Choke Points vs. Doors

Last night during a BAF trial run, The discussion between using Doors or Choke points got pretty heated. I for one prefer choke points when I run this trial. I'm not saying it's the best approach; I'm saying it's always worked best for me.

Here is my reason: If choke points are "Grouped Up" all the AOE, PbAOE damage is focused on one area as well as holds, slows etc. So instead of two Controllers on two different doors you simply combine their effectiveness at one single location while the melee toons simply picked off the gimped up NPC's. To me this is a more logical approach. What do you think?

I have always preferred Choke Points. I know there are toons build to solo doors which is fine but most of the time things leak through and if someone is not manning the choke points you get escapes.

However I always do what the league leader asks to the best of my abilities. When I form the league I get to do it how I want otherwise I listen to the leader.

I think choke points work overall the best. BUT, for it to work right, everyone HAS to stick together in the group (unless chasing down a straggler). Other wise it becomes scattered and there is no longer a concentration of fire power in one area...and thats when some of the escapees get through.

I've always thought it was little funny that BAF "choke points" ended up being called choke points, because the BAF doors are pretty much the definition of a choke point. All enemies must pass through a door, and they even spend several seconds standing at the door before they start running, giving you a chance to AoE them down. I get why we call them choke points, it's just funny to me.

As to the question of which is better, I speak almost exclusively from a melee perspective when I say that I prefer doors. As melee, I can't fight at choke points because the enemies run past! I can pick my nose between taking pot shots at passing foes and hope someone else further down the chain deals with all the ones I didn't finish, or I can spend most of my time chasing things. But at a door, I can operate at pretty much full effectiveness. I don't think it's best to put the whole league on doors, unless you happen to have a dozen SS/Fire brutes or something, but letting the ones who are good at it handle doors, and everyone else deal with the ones that get past has been most effective IMX.

That said, following the leader's instructions is usually more important than maximizing my personal DPS in that phase. Even if I know for certain that I am more effective at a door, ignoring instructions to camp a door also means other players see me ignoring instructions and might follow suit, at which point things can really fall apart.

There are circumstances where doors are the slightly better choice, and there are circumstances where choke points are the slightly better choice.

Nine times out of ten, however, using choke points or doors at the wrong time isn't what fails a BAF. BAF's only fail at this stage when the league argues about whether to use choke points or doors to the extent that everyone is doing their own thing.

Roping the prisoners in isn't hard. You just have to listen to your leader and do what you're told - even if you think you know better.

For the most part choke points are the better strategy but I have seen a combination of both work very well. Let's face it choke points are great for ranged ATs that can sit back and just blast away at anything within range. Melee characters find themselves running back and forth chasing down 1 or 2 escapees for five solid minutes. That can get old after a while.. As long as the choke points are manned to handle anything that slips through I see no problem, and have seen it work very well, for melee toons to man the doors. With their pets out to assist them they cut down on the runners dramatically and make it even easier for those at the choke points.

I think the most important part for everyone to realize is that BOTH work.

I have a plant/rad troller that regularly handles the top north door and the top south door at the same time. When I say handle I mean no runner even commandos escape.

Regardless, doors or chokes the league needs to work together to be a success.

One last thing I would mention is once my toons made +3 pretty much any of them(melee included) can hold a door no problem due to the AOE goodness that is the Polar Lights.

Chokes can work... But ONLY if everyone is paying attention and you have a few people who can break ranks and quickly take out any strays that get past the two main groups.

The fact of the matter is that there are almost always going to be prisoners that make it through the AoE storm, even on a heavily-shifted league with multiple Masterminds. To-hit rolls are what they are, and a few goons are simply going to get lucky. That's just the nature of the beast... But those still have to be taken out. With the whole league bunched up, you can't just let them run by under the assumption that somebody, somehow is going to handle them farther down the path.

That's one of the frustrations I have personally with the choke-point method. Either people *don't* pay attention to the strays and so don't notice them getting through, or they do notice and don't go after them... Assuming, I guess, that someone else will do it or that they'll get in some kind of trouble if they leave their little assigned area.

The former is just human nature. I don't think there's much we can do about that. The latter, though, might be an easier fix... If, instead of just reminding everyone to pack in close and stay in their places, league leaders were to specificly remind heavy damage types to keep an eye out for strays and to give them the specific go-ahead to chase them down if they have to (Even if that means leaving the pack to do so-), it could help.

As it is, I know that some of us will take "chaser" duty anyway if we have to, but that's not always the most efficient use of available ATs. Those of us willing to defy the mantra of "Stay together!" to chase aren't always going to be on characters well suited for that task... That BAF I took Chanter on the other day is a perfect example. I'm a chaser, but a completely unshifted Dark corruptor was far from the best choice for taking out strays. I did it anyway, because I was apparently the only player on my team willing to go after the prisoners that were getting past the group, but there's no way I could kill them fast enough. We'd already lost four or five to my low damage output by the time anyone else decided to help.

'Not exactly an ideal situation, especially when a quick "Hey, damage people... Mangle any strays that manage to avoid the group beat-down" suggestion from the leader could have brought some attention to the issue before it became a problem. Yes, I do realize that going on and on in league chat about people staying together is necessary, but when it comes to taking out strays, I think making an exception is reasonable, and it ought to be mentioned.

I have mixed feelings. Ideally, I always preferred controllers and burners (etc) at doors, trapping and dealing with the minions so that ATs with heavier single-target damage could catch and defeat the lieutenants.

Practically, I lean more and more towards chokes (yeah, it's an odd term) simply because it focuses much more attention on the sidewalks where the lieutenants will be. When you're sitting at a door, you may not even see lieutenants running past, depending on your camera position. Even if you do see them, should you abandon your door and chase them? Someone else will catch and finish off that lieutenant, right? Well, no. Not always.

Doors work well when some number of persons playing shifted characters with good damage either choose to take responsibility, or are assigned responsibility, for dealing with lieutenants. Chokes work because that approach asserts that the lieuts, just like the minions, are everyone's responsibility to defeat. The latter isn't perfect; sometimes a lieut slips through and either no one sees it, or the only person who sees it isn't shifted enough to stop it, but that's no worse than the situation with doors. A lack of shifted characters is equally problematic for either approach to prisoners.

When I ran a lot of BAFs, I used to call doors. A lot of time passed before I ever saw a perfect 0/20 from chokes, so I was unconvinced for quite a while. At this point, I would probably call chokes. It has the bonus of simplicity (team 1 north, teams 2/3 south), and it has some inherent advantages where lieutenant prisoners are concerned.

Doors work, choke points work. Personally. I prefer the choke points. I'd say the reason 1-19 prisoners are escaping per trial(choke points) is because the 2 teams on the south side are acting like Ninjas instead of Spartans. Ninjas are for suckers. Ya know what I'm saying.

Hey now... Dis not the ninja.

Han's guys have done terrible, terrible things to those escaping prisoners.

But, yeah. All kidding aside, it really does come down to everyone covering each other and playing attention to getting the job done.

I have a couple toons that are born door-sitters.
I most of the rest are better off in the gauntlet of the choke points or running down strays.

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Did a BAF last night that went flawlessly. Not a single prisoner escaped. Matter of fact i don't think a single prisoner got through the choke point assault teams.

Reason it worked imo is this. We had several +3 shifted toons on all teams. Not everybody was, but it sure helped, no doubt there. We also had at least one controller on each choke point, and a mastermind at each choke point. But i believe firmly, that if we didn't have so many controllers and MM's it still would have worked out well, because we all stuck together. On the BAF's i've been on that the prisoner escape failed, and we were using the choke point method, its because some people seem to get overwhelmed, scatter and spread out. Once you spread the team out, the amount of dmg dealt is highly reduced. And also, if some do get through nobody will ever call it out so the hole will get plugged up. Whether because of pride, or of fear that they will be blamed. It's better to put your pride to the side and have a successful BAF then hang on to it and miss out on some extra rewards.

I believe doors work also, but is there one more efficient? I'd have to name it choke points for team efficiency. But have seen successes using both ways.

Lol so overall, it comes down to the league...and more so, the players behind the toons.

As I was the one who most likely kicked this topic off, allow me to clarify my comment of "Playing chokes is playing to fail." I did not mean the trial, I meant the Not On My Watch Badge. I've never been on a BAF that lost the trial at the prisoner phase, although I know it has happeed. And, since I made this comment, I've now seen the prisoner go perfect with choke-points 3 times.

2 of those were under you, Cinder. So, hat's off to you, sir.

Rather than explain my former - yes, I've ditched that point of view on chokes - opinion of choke-points, I'd just like to say that I agree with everyone here, that both strategies are equally viable, and one only moreso than the other depending on league make-up.

What I will say, is that I wish I'd not been so frustrated as to vent my opinion of the strategy currently in use, as I make it a habit not to question my leaders TOO much. And, by the way, props to Cinder for being a gentleman and not rubbing my nose in the fact that he was right after all the fuss - cheers, mate.

The other dark meat,
Raven

This topic has been really interesting to read. I've often wondered whether "choke points" or "doors" were a better strategy for the prisoner phase, and I've tried both methods on BAFs that I've led, with varying success.

Reading this topic makes me lean towards the "doors" strategy. Here's why.

The "choke points" strategy, if executed correctly, should be better at leveraging the league's debuffs, buffs and DPS by concentrating people close together. But, as several people mentioned above, if people get spread out or fail to chase runners, the choke points strategy fails.

The "doors" strategy has the advantage that each person has a pretty clearly defined goal (i.e.: stop stuff that comes from your door) and so it's harder for them to screw up, and if they fall behind they can call for help.

Since I form BAFs by inviting the first 16 people who express interest, I lean towards the strategy that is harder to screw up, over the strategy that is numerically superior if you do it right.

i usually do a combination of choke point and door since i run as my demon trap mm most of the time on BAFs when i feel like doing them

i usually camp out the middle door (if im assigned to the bottom) i usually place traps on the path for strays and let my pets deal with the foes at the door

It's "funny" to me that when BAF was first introduced I was reading up from EU_Damz (I think it was hist post) that mentioned doing choke points and when I'd get in on a BAF with my main, I was like, "choke points?!" but then I'd hear, "no, that doesn't work...doors!"

I remember leading a BAF and doing choke points and even linking the map/image of the where the chokepoints were to the league and we still failed (failed totally that is...20 prisoners escaped) and people were "boo'ing" me (nothing has changed, no? I keed)


So I was a fan of doing it the "doors" way with maybe 1-2 strong single target dmg dealers in the pathways for any help necessary....but now it seems like everyone is doing choke points... hehe...granted having most people +1, 2 or 3 is a lot easier now instead of back then when everyone was lvl 50.

See...funny.

>_>

Doors

With the level shifts many toons can hold a door solo or duo. Mainly though I find it easier to unleash hell at the door because the prisoners tend to "hold" there for a second. Often too, they are killed before exiting the door.

Consider all of the AOE toons most controllers, dominators, masterminds, many tanks and scrappers (fire, shield, etc).... it's much easier to drop a burn patch or shield charge at a door where you have a stationary target, then in the middle of the sidewalk on moving targets. Seriously.

Especially taking into account the lag some experience, and the plain old mess of 16 toons at one point (and 8 at the other assuming a team of 24) with infinite buffs, debuffs, and attacks. I often hear people complaining that they cant even see what they are trying to hit at choke points. A huge waste of resources.

When I used to lead BAF's I would ask AOE's on doors everyone else on sidewalks. They generally went fine unless an arguement interrupted about how choke points were better......

Now I just join others trials and shut up and follow the "choke pointers".


As always the bottom line is - do what the leader says or form your own damn trial.

One other concern regarding doors, that I haven't seen noted: confusion. I have some damage ATs that love to camp doors, and others that prefer the sidewalks. The main difference between them is whether they carry confusion protection. Historically, my characters who don't happen to have confusion protection (of their own, or a friendly clarion, etc.) have far more trouble with that effect at doors (as a large, fresh group of prisoners spawns) than on sidewalks/chokes.