Reeeeeeiiiiiiiichsmaaaaan!

So...failed my first Barracuda Strike Force on Sunday.

Not really bitter since it's simply a part of life like taxes or puberty. My question is, what tips are there to get the final battle to go more smoothly? Also, I'm curious if some servers run it more than others.

Failed it twice already I hate that ******* strike force.

I've run it about a half dozen times now (redside Justice), and having debuff along helps a lot. My bots/dark MM was there primarily for that (as at the time, the MM power for taking him down wasn't working). I threw every debuffing temp power at him I could manage (including Ace of Spades, which is a GODSEND), and we took Reichsman down in no time flat.

As for managing the wall-to-wall 5th Column, our personal tactic (my friends and I) is to have 1 person pull them, while the other 7 of us are waaaaaay off in the bottom righthand corner of the map, in the dead end area. Person 1 usually gets killed, but we Recall Friend him to us, rez him, and by the time he's up and ready to go, the Column is on its way. They can't come up behind us, and it's a narrow defile to get into the dead end. Tar Patch, Glue Arrow, Caltrops, Mines, whatever... and we just hammer away at them.

Other favored tactic - anyone who has Nectar (or any other Confuse power) gets close enough to toss it in at the mob o' Fifth and we watch them tear themselves apart.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

I don't know if it is run much anywhere. IMO, the villain version of the Reichsman battle is way more annoying in many ways than the hero version.

One of the most universal benefits you can have, for both Reichsman himself and the army of 5thC ambushes, is high-order +defense buffs. Cold Domination Corrs, /FF MMs and any variant of SoA who takes their team buffs are all good for this, as is Vengeance on most anyone.

Both a Stalker and a MM are very helpful to bring, as a Stalker can clear large swaths of ambushes using the glowies in the laser guarded rooms and a MM gets a temp power that can suppress some of Reichsman's more obnoxious powers.

Are you looking for advice on defeating Reichsman only or all the AVs too?

Just my personal experience, but overwhelming DeBuffs and Damage drop Reichsman (and the other AVs) fairly quick.

Last we ran this (on Triumph heroside) we had the following team;

1 Tank
1 Scrapper
2 Blasters
3 Defenders (2 RAD/* and 1 Dark/Dark)
1 Controller (Ice/RAD)

When we run the Cuda SF, we usually try for a similar Villain AT team makeup;

2 Brutes (1 Brute can tackle Reichsman while the second helps aggro ambushes)
1 Stalker
4 Corruptors (w/ strong Debuffs)
1 MM or Dom

Again, just personal experience here so YMMV.

Now that I'm done AFK farming for my friggin' damage badges, I've got a level 50 Stalker available for the SF if you need him.

I ran the SF a few weeks back with some friends, and it went fairly smoothly... but even with some very experienced players and well-built characters, there were more than a few deaths. (Of course, quite a few of those were from when Masque convinced me to go into the laser room before the patrons had been defeated... then they kept rezzing me to get insta-fragged again for laughs. )

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!

The BSF is quite fun. Did you run it with a PuG? The SF seems to be dependent on a good team. As long as there's 2-3 capable debuffers, it shouldn't be a problem.

If you're on Freedom or Virtue, I'd be glad to run one tonight if you'd like to give it another go.

I wouldn't attempt it without a MM (who knows how to get the temp power from their powers window into their tray). Suppressing Reichsmanns uber defense mode is a must, IMO.

As mentioned above, pull to the alley on the right side of the platform. Stay together. Don't let team members start to pop their heads up out of the alley, then all the 5th stop at a distance and shoot and then you can't AoE them to death.

I ran my first ever Reichsman SF this past Sunday on my Bots/Traps. If I hadn't heard that this SF was such a pain in the behind, I would think it's one of the easiest things I've ever done.

The PuG I had was a perfect machine. Two corruptors, one MM, one brute, a dominator, a stalker and two night widows.

Mako took the longest to bring down out of the AVs. I think somewhere around 45 seconds is an accurate guess.

The brute held Reichsman's aggro the whole time. The rest of us just had fun cleaning up spawn after spawn after spawn until there were no more. Then we focused on Reichsman and dropped him in a few minutes. I think we had three deaths throughout the whole SF, none of them while fighting Reichsman or the other AVs.

I'm not sure what made it so successful, but I'm sure it wasn't me.

Out of curiosity - do the ambushes purposely agro the stalker, or was I just lucky that time? (Oh look, a kill switch! Oh look, massive number of attacks to break through my defense via Streakbreaker! Guess which takes less time to happen?)

i wouldnt mind attempting it again, i think the sf is very fun and that a large majority of teams just give up if they get wiped on the ambushs thinking they spawn unlimitedly.

ive successfully completed the sf about 5 out of 8 times ive been on it (1 of those times was a master run in which we were successful but had to deal with a bugged mm temp AND a bugged master badge, which we had to wait 3-4 days to actually get)

i do advise that having a full team makes dealing with the ambushs easier and will take down reichs faster, pets are also very good for the reichsman fight because its just a ton of added dmg

i think the first time i completed it we were on a full team and the mm temp wasnt working properly (that fight took like 45 min), when the mm temp works properly and you have debuffs/dmg you can take him down between 5 and 20 min

I would say the SF is more 'fun' than the TF version of it. The TF version is just a boring huge bag of HP...it's 'easier' and only worth 20 merits...SF version at least there is some action and not just wailing on a bag of HP (there is that too but...).