Question about Apex TF

I ran Apex on my Scraps and Tanks for the first time last week, and it was really fun and different. But I have a melee-related question about the BM mission.

Does holding BM stop the blue swords from falling on her? It does not appear to, and if BM is held, I have to wait until the blue energy wears off before I can attack. I wanted to tell the trollers to stop holding, but didn't since I didn't know if there was a reason for it that I wasn't seeing. Assuming there is a Tank/Taunter on the team, it seems more productive to let them draw her out from the energy field.

no the holds do not stop the patches, only killing her does

i actually prefer her being held or immob, the blue patches will spawn in melee then, but if she is not held, she could run into more blue patches essentially never giving you a chance to be in melee

if she is immob, she wont be able to get out of that patch cycle so when the next set of patches are up you can run in and melee for a bit till more patches spawn under you

Immobilizing her is likely always the best strat. Letting her move becomes very unpredictable.

You attack her in melee, when the blue patch appears, fall back, either use range attacks on her if you have any or try to beat on any other enemies so they attack you instead of an unarmored character. No one should be near her when the next blue patches appear, therefore she will be clear. As soon as the next blue wave drops, leap back into melee with her. That type of in and out fighting works much better if she is immobilized and much better than taunting her out of the patches, IME.

I run Apex on melee regularly. I agree with Strato. Immobilizing BM is inconvenient for keeping up melee DPS, since she plops a heap of nanite patches on the melees who are around her, which creates a damage zone no one can survive. However, it's pretty straightforward to operate in an "ebb and flow" mode, where you pile melee around her when she's open and recede to use either ranged attacks or to defeat some of her champions.

When she moves around a lot, what I find is that she is as often as not likely to wander into a newer nanite patch, meaning that she remains out of reach of melee attacks more often than if you let the patches fall on her, then off, etc.

I've been on an Apex team that was all melee except for a single Dominator, and we still completed in less than 30 minutes. I don't expect that to be typical, but the point is that while the patches definitely hurt melee DPS, that hurt doesn't make dealing with BM untenable.

I don't see much point in immobilizing/holding her - if you're quick on your feet, you can reliably get her out of any blue patch in just a few seconds, which is more often than not much faster than to wait it out.

Now the issue is that it can go wrong if done poorly, i.e. if the guy who has aggro on her just steps back 20 feet and stands still for a good 10-15 seconds waiting for her to come. First, she's likely to just stand her ground and shoot with her crossbow, and second, there's a higher likelyhood (than if the guy was moving) that one blue patch will appear where the guy with aggro is standing and luring BM to. If you grab aggro and jump about 100-120 feet away though, I've never seen her fail to move instantly.

Edit: when you put it that way Aliana, it's difficult to disagree. Two different strategies, each of them the most efficient for different teams.

Do you have Super Speed? Try kiting. Queue up a strong attack, take a running start at BM, then jump right before you hit the patch. You will sail over the patch, and the attack will start to hit BM, and the animation will finish with you in safety. Typically you'll get hit for one or two ticks, but you can survive it. It's better than standing around waiting for Nem Staff to recharge.

On my DM, when she is in a patch I will alternate between Midnight Grasp and Siphon Life and wait til the patch goes down.

Also, has anyone tried the group hug method for attacking BM? The whole team stays as one close knit group and just moves around to avoid patches. That way the patches are essentially only ever in one spot.

A Taunter, or a Melee with Aggro, should certainly move back FAR ENOUGH OUTSIDE BM'S RANGED ATTACK RANGE.

So, even if BM is immobed, the immob doesn't last forever, and then she'll move. But if the agro magnet is in range, well, then she'll use her ranged attacks first and not move.

I've seen too many Tankers taunting from right outside BRoD. If the intent to keep BM from hitting the squishies... sure, that works. If the intent is to make her move, YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG.

If you move out of range and you have agro, then she hits... no one! And she's going to move to you when she can.

OTOH... flyers with AoE immob and AoE damage wind up locking down and killing all the adds, making it safe for non-flyers. Melee-ers can close in and beat on BM until a BRoD comes and then jump-joust as described above until the BRoD goes away.

It's fairly common that I'm on a team that has no primary aggro management character who can keep aggro at range, like a Tanker or a Brute with Taunt. Absent that, she doesn't stick to most characters very consistently, so the "flow control" of the in-and-out approach works well.

With a taunter who's on the ball, keeping her moving works well. The problem then is people who are used to not having that and who root her anyway, stymieing the taunter.

It also depends on how much melee is on the team. If you've got a bunch of controllers spamming containment damage on her and a couple of melees, it may be better overall to just let them root her and get your licks in when the openings appear. As always, YMMV.

I've completed the Apex TF twice this week with my Dark/Dark stalker. Both times I was using Midnight Grasp liberally, because it is my most damaging quick hitting attack.

On one of the teams, the tank was asking me not to apply it. I really find it had to believe that only my Midnight Grasp was powerful enough to immobilize an AV level enemy. Weren't there other immobilizes affecting her?

Most AVs only have boss resistance to immobilizes, stacking just two will work. With MG being ~18s duration base, it can stack by itself even on a +4 AV (and if you're levelshifted, BM is just +3 to you anyway).

If you have a lot of location based debuffs (FR, Sleet, Tar Patch, Disruption Arrow, etc), and not all that many melee on the team, you're often better off just immobing BM and letting the ranged have at it while keeping the other mobs off of the ranged yourself. Also consider some of the best debuffs in the game--LR, Benumb, aforementioned FR, Sleet & Tar Patch--already slow her to a degree where taunting her out of the patches will take a bit more time anyway.

Basically, I just don't stress about it any more. If the team wants to taunt her out, great. If there's a controller spamming immobs (and you sort of want to immob the swords so they don't hunt down the squishies), I don't complain. Of course, on a team where the scrappers/brutes are your main source of DPS, you need to set up some guidelines for immobs and such.

i wish veat confront had -range.