The Ideal AE Buster Team, and the Ideal AE Buster Team Team Buster

I know my response to these kinds of threads is usually "it depends," but I also always find these conversations interesting anyway.

Recently I've been rediscovering the AE, and to my surprise, I've been able to recruit small teams to run missions with me (I just have to advise ahead of time that I am not running farms).

What I love about AE is that you pretty much can never completely guess what it will throw at you. All bets about how prevelant something is in the main game are completely off.

So there here is the two part challenge.

1) What team could you put together that could survive almost any sort of challenge the AE throws at them?

2) If the teams posted by other posters became the obvious answer and everyone started running them, what changes to AE missions would cause them to suddenly start failing? (Absolutely anything is fair game, from AVs with Shiver and Arctic Air, to whatever nightmare you can dream up).


Speaking strictly for myself right off the bat I would say I would want an Ill/Rad troller in there somewhere (which is funny because I'm not a huge fan of them in normal content outside of very specific TFs.) IMO the team would also want at least one good Tanker. Earth or Ice Dominator for heavy control + debuff and a few autohit powers to get around any absurd -ToHit, Defense or Tanker level mezz protection that might show up. Cold Domination somewhere to protect against -Recharge. The rest scattered damage? My main concern would be some of the ridiculously powerful AVs someone could throw at you, for which you would want a ton of damage... but I'm thinking Dominators or VEATs for their mezz protection. (Several VEATS are also tempting, but I'm wondering if you could completely wreck them with -Recharge or -Endurance?) It would also have to mix up ranged and melee, because eventually someone would throw Force Bubble at you.

In addition to what you listed, you'd probably want good +Perception for the Stalker mobs. And as usual, I think an all Defender/Corruptor team could steamroll 95% of it, with the possible exceptions being things like ambushes of a bunch of Spines Stalker AVs with Build Up and Elude.

Well, just Arctic Air wouldn't be enough to be a showstopper, I think... powers like Tar Patch would keep them at range, and the Defenders could just hover anyway. (Which is why I said Spines/SR, really--slow resistance and a ranged -Fly.) Clarity, Steamy Mist, and Clear Mind also give Confuse protection, so I'm not sure Arctic Air would bother a prepared team of Defenders much even if the enemies could get into range.

Lots of Corruptors/Defenders/Controllers with lots of buffs. But even then you might run into some totally ridiculous debuffing enemies. I've run into enemies before that could kill my soft-capped Invuln Brute with perma DP and Unstoppable running.

I don't think there's any one solution. For instance, if you say "well just take a bunch of Doms to mez them all," you might run into unmezzable foes. If you take tons of buffs you may run into larger autohit debuffs. If you take lots of debuffs you may run into powerful buffers. If you try to overpower on damage you might run into really durable enemies.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

Well, getting into more detail... If I were trying for a 'survive anything AE can throw at me' team, it'd be something like...

1 Cold Domination
1 Forcefield
1 Empathy
1 Traps
1 Kinetics
1 Dark Miasma
1 Radiation Emission
1 ???. Maybe a Controller for good measure.

Corruptor or Defender doesn't matter much, blast sets don't matter much--I'd probably go for about a 50/50 split between Archery and Sonic. All running Tactics. Fully buffed, a team like this has effectively unlimited recovery, is well past the soft cap, has high resistance to hold, immobilize, disorient, fear, sleep, and confusion, with decent slow resistance, and has high +Perception and good +ToHit. Enemies can be hit with high levels of AoE -ToHit, -speed, -recharge, -def in the first few seconds of the fight. Against mobs that are still too dangerous to tackle head-on, they could let Seeker Drones take the fall while they set up debuffs, and they'd have Tar Patch and several AoE slows to keep things at range. Anything that wants to melee has to deal with Force Bubble.

Taking a team like this out, I'd try the following things:
1. Counter-debuffs. Things like Darkest Night and Radiation Infection are ranged, auto-hit debuffs, and they're also AoE: The Defenders would have to spread out to avoid them, which weakens the effectiveness of things like Dispersion Bubble.

2. Hard-to-resist effects. -Fly and -special, for example. Things it's very rare for players to be able to do anything about.

3. Lots of enemies, either through amubushes or powers like Gang War. Once fights get significantly past the target cap, debuffs and controls become less useful forms of mitigation.

4. Grab bag status protection. Rather than try making every enemy immune to everything, I'd just spread the immunity around so that any given debuff probably fails to bother a couple of enemies. Maybe put a few Dispersion Bubble types in there for basic mezz protection too.

5. Lots of +ToHit. Seriously, any damage dealer not packing Aim or Build Up is probably a waste.

6. Lots of ambushes. Makes debuffs offer less mitigation if the enemies have a good chance of getting the first strike.

It's a fight I'd be interested in seeing, but my money would still be on the Defenders, unless you started adding things like ambushes of 30 bosses or groups of 10 AVs or something. And even then...

This is an interesting concept. I think you have to approach it much like a PvP team. In PvP you dealt with real players, so you never knew what to expect. Therefore, your team had to be able to deal with absolutely any lineup the opponents could throw at you. AE is just as random, so you have to come with a similar mindset when building the team.

First of all, I agree that a tank would be needed. A team without a tank can steamroll just fine, as long as everything is going fine. But surprises tend to have a much bigger effect on squishies. A tank doesn't need to depend on his pets being positioned properly, or certain powers being recharged, or any other special circumstance. If the team runs into something completely unexpected, the tank can immediately grab aggro and save the team from a wipe. It's a good starting block.

Second, I agree that a permadom of some sort would be good for the hard control.

Third, you need a cold...probably either a corr or a controller. Cold really hinders AV's, arguably more so than any other set, so it would have that special role. Plus the shields would help the whole team.

Lastly, you need buffs. Two sets were always included on just about every PvP team that ever existed: kin and emp. There's a reason for this. You need kin for the resistance to slows. One guy can keep an entire team (except himself) essentially immune to all slows and also get rid of all their endurance issues. This is obviously a huge deal. Keeping them at the damage cap is an added bonus, as well as the -regen on AV's. The emp provides the entire team with +perception, status protection for squishies, and the obvious buffs/heals. If he keeps AB on the kin, that means the entire team is protected from slows. So with just 2 guys, you get rid of quite a lot of potential problems. Add the cold buffs and debuffs, and the team will be very adaptable to any situation. As for the force bubble, a kin's ID will protect the whole team from repel.

So that leaves 3 open spots. I think perhaps a couple melee's and one blaster would be good. A well-buffed blaster can definitely pump out the most damage, and the melee's would greatly benefit from the kin's FS. I'm thinking either 2 brutes, or 1 brute and 1 scrapper. Or maybe just 3 blappers, who knows. With a tank, the buffs/debuffs, and all the damage, I can't think of what the team wouldn't be able to handle.

Oh, one other thing. Technically, if you want to exploit vengeance, you can just have one guy die, stack 7 vengeances, and have the entire team become essentially tankmages. Vengeance is a pretty crazy buff. Most people don't realize all the effects it helps with. In addition to the damage, defense, and tohit, there's also resistance to all status effects, taunt, placate, knockback, repel....maybe more that I can't think of. And if you stack several, it's pretty much game breaking. Which is why it was "fixed" to not stack...except it wasn't.

I'd argue a /Poison Mastermind could be very, very helpful.

Why? Masterminds provide alpha eating minions. In the infamous 30 ninja stalker mob, a couple of MM pets will eat many of those opening attacks before they explode harmlessly. Poison is self-explanatory; more solid debuffs, and a rez, something a cold/FF/kin/traps Corr/Defender lacks. It also provides one of the most bizarre anchored debuffs in the game.

I had to tone some of the mobs in my arc down, because when they face a team, they start cross-buffing and stacking nasty debuffs. The one power that over and over messed up teams badly was Sleet. I gave it to one of my Lt-class mobs, and when you get a few of them in the same spawn, it gets ugly quickly.

Mobs with buff and debuff powers are underrated. They actually cast them pretty intelligently, and they're especially deadly to teams that don't stick together, as they start buffing as soon as they're in perception range.

Also, make sure that your mobs carry non smash/lethal powers. Fire is prety solidly resisted, but mobs with cold, energy, or negative damage can really mess with a team.

For both the team and the arc's enemies you have to decide if you want to aim for synergy or variety. I'll concentrate on the enemy side of things since I've got better experience there. I currently have only one "challenge" arc but trial and error caused the difficulty of the other arcs to fluctuate a fair bit.

Synergy can work since you want to focus on just one thing and push it to the limit. A lot of arcs do this accidentally simply by going for a theme. I bet you can easily do a search for "demon" or "Netherworld" and find an arc with customs with some variant on dark/dark with the resultant to hit bebuffs. There's similar things with elec/elec and stacking end drain. Dark/dark and fire/fire also have the added "benefit" of strong self heals which can slow a team down.

Personally, I prefer making varied enemies (which generally wind up having a fair amount of synergy anyways). It avoids the weakness of stacking just one effect since it's harder to defend against. Something else is that it gives more room for randomization and thus more room for unpredictability if you design a large enough enemy group. Individual spawns can be vastly different from each other despite being the same enemy group. Plus, I like for a challenge arc to actually be winnable even if it's very hard.

I think 1 and 2 of Kelenar's list are among the most important things you can do and Supermax has the right mindset of pretending they are actually players. To defeat a skilled team, you want to have a sizable amount of disruption and probably attacks and effects they aren't used to. In fact, that really hits upon the point Lakanna made--people are really undervaluing buffs and debuffs in enemy hands. Players, especially the good ones that could take on these kinds of challenges, value DPS over burst damage and buffing mobs are the very time you want burst damage.

There's also a lot of small quirks here and there:

• Enemies with cage/phase powers have the potential of being massively disruptive despite not being damaging. It's also an effective way to toy with defiance/fury generation despite not actually killing the target.
• Give an enemy Speed Boost. They will spam it if not killed which makes other enemies harder to deal with and is a lot of the reason for good burst damage. Fortitude and a few other ST ally buffs fall into this category as well but there's just something about the nuttiness of the AI when they get their coffee.
• Add enemies with higher perception. This is done with specific defense armors or Devices w/ Targeting Drone. Adding higher perception as opposed to enemies that ignore stealth requires teams to be ready sooner.
• Rise of the Phoenix and Soul Transfer are autohit. While this can be mitigated by staying out of melee range it's one way to force people to eat the damage and/or status effects if they stay close to the enemy.
• Customs aren't everything. Strategically mixing in a few key mobs can ramp the challenge up. Futhermore, some things like Leadership toggles aren't available for customs but are available on standard mobs. Actually, going back to the concept of high perception enemies, adding snipers mixes things up.
• Add a timer. It's actually very little to do with the actual time you give them (well, pending on your goals) and everything with the psychology of making people panic. Plus, it does limit the ability to win by just repeatedly running to get insps. Which leads to...
• Use maps with jail code. It throws a bit more disruption into the mix, especially since a lot of players devalue self and ally rezz powers. Sadly, you only get Arachnos and Council options since the Longbow jails were still glitched last time I checked.

I have an extreme difficulty challenge mission that I just updated:

Aeon's Army Extra Hard

It's about as hard as you can make a mission on a small map with only one AV. Well, I suppose it could be made harder with custom mobs, but I wanted to stick to those already found in the game for the most part. Maybe after more incarnate abilities are available I'll have to use some custom enemies.

Someday I want to get a team together and wipe everything out, but there aren't too many teams into doing things with high difficulty and low reward.

One of the biggest challenges I think of building a very tough mission is dealing with the Illusion Controller players. They have two things that can turn your mission on its head:
- Invincible pets that can used from range
- Ability to benefit from the scary powers enemies have via Confusion

To counter the Illusion trollers, there are a few things you could consider:
- Give the enemies -Recharge, to limit perma armies. Also completely wrecks any perma-Doms. Countered by: /Cold Domination. Actually, because of this I'd call Cold Domination a "must have" set for the Player Team. It's just too easy to nail players to the wall with -Recharge otherwise.
- Give the enemies the ability to run quickly (via Kinetics most likely). When they run away, they may come back to an Illusionist whose pets dropped. Again partially countered by /Cold, but Sleet may just make the problem worse for the troller. /Rad would be very limited in its ability to use toggles or risk aggroing the whole map.
- Lots of ambushes, which is probably Illusion's biggest hole.

One enemy specifically that would drive me insane would be Ice Control/Storm. It could have two autohit -Recharge slows, one autohit -Speed that you can't jump or fly out of, Freezing Rain, Tornado (autohit like it is for players?), Lightning Storm, Arctic Air which is autohit with random chance for confuse, Glacier which nerfs Recharge even if you are protected from the hold, -Fly, and confusion protection and stealth from Steamy Mists. Just two or three of these enemies in a group backed by something that provides Hold and Immob protection (Force Field, to also provide the enemies endurance drain protection--but this leaves a sleep hole?) would be really difficult to deal with. Just thinking about it scares me. So naturally, I'd put Malta Snipers and Rikti drones in there as well.

Nemesis + Ruularuu?

The ideal enemy team:

Minions: Sappers only
Lieutenants: Sorcerers only
Bosses: Master Illusionists only

Max level: 1

Quote:

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

Busting the AE is easier with a spec-built team like you propose but if the PLAYERS cooperate it's also much easier. For example:

Everyone waits for the debuffs to get laid down. For a team without Brutes, Scrappers and Tanks this is easier.

The AoE team buffs (both RAs, MA etc) are well-slotted and the players give everyone a few seconds to gather for them.

Everyone runs some form of Leadership, even the non-buff types. I was on a team with 8 Blasters, all with 3/4 Leadership and we rolled over most things.

Mix and match the debuffs. Sonic for -Resist, Rad for -Regen, Dark for -Def and so on. That way foes durable against one thing can be taken down by something else.

One of the few times you might want to consider Team Fly to keep the group together and avoid Caltrops later on. Same goes for Team Teleport.

I prefer click debuffs to toggle ones since one good AoE Stun drops the toggles and the team loses a big chunk of protection. But 4 stacked -To Hit makes for a very safe team.

It might be useful (and fun) to have one insane player (like the Fire/Rad Troller with all the trimmings) who likes to rush ahead. Just have all the ST buffs aimed at him and let him go. With the team behind him he'll draw the aggro while everyone else does their thing.

If you decide to form one of these PM me...it sounds like fun.

I really like this idea and might spend some time trying to build an untra hard arc for me and my VG buddies. We are bigtime speed taskforce guys with toons build specific for some tf's and it would be neat to have something to run occasionally where we need to run as a team instead of splitting up to hit objectives ASAP.

Interesting. If people are actually looking for a mission that will stymie even the toughest teams, I'm pretty sure I could oblige them. Given access to custom critters, I believe I can make life difficult for any team of any composition.

Worth noting: the Scrapper Challenge mission is dialed down from the hardest mission I ever built in the AE by about a factor of twenty.

The secret to making an AE-killer-killer comes down to this:

1. Defuse defense.

2. Take away initiative.

3. Focus on multiple areas of weakness simultaneously.

4. Exploit the crap out of the custom mission maker powersets.


I should point out that I believe the hardest mission to complete quickly was already built in I14 beta by pohsyb. Basically, he filled a mission with nothing but Nemesis AVs. In a large and dense enough map, good luck finishing that before the apocalypse (he used a very small map that guaranteed they were all within line of sight of each other, to guarantee the defense buffing got totally out of hand, but I think you can do better than that).


If people are actually crazy enough to want to run this sort of thing, I could probably try to dig up my Mark II AE killer mission from I14, and tweak it to be insanely lethal. I don't know if I could kill the best possible team on the first try, but I'm pretty sure I could get there in an iteration or two.

PS: has anyone been crazy enough to take a team of eight into the Scrapper Challenge? That thing is intended to be soloed, but it scales up pretty nasty. In my opinion, that represents 5% of my best possible effort. If a team cannot sleep walk through that mission, I think my best effort is going to be a doozy.

If someone is that crazy, demorecord please.


I've been looking for an excuse to get back into the AE, maybe this is it.