Apex + Traps =

Least fun TF I have ever done. The Battle Maiden fight invalidates everything in my secondary except Seeker Drones and FFG...

That's odd. When I did the BM fight on my /Traps mastermind, the only power it invalidated was Detonator. Admittedly, Web Grenade didn't see much use, my Acid Mortars didn't tend to last more than a few shots, and I had to interrupt placing a Trip Mine about half the time, but everything was still useful.

Obviously this means Traps is underpowered or Battle Maiden is broken, because it was a conscious design intent for Traps to be better than everything.

Apex was fairly poorly designed. It invalidates any set that is slow or has a set up time in battle. Yes your traps MM can still take part but your secondary is mostly worthless. Yes your stone tank can take part but you're probably their worst tank choice and will be the equivilant of taking a stalker back when the LRSF first came out.

Please devs. If you're going to force us to team to do content now, then don't poorly design future incarnate content so that it excludes certain sets. I'll likely never take my stone tank on Apex because I'll be a burden to the team. Teleports activation is too slow when Battle Maiden begins dropping those fire patches that activate in 3 seconds (so considering reaction time I have about .5 seconds to activate TP, select a location, and go there.) And no, turning off granite isn't really an option since granite gives you your mez protection. If you turn it off, you need to turn on rooted (which has a harsher speed debuff than granite) and that would defeat the point of turning off granite.

I did an Apex with my Stoney and found it quite easy, more easier than the other Tank (Dark/Fire). 1st instance with BM the spears didn't appear to do much damage and my stoney found he could bathe in them quite easily with Roots and Dull Pain up, on BM's return the spears increased damage so switched tactics to just herd the ambushes whilst the rest of the team spanked BM. Worked for me this tactic, if others are having a problem with stoneys on this give it a whirl.

P.s Just to add my Stoney is a bit of freak and has Fly not TP, so at no point did I have to TP away from splash zones.

It doesn't help that my primary for that character is DP, so regardless of what I use i end up rooted while blue patches rain down on me.
Also, my recent run of bad luck on Incarnate TF's for the DP/Traps corr made me feel it necessary to vent. In 3 total attempts at the TF's, only 1 has completed and I missed the Kitty got Claws badge there due to being dead (I did manage to "tank" her for most of the fight though).

The key factor in the BM fight is that the halberds drop on a set schedule, and you can decide where they will fall. If you know when they are about to drop, you can make sure they drop in a place that won't affect you. The tricky part is staying aware of the timing.

If the devs wanted to make the fight much, much easier, they could set it up so the targeting circles track for 4 seconds, then stay in place until the halberd lands. As it is, counting the seconds should be sufficient.

At first glance you would think the blue patches were meant to favor ranged damage classes, and an attempt to balance out the AT requirements for the tf. This would be along the lines of Ghost Widow on the STF, either bring ranged or have capped melee.

What they wind up doing, is a wonderful job demonstrating the value of short animations and the value of sets that don't need elaborate setup to measure up. It also shows just how valuable the opportunity to make choices is. It also manages to expose just how illusory balance is in the game.

[Duplicate post deleted]

If you are having trouble with blue patches it’s almost certainly you, not your powerset. The warning times they have are insanely long. On toons that i have ran the Apex on i can generally get off a few more attacks after i see the blue start to form and still get away.

And as SpittingTrashcan said it’s rather easy to essentially control the patches and decide where they drop. I have tried doing this a few times, and been rather successful, I would be beating on BM and then jump away and have a patch form where I wanted it to. Of course, of team mates weren’t always doing this so BM was still standing in a patch *sigh*

In short, Apex doesn’t **** up any AT or powerset to the point where it is simply unplayable. Sure, it’s better to have powerset A than to have powerset B, but powerset B still works fine. Isn’t the rest of the game like that already? I think it’s just that Apex is very different than anything else we have seen in the game and players are still getting used to it.

Apex is a very fun TF but it does make certain powers/sets a lot less appealing. I guess that's why they made Tin Mage more "traditional" Strike Force-like. I can see /Trap being pretty good in Tin Mage.

You never learned how to deploy Traps on a mobile target on the way to 50? Or that the majority of AVs, including Battle Maiden, are easy to immobilize with web grenades?

Apex was frustrating on my Bots/Traps. But eventually the team got the hang of things, and we got it done, although being one shotted by floating swords got old pretty fast.

Tin Mage was *intensely* MORE frustrating for Bots/Traps. Director 11 does more to frustrate trappers than BM does, IMO.

'Good, an area clear of mines, I'll drop a gas trap for them to drag Director Cheaty Mc11 over. BOOM! what? Oh, for f....'

Several times I got prox mines planted under me while dropping my longer activation time traps in areas that were clear when I started, and by the time the activation/rooting had finished and I'd started legging it away from the mine, I'd get blasted from the first prox mine that I was still just in range of into another couple that finished me off.

And the fact that 11 is almost completely uncontrollable due to the PTOD and [Tactical Retreat] leaves you with the current situation, where he's just a big lump of frustration.

I like the storylines of Apex and Tin Mage. I just don't like mechanics that feel like they're designed to make my life frustrating. I also don't like mechanics that seem designed to favours certain team makeups. one of the major strengths of this game to me is that you don't need the holy trinity.

(BTW, I don't necessarily expect anyone here to share my feelings on these matters, and I don't expect any changes to be made to the fights or mechanics, I'm just venting slightly. )

Oops, left the [Rant] toggle running, sorry...