SR Tank vs Freedom Phalanx

Did not go well.

The first four missions went off flawlessly. Crimson is a chump, Slinger tickled a bit, the Future Freedom Phalanx was out of H-Boosters, and Ms. Liberty's belt failed her.

We get to Atlas, clear around the outside of the statue a bit, made some jokes about the redshirt being the true threat, and someone agroed the Heroes on accident. We wipe, figure "No big deal, we'll get them next time!" Second time comes around, we seem to be doing fairly well, most of the team is on Psyche because Numina wanted to hang out with the redshirt, and then BAM. I'm dead. Two hits got through at once. No one has a rez, we wipe again. We repeated this cycle 4 or 5 times, trying different things like loading up on oranges and pulling them to the foot, and we did manage to kill the redshirt before calling it. Any suggestions on what to do differently? I was the only tank, we had a brute, stalker, stormie, cold domination, SoA, time manip, and some other I can't remember. Seemed a solid team make up throughout. I suppose it just comes down to luck of the draw, and will of the Random Number Generator. Sorry for the rant.

-Star

As a side note: Build is soft-capped vs. Incarnates. The Phalanx only had a 9% chance to hit me each time, which I think is their minimum.

A lot of Tankers may look at this and think "never tanked it", with so much on option "where do we start" or "there isn't enough information".

To cut things short, to say you didn't have enough support is an understatement. I am drooling over the stormie alone myself.

There will probably be more of a better response by Brutes who tank this day in, day out. Someone in the Brute section would of possibly ate, drank and slept this.

I will say, that before an STF, no matter what the team make up, even that doesn't require a Tanker, you should be able to remember the whole team, know what powers were on offer, even their smallest secondary effects and have a box of tricks up your sleeve for simply completing the damn thing ya attempting to do. Snowstorm + Hurricane would of offered a worst case scenario tactic for getting it done if it was me, but then ya prolly build an SR tank differently to me.

I guess the problem is that you were all defense (SoA, cold, time all buff defense).

The only significant debuff you'd have is Benumb from the cold to weaken the AV's damage, Snow Storm and Hurricane wouldn't do much, Freezing Rain and Sleet would help you kill faster but only if your team is able to survive.

I went thru a similar situation on the STF where the Ice Tanker was dying repeatedly in front of buffed Recluse (we had two emps but they were pretty bad, they kept dying for standing close to Recluse I guess, I did plenty of MOs on my emp, but I was on a fire/kin at the time and couldn't hit buffed recluse for transfusion). The solution in the end... Everyone bought a ton of orange insps and kept the tanker topped at 90% resist to all, one at a time, while the rest destroyed the towers. But although the emps were lame, I suppose he had at least one Adrenalin Boost on him on top of the oranges.

If you're an SR tanker, you should always try to have a tray filled with orange inspirations, especially for situations like these. Also, temp powers like Eye of the Magus, Wedding Band, Elusive Mind, and Kinetic Dampener really help.

Thanks for the advice everyone, I suppose I'd better go grab some temporary powers and accolades before the next time I run it!

Something doesn't add up.

If you are incarnate softcapped and brought a tray of oranges, and had a cold dom (who was possibly hitting you with frostwork) you are many times more survivable than most brutes who have done the same thing for years with little to no trouble.

Assuming you had 0 resists (which between tough, and the AoE resistances from a cold and stormy, you'd have a good bit to S/L/E/F/C ) You would have 2 minutes of hard capped resistances and at least 1800-2000 HP with possibly much much more.

You also had a cold (Sleet/HL/Benumb) a stormy (Sleet) and a SOA (Venom grenade) a time manip (Healing/Regen and more -Res)

The only thing I can possibly think of is player fault, because given the tools you had (especially with the tray full of oranges, and even feeding them to the tank after 2 minutes were up?) thats about all it could be. You even had a brute that was somehow discounted, despite it was the AT that tanked the FP for years before Going Rogue.

Or it could just be a bad run. We all have them. I sometimes have days when I can't play for toffee.

Did you manage to kill any of the FP?

From the brute corner...I used to tank the FP on a dark armour brute, before IOs, and after then (before incarnates). Sure, the teams were usually Brute and 4-7 corrs, but quite a few times we had less support than your run did.

None of this pansy mind dom sleep runs either..herd them all to the boot and go to town.

Once we did an all VEAT rsf, with around..150? % def to all. And we STILL got hit. Doesnt matter how good your def is, 8 Heroes, WILL hit you. Using oranges does help, but a pure defence set like SR is going to get hurt.

Shame that you guys didn't manage it. Also brings up the huge imbalance between RSF and STF. I have said this so many times, but rsf is a heap harder. Even before incarnates, stf teams could pretty much work with anything, while rsf was limited to stone brute/corrs and mind dom runs. And lets not mention stf only ever has, at most, FOUR avs at once..compared to 4,5 and 8! Oh wait..how about the fact you can split them up on stf, yet rsf is almost impossible (have seen it down twice) to pull single heroes off. And what about the BS requirement of a finished patron arc, before you can even start an rsf in the first place? Anyway..rant done!

I actually found it the other way around.

RSF, I can speed run, takes us no time at all and the end fight is generally pretty easy. STF, on the last bit due to the towers, fliers etc.

Was just arguing about this with a friend. If you look at stf vs rsf, in a bubble..rsf IS harder. The fact people still fail stf (and my friend said shes failed more) is more due to people being idiots and having NO idea of the type of team make up a smooth STF actually NEEDS. That and stupid people wanting to take out towers in the wrong order.

And how can you even compare the final fights? 8 Heroes, which you cant split up, and buff each other...vs ONE av that you can 'tank' with a jetpack?? Such an epic fight that.

Whenever I've done it, we sailed through it. Never had an issue. Maybe I was just in an awesome team though.

Whenever I've done STF, it has always ended up with multiple deaths on the bits leading up to it, us wiping at least twice on the patrons, and then a really really long fight vs Recluse.

So, to me, RSF is easier. I have never seemed to have a problem with it, all the stuff leading up to the freedom phalanx fight is pretty easy and getting Numina, Psyche, Positron whatever never seemed to be a problem. But, like I said, maybe I got lucky and I've only ever done them in awesome teams of +1 with the perfect set ups and incarnate powers up the wazzu.

This is why I am really refraining from making an SR tanker. Like others have mentioned, your team make up had a lot of +defense, but not a lot of anything else, time has some healing though, having no resistance or healing of your own really leaves you hanging. I have run into situations on my Sr Scrapper, where it didn't matter how many greens I popped, even with Elude running, that 'always 5% to hit no matter what' was enough to take him out more than once. SR is flawed in my opinion, even though it does do what it does do well, I put its issues more down to game mechanics than the set itself.

In that situaion though, it was really just bad luck.

I prefer having a tray of greens instead of oranges honestly, on top of a tier 4 radial rebirth that is perma. Lev 53 SR/Ice tanker here - haven't tried something like this though.

Repeat Offenders ran the LRSF every week for as long as... I can't even remember for how long, with just VEATS, and sometimes brutes. Now VEATS are all Defense heavy. I always played my Widow and we had Widows as the majority of team make up.

That's it, no Defenders, no Corrs, no trollers.... This was before incarnates, before Going Rogue...

So how do we deal with Freedom Phalanx on all Def based team with very minimal Def debuff resists? How do we deal with the occassional lucky hits that did get through? Inspirations ! Large or medium inspirations, ORANGES, and using our advantages, a very offensive heavy team. We never failed once, some did take longer than other runs.

I am not trying to insult you at all! Ok, perhaps a teensy bit. lol. But still..saying that you take anyone and everyone for stf's (which I agree is a GOOD thing, to let everyone experience the content) and then find X bit of the tf 'hard' when you could have removed or lessened that with a better team..

The very fact you CAN do that with stf, when not long ago, an RSF would basically work with only two types of team builds. Not so much the case now though.

If anything, it comes down to maths. 4 avs with 8% chance to hit you. Or 8 heroes, with 8% chance to hit you. Doesnt matter what happens..the 8 will hit you more.