Dispari

Defense by your own definition is to "protect from enemy attacks," which is satisfied by making enemies less capable of attacking you.

By your arbitrary and vague definition that requires you don't interact with your opponent, building a wall to keep out attackers isn't a defensive maneuver because it actively slows down the enemy rather than affecting yourself.

Very bad analogy. We're not trying to claim that hot dog = donut or offense = defense. We're trying to explain that an offensive maneuver can = defense if the net result is that it "protects from enemy attacks." Which is YOUR definition. As Arc explained, there's an offensive and defensive benefit to frontloading your damage so that you can more quickly dispatch enemies.

You even said yourself, "I agree that deader enemies results in greater survivability than not-as-dead enemies," meaning you acknowledge that the net result means you survive better and mitigate damage better. Meaning you admit that you actively reduce incoming damage, but it's still not defensive. IE, you protect from enemy attacks, but it's not defensive (for no clear reason). The only person claiming defense is not defense is you.

Well maybe they'd been fighting so long that the "juice" was more like a long energy drink binge. They haven't slept in weeks, but are barely awake thanks to the drugs! vv

And here I thought Siren's Call was a PvP zone.

What makes it "wrong" though? Just because to you killing enemies faster doesn't "feel" like a defensive behavior? Are airplanes not safer because they don't "feel" safer? What are you basing it on that would suggest what other people say isn't true? You claim that Arc is just making up things out of thin air using vague wording and stretched truths. Based on what?

Enemies dying faster doesn't protect you from their attacks? Does an enemy that lasts 30 seconds, and an enemy that lasts 10 seconds, do the same amount of damage to you?

Is holding an enemy a defensive behavior? According to you, no. Either way, they aren't attacking you or doing any damage. Their damage output is 0 whether they're asleep, stunned, held, or dead. People say all the time that the best defense is a good offense. If your enemies are dead, they aren't going to hurt you much.

I'm confused. Having defense so enemies miss you "protects from enemy attacks" but reducing enemy accuracy so they miss you does not "protect from enemy attacks" ? The net result is identical. The enemy misses. +RES and -DMG do the same thing. They protect from enemy attacks.

I don't see that. What I see as Arc's definition of "defensive" is "protecting from enemy attacks." Making it so the enemies can't hit you at all, making it so the enemies hit you for almost no damage, or making it so the enemies are unable to attack through mez or death, is protecting you from their attacks.

Your definition, you claim, is "protecting from enemy attacks," but it's actually "protecting from enemy attacks, but only if you don't affect the enemies to do it." This isn't actually based on anything solid. It's arbitrary. You just "feel" that it's right.

It's offensive damage mitigation in the same way that you have passive and active damage mitigation. The "offensive" portion is only a means to an end. It doesn't matter whether it's an offensive maneuver. It's still damage mitigation. And it's still defensive. I can't even fathom how you'd be able to reduce incoming damage, but not have it be defensive in any way.

Unless you're just nitpicking semantics for the sake of nitpicking. Since you admit that it's damage mitigation, but not damage mitigation that would qualify as "defensive" to you... which would imply it mitigates damage in some way that somehow doesn't contribute to your survival. But that's not even true. Or possible.

Believe me, I'd love to see a PUG succeed using just debuff sets like Trick Arrow, Storm, and Dark. Those sets are all potent and powerful sets that can offer a lot of useful debuffs toward the fight. But to trivialize the incoming damage of 8 level 53 Heroes and act like any team you could possibly put together would still be easy is just ridiculous. You're going to need some sort of amazing gimmick to get past the tremendous buffs, debuffs, autohits, and varied damage types they offer. If you're REALLY suggesting that all it takes is 8 random people with random ATs and powersets as long as they're intelligent, you're some kind of batty.

The LRSF is hard. I don't know what to tell you. I've never failed it, but that doesn't mean it's not hard. I don't know what sorts of things you do that you could claim the hardest mission in the entire game is EASY, but if that were true the rest of the game would have to be some laughable joke. Maybe you regularly solo AVs and GMs or do RWZ challenges. Maybe you have some really awesome friends you always run it with. I don't know. But seeing as there's always some sort of thread going about how hard the LRSF is and how the merits don't match the risk, and how people fail it all the time, I don't think you with your "the LRSF is pitifully easy" attitude are in the majority.

The LRSF is quite doable with a comfortable level of speed and success if you know what you're doing. That doesn't equate to easy. You're basically an expert juggler telling regular people that juggling chainsaws is easy. Maybe you don't have problems with it, but that still doesn't mean it's easy.

Not true at all.

The post I quoted said you don't need a specific team makeup, then went on to list all the buffs and debuffs you need. There are a lot of situations that can get you into trouble in the final battle. All we know is that the OP had Brutes, Corrs, and MMs. And had a lot of DEF. There are a ton of combinations that could spell trouble for the final battle.

Also, I've done a ton of LRSFs. We always try to pull, but it usually doesn't work. You should always plan for the inevitability that you'll have to fight most, if not all 8 Heroes at once. Because on some runs, this will happen, and you can't do anything about it.

1) Lack of Psi Protection
Two of the final attackers have psi damage. And very few powersets actually grant protection to psi. Having along some widows helps here, since they grant psi RES. Dark Miasma also grants psi RES. Pain adds a little. Outside of that though you're pretty boned. Thermal and Sonic don't do anything for psi. As far as the Brutes go, EA, Fire, Invuln, Shield, SR, and Stone would all have trouble dealing with the psi damage. It's good to have along someone who's Dark, WP, or Elec.

Suggestions: Take widows, Dark Miasma, or Pain. Widows and Pain recommended most since they also bring lots of good buffs of other sorts. Also have along someone who's WP, since WP can handle a lot. Dark and Elec do in a pinch.

2) Lack of Mitigation
You're fighting several Heroes at once. Possibly as many as 8. BABs alone has three powers (or more) that can do over 1400 in one hit. There are also several AoEs. This means every squishy on the team is at risk of being one shotted. So, in theory, the OP's team has 6 people at risk of being killed instantly. You need +DEF, +RES, +regen, +HP, +heals, or whatever you can come up with. This also means that if the OP's team was mostly made up of things like Dark Miasma, Kinetics, Radiation Emission, Storm, Trick Arrow, and Poison, the whole team is at serious risk of getting killed.

Suggestions: Widows (again) and soldiers. Pain, Thermal, Sonic, and Cold. This is one of those situations where just throwing a bunch of kins at something isn't going to work. Sustained regen buffs like from Triage Beacon and Spirit Tree can also help.

3) Relying on Defense
Defense is a great mitigation tool, and easy to come by. It caps at the same point for everyone and it's not that hard to get 45% vs all. It can even help with the psi damage. Unfortunately, defense is random. And with 8 Heroes all attacking at once, doing AoEs, eventually people are going to get hit. If you happen to be one of the squishies, you can die immediately. Not to mention, Synapse has an autohit power (I believe Manticore does too), and DEF won't do anything to protect you from that. You want to have high DEF for the whole team, but at the same time you can't have just DEF. DEF is just one layer of stuff you need. You're still going to need RES, regen, heals, and other things to soften the blows that make it through the DEF.

Additionally, Brutes who are DEF-based will suffer more here because they end up with the same amount of mitigation as everyone else. Taking a Brute that doesn't rely on DEF as a main mitigation tool will grant you more survival due to the fact that a RES-based Brute who's also soft-capped is much better than an SR Brute who has 90% DEF vs all.

Suggestions: Widows (trendy!) and soldiers. FF not as much because it doesn't do much besides DEF, and DEF is easy to get otherwise. Cold and Traps offer good DEF boosts as well. Also having Maneuvers. For Brutes, if you have enough +DEF, try to avoid Shield, SR, and EA. Look for things that have high RES values or heals, like Invuln, Elec, Stone, Dark, Fire, and WP.

4) Lack of Long-Term Sustainability
For long fights against a bunch of Heroes (especially ones that have tier 9s), you're going to have to be able to stay alive and keep trucking. This means you don't just need high levels of mitigation, but also the ability to let that mitigation run for a long time. Even if you have 90% RES vs all, you're going to be taking a ton of damage, and are going to eventually need regen or heals to keep you up. Additionally, for such a long fight, endurance may run low and bottom out even for people who don't usually have endurance problems.

Suggestions: Kin is always a good way to keep endurance going. Rad, Cold, and Pain can help as well. For health, you're going to want heals like Kin, Dark, Pain, or Thermal. So the best ones to take so far given all the above mentions are Pain and Thermal.

5) Lack of ToHit/Accuracy
Here's something people may not realize. Manticore has Maneuvers, Numina has Fortitude, Sister Psyche has Force Shield, Positron has a DEF-based tier 9, Citadel has a DEF-based tier 9. If you aren't careful, not only will you be unable to hit some of these guys, but you'll be unable to use targeted buffs/debuffs like the heals in Dark and Kin. The best way to go about this is to pack some ToHit buffs. These come in a wide variety and can be made trivialized depending on what you take.

Suggestions: Widows (!!) and soldiers. Thermal, Pain (to a lesser extent), and Tactics. Powers like BU, Aim, and Rage will also do wonders. -DEF will help too, assuming it can hit to begin with (QS, RI, stuff like that gets points here), but Heroes resist debuffs, and +ToHit is far easier to build than enormous amounts of -DEF.

6) Lack of Rezzes
Here's one that didn't even dawn on me until a recent run. Lack of rezzes. Remember how I said that squishies were prone to being killed in like one hit, how the fight is really long, and how DEF is random? Well it turns out if your team isn't packing some good rezzes, this can lead to your eventual death. Last LRSF I did, we had zero rezzers. And we only had a small handful of awakes. When someone died, they stayed dead. This caused a problem until we worked around it using inspirations. A team where everyone only gets once shot at it is a dangerous team.

Suggestions: Thermal, Pain (these two are getting pretty common), Dark, Rad, and Poison. Dark even has the added bonus of being an AoE rez. Brutes that can rez themselves can also be pretty useful here. However, don't forget to stay down for at least long enough for Vengeance to go off, if applicable. If nothing else, make sure everyone on the team packs 2-4 awakes and some break frees so they can quickly back out and recover and rejoin the fight.

7) Lack of Offensive Buffs/Offensive Debuffs
There are a lot of Heroes. Two have RES-based tier 9s, two have DEF-based tier 9s, they have buffs to go around, and have the normal Hero resistance as well as innate resistances which varies from one to the next. You also fight a lot of them at once. And depending on how your 1-6 are balanced in terms of mitigation, rez frequency/speed, lasting power, and everything else, you're on a timer to kill these guys as fast as possible. You're going to want +DMG, +ToHit, +recharge, as well as -RES, -DEF, and -regen.

Suggestions: Widows (luls) and soldiers. Thermal and Pain (luls!). Kin is an obvious one for +DMG and +recharge. Tons of sets can debuff, so I won't go too far into that. But Rad is a good one.

8) Not Having Inspirations
Inspirations aren't cheating. So take a bunch. If you know that you didn't cover all your bases from 1-7, fill up on inspirations you need. Grab awakes, or purples, or even reds, yellows, or oranges. If you're lacking psi RES, get some oranges. If you're lacking ToHit buffs, get yellows. You can stock up beforehand, or just buy them in Ouroboros or at your local AE station. Also remember you can just combine other inspirations to get the ones you want, so even though AE buildings don't sell awakes, you can make them.

Suggestions: Use inspirations.

9) Not Having Temps/Accolades
This is so far down on the list because it's more a last resort type deal, like inspirations. you can do the mission without 8-10. Heck you can do it without most of the list if you choose wisely. But having temps can really help. If you have temp powers that grant RES, or ToHit, think about using those. Shivans, HVAS, Snow Beast, and any other pet you have can provide damage output, debuffs, or even a momentary distraction. Nukes, the psi buff from whatever SF it's from (totally blanking here), or things like Demonic can help a ton.

Suggestions: Don't just get to 50 using newspapers. Side-track and get some useful temps. Earn things like Demonic and +HP accolades early on before attempting this. Always have a Shivan on hand in case stuff like this comes up.

10) Teamwork! Not Giving Up!
Even with the best team, brute force may not do it. So take a step back and try to make it as easy on you as possible. After 1-9 are said and done, make sure to apply them. Try to pull. Find a good corner to group enemies around. Try to divide the enemies and off-tank some of them so not all the AoEs are landing on one spot. Agree on the kill order ahead of time and focus fire. Discuss tactics and get everyone involved before you leap in. And even if you team wipe, as long as you can recover and take down some Heroes on the way, you'll eventually work through them.

The last LRSF I did, we wiped three times. First wipe we killed nobody. Second wipe we almost killed one person, but got killed at the last second with a sliver of HP left. Second wipe we only killed Numina. Fourth run, we killed everyone. We sidetracked to pick up awakes, off-tanked a group with one Brute (me) holding attention of several Heroes while the others were widdled down. I allowed the other Brute to alpha the psi people while I ran Unstoppable and kept Citadel, BABs, States, and Synapse busy. When Unstoppable was crashing, I pulled back and hit Demonic and inspirations.

Suggestions: Never give up! I must succeed!

So in summary, take Widows, Pain, Thermal, a RES-based Brute, and people who can rez. Get everyone soft-capped somehow too. And maybe a Dark. Once you have those things, it should flow a lot more smoothly.

Also in summary, over half the support sets offer things that won't do much, if anything for the final battle. And if the OP's team had just the wrong mix of those things, the final battle could've indeed annihilated him no matter how good his team was. Inspirations can help shore up some of your defenses and keep the team alive. So can great teamwork and persistence.

To claim that just throwing whoever together on a team as long as they're intelligent should succeed is just insulting. There are a ton of factors, and a ton of powersets that would make the final fight really difficult. If anything, you have to pick and choose rather specific bonuses if you want to have any degree of ease. You don't need ALL of those things, but you need quite a few of those things. You can't just throw a bunch of Poison, Trick Arrow, and Storm Corruptors at the LRSF and expect a cakewalk just because the players are intelligent. You're going to have to get a solid team going first that can handle an extremely large amount of incoming damage, some of which is psi, some of which is autohit, and most of which can one-shot all but a couple of the characters you brought.

So no, "team of 2 brutes, 4 corrs, 2 MMs regardless of powersets or any other factors, as long as they're intelligent" does not automatically equal ease.

I'm glad I'm mostly a redside player. I shudder at the thought of having to lick Recluse!

My main IOed out Brute has Hover/Fly even though she can't use Hover in combat due to being Elec.

This is a really good one and deserves heavy mention. I see a lot of people in PUGs who don't use inspirations at all, and just let their bar fill up uselessly.

Inspirations drop constantly, and none of them are hard to obtain, so don't feel bad about using them. In fact, don't even feel bad about "burning" some (using them or deleting them) to make way for better ones.

I always keep a column of blues and a column of greens. I also try to keep a column of purples around, because even though you'd think grabbing greens would be the best idea for hard stuff, purples offer much more safety and mitigation. Protip: 4 purples will give you the maximum possible evasion no matter what toon or sets you're playing. So if you're up against a hard boss or EB, using 4 purples will give you a huge advantage.

Learn to use inspirations, since even just burning random ones as you go can speed up kills, and having a pocket of them will let you get through difficult content.

Maybe you aren't looking hard enough.

This one says the LRSF isn't hard, and all you need is 8 competent players. Amusingly, this also suggests that you don't need temps of any sort, or a specific team makeup. All you need is a specific team makeup with all the right buffs and debuffs, and aggro control.

And these two just plain insult the OP and his friends for being the worst players in the world, or braindead.

This too:



Not me. The devs prefer to make things broad and open to interpretation over making them overly specific. Overly specific things only please a small group. If the set was just Circle stuff, it'd only please people who like Circle, or handwave it and pretend it's not Circle. A broad and general demon set is more open for people to do with as they please.

Also the same reason we'll probably never get Arachnos or Carnies for MMs. Also why Mercs and Bots are new, and not Knives or Council robots.

Personally, certain forced powers like Gale, Electric Fence, Entangling Arrow, and Force Bolt usually wander off my bar and never come back by the time I'm in double-digit levels.

In fact, some of those forced powers cause me to not play those sets on certain ATs. I'd love to build a Shield/SS Tank, but Jab is in the way. On my SS Brute, I skipped Jab, and use Boxing (since I'm going to have Tough/Weave either way) instead. On a Tanker, I have to have both. One's just a wasted slot.

The powers you get at 1 should be powers you use a lot and rely on or are important. I can think of about a dozen that I'd skip entirely if I had the choice. All Blaster secondaries seem to force you into a power that sucks on purpose. Possibly cause Blasters are just so cool that they have to be toned down with crappy powers.

I don't think I should be able to take Hover instead of Jab. But I should be able to take Punch instead of Jab at least.

If the recharge on the 100% is 45s or less, the 100%.

I dunno, I've never been killed by a dead guy. They have low damage output. I try to use the "dead" mez on as many guys as possible.

You can't set a new mission if someone's still in the old one.

I had to boot someone last night cause they were AFK.

Oh, I know. There's no automatic process making secondaries weaker. In fact I know there are a lot of exceptions that can sometimes cause people to complain. Trick Arrow being pretty spiffy on Controllers due to their mez numbers being one example. Shield Charge doing just as much damage as Lightning Rod in a primary being another one.

But I recall Castle saying things about Dominators being now designed so that they essentially have "two primaries," in the sense that the strength of both their primary and their secondary are high enough that they could warrant being the primary (and therefore, the intended role/goal/purpose) of any given AT. Doms have the highest base damage on redside, which is unusual for someone who has attacks in their secondary. Normally having attacks in your secondary would mean your attacks do pretty low damage (Tankers, Defenders) because your AT does other things, and considers damage less important.

But from what Castle said about wanting to take away the up and down feeling of Doms, beefing up their damage to that level was the best way to go about it. After all, high-end players were already playing that way, having a Dom that could mez as well as do great damage.

Another way to take it would be that Castle may have been worried that the okay guys would think Doms too powerful if their numbers were so high in damage AND in mez at the same time. But it seems to have been something that worked out.

Or a GM.

So you're saying TA can keep teams going, but only if the teams don't need support to begin with?

Just imagine the angst if three people who didn't meet the requirements are let in, but nobody else is.