Barracuda's Strike Force is RIDICULOUS.

Now I'm not one to lose my temper over stupid things like this, but are you kidding me?

I just spent three hours doing this god damned task force, just to find that at the FINAL Reichsman battle we required a Mastermind and thus, FAILED.

Where the hell in this task force does it mention this?

Why doesn't Barracuda BEFORE giving me this task tell me, "Hey, Annihilius, you need a Mastermind or you can't complete this task force!"

Would've REALLY helped.

I'm almost positive I'm NOT the only person to encounter this and it IS garbage.

I apologize for the rant, but seriously, is this not complete crap? Does anyone else agree with me?

Your anger is justified.

There have been some teams that completed it without the MM's power, but few that attempted have.

Even with the MM's (and Defender's, now, with GR) power, it's easy for an unprepared team to get overwhelmed.

I'm surprised you didn't know this... it seems to be common knowledge now.

How about the fact that this task force only awards 20 merits and the far easier hero version awards 30 merits?

That has to be a bug. Some sort of database typo. Less merits for a harder task that requires specific ATs?

Barracuda and Lady Grey seem to be the only TFs in the game thus far that have very specific requirements for completion (and therefore can be impossible or nearly so to complete without that component). For Barracuda, of course, it's the Black Scorpion anti-phase power given to Masterminds and Defenders. For Lady Grey, it's the holds which are critical to taking down the green mitochondria in the Hamidon encounter. Not enough holds on your team and you essentially can't progress.

While I don't necessarily think these kind of requirements are completely wrong of the Devs to include, it is very easy for ignorant players to get themselves into frustrating situations where they realize they never had a reasonable chance with the team makeup they began with - probably TFs of this sort should have some kind of warning flag in a different color of text prior to starting the TF. While it's likely those forming the TFs might not bother to read it, at least a warning is given in that case.

Required a MM? Since when?

PUGGed it (well, half pugged) last night, no mastermind. No issues. What do you think you need a MM for?

See my Guides and Tutorials

Honestly, never thought of a MM or Defender as required for it. Never had that much trouble with it. I can see where others would, though. I do think it should award more merits, though.

The first I-don't-know-how-many-times I did this SF, the MM power was broken, it was LONG before side-switching occurred, and we still kicked the crap out of him. So while 'theoretically' my MM was 'useless' coz the power didn't work, my bots/dark MM came in loaded for bear with her Mayhem-missions-collected temp powers instead and debuffed him to the point where he couldn't hit a damn thing.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

Not having the temp power dramatically increases the effective DPS requirement for the team. If any given team has that level of DPS, then they're fine even without the temp power, but otherwise, they can range from taking a bit longer, to dramatically longer, to actually being unable to overcome his regen.

Shivans and nukes and the like are possible options. Shivans actually fare somewhat poorly against Reichsman in my experience (in either the SF or the TF), because of all the KB.

I did this on Saturday. We had an MM but he bailed on us. With only seven of us we had a bit less debuff and damage that was ideal. However, each time he kicked in his phase/heal it ended with him slightly less hp than the previous. Took us about 17 cycles before we managed to down him.

We had one rad and one sonic corrupter, a fort, two stalkers, an ice/ice dominator, and a brute.

I have been on teams that failed without a MM/Defender, and while I know it can be done, even when it is possible, it is very often to annoying to be fun.

We ran this TF I think on Tuesday or Wednesday, and we did have a MM.

We still team wiped once because of all the ambushes.

My issue is the temp power for the stalker. How are you supposed to know to walk into the machine to activate it if you've never done it before? The SF leader was all pissed off at me because I didnt know it.

But seriously, how was I supposed to know this? Is it written anywhere in the dialog?

After the team wipe we reentered, and just obliterated all the ambushes on our way back to the final room and took down Reichmann.

Im sure Im not the only one who just assumed a power was supposed to drop into my tray during the previous mission, and just didnt. How was I suppsed to know that the stalker power is initiated in this way? Why is this SF so much different from the TF version? Who lamebrained idea was this??

IMO, this SF needs redone, before they ever make it the WST again.

Without a Mastermind or Defender, after 80% HP (his unaffected stage) you can only deal damage to Reichsman in increments of 3,000. Deal mass damage, he'll heal it all up except for 3,000 of the damage done. Then, he repeats. Now, you say, "what's the big deal?"

He has over 200,000 HP.

Doesn't matter the debuffs you have and regeneration debuff will have no affect on this either. Debuffs can only speed up the overall time it'll take. Still takes an hour plus if you don't have -100% resist debuffs on him.

I have been on teams that've cleared this SF in a matter of an hour or less.

This past team, we got to the final mission in about 45 minutes, spent an hour and a half - two hours swinging on him (in his 'phase / dephase / regen' stage) and even with Vanguard heavies and shivans, eventually had to give up. We had a great team, but without the Mastermind or Defender, it just wasn't possible. Our problem wasn't surviving or damage, we could do both. It was the fact that after hours we were only at 50% of his hit points and no one (including me) had the patience to sit there for another hour+ swinging on him.

The Barracuda SF should still mention, somewhere in the START UP of the mish, in ORANGE or RED or something in the NPC/contact's text, that an MM/Defender would be a 'benefit' to your team makeup.

Not mentioning this in the text or SF description is not helpful.

This knoweldge is constituted as what we call in business/education as, 'Tribal Knowlege':

Tribal knowledge is any unwritten information that is known within a "tribe" but often unknown outside of it. A "tribe" may be a group or subgroup of people that share a common knowledge.

To offer a counterpoint, I'd like to state that I got my second Notice of the Well on a PuG Barracuda where we had no MMs or Defenders, and had no effective way of neutralizing the ambushes other than just fighting through every last one of them at the entrance to the final room so as to not also have to deal with Reichsman.

Reichsman himself was a very long,very arduous battle. It took an Envenomed Dagger, a Vanguard Heavy, and 3 Snowbeasts to keep his regen and recharge low enough that we wouldn't lose all the headway we'd made before each time he used his Unbreakable power. But we did do it. And 3 out of the 7 on the team had never run the BSF before. So, while it can be exceedingly difficult for some teams and indeed impossible for some teams, it's NOT absolutely impossible if you don't have all the temp powers at your disposal.

I finished it for the first time without an MM/Defender this weekend. So now I know it's possible. This team was ALL debuff,DPS and slows though, so it was ideal for the situation.

The main problem I have with doing it without the MM/Defender temp power is that it's boring. The ambush is fun, but just standing around pounding or Reichs for half an hour gets old pretty fast.

I won't deny that it's possible with a bit of luck and the right setup, to complete the SF without an MM or Defender. However, the discrepancy between having one and not is completely absurd. Difficulty-wise, everything other than the final battle is pretty low-end, but the final confrontation varies from "very close to impossible" if you don't have any of the right temps to absolutely trivial if you do.

As the SF stands right now, an MM or Defender who does absolutely nothing but fire that temp power in the last battle actually makes a bigger difference to the team than someone of a different AT who makes a solid attempt to contribute the whole way through. That is not the way this game should be.