Reichsman still equal parts tedious and annoying.

Needs more Rad/Rad and Sonic/Sonic, mixed with Broot

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Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

Well, 52:00 may be sloppy for some, but thanks to a patient leader who gave clear objectives*, I can finally say I completed a Kahn (I think there were three of us who were first-timers). Just over 50 minutes. It obviously wasn't a speed, but it certainly wasn't a kill all either. More a "kill some if you happen upon them."


* Also thanks to Nanny McPhee Returns, which occupied the kids for a bit.

Just finished a 37:00 on Liberty and a 32:00 on Triumph - both PUGs

Today I ran my first Cuda and the MM had to be convinced to use the temp power. There must have been at least a 20 minute debate about whether all the temp powers were passive after pointlessly beating on Reichsman for god know how long, despite going over that we needed to use temp powers at the beginning of the mission.

We finished in 2 and a half hours.

Just wanted to post again and clarify - since one of my teammates saw my earlier image and pointed this out to me - that I really can't claim that Reichsman isn't a rather boring slog and basically just a big bag of hit points to pound on. That 52-minute I mentioned? That one took so long because our one Defender (who happened to be Rad/ and thus was a huge help in AV fights) quit the TF in the middle of the final fight, leaving a team of mostly melee characters to pound through Reichsman's regeneration.

So yeah, we were pretty successful all told, and I guess a lot of it was that I know 3 of us know general game mechanics pretty well and have decent-to-good builds (I think mine's pretty good but I've definitely seen much better 'monster' builds) and that may have skewed our times somewhat - I definitely don't know about and can't speak for what the 'average' may be in regards to Kahn - but despite the fact that we managed to cut through it pretty fast, in the end the Reichsman fight is a slog, it can't really be denied.

I tried Kahn and Cuda for the first time over this weekend. (Wasn't around for I19.)

Kahn is nothing. I'd agree with Eva_Destruction's classification of it (see the BAF feedback threads). Many missions are easy to sneak. The temp power goes to all members in the zone of one mission. So you just need one person on the ball enough to use it - and on my second Kahn ever, I was the one who re-used my first Kahn's gun after watching the other 7 team members beat away at something that was spamming invulnerable messages for a minute. One zap (and there are 10 uses), badabing, vulnerable. No team coordination required, just one sharper than average person.

The only thing cheesy about the Reichsmann TFs is the part where the mission nav says "Defeat Reichsmann" and he's really invulnerable, so you have to give up, go to mission exit, and wait for the team leader to presumably go talk to the TF contact. No one in the team ever explains that, they just assume everyone knows what to do. Gimmicky. But learnable without words. All I had to do was watch what everyone else did for my first Kahn.

Since Kahn is a 5 AV fight, you have your standard 'broken' AV issues coming into play. Purple triangles and if you don't have -regen in some form, you're in for trouble. (Big bag of hitpoints with insane regen syndrome.) That's probably the cause of all the people having Kahn issues, not having enough people who know anything about -regen on the team. Since I'm allergic to this point, I have made it an issue to always bring my dark def for the first times to anything involving an AV, so that I know there's at least one source of guaranteed -regen. :P

I liked that there were at least two possible solutions to this fight. Both my Kahns just unleashed on Reichsmann and ignored the damage from the other AVs being released. We had a tank/scrapper and one or two other players who just taunted off the damage from the other AVs for both times. Between some huddle AoE heals, and the odd death-vengeance-rez, Reichs went down, then the other AVs in whatever-was-closest fashion. I have heard that other teams will deal with the other AVs as they are being released. Whatever works.

Basic criteria of Kahn: An AV-killing-capable team. This is generally quite low requirements for any TF content, and low coordination/leadership moments required.

Finished in 34 minutes and 41 minutes (the second time was a little less speed-y in nature because I think we had less players who had done it before and were sneak-capable to handle all the glowies in interim missions.) 30 merits is pretty high an award for this.

I'd throw it in at an ITF and LGTF level. Multiple ways to complete the missions, low coordination required. Pretty darned fun. One of the few times I have seen a multiple simultaneous AV fight and not winced in pain or not wanted to do it anymore. (ITF by the way is brute forced most of the time now. Teams just fight Rommy three times. Screw the coordination required for pulling and separating the Nicti. But one could still do it if the pile-on-the-damage method didn't work.)

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Barracuda on the other hand. Wow. The AVs were a little tougher in this one, but as long as you lead them into the machine in a controlled fashion, and have an AV-killing-capable team, the patrons were not too much trouble. We had a /poison mm, /ice corr and a rad, so no buff/debuff and -regen issues there, the patron AVs popped fairly quickly, imo. Reichsmann here on the other hand is a gimmick fight that requires medium to high team leadership coordination moments in theory.

The good news is that there is a brute force method for low leadership-player coordination teams. We went by this route because we got smoked by the seemingly endless ambushes. Our stalker was trying to fire off his temp power, but got interrupted. Our controller did manage to fire off his electric fences red hold at some point. My dom did not because of first time inexperience and trying to locate the one usable temp power out of 5 on a full listing of temps/vet powers while in a room full of angry ambushes and Reichsmann. We didn't discuss anything beyond a vague assumption that the mm should use his temp power, and the stalker apparently had some power that would hold/kill the ambushes (a little technically incorrect there after I went to read Paragonwiki about it.)

Had to rez and fight our way through them until the ambushes stopped, after which, Reichs was doable (our one MM presumably was on the ball enough to use his temp power.) He spent maybe two seconds trying to recharge in his machine before he came back, and then he died. Eventually, after punching him for a long time.

Total time we took was either 1h 15min or 1h 50 mins. I forget the back, but I did remember the front number. For 20 merits. Wow. Can you say mis-balanced time-reward? No wonder everybody and their mother is doing Kahn instead of Cuda, except for villains with no choice. I do need to add that even if the merits were adjusted the other way around, I still think more people would repeat Kahn. Simply because the level of coordination required is low. Few people want to step up to lead.

I admit to being keen enough to see what a proper execution of the temp power theoretical synergy would look like in practice. From reading up the temp powers, it looks like the control ATs should activate the hold, the corruptor types activate the dust devils shortly after (our corr activated his while fighting Reichs after the ambushes were cleared. They looked pretty. Did nothing.) While the dust devils keep the aggro occupied, stalker triggers his stealth power and at least one person should get through to the Failsafe trigger (where the hell was it, I wonder!). Hit that, badabing, all the ambushes who were currently held in that timeframe should collapse and die. Refocus on Reichs, and get the MM to use his temp (whenever the appropriate time was supposed to be.)

But you know what that takes, right? Medium raid-like leadership and player coordination. You won't need the macro'ed barked orders, but you would have to stop the team, explain the strat, and hope they listen and execute perfectly. If not, it's brute force for you. The fighting through the tunnel ambushes were actually quite amusing after we got our act together (and one of the rare times I could play with bonfire on my fire/ dom) and we got quite a few Incarnate shards bonded out of it.

I'd classify this one just above ITF/LGTF, possibly around Tin Mage/Apex level of difficulty (a bit more explanation and ordered coordination for perfect execution of Cuda, less pre-prep needed in terms of alpha slotting and less dodging reflxes required), just a bit lower than STF/LRSF.

Corrupted Lightning Bolt

Corrupted Lightning Bolt has a long and visually distinct animation. He raises his right hand up slowly over his head, stares at it, and then throws lightning at his feet. Here is a frame from the Apex of the animation.



In theory it should be possible to see the animation starting and move out of the way. In games were you fight a solo boss or the boss is way bigger then the other NPCs it's pretty easy to see the animation and move away. When the boss is the same size as every other model on the map and the players are spamming all that FX it's almost impossible to tell the lightning bolt animation form a sit emote.

Tooney you pretty much just restated the same thing I said in the last sentence you quoted.

Heh, still I love that. "Odd bad 45-50 minute run." I did my second Kahn last night and we took 59 minutes. No real problems (ok, I bit it a couple of times including seeking an energy source because oops, superior invis isn't all that superior, but whatever). Took down the AVs quickly as they came, but Reichs took what seemed like a pretty long time.