Can someone explain how the LRSF is balanced?

The last mission can be tough, especially on PuGs. But it's not THAT hard either. There are only 3 things you 'need' on the LRSF imo:
1) a Brute that is able take and hold the agro of multiple Heros at the same time and makes it his job to tank for the team.
2) 2 corruptors/masterminds (preferbly 1 with buffs and one with debuffs, but 2 of the same will work too) That make it their job to keep the brute alive.
3) an insp tray filled with 3-4 rows of lucks.

You can fill the rest with whatever you like. None of the players need to have expensive slottings, decent SO builds will do just fine, as long as you take people that know how to play their respective toons and play as a team.

Our SG used to do these on a weekly basis (3-8 SG players and friends, the rest PuG) most of us are inactive now though, so it's been a while. We got quite good at it.

Our usual 'tactics' for the final mission were fairly straightforward:
Gather in front of the platform with the heros
Everyone buffs up.
The tanker brute takes purples till softcapped, the rest takes 2-3 (or till softcap).
Tanker brute charges in takes the agro from 8 heroes and herds em into a bunch, his main focus now is to keep all the agro on him and to stay alive.
Debuffs are aplied.
other melee jumps in and start on numina
All the squishies stay out of the AoE attack range from the 8 angry heros focussed on the tank and start also on numina, if this means squishies can't use some of their attacks due to range than so be it.
Reaply buffs when needed and healers should focus on the tank, since all the agro is held by the main brute and all squishies are out of harms way, this should be doable.
7 people keep their damage focussed on 1 hero at a time
Numina -> Sister -> Positron -> whoever bothers you the most.

Easy as pie

Someone mentioned the possibility of an all brute LRSF in this thread, this is very doable. Out SG tried this once and it went very well. We didn't complete however because we overlooked one tiny detail. 5 of our 8 brutes were Super Strenght and 1 Energy Melee. This meant that we couldn't kill statesman because, when he's unstoppable he has 100% resistance to S/L/E dmg types. So the only ones doing a little bit of damage were our fire/invul and dark/dark brute. We killed all the other heros but had to stop after pounding away at states for a small hour. We weathered him down, he popped unstoppable, he regened to 3/4 life, we took him down, he popped unstoppable, ... One on the chin for FotM powersets, eh?

All *insert AT* LRSF's can certainly be done though, I know of all dominator, all stalker and of course all VEAT MoLRSF's being completed. And this wasn't during the horrible -1 period.

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

This is true, I once did a LGTF with all decent players that went great rite up until the point that we fought the Honoree, we just couldn't kill him. Why? same problem I had on the all brute LRSF I mentioned above. 7 out of our 8 players were smashing or lethal damage (I was a dark/dark corr specced for buffs and control), we just couldn't crack his combination of unstoppable and regen. Only LGTF I ever failed.

The AVs in the STF are just about as easy (or hard) to separate as the ones in the LRSF. The main difference is that there are more Heroes to try to single-pull, so the odds that someone brings friends are ultimately higher.

Single pulling the AVs is not a reasonable approach any more unless you're trying for a "Master Of" badge. Most "Master Of" runs I've been on have accepted as many as 3 Hero/AVs at once, and one I was on (accidentally) pulled the entire Phalanx and still won.

I really don't understand where that's coming from. Do you have defective inspirations? The only hard-hitting defense debuff is from Positron, and I don't ever recall having it land on me. Lucks and Sturdies work just fine against the AVs. High-order defense is the most common way to survive them.

Lets stop and think about this for a second. You're waving your hand at eating ten Lucks? Seriously?
Fought Scirocco recently?

Frankly, I do think that the AoEs on Back Alley Brawler's CoV incarnation are ridiculous. His Handclap is a > 1500 damage AoE. His Energy Transfer is an AoE. But other than that complaint (which is mostly formed from fighting him in story arcs, not the LRSF) I really don't see the issue. I don't find Statesman any worse than Lord Recluse.

He summons level 54 bosses.

You understand the merit reward foundation, right? It's based on median completion time. If you know how to do it, the LRSF is easy, and it doesn't take very long to complete. I don't know if there's any fudge factor in the devs' calculations for number of failed TFs - there should be if there isn't. But the fact is that a lot of LRSFs are completed and completed pretty quickly.

That generally takes longer no matter how fast you defeat the foes, because its structured differently. Remember: median completion time.

I really don't see any posts like that. I think you're overreacting.

He described going in with stacked Vengeance (I assume it was stacked since he mentioned using TP on the target) and Shivans. Now it's possible they had some really bad luck with the Heroes' hitting through high defense, but in general, Shivans with +DEF and +Damage eat the heroes alive.

No, you can't win the LRSF with just any old team, because there are degenerate teams that are going to have an awful time. One that deals all Lethal and Smashing damage, as mentioned, is one of them. But any team with a decent mix of buff/debuff characters, and either a mix of damage types or at least some Shivans/HVAS are very likely to be OK. Some will win faster than others, some may have more deaths than others, but most should come out on top.

Things you want for the LRSF, in some combination from some source:

• High defense. Be it from VEATs, Corruptor/MM buffs, Vengeance, Lucks or Accolades, you want to be at or above 45% defense to all vectors/types if you can manage it when you go in on the Phalanx.
• High DR. This is less important than high defense if you already have high defense, but the AVs are still likely to hit you at some point even at the defense "soft cap". They hit hard. Thermal shields, running a few oranges or the Demonic accolade are good ways to take the edge off it.
• Healing. If the AVs to connect, you want a way to recover. Especially if you don't have high DR, strong burst healing to recover can help.
• Damage. You want high DPS. You can get +Damage directly via Kinetics, stacked Assault, Accelerate Metabolisms, Bio nukes, Vengeance, red inspirations. You can debuff their DR with Rad, Col, Dark and Thermal powersets. -Regen is helpful, but a team context +DAM and -DR are likely stronger effects, though see below. You need to defeat the Heroes as fast as possible to cut down their numbers rapidly. This is especially important if your initial buffs are short-lived.
• Exotic damage types. If Statesman in particular gets his Untoppable off, the last I knew it capped his resistance to several damage types, particularly L/S damage. You need other damage types on the team. If you don't have them, Shivans can help provide this because they deal truckloads of Energy damage. If you are being heavily but not full resisted, Regen debuffs might be able to pull you through.

If you're using Shivans and you can give these things to the Shivans they will generally crush the heroes. I have seen all 8 heroes go down in under 60 seconds, no joke, under the onslaught of defense-buffed Shivans with capped damage and Speed Boost.

Other things that may be useful...

• Damage debuffs, such as Darkest Night or Enervating Field. I was on a MoRSF run where in the end Statesman was hitting our Invul Brute for like 50 damage with Knockout Blow, because he was so badly debuffed and the Brute had good baseline smashing DR.
• Regen debuffs. If Statesman is running Unstoppable and resisting most of your damage, this effect may become very important.

Anyone with familiarity with the game's ATs and powersets will see that just any team may not provide enough of those benefits, though a great many will.

Note that I am not at all a fan of the ridiculous resistances that AVs like Statesman or the Honoree get when they pop Unstoppable or similar powers. I think it is completely suck that people have to strongly consider choosing what character they will bring to such events on the basis of the damage types they deal. A character's damage type is something players cannot easily control outside of wholesale powerset choice, and which it's far too late to do much about once you get to level 45+ and discover that things may completely ignore your given choice. However, until the devs see fit to change that we're stuck with having to bear it in mind.

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

And do it from space... it's the only way to be sure.

d'oh! I said I was bowing out... *runs for the shadows*

Maybe you aren't looking hard enough.

This one says the LRSF isn't hard, and all you need is 8 competent players. Amusingly, this also suggests that you don't need temps of any sort, or a specific team makeup. All you need is a specific team makeup with all the right buffs and debuffs, and aggro control.

And these two just plain insult the OP and his friends for being the worst players in the world, or braindead.

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

yeah some of the statements are funny.

HOWEVER, I think the issue was that Numina somehow went buff crazy.

To be honest no one knows what went wrong unless they were on the run.

BUT with the team Tech posted, I'm really surprised they had that much trouble. Something was up with that run that we don't know, that we could only tell if it was demo recorded.

TL;DR: The RSF CAN be difficult. It shouldn't have been with the team that Tech posted. Sounds like they were a bit unlucky with pulling.

The LRSF is hard. The hardest thing in the game, excluding hamidon imo. (except when you're doing it on a weekly basis with an experienced crew, then it really isn't.) For the other parts he's right though, you don't necessarily NEED any sort of temps (doesn't stop me from carrying shivs around, but I wont use em if I believe the team can do without). You also don't NEED any specific team make up (an all s/l dmg team can get you into trouble though, unless you have a lot of debuffs) All sorts of combinations can and have completed LRSF's and even MoLRSFs. For a pug though you do need a balanced team and a strong tanking brute that knows his stuff, imo.




Apart from the insults that last one is right though, I too am struggling to see were they did go wrong. The team make up was solid, they even had loads of Shivs. So basicly, the only other option left is that they did it wrong.

My advise is, if you really want to complete it, is to get a semi regular group togheter and just practice it every week untill you succeed, learning from mistakes. Or tag along with an already experienced team. PuGs can be very hit or miss, both in terms of fun and succes, because some people, even with years of vet rewards under their belt are just bad players no matter which way you look at it.

And he's right. The LRSF is not hard. Like most things in MMOs, the LRSF just takes certain keys to unlock victory. Not all the keys are required for victory, just some combination of them, and there are many such winning combinations. If you don't bring any of the keys, you'll fail. The more keys you bring, the easier it gets, and once you know the set of working keys, you can repeat dozens of victories in a row without a failure.

Those keys can be discovered elsewhere in the game. In the rest of the game, mixing those keys is usually overkill, used to speed a team to victory that was already guaranteed. In the LRSF you do need a least some of them to win at all, but once you have them, victory is generally simple and repeatable. The only "hard" part is finding the keys. We've tried to lay them out here in this thread.

You don't need a specific team makeup. You don't need a particular combination of ATs or powersets. I sometimes see people building an RSF team by calling for a particular number of Corruptors of particular powersets, and a Stone Armor brute. When I see that, I shake my head. That approach is not required for victory. However, whatever you do bring needs to provide the team with certain benefits. There are many different ways to provide them. You need specific benefits, not a specific makeup. Any makeup that provides the benefits should do. If it provides them via temp powers and inspirations, that wildly opens up the horizons of what's viable.

I will definitely concede that several Masterminds get a short stick with this encounter, because of the wide level difference between the pets and the AVs, and the many AoEs. Much as people complain about how AVs in a broad sense reduce most Controllers and Dominators to their secondaries, and I feel this encounter broadly reduces many MM builds to their secondaries as well. Bots, which have range-oriented AI, are some of the only pets which I see consistently survive this encounter. It'd be nice if it didn't work out this way, but making it not would require a significant redesign of the encounter, MM pet mechanics, or both.

The Patron AVs in the STF are lvl54, not lvl53. That is a significant decrease in player effectiveness against them, and a increase in their effectiveness against the players.

On a character with 0% def, it would take 6 licks per minute to keep Recluse floored. That means a player with a full tray of purples (no greens, etc) would run out in 3 minutes. I've seen teams take much longer than that, especially when the repairmen were bugged. That is also ignoring the fact that the tohit buff is in the Blue Tower, so even when the Red Tower is down, Recluse will be hitting at an accellerated rate.

(That actually got me killed once, four of his Jabs hit me in a row and broke my status protection. Squish!)

---

Do I think the LRSF is harder than the STF? Yeah, but that is also because I've run the STF far more often than the LRSF and my friends and I have a much bigger pool of heroes to draw from than we do villains.

Not true at all.

The post I quoted said you don't need a specific team makeup, then went on to list all the buffs and debuffs you need. There are a lot of situations that can get you into trouble in the final battle. All we know is that the OP had Brutes, Corrs, and MMs. And had a lot of DEF. There are a ton of combinations that could spell trouble for the final battle.

Also, I've done a ton of LRSFs. We always try to pull, but it usually doesn't work. You should always plan for the inevitability that you'll have to fight most, if not all 8 Heroes at once. Because on some runs, this will happen, and you can't do anything about it.

1) Lack of Psi Protection
Two of the final attackers have psi damage. And very few powersets actually grant protection to psi. Having along some widows helps here, since they grant psi RES. Dark Miasma also grants psi RES. Pain adds a little. Outside of that though you're pretty boned. Thermal and Sonic don't do anything for psi. As far as the Brutes go, EA, Fire, Invuln, Shield, SR, and Stone would all have trouble dealing with the psi damage. It's good to have along someone who's Dark, WP, or Elec.

Suggestions: Take widows, Dark Miasma, or Pain. Widows and Pain recommended most since they also bring lots of good buffs of other sorts. Also have along someone who's WP, since WP can handle a lot. Dark and Elec do in a pinch.

2) Lack of Mitigation
You're fighting several Heroes at once. Possibly as many as 8. BABs alone has three powers (or more) that can do over 1400 in one hit. There are also several AoEs. This means every squishy on the team is at risk of being one shotted. So, in theory, the OP's team has 6 people at risk of being killed instantly. You need +DEF, +RES, +regen, +HP, +heals, or whatever you can come up with. This also means that if the OP's team was mostly made up of things like Dark Miasma, Kinetics, Radiation Emission, Storm, Trick Arrow, and Poison, the whole team is at serious risk of getting killed.

Suggestions: Widows (again) and soldiers. Pain, Thermal, Sonic, and Cold. This is one of those situations where just throwing a bunch of kins at something isn't going to work. Sustained regen buffs like from Triage Beacon and Spirit Tree can also help.

3) Relying on Defense
Defense is a great mitigation tool, and easy to come by. It caps at the same point for everyone and it's not that hard to get 45% vs all. It can even help with the psi damage. Unfortunately, defense is random. And with 8 Heroes all attacking at once, doing AoEs, eventually people are going to get hit. If you happen to be one of the squishies, you can die immediately. Not to mention, Synapse has an autohit power (I believe Manticore does too), and DEF won't do anything to protect you from that. You want to have high DEF for the whole team, but at the same time you can't have just DEF. DEF is just one layer of stuff you need. You're still going to need RES, regen, heals, and other things to soften the blows that make it through the DEF.

Additionally, Brutes who are DEF-based will suffer more here because they end up with the same amount of mitigation as everyone else. Taking a Brute that doesn't rely on DEF as a main mitigation tool will grant you more survival due to the fact that a RES-based Brute who's also soft-capped is much better than an SR Brute who has 90% DEF vs all.

Suggestions: Widows (trendy!) and soldiers. FF not as much because it doesn't do much besides DEF, and DEF is easy to get otherwise. Cold and Traps offer good DEF boosts as well. Also having Maneuvers. For Brutes, if you have enough +DEF, try to avoid Shield, SR, and EA. Look for things that have high RES values or heals, like Invuln, Elec, Stone, Dark, Fire, and WP.

4) Lack of Long-Term Sustainability
For long fights against a bunch of Heroes (especially ones that have tier 9s), you're going to have to be able to stay alive and keep trucking. This means you don't just need high levels of mitigation, but also the ability to let that mitigation run for a long time. Even if you have 90% RES vs all, you're going to be taking a ton of damage, and are going to eventually need regen or heals to keep you up. Additionally, for such a long fight, endurance may run low and bottom out even for people who don't usually have endurance problems.

Suggestions: Kin is always a good way to keep endurance going. Rad, Cold, and Pain can help as well. For health, you're going to want heals like Kin, Dark, Pain, or Thermal. So the best ones to take so far given all the above mentions are Pain and Thermal.

5) Lack of ToHit/Accuracy
Here's something people may not realize. Manticore has Maneuvers, Numina has Fortitude, Sister Psyche has Force Shield, Positron has a DEF-based tier 9, Citadel has a DEF-based tier 9. If you aren't careful, not only will you be unable to hit some of these guys, but you'll be unable to use targeted buffs/debuffs like the heals in Dark and Kin. The best way to go about this is to pack some ToHit buffs. These come in a wide variety and can be made trivialized depending on what you take.

Suggestions: Widows (!!) and soldiers. Thermal, Pain (to a lesser extent), and Tactics. Powers like BU, Aim, and Rage will also do wonders. -DEF will help too, assuming it can hit to begin with (QS, RI, stuff like that gets points here), but Heroes resist debuffs, and +ToHit is far easier to build than enormous amounts of -DEF.

6) Lack of Rezzes
Here's one that didn't even dawn on me until a recent run. Lack of rezzes. Remember how I said that squishies were prone to being killed in like one hit, how the fight is really long, and how DEF is random? Well it turns out if your team isn't packing some good rezzes, this can lead to your eventual death. Last LRSF I did, we had zero rezzers. And we only had a small handful of awakes. When someone died, they stayed dead. This caused a problem until we worked around it using inspirations. A team where everyone only gets once shot at it is a dangerous team.

Suggestions: Thermal, Pain (these two are getting pretty common), Dark, Rad, and Poison. Dark even has the added bonus of being an AoE rez. Brutes that can rez themselves can also be pretty useful here. However, don't forget to stay down for at least long enough for Vengeance to go off, if applicable. If nothing else, make sure everyone on the team packs 2-4 awakes and some break frees so they can quickly back out and recover and rejoin the fight.

7) Lack of Offensive Buffs/Offensive Debuffs
There are a lot of Heroes. Two have RES-based tier 9s, two have DEF-based tier 9s, they have buffs to go around, and have the normal Hero resistance as well as innate resistances which varies from one to the next. You also fight a lot of them at once. And depending on how your 1-6 are balanced in terms of mitigation, rez frequency/speed, lasting power, and everything else, you're on a timer to kill these guys as fast as possible. You're going to want +DMG, +ToHit, +recharge, as well as -RES, -DEF, and -regen.

Suggestions: Widows (luls) and soldiers. Thermal and Pain (luls!). Kin is an obvious one for +DMG and +recharge. Tons of sets can debuff, so I won't go too far into that. But Rad is a good one.

8) Not Having Inspirations
Inspirations aren't cheating. So take a bunch. If you know that you didn't cover all your bases from 1-7, fill up on inspirations you need. Grab awakes, or purples, or even reds, yellows, or oranges. If you're lacking psi RES, get some oranges. If you're lacking ToHit buffs, get yellows. You can stock up beforehand, or just buy them in Ouroboros or at your local AE station. Also remember you can just combine other inspirations to get the ones you want, so even though AE buildings don't sell awakes, you can make them.

Suggestions: Use inspirations.

9) Not Having Temps/Accolades
This is so far down on the list because it's more a last resort type deal, like inspirations. you can do the mission without 8-10. Heck you can do it without most of the list if you choose wisely. But having temps can really help. If you have temp powers that grant RES, or ToHit, think about using those. Shivans, HVAS, Snow Beast, and any other pet you have can provide damage output, debuffs, or even a momentary distraction. Nukes, the psi buff from whatever SF it's from (totally blanking here), or things like Demonic can help a ton.

Suggestions: Don't just get to 50 using newspapers. Side-track and get some useful temps. Earn things like Demonic and +HP accolades early on before attempting this. Always have a Shivan on hand in case stuff like this comes up.

10) Teamwork! Not Giving Up!
Even with the best team, brute force may not do it. So take a step back and try to make it as easy on you as possible. After 1-9 are said and done, make sure to apply them. Try to pull. Find a good corner to group enemies around. Try to divide the enemies and off-tank some of them so not all the AoEs are landing on one spot. Agree on the kill order ahead of time and focus fire. Discuss tactics and get everyone involved before you leap in. And even if you team wipe, as long as you can recover and take down some Heroes on the way, you'll eventually work through them.

The last LRSF I did, we wiped three times. First wipe we killed nobody. Second wipe we almost killed one person, but got killed at the last second with a sliver of HP left. Second wipe we only killed Numina. Fourth run, we killed everyone. We sidetracked to pick up awakes, off-tanked a group with one Brute (me) holding attention of several Heroes while the others were widdled down. I allowed the other Brute to alpha the psi people while I ran Unstoppable and kept Citadel, BABs, States, and Synapse busy. When Unstoppable was crashing, I pulled back and hit Demonic and inspirations.

Suggestions: Never give up! I must succeed!

So in summary, take Widows, Pain, Thermal, a RES-based Brute, and people who can rez. Get everyone soft-capped somehow too. And maybe a Dark. Once you have those things, it should flow a lot more smoothly.

Also in summary, over half the support sets offer things that won't do much, if anything for the final battle. And if the OP's team had just the wrong mix of those things, the final battle could've indeed annihilated him no matter how good his team was. Inspirations can help shore up some of your defenses and keep the team alive. So can great teamwork and persistence.

To claim that just throwing whoever together on a team as long as they're intelligent should succeed is just insulting. There are a ton of factors, and a ton of powersets that would make the final fight really difficult. If anything, you have to pick and choose rather specific bonuses if you want to have any degree of ease. You don't need ALL of those things, but you need quite a few of those things. You can't just throw a bunch of Poison, Trick Arrow, and Storm Corruptors at the LRSF and expect a cakewalk just because the players are intelligent. You're going to have to get a solid team going first that can handle an extremely large amount of incoming damage, some of which is psi, some of which is autohit, and most of which can one-shot all but a couple of the characters you brought.

So no, "team of 2 brutes, 4 corrs, 2 MMs regardless of powersets or any other factors, as long as they're intelligent" does not automatically equal ease.

I'm glad I'm mostly a redside player. I shudder at the thought of having to lick Recluse!

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

Think this is biggest issue in failing LRSF. I have done it 2 times and both times we failed, because after 2nd or 3rd wipe - even after killing Numina and one other, people say that they don't have time to finish and leave. Also lot of people think if all 8 heroes come that there is no way of succeeding and it is better to quit (and from what I saw here and on wiki one of the strategies is to attack all heroes at once). And succeeding in team of 5 is hard.

I hope next time I try it that will be in team that won't give up even if it takes 2h to finish last mission

Did Kahn TF when first appeared in team of 8 without debuffs - and it was hard. But noone gave up and we made it althought it took us more time to kill AV then do rest of TF (more than 1h on AV).

Unfortunately EU player can't switch to US servers yet, so we can't join teams that do LRSF regulary, and see how you do it .

- Il Numero Uno (The Number One)

Baloney. Seriously, if you think this, it's not wonder you think this encounter is hard.

By the way, the only time the teams I usually run this on try to pull the Heroes is if we're trying for the Master badge. Normally we jump feet first into all eight of them. We always prioritize Numina, then Sis, then usually Positron, and usually save Statesman for last.

Believe me, I'd love to see a PUG succeed using just debuff sets like Trick Arrow, Storm, and Dark. Those sets are all potent and powerful sets that can offer a lot of useful debuffs toward the fight. But to trivialize the incoming damage of 8 level 53 Heroes and act like any team you could possibly put together would still be easy is just ridiculous. You're going to need some sort of amazing gimmick to get past the tremendous buffs, debuffs, autohits, and varied damage types they offer. If you're REALLY suggesting that all it takes is 8 random people with random ATs and powersets as long as they're intelligent, you're some kind of batty.

The LRSF is hard. I don't know what to tell you. I've never failed it, but that doesn't mean it's not hard. I don't know what sorts of things you do that you could claim the hardest mission in the entire game is EASY, but if that were true the rest of the game would have to be some laughable joke. Maybe you regularly solo AVs and GMs or do RWZ challenges. Maybe you have some really awesome friends you always run it with. I don't know. But seeing as there's always some sort of thread going about how hard the LRSF is and how the merits don't match the risk, and how people fail it all the time, I don't think you with your "the LRSF is pitifully easy" attitude are in the majority.

The LRSF is quite doable with a comfortable level of speed and success if you know what you're doing. That doesn't equate to easy. You're basically an expert juggler telling regular people that juggling chainsaws is easy. Maybe you don't have problems with it, but that still doesn't mean it's easy.

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

Heh...I wish mine had.
Seriously. Synapse and Positron seemed to have a grudge against me. Either that or, despite my defences, I got slapped around by one of the many AoEs going around.

It also doesn't help, given the current A.I. on pets, that some of my bots ran over to try and PUNCH the Phalanx members -_-

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

You're mixing two things together. A random pug is not the same thing as a mishmash assortment of buff and debuff and damage types in the hands of experienced RSF players. Read my posts. There are keys to victory, and the encounter is easy if you know what they are. That means you see what powersets and ATs people brought, and you adjust to make sure you bring the keys. Lack defense? Bring more lucks. Lots of Lethal/Smashing damage? Get Shivans. Sure, if it really doesn't look like a good mix even with that, 1-2 people might consider getting a different character.

No one is trying to say that any random group of people who try it the first time is the same as going in with a non-optimized team of players who know how to win. It's not. A non-optimized team still knows what they need, and will try to make sure they have all the things they need somehow.

For a team that can win the LRSF, there is absolutely no question that the rest of the game is a total joke.

I play with the kind of people who find even Hamidon raids pretty easy. We have most of the game down to a science, and that science is only disrupted by unfortunate RNG streaks, accidents, bad network performance, or other things generally out of player control or not player intended.

Most people feel solving a Rubiks' Cube is hard... except the people who figure out how to do it, and can repeatedly do it in seconds. I've never solved a Rubik's Cube without cheating by taking it apart first, but I have figured out (or play with people who figured out) how to "solve" most of CoH/CoV with a team. Fortunately, I still find the game fun for a variety of reasons.

Juggling chainsaws is dangerous. Juggling, like a lot of things, is easy once you figure out how to do it. Figuring it out is the hard part, and then the difficulty fades after you succeed.