Statesman Task Force Question

Attempted an STF today with an odd PUG, and we got all the way to the final mission, where we couldn't get past the 4 AV's, and I saw some behavior that seemed a little odd to me based on my previous experience with the Task Force.

Team composition simply didn't have enough damage overall, with 2 tanks, 2 defenders, 1 corruptor, 1 mastermind, 1 Peacebringer, and 1 dominator.

With that said, when it came time to face the pack of four, we would make a pull, it seemed clean, got Mako and were smacking him for quite a while and when he was down to around a third, up came Black Scorpion. One tank peeled off and held Scorpion, but when we got Mako to around a quarter, up came Scirocco, followed promptly by Ghost Widow, and we got slapped around and dropped, without being able to focus on any single AV enough to make any headway.

We fell back and regrouped and started over, and found the same behavior. A pull, followed by slow damaging of the AV, and then another of the 4 joining, followed by the last two.

What I am wondering is whether this is standard behavior. If you don't have enough damage to drop those four AV's rather quickly, do the others always get involved? Or was there something going on here that I was missing, and someone was drawing aggro somehow from the rest of the A.V.'s?

Any insight would be welcome.

My experience of the AV pull on the STF is I'm either very lucky (I get one at a time) or I'm very unlucky (and I get all four). I've never seen an additional one arrive once one was damaged to a certain level (ala the AVs on Khan arriving when Reichs health hits a certain point).

When I tanked MoSTF recently, I pulled and got all four. I held GW, Scir and BS and a brute taunted Mako away to the team to kill. I wonder if you had any mez protection like Clarity, Clear Mind, Increased Density or the one from Thermal which I always forget? I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that a stoner needs 6 and other tanks 8 to avoid GW's hold. (Not sure if that's up to date though.) I know I didn't get held on that run.

Trying to improve my own pull success, I spoke with a friend and he said he had five Devastation in lazer beam eyes on one char (and lazer is what I use to pull) and five of a purple on the other char (think that was apoc in fireblast). Neither increases range so it isn't that. He did say he targets the AV, starts the power activating and creeps very slowly forward. He also said he's awesome. Which maybe true but doesn't help us mere mortals with a 50:50 pull ratio.

As for damage; I would be interested in the secondaries of the team because I don't see lack of damage as a problem with what you listed. This was the make up of a successful MoSTF I lead recently. My team make up was hardly damage heavy but it was outstanding at debuffing. We didn't trap where the AVs were either.

Usually if I see a STF go pear-shaped it's either because they team won't function as a team (IE half the team at the hospital and rather than regroup they go back during which time the other half have died and are enroute to the hospital) or they don't take enough debuff. If the AV's are kicking you then I'm guessing debuff and/or mez prot.

Best of luck with the next run.

Well, I don't think it was primarily a damage issue, like I said, we were able to make headway when we had Mako on his own, got him to the point where I think he popped his elude, but that is when the reinforcements came. I do believe our damage was sufficient if we didn't have the problem of the 4 AV's coming and smacking us around. We had decent debuff, I had cold, there was definitely a dark, so we could whittle them in time, but the AV's coming the way they did was new. My experience has normally been that you can pull one, or possibly two if you are cautious, and never seen them decide to join in after a delay. It's either right away, or not at all from what I have seen. Seemed strange, so figured I would post my observation and see if there was any corroboration, or possibly a change for 19

While not always the case, I find usually it's best to just keep all on the one target, whether more arrive or not.

But knowing the ATs doesn't do much as I would think the Defenders/PB/MM could likely stay at range (though not always the case) to avoid the AOEs, and maybe the dominator depending on the combo.

I've seen such behaviour in the past (we no longer pull AVs, but rush all 4 of them even on MO runs). Late coming is not necessarily happening all the times. But happens quite often. You may try to lose aggro, and try to pull again.

You CAN get another AV to decide to join the party late, but that only happens in my experience if you're fighting right at the top of the ramp. Pull back at least a bit down the corridor and you shouldn't get late ads. You may well still have ads but they should come within 30-45 seconds.

Depending on your powersets it sounds like the team should have done well in the TF, always assuming competent players behind the keyboards. I wouldn't have hesitated to make a run with that mix of AT's.

The secret to a clean pull seems to be to hit the AV from beyond it's own attack range, that way they don't holler at their buddies. I've made a half dozen runs with a friend with a Kin/Psi defender and that Psi snipe has so much range that we've had a perfect single pull every time. Personally I like to get GW out of the way first since she's the most dangerous.

The last couple of runs I've just snagged GW & Scirocco with Taunt; usually we end up with all 4 and I simply tank the group while we kill GW, Scirocco, Mako and finally Scorpion. Any melee of GW needs high negative energy defense, or the tanker needs to stay back out of melee of her. That heal of hers has to hit to work after all, and if the tank's out of melee she won't use it.