Weekly Strike Target Horror Stories

Being as this week's target is the STF, lets hear about your STF's

I will start with my most recent one:

I was on a PuG STF the other day, and we had a good mix; a tank, 2 scrappers, a blaster, 3 trollers (an emp, a rad, and a kin) and me, a brute. Good team layout. So we are humming right along for the first mission. No deaths, no real close calls, easy mode. We get to the second mission, little bumpy but nothing out of the ordinary, but we are charging through it, not thinking anything of it. Third mission, we start clearing and the Emp, out of no where, declares we are going to fast and quits , but OK, no big deal, we trudge on.

Next mission we find the Chiefs relatively quick and start workign on the AV's, we get past the first, and the Rad says they RL aggro and quits!! So there we are, the 6 of us left, slogging through (thank goodness the Rad didn't have the Thorn temp!!). We finish the mission, barely, and move on.

So there we are facing the 4 AV's and we try single pulling GW. No, it didn't work. We sit there and pound Scirrocco, get him down, GW, BARELY get her down, and sneeze and kill the other 2 . So we face down LR and I "tank" Recluse (I "rock" a Stone brute btw) and he is hitting me HARD, so I start popping insp and the team takes their time getting the Towers down, but finally get them down, then Recluse.

Time total - 2 hours 34 minutes (I am sure there are longer tuns out there, but this was my longest)

Got an awesome one!

Did the TF - took Notice of the Well and.............when I go to unlock and get my +1 rate - I no longer have Notice of the Well.

So I say nevermind I will run it again - nope 3 more times and it never came back. So I am waiting so I can hopefully get it again this week.

Also can I say morons with O-ports on the sub?

Jump on a STF PuG on Friday night with my Fire/Fire/Fire blaster. Looks like a good mix. One tank, an Ill/Rad, a kin, a couple scrappers and a WS. A little bumpy start. I eat floor a couple times, but my blaster eats floor like its Ramen, so no big.

Then we get to the last mish. Damn, its always that last mish. Despite no one saying so, its obvious a few people haven't done this TF before. Our tank is fire/fire, and understandably worried about taking on level 54 AVs. Our Ill/Rad doesnt have perma-PA. In fact, our Ill/Rad doesn't know what "perma" means.

Myself and the WS try and talk folks through strategy as much as possible. The /kin seems utterly incapable of "staying back" when the tank goes to try and pull one of the patrons. The fire tank, for being a fire tank, does actually a pretty admirable job of tanking all 4 AVs at once, for as long as he can. Unfortunately, every time he pulls he pulls ALL FOUR AVs.

Somehow we manage to take down Black Scorp.

On the last pull, when people are really losing heart, I manage to peel off Mako and lead him away. The other two AVs reset, the team regroups, i got Mako away from his buddies, but I'm am one loogie away from dead. This is what team chat looked like:
ME: GOT MAKO!!
ME: HELP!
ME: HELP!
Scrapper: Oh well
Tank: I guess we're screwed
ME: GOT MAKO!!
ME: GOT MAKO!!
Blaster: better luck next time
ME: GOT MAKO!!
ME: HELP!
Controller: Thx for team
#Controller quit the team.#
ME: GOT MAKO!!
ME: GOT MAKO!!
#Scrapper quit the team.#
Tank: Bye
#Tank quit the team.#

only the WS actually came to help me with Mako. :-(
He spit on both of us, and we died.

We had the buffs, debuffs and DPS to finish the mission, but the bad communication and poor teamwork broke us.

Luckily last night my blaster finally found a good team, and we rocked the STF in under 2 hours!

i think you still did a good job of finishing the last mish only a kin and a ton of melee lol

i wish i had something to add, but the 12-14 LRSFs and 2 STFs ive done in the past 5 days all went really smoothly, maybe with a bumpy part here or there, but nothing that bad lol

I actually had pretty good luck with the STF this week only two failures in 13 attempts. Some were more difficult than others but any win is a WIN!

Okay my horror story involves the first failure I experienced. First off after building the team the leader decides, after never advertising it, to make this a Master of run. A few of us balked at the idea but the leader promised if we failed we just keep going and no big deal.

Well the run ended in mission one and guess who was the first to die? You got it if you picked THE LEADER (A defender). Okay so no huge deal we carry on and manage to get through to the final mission and even handle the four AVs with relatively little problem. Now we get to Lord Recluse and the towers. The only healer we have is a DM so healing the tank while he TRIED to keep LR busy was iffy at best. The leader wants the tank to use the "Hover out of range and taunt" technique with LR but.. OH Gee the Tank didn't take FLY as a travel power and while he has a Raptor Pack guess what isn't available now because we have no access to temps?

For almost half an hour we keep trying different things to get past this but the result is a lot of trips to the on ship hospital and we still didn't even have down one tower. Then the Controller quits saying its time to simply cut our losses. We'd already lost one other member RL so we now have 6 and just lost our debuffs.

Then its gets really strange. The Controller is in Globals forming his own STF and our leader launches into a smear campaign trying to get people to refuse to join the Trollers team since he abandoned us. I am sitting there watching all this take place in chats while we are still in mission and trying to find a way to get past Recluse for a mission complete. Now here is the best part..

We finally just gave up and later that day I got on a different team that just breezed through the TF. The next day I am working on another of my Incarnates and I wind up on a team with the exact same leader. Once again he wants to make this a Master Of run but this time the team shuts him down cold so at least we got to keep out temps. Well the day and the team may have been different but the overall result was about the same. We got to that final portion of the last mission and simply could not defeat Recluse. After a while the team just quit and moved on. THOSE TWO times with that ONE LEADER were the only times all week I failed to complete an STF. LOL That man just does not know how to team build and use strategy at all apparently. I added a note to his name so I will not EVER team with him again.

Only one real "horror" story from the WSTs. 4 hour LRSF ending with no victory and the team giving up. They were all nice players and there wasn't any real drama, poor play, afk'ers or anything like that. To everyone's credit nobody quit until everyone decided it just wasn't working; no name calling or finger pointing. The team was pretty balanced and all pretty knowledgable in the SF, just something about it didn't work at that time. Every other run on either WST was successful and all in relatively short (or acceptable) time.

Ran the STF 9 times this past week--all pretty much PuGs. Most of them went very smoothly, but the worst was on my blaster. Team makeup:

*/Dark MM (nominal leader, more on this)
2 scrappers
1 stalker
FF defender
2 blasters (one of them, me)
Elec tank (actually good for STF w/capped En resists & end drain resists)

I'm the 7th invite. I look at the team makeup, note in chat we only have the */Dark for debuffs when the 8th fills (still no more debuffs). One of the scrappers volunteers to switch to a rad when the 1st mission starts. I start thinking the leader isn't interested in communication, and I'm right. Zero instructions, leadership, whatever from the MM. Also, most of the team seems very little experienced w/the STF. I'm communicating w/one of the scrappers who's pretty experienced and we try to provide some leadership. I'm having doubts about completing the TF at all.

Vines room is leading to mult deaths, team is scattered, again zero communication from the leader. Some are fighting CoT, some killing vines, a few (incl. the leader) are dead and not rezzing. His only communication: "kill them." :|

Next mish, I sorta take over, start issuing "suggestions", but really commands. Scrapper supports me. Thankfully, everyone listens, or at least doesn't overtly object. I ask ppl to go from Chief to Chief and to watch for aggro trails, but in a blazing stroke of luck, we get the key off of the 1st Chief. I tell ppl to get in the building. Half the team stays at outside for random fights, but eventually catch up. I decide to mop up mobs from each AV fight so as not to drag too much aggro, which I'm sure would cause too many deaths. Finish up Aeon w/a bit of trouble, but nothing too bad.

Last mish, I'm playing it safe and clear the whole path on the right. I give a long speech about tactics, and how pulls usually fail, so be prepared to deal w/all 4 AVs at once. Give detailed instructions on how to tank, keeping buffs on him, how to deal w/deaths, AV order, etc. We try pulling, but naturally, we get all 4. We get on Scirroco, then BS. A few deaths, but we get the 1st two. GW's next, and I tell ppl to stay at range if they can, only go into melee if your def is capped. No go, she's healing back too fast. I position the bubbler a bit better to cover the melee, get rid of all pets and we *eventually* get her down (toughest fight of the whole TF, by far). Mako's no prob after that.

Flier, clear the mobs, flier again, and the scrapper has instructed the tank how to evade & taunt LR. We get the towers down and finish LR w/little difficulty. 2:35-ish time, which was by far the longest I'd spent on the STF all week long. Personally, I didn't think we'd get past the patrons, and we were pretty close to giving up against GW, but we stuck to it and pulled it off. I actually hate leading groups, because I'm lazy, but I was pretty grateful ppl followed directions and there were no petty squabblings, esp by the nominal leader.

So far, the only STF I've only failed in my whole career was when we couldn't hit Mako through Elude and the team just gave up, but that was years ago. I (and other experienced players) usually have to give some encouragement to the team when we pull all 4 patrons, but really, as long as the tank (+ support) is on his game, that's not that big a problem. Hell, half the time, we just bum rush all 4 and get through no problems, as long as the team is well put together. I did also fail the LRSF last week before it became a WST, mostly because we didn't have a tank or a sturdy enough brute for the end fight, but that's another story.

Only issue I have, from time to time, is folks not reading team chat to get gameplans. Stopping at 2 pipes left means slowing at 6 pipes left. If I tank, I move to the platform with about 8 or so left and ask the debuff to go with me.

Haven't had one go badly since the Strike Target concept, though there was a team I didn't bother to start one with. Leader wanted two Emps and shrugged off getting any debuff. Vaya con Dios, fellas.

I got to thinking that having so many do this TF in a concentrated time may actually improve players, since the knowledge sharing is widespread and the repetition is so immediate. I was on an all-PUG and there was almost no team chatter. Everyone just seemed to know their roles and went about their duties.

Not really a horror story but I'll relate the only time it looked like the team I was on would fail the STF:

Got invited by a sg member who was forming and I went afk to deal with son, get him changed and into bed. Come back and find out I was gonna 'tank' the STF on my brute. No problem, I thought; I'm soft-capped. Everything was going good till GW. We had pulled all other Av's no problem and GW was the only one left. I'm taunting and staying at range but we have no immob. Fine, I just keep falling back as she gets closer. We budge her life but she continues to land one of her little heals constantly. Scrapper on the team is sending me tells on how to handle her but I have 9 lvl 50 tanks and have done this before. I still cannot figure out how she is consistently getting a heal till I remember..... I am softcapped to all but..... Negative energy-- I am playing an Energy Aura brute- DUH!! So pop a purple or two as needed, wade in close to beat on her, she goes down in no time. For Recluse, I use the taunt-while-flying method. Only 2 issues there- when he end drained and toggle dropped me (still stayed alive though) and once or twice he ran to the peeps on the Towers requiring me to go get him again.

The only real horror story I have is from this Saturday evening. I was on my Warshade and my SG Mate wanted to run a STF. I agreed to form one up, since my Shade needed the Notice anyway. I should point out here that I'm not a great leader, but I've run the TF plenty of times and have led it successfully a few times, so I know what to do at least.

We had my Warshade, my SG mate's Fire/Fire Blaster, a Dark/SR Scrapper, a Psi/Emp Defender, a Ninjas/Dark MM, a Fire/SS Tank, a Rad/Rad Corruptor, and another Scrapper (can't remember what he was).

The first mission goes fairly fine, though some people seem to be having a hard time following orders. But we make it through with few real issues. The second mission also goes fairly smoothly, a few deaths due to carelessness but nothing crippling. Though it was an omen of things to come. The third mission also goes fairly smoothly, with us just clearing the vines and no real deaths.

The 4th mission is where things get dicey. We luck out by finding the security officer in the 2nd group, so we clear off the ambushes and head inside. The first two AVs go down easily.

Then half the group runs right past the 3rd AV. Repeated calls for them to come back fail and eventually I have to TP two people back to the room before we get started. But once the AV goes down, we move on and take out the 4th with no problem, though we're still getting rather scattered as people are running on ahead without warning.

We get to Aeon's room and clear one side and the tank just runs in and starts attacking Aeon while the rest of the team is still busy clearing. Take note that I held the temp power, so it's not like the tank was doing anything useful but causing Aeon to spawn clones.

The team mostly wipes, but we pull back and set up again. We go in, I hit the temp power, and we manage to take Aeon down.

Then there was the final mission. We clear the left side and start trying to pull singly. No matter WHAT we do, we always manage to get all 4 AVs. Sometimes they don't all come at once. A few times, we would get GW or Scirocco by themselves for like 3 minutes, only for Mako and/or Scorpion to mosey on up and join in the fray a bit later.

This wouldn't have been a problem except for one thing... The tank had NO idea how to hold aggro. His concept of holding aggro was spamming taunt on one of the AVs in front of him and ignoring the rest. This naturally caused the buffers and debuffers to die, which then meant the tank quickly got overwhelmed. Plus, we had squishies wandering into melee range constantly, so they could get held by Scirocco's EM Pulse. And the Ninjas MM appeared to simply set his minions on Aggressive and use his personal attacks over and over.

I tried to get people to follow orders, but no matter what we kept having the same issues, especially with the tank holding aggro on the AVs and keeping them from running off and pounding us.

Finally, after about a dozen wipes, the entire team gave up. Which is unfortunate, because we COULD have done it if everyone had been doing what they were supposed to do.

3 attempts, 1 fail. FYI, GW succumbs to the fly + taunt tactic as long as you can keep her on the ground (or just yoyo up and down if she flies after you). Even if everyone else is in melee, she won't use her pbaoe heal if the taunt-bot is out of range (kinda like reichsman and his pbaoe).

Horror story: I dunno if it was really a horror story so much as several people hadn't done the TF before, including our only Tanker. Like usual, it's the last mission we stumbled on after doing moderately well through the other missions. One of our support toons kept DCing, and eventually never returned, so we were down to 7 by LR. We had an empath and a kin, so our inv tanker should have been ok, right? Well...maybe if said tanker wasn't just on SOs (maybe common IOs, but definately no IO sets), and maybe if said tanker had taunt... Of course, team leader hadn't checked this until the upteenth team wipe on LR, but once he found out, he berates the tanker and quits. His fiancee quits immediately after. And that was it. Never did finish it on my Blaster....

My horror story? Ran the LRSF four times over the course of the week, and three of those were successful (the fourth would've been successful if we hadn't had multiple quits after a couple bad pulls in the last mission). That's terrifying. Makes me think I fell into a parallel universe or something.

I'm almost not dreading having to do a couple of 'cudas in the coming week.

I had a mostly fairly easy-going time of it on STFs this week, most runs were under an hour even when slacking off. But I also had the longest STF I've been on this past week, too: one run had six people who had never finished one before - several of whom stated they had never run it before at all - and I ended up being the de facto leader despite not having the star because I ended up briefing everybody how each mission is supposed to go.

Things went fairly slowly compared to what I'm used to, as the team wanted to clear to all of the objectives and we waited so that everybody could see all of the cut scenes. In the vine room we hit a minor snag because some started on vines while others were clearing CoT despite being told to concentrate on one or the other and not both at the same time, but we finished in a little over 3 hours even waiting about 15 mins for the leader to get back since they DC'd as the last patron dropped. All told, considering the inexperience of the team with STFs and people not being level-capped (the DA tanker who was the main aggro magnet hit 50 as the TF ended), I think things went okay - sure it could have been smoother, but for an almost-entirely-STF-newbie PuG? Hey, we finished!

Quote:

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brillig It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.

My horror story:

I put LF TF flag up on search window.
Got Invited.
Killed Stuff.
One person died a lot.
Killed more stuff.
Collected Goodies.

I just failed the STF for the 3rd of 5 times (the other 2 fails being before this week). Despite taunting the tank could not hold aggro and every attempt to pull the AVs at the end pulled 3 of them at a time. Like every other time I've failed it there wasn't really a lot I could do but just go, well someone is doing something wrong I guess. There's nothing I could really do about having my Controller 2-shot by Mako. People started quitting and that was it. Yes, btw, I hate this task force.