Troubles Finishing off Romulus in ITF

I've undertaken a "social" ITF with a couple of friends -- this team is not particularly min/maxed and just played for fun. Without planning it, we happen to be a Hero Pentad -- Blaster, Controller, Defender, Scrapper, Tanker.

We motored through the last mission and got to Romulus and his nicti, and found ourselves unable to take him down. Instead, he quickly cuts us down every time, perhaps with his autohit pulse attack. We have not stayed alive long enough to see if we're making inroads into his life bar, so it's hard to say if we have "enough" damage.

I myself have participated in the ITF many times, but usually we've either split the spawn between two taunting Tanks, or just powered through with mass damage, so I never learned the finer points of bringing down Rommy.

We'll try again this week.

Questions:

1) Is it possible to kill off the nicti first? I get the impression that Romulus himself has to go down (multiple times) -- at least that's how I remember seeing it done -- instead of shearing him of his nicti, but I'm not really sure. It does seem we cannot "pull" the nicti until we target and pull Romulus himself. Since we lack a second taunter, the odds of forcibly splitting him from the nicti are iffy at best.

2) Is there anything else tactically we should be doing in order to defeat him? We've tried asking the ranged squishies to stand way back, but to date it hasn't worked -- something is shooting them.

3) What else can we do (without leaving/breaking the Task Force) to beef up? We're all heroes, not a mixed-faction team, so we can leave the zone. Here's what I've come up with:

• Buy Backup Radios in the auction house
• Buy Evenomed Daggers in the auction house
• Run Bloody Bay for Shivans
• Run Warburg for Nukes
• I'm not sure if our little SG has an Empowerment Station yet

If you could tell us what flavors of AT we're dealing with, I could be more helpful. It really makes a difference knowing what buffs and debuffs are available.

just another note, you CAN leave the zone even if you were mixed alignments, they changed this not too long after GR came out (i think around i19)

once you formed a co op team you can leave co op zones and still be on the team

With Cold Domination, your group should be well buffed enough that Shields+1 purple will keep you on your feet.

If your Tanker is buffed and can stand toe to toe with Romulus, here is my advice for placement:

1) Fight him where he stands. At least, have the tanker start the fight there, and get the aggro from him and his Nictus.

2) everyone else in the party move past Rommy and stand at the temple doorway together. Once the tanker has aggro, the Scrapper can go in, but most of your group should spend most of the fight at range when possible.

the advantage to this placement is all the ambushes should then come from a fairly predictable direction, and have to run through your tanker and whatever AoEs your group has out.

Until aggro is established and your tank is able to stand up, the rest of the group should avoid Area effects. Usually that only matters for the first few seconds.

If your tanker isn't capable of standing up with buffs and heals from you guys, we have bigger issues, but for now lets talk as if we can solve this from a straight up fight.

Things your team can do:

- Keep positioning so ambushes and Nictus spawns have to pass through area effects.
- Your cold defender should find the healer nictus at the start of the fight (its the one that spawns on the left as you face Romulus) If at all possible he needs to keep track of that one and cast Benumb on it every time he can until it gets eaten. The other Cold Debuffs should go on Romulus.
- the kinetic controller may become a buffer/healer for most of the first part of this fight. If your tank is having issues staying up, his heals are going to be the difference maker.

Overall I feel this group can pull it off. You have solid buffs and debuffs on your side, which means you have enough damage if you can stay on your feet to do it.

It's really all about knowing where to stand.

Post again if your tanker is the one that is having issues staying on his feet. Dark Armor is Resistance, and Cold shields are Defense, so this is the one weak area in your composition and he may need to chew more purples than the rest of you to get over the top Defense to stay up.

Adeon is talking about picking off the Nictus before engaging Rommie I think.

Anyway the teams I've been on where one of the Nictus (or two) die before Rommie uses them to rez have been pretty high-damage teams that could just pound Rommie into the ground in any case.

But I do agree with all of the above strategies. Eat purples, use your buffs and debuffs. Having a kin to boost everyone's damage helps a lot.

A shivan each would most likley turn it into a cakewalk. Thats the easy answer

Have your Fire blaster watch the summoning Nictus. When the mini-fluffies are called out, they're stacked on top of each other. The mini-fluffies have relatively low hitpoints. Two quick AOEs (Fire Ball + Fire Breath) could take them all out. Heck, several times, I've Sands of Mu'ed them.

Just a couple of details that Sailboat left out. The team is level 39, so we don't have little goodies like APPs or incarnate slots. Also, the task force itself is set at level 45 since we had an extra participant when we started; so we're artificially level 44 which may not make a huge difference but it's a slight handicap.

I'm playing the tanker, and how it's typically gone is that I don't stay up long enough to get Dark Regeneration off a second time. Usually the electric/kinetic controller dies within the first few seconds of the fight, so a good chunk of our debuffing and our only source of external healing has been absent. Probably the biggest factor is the recharge debuffs that get piled on me, even with the debuff resistance and recharge bonus of Speed Boost. I think I was at -131% when I looked at one point during one of the fights last week.

My own stats are 13-15% defense to any given damage type before the cold buffs (28-30% buffed), and about 60% resistance to smashing, lethal and negative energy.

Thanks for the advice so far—tomorrow night we hurl ourselves at him again!

I don't know what sort of auto-hit there is; I've done a lot of ITFs on force field defenders and the team doesn't take a lot of damage. So the cold shields + medium purples should make a big difference. (Remember: 45% Defense takes 1/4 as many hits as 30% ! Four times tougher! Until you get defense debuffed...)

Also, 60% Res is about where big oranges start to shine; two mediums will get you to 90%. I love the Wentworth's inspiration counter!

If you're really pushed for room in your inspiration tray you can global-mail yourself insps and pick up your mail in midfight.

I was on a team that picked off the Nicti once. I don't remember all the details but it involved staying at snipe/NemStaff range. Somehow they didn't aggro. It worked but I wouldn't try it without a real explanation.

Find the healer.

Kill him with ranged attacks of 80+range. ST only

if needed, rinse and repeat with the other nictus...

a lot of good advice here but, i would disagree on fighting rom where he spawns.

if you are having trouble with rom, its likely the ambushes are overwhelming you too. pull rom to the grassy area away from the "dance floor" and no ambushes will follow.

oh yeah - and lots of the speed runs do involve killing the nictus first. if you plan on trying that - you should probably target through the tank - to ensure everyone is on the same nictus! (and then get the healing one first!)

If you have Superspeed, Teleport, or really any fast movement, you might be able to hop up to where rommy spawns between him and the nictus, breaking the "leash"

I'd have everyone fill up with small purples and have everyone hug Rommie for spammed Kin heal and Fulrcum shift. Transfusion comes back very quickly and heals for ton with everyone at or near soft cap it should be more than enough to keep them on their feet.

If the Kin and the Cold can stay alive, they should be able to take him down even with minimal help from the team.

I've been on a couple of low damage buff/debuff light teams in the early days of ITFs where we have done this - its very slow but definitely possible.
Usually easier is to split Rommy away from the Nictus - with two tanks this is straightforward but can be done with one if the team can immob Rommy - stand in the nictus with a Taunt Aura running and use Taunt on the immobbed Rommy.

Next option is for the tank to be the only toon in melee range - The healing Nictus will heal Rommy (and everything else) according to how many of the team including pets are in its aggro range (~80' I think) - If you aren't the tank and are in its range you will find an icon along with your buff/debuff icons - you will also find a faint dark (I think its probably purple) smokey aura on you. If this is the case move back until you are out of its range - melee toons sit back and twiddle your thumbs - or better keep an eye out for the ambushes.

These days its more usual for teams to just owerwhelm the healing Nictus's heals with buffs/debuffs in which case just pound on Rommy.

When Rommy rezzes everyone in line of sight will be hit with a high mag stun so as soon as he drops run around a corner somewhere and listen for the mez animation to finish. If you don't you WILL be mezzed even if you are a granite tanker running rooted and buffed with multiple ID, Clear Minds and Clarities so keep some break frees handy - its not as high as GWs mez but you still aren't going to avoid it with mez protection.