your eyes out for that nasty 30-odd minute debuff the Vanguard Wizards can toss at you.

They were pretty much cake for my Stone Melee/Electric Armor brute, who pretty much just kept them flat on their backs in every fight (go knockdown!)

My first run-in with these guys was a massive wake-up call. They ripped Bill up in pretty short order because I expected them to be the same pansies the rest of the game is filled with when it comes to melee vs AI.

The Rogue Vanguard were specifically designed to beat the tar out of meleers. And to this day, they're one of my favorite groups because of that.

They make me think. The make me scrap defensively. They're FUN.

I know that "The Coming Storm" has pretty much fallen off of everyone's radar, but I have a feeling that the next batch of baddies we face are going to be really freaking nasty.

And all that does is make me wipe the blood from my mouth and grin.

My mastermind found them to be cake. Then I ran through them like a year later on a brute and went 'o_o what the hell was that.'

I've still found high-level Arachnos to give more of my characters problems. This might be helped a bit by the fact that my brute is /elec/Mu, so she can keep entire mobs of Vanguard almost perma-sapped.

The first time I encountered the Rogue Vanguard I was on my Fire/Energy blaster. When soloing, I was used to sneaking into a group while stealthed, stunning the tougher LTs or bosses and then taking the group out while standing toe to toe. Great tactic for groups like Rikti because the mezzers will use their swords instead of holding me.

Tried this with Rogue Vanguard, and of course they killed me in record time. After they wiped the floor with me, I came to the forums to complain about how tough they were and got a response roughly equivalent to "Well cry me a river, mister I-can-attack-from-range blaster!" And then I learned about the whole "range good, melee bad" deal with them. Heh.

They are by far the toughest group in the game, especially for me since I play a lot of brutes and scrappers. I curse them up and down and make a few hospital runs when I fight them.

But I can't wait to unlock that arc with every toon. I wish there were a few more enemy groups that were as difficult as them. Sometimes I like mowing through minions like they are nothing, but it is also fun trying to fight and claw your way through super tough groups every once in a while.

When people say that /Dark is squishy, I wonder if we are playing the same game.

When people say that Elec/Dark is squishy, I know that we are not playing the same game.

To whoever downrated me with the single word comment "liar" :

Enjoy.

Other than the aforementioned "Curse of Weariness" that I hadn't even heard of the first time I ran this arc, I don't recall my Broadsword/Willpower scrapper having any major problems with the Vanguard Sword. And I know the reason can't be that I am an awesome player, because I'm certainly not.

Odd that noone mentioned the unusually high perception these guys have.

The first time I encountered them was with Nightshade (Thugs/Poison Mastermind) It was a team, and someone else's mission, so I had no idea who they were but they died pretty easily.

I've yet to fight them with a melee character though. That should be interesting, since after fighting Rularuu with Nightshade I thought they were easy, and then I took my /SR scrapper into the Shadow Shard and couldn't believe the combat results I was seeing (Watcher HITS you! Chomp had 88% chance to hit... huh, what? I had Elude on!) Same deal with Nosferatu, who I genuinely thought was overrated until I ran the Mender Lazarus SF with my Brute...

I think now we know why Longbow hates Vanguard, they turn the ballistas into pizza.

My invuln/SS tank made it through okay. I do missions on heroic when I'm solo, though, in order to keep the pace up. 3 minions or a minion and Lt. combo aren't that bad for Invuln.

I take my melee tactic from the Ti Kwan Leep / Boot to the Head bit: Get in the first shot.