Alternate Strategy For BAF? Let's Figure it Out.

So, I haven't attempted it yet, but I'd like to find some intrepid players to give it a shot this weekend - and that is to defeat Nightstar and Siege at their spawn locations, rather than pull them to tennis court "blind spot."

We will definitely need someone with invis on guard tower duty.

Any ideas, folks?

We already have said strategy posted over on union... Not that we're too fast or anything...

Well everybody's primary concern are those cannons. Because fighting them at their spawn puts you in range of the cannons, that's why pulling to Tennis courts work - most of the time. Grant it I did ask, which nobody answered, how many targets can the guns focus on. I think their damage is unresistable, like Nanoswarms from BM, but they do deal fairly small amounts allowing a good healer to keep you alive.

It's possible never the less but then you also have to kill the two at the same time when you take out Siege. Not sure on the specifics of why, I always assumed Nightstar would get some hefty bonus much like Minx during Tin Mage's trial.

More importantly defeating them at their spawn locations awards an additional Astral Merit (wether or not you have the badge).

My suggestion at the moment would be to have one fast player on each side who focuses solely on turning off the turrets.

There are TWO reasons to pull to courts:
1.) Safety from the towers.
2.) Ease in switching attacks from one AV to the other

There are reasons NOT to pull to courts:
1.) Challenge.
2.) The badge for defeating them seperately.
3.) The Astral merit for the badge (everytime)
4.) The random uncommon component for the badge (the first time)
5.) The badge, Astral merit, and first time uncommon componet for the tower takedown badge.
6.) The badge, astral merit, and rare componet for completing the "Master Of" for getting all four badges (I have the other two already).

So would definetaly love to complete it like that at least once.

Considering the difficulty of coordinating 3 teams on the final phase when both Siege and Nightstar are both together, I'd think this would really only be possible if the league was filled only with people who have done the BAF enough times to know exactly what to look for, and exactly what to do when their AV has lower health than the other teams.

For many people, having to *gasp* slow down or even stop attacking a single target in front of you when there is no other targets in sight is a strange and foreign thing. The usual "SIEGE!" "NIGHTSTAR!" on league chat won't work.

That's not to say it couldn't work, of course. Just that it would be hard to pull off.

I have questions:

1) Do you get the badge after killing both of them at their spawn points or after their second, must-be-killed-within-10-seconds, death? If the former, couldn't you kill them at their spawn point and THEN move them to the center?

2) How much can the AV move, if at all, to get the badge? Could you hug the buildings close to the spawn point or do you fail if AV moves 1 inch?

1) Do you get the badge after killing both of them at their spawn points or after their second, must-be-killed-within-10-seconds, death? If the former, couldn't you kill them at their spawn point and THEN move them to the center?

Moving either AV at any stage more than about 50m causes the badge to not be awarded.

2) How much can the AV move, if at all, to get the badge? Could you hug the buildings close to the spawn point or do you fail if AV moves 1 inch?

Nightstar can move freely between the Barracks and Siege can move to the BAF doorway quite happily without jepordising the badge. Pulling them to the tennis courts causes an epic fail.

Thank you, Tsumiju. I just read your Master BAF guide and it answered most of the questions. Nicely done.

NP flea, always a pleasure working with you on strategy

My understanding so far is as long as you treat the mobs considerably, they'll follow you just about anywhere on the map. Gotta handle them like Rom at the end of the ITF if you're pulling him to the grass, don't just run off expecting them to stay interested when you're a few miles out.

As for their range minimum for the badge? Well safe to say tennis courts don't cut it, fight them on the grass outside of their spawn points; that's fine but you need a few running turret gun controls if you want to cull the threat.

Ok did an attempt at a Masters run today. We failed but it was pretty close. The team killing adds got overwhelmed and wiped the other two teams took down their AVs anyway but missed the 10 second split by about 2 seconds resulting in fully healed AVs with a ton of adds. We did actually get the add population back under control but ran out of time.

Things I learned:

1. Killing them separately does take quite a bit longer so it's important to have defensive buffs well distributed

2. The team killing adds needs a lot more damage than I think or they are going to get overwhelmed. The Siege team was going slow so I peeled two people off the add team to help with Siege. That was a mistake, it resulted in the add team getting overwhelmed. I either should have kept them there and gone for a longer fight with the NS team taking it slow, moved someone from NS to Siege or (possibly) moved a defender/corruptor from adds to Siege instead of a MM and a Brute.

3. The choke point strategy for Prisoners is definitely better overall as long as the people involved are clear on where they are supposed to be.

Ooh. Just found this thread.

I ran in a streak of 11/11 BaFs today; 10 of which I led myself. This may not be the best way to do it, but I'll share we were doing:

For the Prisoners: Bear in mind, you don't actually have to *kill* them to succeed - you just have to prevent them from running. You can mez the minions; but not the LTs. Thus: Mezzers focus on holding minions while damage-dealers hunt down the LTs - or any Minions who managed to slip through. It's critical to watch the sidewalk for them. We had 0 escapees twice in a row working like this; and only one or two the other times due to lag. Combined with the chokepoint idea, I think this is a sure thing.

For Siege/Siege+Nightstar: Now, this is going to depend a lot on the make-up of the League - but we managed this whether we had 12 people or 28 (the thing bugged and gave us extra people one raid, I think). The most important bit is to make sure the 9CUs don't stack up. To this end, we split the League into three teams; trying to make the best balance of control/buff/damage/sturdiness we could in each team - but most importantly for Team 1 and Team 3. Team 1 and 2 would handle the AVs, while Team 3 stayed at the North door and handled the adds that came in. Anyone who had two warnings from the AVs would fall back and assist Team 3 until the warnings wore off. If the adds were finished before the next group was ready to spawn, then Team 3 would come back to help against the AVs for a few moments. We had no trouble, there - but like I mentioned, it does rely on having two teams capable of handling their respective ends.

And that was really about it! We stuck to those strategies, and often had the last fight finished well before the 10-minute mark on it.

It helps, though, that we all started out as a PuG League - and folk stayed on from each until we were at the point I didn't even have to say anything anymore.

I've been seeing a lot of success with killing Siege and Nightstar at their spawn locations without having to hide much anywhere. Literally, one person on tower duty, one team covering the reinforcement spawn doors, and it works beautifully.