Apex TF - spoilers within

You're fine with the part where Bobcat, an AV many characters can easily solo, becomes the most powerful AV in the game just like that?

Personally, I'd like it if there was a dramatic cut-scene after Neuron dies showing how Bobcat goes crazy(And maybe a cut-scene somewhere before that highlighting their close relationship). Kind of like the Romulus cutscene when he turns Nictus.

And while I'm on a cut-scene frenzy, how about adding one before the Battle Maiden fight, where a powerful entity charges at her head-on and gets decimated by blue flames(A vanguard heavy? An elite Rikti squadron?).

The devs had decided cutscenes weren't going to be in the new TFs, hence the little text-boxes popping up instead, it was to reduce pauses and (Successfully) add a solid flow to the TFs.

If you read the dialogue, clues, mission text and watch the npcs rush BM and get flawed easily, you'll understand that Tyrant is draining the powers of all heroes, and channeling it into BM. This is why praetorians wouldn't just rush Primal with all their "Uber-buffed heroes" and destroy the place, Tyrant sent his best, with all his power put into her, to lead the invasion of the clockwork army.

And with Bobcat's "Vengence" running Bobcat's loyalist arc, you'd known how completely lazy she is, Neuron gets played like a fool by her and does almost all her work, until you come along and start helping Bobcat be lazy.

Also with the dialogue of Bobcat saying at 75%, 50% and 25% of Neuron, it's pretty easy to say sarcasticly "Oh, she's going to get mad and take revenge, oh, how difficult, we'll just DPS her down while she's no different because it's just dialogue." But you have ample reason to expect her to do something after defeating Neuron, she's not ultimately powerful either, she's fighting at full strength/effort and still is simple to get down, she's using claws though, that's a fast attack set, so whatever chance to hit she has, is going to be rolling more often regardless.

Having run this on my Ill/Rad, I've been thinking about how I'm going to handle it on my Tanker. I have a couple questions for those who've run it more:

- When a character is flying, I know the targeting flame will appear in midair, and the sword will explode in midair. Does the resulting patch do damage underneath the flame?

- Has anyone tried having one character be the "movement leader", whose job is to move out of the way of patches when they appear, with everyone else on /follow to that person? In particular, has anyone tried this in conjunction with Group Fly?

- Does anyone know the trigger for Battle Maiden's cohorts spawning, and if so, how many waves are there?

- How many flying swords spawn? Is it possible for one tanker to keep all of their aggro? If one is destroyed, where will its replacement appear from?

Depending on the answers to these, I think I might have a strategy to try on our next run, where a Tanker or two will be extremely useful. When my support character died, it tended to be in one of three ways:

1. Sword burst patch, usually either due to bad timing, too many patches spread around the area, or failing to realize that I couldn't dodge in a direction due to the zone wall.
2. Flying sword aggro.
3. Cohort aggro.

Battle Maiden herself rarely did any damage to me, in part due to good tanking and in part because I was staying well away and tossing Phantom Armies in her face. (Incidentally, Phantom Army ignores sword bursts, so there's a minor blessing). I am currently thinking of a strategy that goes like this:

- One tank pulls the flying swords, and only the flying swords. Their job is to keep sword aggro, not kill any swords, keep the swords away from Battle Maiden, and not die in a fire.
- The other tank pulls Battle Maiden and her cohorts when they spawn. Their job is to keep BM and cohort aggro, kill cohorts, and not die in a fire.
- The movement leader is, ideally, a ranged fighter with Group Fly. The movement leader's job is to float above and to the side of Battle Maiden and attack/debuff/etc from range. When the movement leader sees a blue patch under them, they detoggle Group Fly (which can be done in the middle of an animation!) and drop below the sword burst. Then they run to a different spot, retoggle Group Fly, and fly back up into the air and continue attacking.
- The rest of the team is either ranged attackers, who put the movement leader on follow and attack BM from range (thus keeping sword bursts clustered so they can be more easily dodged), or melee attackers, who follow the BM tank, kill cohorts, and attack BM.

Of course, if sword bursts do damage below their drop point, or if swords can't be taunted by a single tank, or if BM + cohorts is too much for one tank, there might be issues.

Incidentally, this is one encounter where heals actually help a lot. If a tank gets clipped by a sword burst, a quick HP top-up can make a big difference.

So, I take it that we should avoid the blue patches? Gotcha, though I'll probably be one of those who're getting that "one more attack" off and dying for it. It's okay though, as my man Vigo said "Death is but a door, time is but a window, I'll be back."

Quote:

Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane Some of us don't like most of our Primary power set being rendered moot and some of us like to use the other powers in our Secondary besides Taunt to FIGHT super villains; not RUN AWAY like ants.

Actually, you sound like you want to be like the ant, just heedlessly throwing yourself into the fray (and certain death) for the sake of the colony.

Me? I'm a superhero and a weasel. Both know the value of tactical retreat, and both know that sometimes you have to approach a threat from a different angle in order to win.

So if JB was Superman, would he always fight Metallo, he of the kryptonite heart, toe to toe? Or would he, I dunno, stay at range and kite him w/heat vision? Or, maybe use his too-often-forgotten super speed to hit (from behind) & run? Maybe throw cars at him? Or just be outraged that he weren't allowed to just walk up to him slowly and punch him in the face like he could w/everyone else.

(Yes, I know bad writers have Supes doing exactly that w/Metallo for decades.)

And yes, Metallo sometimes will get a temporary upgrade from Darkseid. Supes would find a way to deal and so should you.

I have only done this TF once, with a heavily IOed Mind/Cold Controller. A few observations.

1) I believe we had a Tanker on our team. He did a good job keeping Battle Maiden away from the squishies. A Tanker is definitely welcome here for the extra HP. Heals are very useful in this fight, from what I could see, both for squishies and meleers.

2) I found jumping (with Combat Jumping + Super Speed) to be much safer than either flying or running.

3) I only had about 30% Slash/Lethal defense. Eventually got cornered by swords and died. But only once. In any case, the swords at least appear to have protection to Sleep, Hold, Fear, and Confuse. I wonder if Force Bubble would work well though.

4) It seemed safer in general to hang out at the edges of the map than the center. That way if a flame did erupt, the actual area it covered was diminished by the edge of the map and teammates would be less likely to accidentally run into it. However, what I'm not sure of is whether the flames actually target your current location, or drop randomly, or both.

So, um.

Anyone tried using Team Teleport in this TF?

Because Team Teleport does let you port people in the middle of animations, right?