Apex Task Force Strategy Discussion

I thought it might be a good idea to start a thread for ideas and strategy for the Apex TF. This is not a guide, I do not presume to have the winning combination a mere two days into the live i19 release. I just felt a thread where people can simply post ideas or share experiences thus far doing this task force would help others do this task force.

First mission was not so bad. The team I was on was composed of 3 Brutes, 1 Scrapper, 1 /Rad Controller, 1 Nrg Blaster, 1 /Dark Mastermind, and a /Storm Defender.

I really don't have any complaints about the first half, Clockwork were no problem and Hydra were efficently destroyed. Warwalkers were not really a problem, we were not making a determined effort to try to keep the Police Drones alive for that badge, which was agreed on before the TF started since most of us were getting our feet with this TF. We certainly had more than enough members to Taunt Warwalkers away from the drones though.

The second half. Wow. Well, after the second ambush of swords atop the building I DC'ed....so yeah. I didn't see how the first Battle Maiden attack went. After logging back in Battle Maiden had already been defeated for the first time. So imagine that part did take too much time. Those endless sword ambushes are the biggest problem to me. I think the best thing to do is to defeat all but one, then focus on Battle Maiden when she returns. If you keep moving those AoE's are not nearly so deadly. You'll probably get caught while mid-casting something. Death is inevitable. With people spread out so much healing others became difficult. Having some many Brutes in our group to pull aggro away from squishy toons helped.

Our team was mostly melee. So we had to adapt fighting Battle Maiden. Once we got the hang of it, our hit-and-run strategy began to pay off, but more ranged attacks would obviously helped.

I think an Empath or Pain Domination Corruptor with Recall Friend is very useful here. Leave the Empath on the top of the building to TP and Rez fallen allies, while safely being out danger would cut the time between dying and getting back in the fight by a lot, and make dying less frustrating. Anyone tried this?

Any other ideas?

I completed this TF yesterday with a PuG consisting of six melee characters, one PB and my Thermal Corruptor. I believe it was everyone's first time running this TF. It was a fun challenge and for a first time PuG run, I think it went fairly well.

While there may be variations on how people approach the last mission, the most important strategy really does boil down to this:

I didn't say it was hard a Task Force or that it needed any changes.

I can only see one major thing thats got to change on this tf. Its the damn death patches of doom™. Make it where they can not spawn right at the exit from the building. Too many times our whole team gets insta-killed just leaving the roof. No Lrn2Dodge isnt going to help that because by the time you character can move your already dead. Maybe give exiting the door a 3 second untouchable state or something, because right now its extreme cheating with the npcs which is something I know alot of us didnt want anymore in the lvl 50 content. We get that enough with Statesman/Tyrant/Hero-1/M.Bison's 100% resistance to damage crap.

So I just beat her on a second try:

1 Tank
2 SoAs (1 Window / 1 Bane)
1 Blaster
1 Dominator
1 Scrapper
1 Stalker (myself)
1 Brute

After clearing all her adds all we would do is basically take pop shots. Jump in when her area was clear, gang up, then fall back, and resort to any range attack. I see that powers like Fire Rain especially help because in the event that she puts down the nanite storm at her feet (whatever it's called) she'll run out and into the clear where we'd gang up. As a bonus the PBAoEs also slow her regen preventing her from recovering too quickly if range attacks aren't dealing enough.

Quote:

Originally Posted by EvilRyu I can only see one major thing thats got to change on this tf. Its the damn death patches of doom™.

I agree here. Unfortunately I doubt that will change as people will just use the roof of the door or something to tank her without having to worry about Dodging at all. Honestly my best suggestion would be to treat the PBAoE attack based on her health percentage. Or something a little less constant.


Also Stone Tanks shouldn't be made Primary Tanks as they'll get killed consistently due to slow movement. I'd advise having a more mobile tank focus on Maiden and, if a Stone is in your team, have them deal with the adds. As crummy as it sounds, unless if they increase the activation time; Stonetanks are at a disadvantage.

I had a tough go as a stone tank...but my team didnt do well and we failed. I have to remember to not kill all the swords and focus on the enemies. The MM and the stalker we had wernt the best either. We lacked ranged damage, which is at a premium on this TF. I wonder what close huddled team TP with a dedicated TPer would do. I know it works for fire/kins with ease...

I'm not exactly a hardcore player, but even I think Apex is easy enough. The ONLY challenge, really, is learning to time things properly.

For example, even after the warning shows up, a Crab can get off Supression before moving and still get clear of the blast zone, even with Hover.

Quite literally the ONLY people at a GAME-enforced disadvantage are non-teleporting Stone Tankers who enjoy Granite too much simply because they refuse to build well enough to survive without it. Even then that's a SMALL subset of a specific AT and powerset combination.

What's Battle Maiden's regen rate like?

I've run Apex a couple of times now.

The first run yesterday was on a highly non-optimized team. We had six melee (tanks, scrappers, brutes, and a stalker), one buff/debuffer (corrupter), and one ranged (me, a Peacebringer built to blast). One of our melee also did not have his Alpha slot filled, so he was running at a -8 level debuff.

It took forever and a day, but we took Battle Maiden down with plain, old fashioned perseverance. You have plenty of time to dodge her Blue Aura of Death even if you have an attack firing off.

Our run time for the TF was 1:38.

The second attempt this afternoon had a much better grouping, with four melee, three buff/debuff, and a ranged (again, me). With the buffs/debuffs, we took Battle Maiden down within the 15 minutes allotted for the Already Dead badge. It was close, I'm sure we were probably pushing the 15 minute limit, but we were successful nonetheless. Total TF time was somewhere around 50 minutes.

From both runs, for the Battle Maiden portion of the TF, I came away with two insights.

1. First, a -regen debuffer would be hugely helpful, such as a rad or dark. Battle Maiden has a pretty significant regen rate, so reducing this will be very helpful.

2. I found myself having MUCH less difficulty avoiding face-planting compared to my melee counterparts. The swords do not appear to have a fly capability or ranged damage (if they did, I didn't notice), so they did not provide me with any significant problems. Having a solid contingent of flying ranged damage on the team would also be greatly helpful.

Just my thoughts. IMO.

As far as I can tell, my own strategy for that is to find 7 people that CAN do the BM mission, and then I stay up on the roof.

I mean, coming into the zone only to find a blue patch ALREADY ON YOU, and instantly dying more than once in that way, or getting cornered between the zone wall and a couple blue patches. My main is a EM/Inv brute, I don't mind trying to maneuver, but I'm REALLY not good at it.

It's a GREAT mission for fast-reflex players, but I'm not, never have been, never will be. I can't get close to her to do much damage because she'll drop a blue patch on her feet before I can get two good attacks off, and even then they won't be "good" because I spend so much time dodging I can't get fury built.

Did this yesterday, and it took a long time, but we got it done. Team was three scrappers, 2 controllers, 1 corrupter and 1 defender. No dedicated healers among them.

Things didn't go very well for a while, because the blue patches seemed to send a lot of the team into panic mode and we got very disorganised. Eventually about half the team wanted to quit, but we made a plan, drilled into people's heads that they'd have to KEEP MOVING and it wasn't too long after that we whittled her down.


When it comes to dealing with the patches, positioning and survival are your highest priority.

1) Zoom out your camera as far as it goes.
2) Keep an eye on the current patches.
3) Watch your feet: as soon as you see a blue marker appear, move to open ground.
4) Steer clear - patches appear to be slightly larger than they look.
5) Avoid queueing attacks, or at least stick to quick ones. You need to be ready to move.
6) If you're in a really tight situation, bear in mind that the current patches will fade about a second before the new ones appear. You can move into where they were in that time.
7) If you die, don't try to use a wakie or hang around for a rez. Just hosp. If you load quickly you can be back in under 30 secs.
8) Don't hang out near the door, certainly don't fight there. If a patch drops there warn anyone coming down.

Aside from the patches, BM herself didn't seem much of a threat. All the scrappers on the team were capable of tanking her for extended periods. My softcapped /SR could happily hold her aggro just by spamming shuriken.

For my team, the most important thing was just to stay calm and focus. Once we got over the THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE!!!!! angst, things went pretty smoothly. Yes we died lots but it worked out in the end. And I, personally, had a hell of a good time.

Apex is fun and challenging. With that said it is also HARD for those that percieve it as such and easy for others. I have posted a guide in player help that may be useful to some.

We have been pounding these out sice day one and have several folks who have earned Master of Apex. Check out the guide add your thoughts and for folks on Victory hit me up @kidon and I'll be glad to help you on your Apex TF.

One other little thing that can make a huge difference is disabling your auto-attack if you have one enabled. On my Crab spider main, I have Arm Lash set up as auto to deal with enemies that get too close. During the closed beta, almost every time I got nailed by the Nanite attack once I'd figured the general strategy out was because a flying sword or one of BM's henchmen got in range of Arm Lash, and I was unable to get out of the way in time.