Weekly Strike Force Success stories!

I saw the Horror stories one and wanted to even out the Karma

Last night I was on my Ice/Storm controller (Mab Queen of Winter) and got invited to an STF.

I get on the team and we only have 5 damage dealers. A PB, Tank, Blaster,Scrapper and a Bane.
We have a Defender, 2 Ice/Storm controllers.

Looking at the team I was not thinking we could do enough damage to defeat Ghost Widow or Recluse. I said so in team chat and offered to grab a damage doer. They said lets give it a try - and so we did. The first mission was very easy. Then, so was the second and the tree went down FAST!

Aeon, easy.

Now we roll into Recluseville and I suggest we take on Ghost Widow first and see what happens. The Tank and scrapper were the only 2 in melee range and Ghost Widow just dropped - like a rock. She was dead in less than 2 minutes I believe.

The other 3 went down easy and so did the flier. Now was the test and we did have one thing in our favor a superior tank - Nami. Nami climbed the pole near Recluse and then Recluse could not stay in melee range for long.

We had 2 hurricanes and lightning storms knocking the repair workers off the towers and they went down FAST. It was now we would try Recluse and he started going down fast as well. His minion spawn got us though and so we all took a break got loaded up on inspirations and took him back to the ship to avoid the flier and toasted him rapidly.

It was quite a pleasant surprise that we did it with such ease.

Did it six times, succeeded every time, including the one with 7 melee ATs and an emp defender. I'd never run it before this last week, but I had a lot of fun.

On Saturday we ran one of our Guardian server All Controller Task Forces that I organize. We finished the STF in 1:20 with only 2 deaths (both preventable) and were so pumped up we ran to the RWZ and finished a Tin Mage in 45 minutes.

I love playing my Ice/Storm on the STF (c'mon, Infernus, 2 Stormies and you thought you didn't have enough damage? ). Love playing havoc on the towers w/Tornado, Lt Storm & FR buzzsawing through while Hurricane & Ice Slick keep the repairmen off. Had a great time w/him on it during the WST week. Can't remember the team makeup or final time, but it was right around the 60 min mark.

Hell, most of my STF runs this past week were under 90 min, the fastest being around 45 min. Only really had a few runs that were iffy and that one run I posted about in the horror thread. Kahn (and LG) should be just a cakewalk, esp w/all my level-shifted toons.

My first STF. A PUG. We get an FF Fender, 3 Trollers (Rad, Kin, Emp), Blaster, 2 Scrappers, and me (Fire/Fire Tank). We steamrolled the sucker. Everything just clicked. We had the entire team clumped up, under the Dispersion Bubble with triple Maneuvers, three AoE heals, AM, SB, FS and Fortitude being spread around liberally. When I tried to pull one of the patrons, it didn't work, so all eight of us dogpiled the four AVs and focused fire. First was Ghost Widow and she just buckled. Black Scorpion was a bag of HP, and the rest rolled over in short order.

We take out the flyer, though I've forgotten to get a jetpack, so I'm reduced to taunting, clearing the troops it drops, and occasionally SJing up for a Scorch or GFS. And then it's the big one - Recluse himself. I'm feeling confident, so I get fresh AM/SB/Fort/bubbles, turn on the Wedding Band temp, and go toe-to-toe with him. And it works perfectly. Neither bar budges, even though I drop Burn just for the guaranteed Gauntlet from the patch. Everyone's cheering and making jokes as the other seven teammmates take down the towers.

I did find out that Acrobatics and one KB IO isn't quite enough to stop LR's KB cone, and I'm fairly sure the Emp at least had her eye on me to make sure nothing went too wrong, though I was pretty quick on Healing Flames when I actually did get hit. I also got timely re-bubbling and SBs, which make a huge difference for Fire. LR's ranged attacks have a nasty -End component, but enough -End resist and +Recovery makes it pretty much meaningless.

I ran 8 Kahn TFs and 2 Barracuda SFs in a single day not a single one was close to failing.

FUN!

WOW Well I posted on the Horror stories so I guess its only right I post here as well.

Let's start with today and the very first Kahn I did with my Main Tessa. I arrived in FF and just like last week found a fair sized group of people standing around Doc Kahn. I assumed someone was already team building so I advertised my 50 (+1) level Crab Spider and waited. It became quite obviously, just like last week, that everyone wa standing around waiting for someone to LEAD so I formed a team. I have to say I was a bit skeptical we didn't have much support with only one Dark Defender on the team. We did have a good tank althouigh he admitted he'd never done this TF before so I spent a little time through out giving him some tips. Had a couple Scrappers and a couple Blasters alomh with one MM and one Dominator.

Inside the first mission I asked if the teamed wanted to go for shards or rush a bit and just get the Notice of the Well. Seven players said they didn't care and one said she needed shards so we did our best to get her some. We actually almost cleared the outside around the City Building in Atlas before heading in and eventually wound up in the 5th Column base. Mission two I suggested we skip a bit since it's a huge map and just fight what we came across on the way to the portals. In three we did fight our way to the base leader and pretty much cleared that base by the time we discovered the right computer. In the next we didn't deal with every mob in Axis America but we did clear quite a few as we discoverd and took our the portals there.

Then it was on to the final mission and we pounded our way to Reichmann. The battle went very well and we took down him and all his little helpers with no real problems. I had set a time limit of 1 hour sort of assuming we be stealthing and moving fast .. I figured we'd be done in about 30 minutes or so. Even with all the extra time defeating anything that got in our way we were barely, BARELY over 1 hour when we got Mission complete.

I haven't really has a BAD Kahn yet and I have managed to already get in seven with two more needed before all my Incarnates have their NotW for the week. I even somehow wound up on a Master Of Kahn run with my MM and she is now running around with a Master Of Kahn Badge


Last week I think my biggest success was on a team with a Stone Tank leading. We had a great combination of Control, Damage and the tank was outstanding at Aggor control. Not a single mission went badly and we cleaned up Recluse so fast it was funny. The Arachnos Flyer respawned just about the time LR dropped so we figured why not? and took it out again for 2 more reward merits.

Hehehe I have sort of taken to keeping track ...

Week One 13 STFs 11 Successful 2 Failed 84.6%
Week Two 7 KTFs 7 Successful 0 Failed 100.0%

Two week total to date 18 of 20 successful for a 90% rate

Oh in case anyone saw my post on the horror story thread that mean that in two weeks and over 20 TF the only failures I have were lead by the exact same guy. LOL More and more I am glad I added a note on him so I don't team with him again.. he's not only a bad leader apparently he's bad luck

Continued success to all and lets see what kind of tales we get from LGFT next week.. the Hami always finds a way to drive teams mad.. especially ones that don't bother to try and find at least ONE guy that has holds!

Ran my first Barracuda TF tonight. I'd been having trouble getting one together, even with the server at yellow, so I complained to my friend about redside on Pinnacle being dead. He then referred me to the PinnBadges Global. "You can get a cuda TF going there in about 5 minutes". Sure enough, once I got in and expressed interest, we got a team of 8 ready in no time flat. We wiped once on Reichsman and his ambushes in the final mission, but we wiped only once. The myriad AVs got thoroughly thrashed, even when we would bump into them on accident and aggro other spawns (we had 3 Dominators, and I'm built for add control ). There were deaths here and there, but thanks to the fact that I've got Power Boost + Vengeance and we had a Corr with Howling Twilight, we could turn single deaths into Elude for Everyone.

Reichsman was annoying because we didn't have a Fender or a MM to stop him from phasing, and I forgot to use my temp power when the ambushes came, but we took him down in round 2. Once we cleaned the room out again, the /Kin Corr, the Brute, and I pounded on Reichsman to soften him up and keep him from regenerating, while the rest of the team plugged the entrance to the room and dealt with the ambushes until they stopped coming. Then we wailed on Reichsman for half an hour and down he went.

I got my level shift shortly after. Thanks and approval were exchanged.

I think the biggest success story is the concept of weekly strike forces itself. I hope whoever thought of the concept gets a promotion. I was unsure at first, but frankly, I love this extra motivation to team up. My only wish now is that we had a server-wide channel to recruit through that didn't limit us to a set number of accounts.

My success stories are pretty boring to anyone that isn't me. In a nutshell, running TFs as often as usual but having an easier time recruiting, going faster or with less people and still completing fast, making lots of new friends, bringing out old characters. Having fun.

I ran the RSF for the third time ever the other day. It was a PUG that was a little light on buffs and debuffs, and I ended up getting the star, so I was kind of anxious. But pretty much the entire thing was a cakewalk except the Vindicators base, and we charged in and melted the Phalanx so fast that we completely disposed of a kill order after the first few and took down a few of them through their tier 9s. I think that team could have pretty easily done a Master run if we'd cared to.

I have found 2 types of teams:

1. you aren't a team you are 8 people sort of moving in the same direction

2. Let's have some fun, complete the TF and take care of each other because we are a team.

I dislike the first type unless it is openly expressed its a speed TF. I far more like the second type as it is more fun and relaxed.

My 3rd Khan TF yesterday was defined as a speed run, so we barrel through, hit glowies and exit as fast as possible. When we get to Reichsman we decide to stay on him the whole time, ignoring the other 4 AVs entirely.

Reichsman had less than 100 HP left when he one-shotted half the team, started healing, wiped out the rest of us (w/ help from the other 4 AVs), and was back to full health... while us player character types had exhausted our inspirations and many of us had completely used up the grounding ray temp.

But wait, this is the Success Story thread...

One scrapper rezzes and manages to get out into the hall. Soon we're all being teleported to the hall to join him. Between the insp we have left, a handful of rez powers, and insps that drop from the 5th Cols we kill in the hall, we soon get a decent stash of pills to pop. Then we pull the AVs into the hall to join us. Even taking 2 at a time they drop fast. Now we return our focus to Reichsman, this time with no distractions, and whittle him away to nothing.

Despite the team-wipe and the limited rounds of grounding ray still available to us, we still finished in under 30 minutes (IIRC). Sure, we had something like 27 deaths, but so what? We all got what we came for, be it Notice, Shards, Merits, or just a fast and furious TF.

Ran a STF last week in a team of 8 with my level 45 cold controller. I didn't always know what was going on (I'd never run it before) and mine were the only 2 deaths that evening but everyone stayed together and had a lot of fun. Finished it in around an hour without any trouble despite pulling multiple AV's. Made 1.7 million experience and was 2 bars from level 47 when we were done.

Ran a Kahn last night with my dark tank in a team of 7. Everyone stayed together and we moved only as fast as everything could be killed between us and the objective which turned out to be quite quickly - we finished it in 1 hour 6 minutes. A few deaths due to either aoe's or over-eagerness (especially the kin) but none were down more than a few seconds before either the rad or empath had them back up and slugging. Everyone had a lot of fun and got their notice and double merits.

Both were wonderful experiences.

Already covered my weird success story here.

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

Success story...the team enters the room through ATT (obviously we're speeding through the TF), charge up to Reichsman 5 minutes later Reichsman is down and it was just a question of will the Reichsman or the last AV go down first?

I ran Kahn with half a team of pvp characters (Psi/EM Blasters), 2 Brutes, and a Fire/Rad and Fire/Kin Controller. After the first mission went smoothly, the Fire/Kin quits because they wanted to find a more stable team rather than having 4 Psi/EM's taking turns tanking Reichsman with Hibernate. I'm not sure if this person was mentally challenged since we did have 2 Brutes after all.

Anyways, we went on to completing the TF without any problems in about 35 minutes. It was no speed record or anything, but afterward, everyone sent a tell to the person who quit with our completion time.

First day of the new strike task I run 4 khans (different 50's). The first two are unremarkable, 45-60 minutes each, no problems but nothing special. Then after a food break I log on my huntsman and form up a team. At first it seemed a normal team, there where even a couple of folks who had never run khan before. However, everything goes completely smooth and we finish in 27 minutes, which is probably as good a time as I have ever seen. Khan drops so fast we end up with 2 AV's left to finish off (usually they all get eaten up in AE's before khan drops).

Than I am finishing some crafting on him and another khan starts to form, I swap to my ill/rad and join it and the leader suggests we try a master run as we have a ton of buffs/debuffs (two ill/rads and a rad/dark? defender - not sure on blast set). 47 minutes later I have my Master of the 5th column task force badge on a run that is no slower than many of my previous speed runs.

All in all a very successful day and a lot of fun at what can frequently be a boring task force.

Did three nice and straightforward Kahns last night. Each took around 35 minutes. They were all run speed style, and although some of the players were not masters of the game, there really weren't any hiccups.

I like that how by the end of the week, it because SOP for groups in the STF to stop clearing the CoT in the Thorn Tree Room and go straight for the vines. Saved a lot of time (since I'm running one of these a night for the badge).

Last week i did a 36 mintue LRSF, 4 or 5 deaths, to get my notice. That actually turned out to be the first LRSF i did not fail.

I've had a good run of WST's lately, each taking under an hour and with few to no deaths.

Now that I've gone and said this... queue the fail-squad with the afk'er, the emp who does nothing but heal, the fire/kin who logs during the third mish, the fire tank with no -KB enh's and no acrobatics, the fire blaster who opens before anyone else with all his AOEs, the FF defender who never bubbles anyone, and the team leader who has every message to his team partially blotted out with <&^%@>.

7 Kahns so far. Longest was 45 min w/almost no debuffs in the group. Shortest was 25-ish, all the rest right around 30~35 min. Success stories all.