Envoy_NA

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On the other hand, a completely different STF team I was with last night had a heck of a time with LR himself, even with the three non-blue towers down. That team didn't have a huge amount of damage or debuff, so when LR would get low on health and start spawning his big purple attendants, things would get out of control pretty quickly. Even with Vengeance, it was extremely difficult to finish him off, or to keep him occupied (and regenerating) while trying to deal with those big spawns.

It was hard not to wonder if the blue tower wasn't somehow involved. I hadn't seen him spawn that many purple attendants on any previous STF.

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I was on a team that had this exact experience. A bit low on dmg output and whenever we got Recluse low on health he spawned tons of guys. To me it seemed like he did 2 separate spawns only a second or so apart rather than one really big one.

My point, however, is that we had all towers down, so the spawning is tower independant.

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The same Phantoms kept GW busy while the rest of us dealt with the rest of the AVs in his group.

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I tried to distract GW with PA and it worked well for the duration but when they dropped she killed my phantasm and then came after me with a vengence.

Speaking of GW and phantoms, she can't use her heal on them can she? I assume no but since we had a bit of trouble with her last time I didn't want to risk anything when we finally managed to start hurting her.

Did my second run this weekend and it was a lot harder. No real surprise since the previous one was smooth sailing all the way.

Team had 2 defenders both emp, 2 controllers, tank, scrapper, 2 blasters.

We managed to single pull Mako. It might be worth noting that our tank did the pulling.
Oddly enough we had the least problem with ol Mako. We hit him for a while he popped elude we hit him some more and that was that.
For those keeping score we had 3 tactics, one each of defender, controller and blaster versions.
I think at least two of our dmg dealers had focused accuracy and we had fort from the two emps.
I myself was hitting him pretty good, two acc slotted and I used a small acc insp.

At this point I was feeling somewhat optimistic. Especially since we proceeded to single pull BS. We had a slow going with him, though, and that was a trend all through the TF, our dmg output seemed somewhat lacking.
The bad news came when GW and scirocco showed up suddenly. They were a complete nuisance, one/two-shotting the squishies and GW holding anyone she wanted.

At some point when pretty much everyone was running back from hospital or fleeing, GW and Scirocco apparently felt they had proven their point and went "home" ditching BS. No honor among arch villains and all.

We could then dispatch BS. Single pull Scirocco and take our revenge on him.

Then came GW and this initially looked like the end for us. We could hardly make her health bar budge and she kept holding our tank through anything.
Finally we managed to start moving her bar, and evetually kill her, with the tank taunting from range, the scrapper attacking from the rear and everyone, including two pets staying at range.

Now I really thought the worst was done, since last time we did well with a tank and one emp on Recluse duty and the rest on tower patrol. This time we had two emps.
As it turned out the recluse team was fine and ... the tower patrol was also fine.
We had a storm keep repairmen off the tower, however, with a strategy that involves initially keeping them away from the tower it's important to have someone make sure they get dead.
I noticed the repairmen flying off the tower and took in upon myself to make sure they didn't get the idea to seek out another tower. I had good help from Jack and Phantasm who seemed to really enjoy picking on the gray con for some reason.

So with the towers down it's just mopping up Recluse left. Wrong!
We got him to about 20% when he spawed his posse but have they changed something or was it always this many?
It must have been at least 20, probably more, bosses.
Somehow we managed to clear them with only a few deaths. But we hardly got started on Recluse when it happed again and to make matters worse Recluse decided to move just far enough for the flier to notice us. Wipe.

We regrouped, and cleared our way to Recluse for a rematch. Once again he spawned a godawful amount of bosses but this time we ignored them, kept hitting Recluse and managed to bring him down before we fell apart.

Took a bit over 4 hours I think but felt longer.
A little bit harder and we would have failed I think. But it shows that depending on team it's not just Mako and GW that can be problem points. For us it was GW and Recluse (after towers).

I ran it for the first time this weekend and was aprehensive due to having read this thead. As it turned out we breezed through it, including the final mission.

We had:
ill/rad controller (me).
fire/rad controller.
emp defender.
dark defender
kin defender.
Invuln tank.
1 claws scrapper.
1 ??? blaster.

So only 2 dmg dealers and lots of support + tank.
We had at least two tactics plus piles of buffs and debuffs.
No vengence but admittedly 4 shivans when we fought
the final AVs. However, we failed misserably to pull
and ended up with all of them.

Everyone was expecting to start over but after they followed us all the way back to the ship we started fighting them and it was surprisingly ok, no deaths on our side.
The shivans came out after a while and I wonder if we could have taken the AVs without them. We didn't seem to have any problems staying alive at least.

With no taunt on the tank we saved GW for last and I guess the shivans must have pounded her cause she was almost dead. I think we got lucky with her as she stayed at range while we fought the others and thus didn't get to heal.
I did notice my phantasm sending his decoy to fight her, not sure if she can heal off of that.

Recluse went smoothly as well. The tank pulled him away with support from the emp while the rest of us took the towers at a steady pace. Area dmg killed the repairmen as soon as they spawned, before I could even try to hold them.

Never done the villain respec so didn't know how bad it was and I still don't. We cleared the CoT with the squishies keeping low. Then spread out and cleared out the vines pretty quickly and finally the AV.

It did help that we had some experienced ppl leading, especially since I believe, at least 3 of us hadn't done the STF before.

Now I'm afraid to try it again cause it will probably never work this well again.