Admiral Sutter TF

My 50 en/en/fire blaster and 2 SG-mates (50 PB and a 50 Ill/Kin controller) are trying to trio the Admiral Sutter TF.

We gound the first part outside the ships and big base ship thing a long fight, until we realised that thePB and I had forgotten to change our diff settings from 'team size 8' from when we were doing PP badging in ouro, lol, but after resetting we went through it again easily enough.

The War Walkers etc arent a problem. Riptide took a while, because of the angry bombs, but we managed, and Hsrbinger was easy. Fusion and Temblor were doable too.

We seem to have hit an impossible wall however with the two Durays. I can't find any specific advice anywhere about them, so I was wondering if anyone has any here. We can go get Shivans and WB nukes if necessary. Primal Duray keeps teleporting all the time, and it seems imposdible to separate them to take them down one by one. Also, we're not sure how to avoid the airstrikes.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Eco

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

Suggestions and observations, in no particular order:

1) You can't really separate the two Durays. The intended challenge is having to face them together. However, you can choose which to concentrate on. I strongly recommend defeating Primal Duray first. The air strikes will stop when you defeat him, and the battle with Praetorian Duray becomes pretty much a standard AV fight with a Sky Raider ambush partway through (which often gets lost and doesn't bother you). If you defeat Praetorian Duray first, he simply summons a clone of himself.

2) Primal Duray does indeed teleport and otherwise hare around all over the place. (This is true even on teams that constantly taunt or immobilize him.) Fortunately, your entire team has ranged attacks, so you won't need to be running to keep up with him TOO much. I suspect that your recurring problem will be that his AV regeneration will keep the damage you do from sticking due to the time it takes to relocate and continue attacking him. You simply have to wear him down and keep your eyes open for him.

3) To avoid air strikes, when you see the honking, flashing arrows on the ground near you, get out of the way. Essentially, they're a device to force characters to move around, much like the blue stuff in the Apex TF. (Unlike the blue stuff, an air strike will not almost always kill its target, though they do hit very hard.) My usual strategy for dealing with this and (2) combined is to blast Duray from the air and move after each shot. I also fight with my view zoomed out a long way, in order to spot him quickly when he teleports.

4) Additional damage, such as pets, doesn't hurt. However, since you cannot command most pets to attack only Primal Duray, they are less useful in this fight than in most others in the game.

Aside from those issues, it looks like you have a good team combination for a trio on this. Good luck!

To add on what Olantern said, if your PB is at capped resistance and has a bit of defense, they can probably take a few air strikes. Playing in Dwarf form isn't the most fun for that fight, though, unless the PB is adept at teleporting.

The team you're using is a bit light on defense unless they have very strong Inventions builds, so consider getting using temp powers like Kinetic Dampener with a luck or two. At least during the time you're fighting Primal.

The PB is using humsn form rxclusively. I have no PBs so I'm not sure if this is a good idea or not. We can stock up on large inspirs. How msny of those hit the cap?

Eco

Edit. Cheers for the temp tip. Will get those.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

Me and my friend duo'd it about a week after it came out (We were both fire/ss tankers, moderately IO'd at the time, first time running it)

I think it was at +1 x6 or 8, not really sure.

We honestly didn't have any sort of problem with anything, most stuff was kind of laughable except for the first mission, where we couldn't really close the portals. Since we were fire armor, we just ignored the exploding zombies, and I'm pretty sure I sat inside the air strike zones a few times and didn't notice. Don't really think we used many inspirations either, and when it was over, we kind of just sat there and went "Wow, really? That TF was kinda lame."

With enough inspirations I'm sure you guys would do fine.

Unless they buffed stuff since we ran it.

I'd say just load up on inspirations and avoid the air strikes, the durays are pretty weak by themselves.

I've got all three WB nukes and 5 shivans, I just got kinetic dampeners for all of us. I guess our plan is to load up on large inspirations, all fly with camera zoomed out, i'll drop the 2 offensive nukes on Duray primal and the buff nuke on us, then we just strafe and blast him whilst eating our way through our inspirs until he's down, and then when he is, drop to Praetorian Duray and unleash the Shivans and batter him whilst the controller heals us and saps him?

Eco

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

I do know that if you don't chase the Primal Duray very far, he will not go too far himself and returns MUCH faster. In my experience, anyway.

UPDATE:

Phew. That was a hellish session.

We went in and pulled Temblor away from Fusion, she was easy. Fusion next, also not a problem. Blaster and PB blasting, troller spamming heals and transference etc..

Then we put our plan into operation.

We had a full tray of super inspirations each,. We did all 3 WB nukes first, then ate an Ultimate each, laid down Shivans, buffed up and flew around attacking Duray Primal. It was hard. At one point we got him down to half health, but after about half an hour of faffing about, we'd run out of inspirations and were back at square one.

The problem was his teleporting conbined with the damn airstrikes, and Praetorian Duray's missile attacks didn't help.

After that, we tried a different plan. We pulled praetorian Duray down into one of the large pipes underneath the road, and the PB and I blasted him whilst the troller did the support stuff. When he went down, an EB clone appeared. We killed him fairly easily. Then another clone appeared...

After 4 clones, we figured they must be infinite, so we left the next one alone and retreated to see what would happen. the clone stayed put in the pipe, so we just left it there.

Then we got more Super Inspirations and tried Duray primal again. The TPs and the airstrikes still proved too much for us.

And then it was time for one of our group to log out, so we have left it there for now. The controller has parked her toon at the hospital plcae in the map and is going to leave her comp on until tomorrow evening when we'll try again.

Our new new plan for Primal Duray is thus:

There's a Skyraider skiff hanging about. We're going to pull that away and down under the road bit (on the other side from the Praetorian Duray clone) and the troller's going to confuse it. Then we're going to pull Duray Primal under the road, and hover near the skiff whilst the troller heals off it, and attack Duray whenever he appears near us. We're going to not chase him up top, and hope he comes near us enough for us to take him down.

What would be awesome was some sort of hold we could use to stop him teleporting away all the damn time.

I'm still not entiorely sure that the road offers protection from the airstrikes either.

Any adive re hold craftable temp powers? And does the road protect against airstrikes?

Epic fight so far, but much like the trials, I'm finding it a bit too gimmicky with the TPs plus airstrikes.

Eco

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

What are the empowerment table buffs?

Eco

Edit: and the fact that airstrikes can go through the roadway to the underpass below is rubbish. So much for rewarding tactical thinkig!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

OK, I'll get the attack speed buffs i guess.

I'm not massivley vonfident, tbh. If we just take a full tray of 20 Super Lucks, what wil that do to our defense? I'm not very familiar with the numbers and what they do tbh. One super luck caps our defense, am I right? So we've got 20 minutes at capped defense? How many times will an even con AV be expected to hit a toon with capped def per 10 attacks?

Eco.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

Wow, i'm very interested in how this all plays out so please keep it updated. I'm sorry to hear about the troubles you're having with it. Hopefully you can pull out the victory

Check out this thread from June.

Early this evening, the three of us met up again in the mission where the troller had been parked all night. Praetorian Duray's fifth clone was still standing in the pipe under the roadway (I heartily recommend the 'Praetorian Pulling Pipe Plan' approach for this TF), and Primal Duray was still waiting with a lone Sky Radier Skiff up top.

I sniped the Skiff and pulled it under the road, and the troller confused it. I went back and sniped Duray and then whilst he was coming for me we buffed up with the first of many Super Lucks, and an Ultimate each.

After the first minute or two we realised that staying down there was a no-starter, and that yes, the road does not stop the airstrikes (v poor design imo).

So we decamped up to the roadway and adopted a tactioc if simply chasing him around blasting whilst avoding airstrikes whenever we could.

We'd also trawled through our powers list for all the temp powers we could possibly use. Every time i got close, I was using Web grenade, some sort of stunner, Seduction, Nectar, my Crey Pistol, fearsome gaze and some sort of terrify thing that I've got from I don't know where lol.

We got Duray down to about half health, and then hit a patch of us dying one after another. I used Rec Friend when I could, but he gradually went back up to full health again, and our inspirs were dwindling.

Again, we beat him down to half health, every time desperately trying to keep him in one place long enough to pound on him. The PB has a tesla cage proc thing in one attack, sometimes that would hold him for a while. Using my energy melee attacks with chance to stun helped too, and the troller's confuses would periodically keep him put for a bit.

Butall too soon I'd run out of inspirs and used the ones I'd emailed myself too, and he was then back to full health with us now totally insp free. I was ready to call it quits then, we were back to square one with almost a billion inf worth of inspirations used up and apparently worse off in terms of ammo than we were at the start.

The troller wasn't having any defeatist talk, however. I pointed out how much inf we'd spent already to no avail, and she replied 'yeah, and you want it to all be for nothing?'

So back in we went, and even though it hadn't seemed to help at all yesterday, we dropped some Shivans off to do whatever they could.

And I think that it was those Shivans that turned the tide. Duray's attacks aren't much threat, as pointed out by other commenters here, and he seems to call an airstrike and then teleport out of the way. When he does, the Shivans immediately run off after him, so they generally don't get hit by the airstrikes. As long as we managed to avoid dying, our Shicvan pets were still alive, and their rad attacks meant our attacks were doing more hurt to him. The trollers slows started to stack, and combined with all the crap our temps were throwing at him, his health dropped to 75%, then 50%, and then 25%, and then his TP unit must have got scrambled or something, because he TPd about 2 feet twice in a row. Surrounded by rampaging Shivans, a Blaster, a PB and the trollers pets, He finally dropped and the Land, Sea and Air badge was ours.

After that, we did a little victory dance and then went down to where Praetorian Duray Clone 5 was waiting, and he was like a wafer-thin mint after a twelve course meal.

It was sort of 'epic', but looking back at it, the super inspirs weren't needed at all, or at least not in such huge quantities. And unlike my feeling of grim determination and tense excitement when I duod the Katie hannon TF with the troller's player (on her her other trolelr, a Mind/emp), my overriding emotion during this fight was irritation at the devs for engineering such an annoying opponent. I think this TF would be much better with another AV-level chalenge somewhere on the map that if defeated would stop Duray's TP or the airsterikes. I'm happy to have the badge, and the first part of the TF with the ships etc was very cool. But Primal Duray is a total ******.

So my tip for anyone attempting this in future is:

Pull Praetorian Duray into the pipe and then leave the clone there.
Drop Shivans onto the road and stay alive for them to do their thing.
Finish Primal Duray off as quickly as you can.


Next up is the Synapse TF, with the same trio.

Eco.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

Incidentally, does anyone know if Praetorian Duray's clones are infinite? We killed five altogether.

Eco

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

I hate this TF with a passion. I've only done it twice and have told myself never to do this TF again (said that to myself after the 1st time I did it but...got suckered into doing it)....


The 1st time I did it we did as others have said; take out Primal Duray (the one that tps) and then we took out the Praet. version.

The 2nd time I did the TF I suggested we do the same (take out Primal first). After quite a few team wipes, I was like, "Meh, let's get the one that's just standing still..."

So we went for the Praet. version and took him out which helped us from dying from his attacks.

Then we finally wittled the Primal version down.


Some hate the iTrials; I hate the Sutter TF