Noxilicious

Ahahahaha, first you demand to be able to run faster, then you outright refuse to use a power that makes you run faster.

It's not the game's fault that you refuse to use the tools it offers you.

What I wonder is, does the Double XP Weekend also double the drop-rate of Shards?

I soloed Trapdoor on all my 50s except my Scrapper, and that was only because she hit 50 while on a PuG and the team decided to help me out on the arc.

I can only imagine it's what signpost said. In my experience he summons bifurcations rarely enough that killing them quickly is no big deal, but I imagine if you don't he'll eventually have three or four or five and things get hairy then.

How does the game tell you the bifurcations boost his regen again? I think the flashing red text only mentions he summons one but not what it does. Maybe if they rewrite it to mention the regen boost people will have less trouble with the guy?

Well, the Mender Silos Task/Strike Force isn't a proper TF because you can start it all by yourself and the AVs will downgrade into EBs if you got a small team or are solo.

On the other hand, it's one of the few opportunities to fight most the Freedom Phalanx/Arachnos, so that alone makes me think favourable of that pseudo-TF.

The VEAT story had an interesting thing going where you start out as a mook but eventually you become so badass you kick destiny itself in the face and become a world-changing, important individual. It's just too bad this whole thing was so badly executed ít just never failed as big as it could have.

So I failed an Apex TF yesterday and I realised something I really appreciate about the new TFs.

They may be short, but their brevity made failure less of a big deal for me. I've failed STFs and LRSFs before, and it always made me rather furious. It feels like such a huge waste of time to go through an entire moderately-long TF only to fail at the end. Now while failing that Apex TF wasn't exactly a fun experience, all it takes to get back to Battle Maiden is one mission that only lasts about ten to thirty minutes. It feels like something I can try again without much hassle.

0.02$

Personally my highest amount shard gotten in a TF was 13 in a 'cuda SF, but that's mostly thanks to the ambush that never ends in the final mission.

Your best bet is to join some global channels. About every server has a global channel dedicated to forming TFs. Just check the server forums here for stickied threads that list global channels and I'm sure you'll find one that'll help you out.

I'm not a badger, so not getting the badge doesn't really bother me. It's getting blown to smithereens because he somehow managed to snuck a mine under my feet using his mad ninja skills that just rubs me the wrong way.

Well, there's no way to outlevel TFs per sé. You can always just talk to a TF contact and you'll be exemplared down to the level range of the TF.

If you were planning on soloing the TFs, with small mobs and EBs instead of AVs, I'm afraid you are out of luck, though.

I've done two Apex TFs by now and did a Tin Mage TF two days ago (I ended up leading that TMTF. You know how it is, you ask if that TF is happening, someone else starts saying OMG SOMEONE IS FORMING A TIN MAGE TF and the next thing you know is you are leading seven Incarnates into the heart of your enemy's capitol and wonder how you got there. Anyway, I digress).

Personally, I had quite some fun with them. They're challenging without feeling unfair, for the most part. I actually liked the Battle Maiden fight and found her Blue Death to be an interesting gimmick.

Now I heard some people say that these two new TFs gimp out MMs, and I imagine many of them had this fight in mind, and I have to disagree with them. Having fought Battle Maiden on a Mastermind, it's true that at first my henchies kept dying, but that's because I was still getting used to the gimmick. After an adjustment period it was as simple as telling my henchies to stand wherever there's no players and tell them which targets to attack while they're set to passive to make sure they won't wildly run around because someone aggroed them. In that sense it's one of the few situations that actually require you to control your henchies as opposed to letting them run hogwild.

The Tin Mage TF was also pretty fun and I cannot my team had any problems with the fight in the final mission. Fighting four level 54 AVs at once isn't really a new thing after you've done a couple of STFs or LRSFs, so I can't say I was too caught off-guard by that.

There's one part of the two TFs that I really didn't enjoy, though, and that's the Director 11 fight. Where Battle Maiden's gimmick was pretty interesting and kept you on your toes, I felt that Director 11 is just cheap. Now it's entirely possible that I just failed to understand his patterns, but his mines seemed to spawn in random locations at random intervals, and where the Blue Death was a bright blue mist that was impossible to miss, the mines just blend in with the floor and become even harder to see when the usual lightshow that is a team of 8 supers start. The only way to tell you're even close to a mine warning text on your screen and even then you'll just end up dodging into another mine. Where Battle Maiden's fight felt frantic and chaotic, Director 11's just felt like a confusing mess.

$0.02

Just to add my anecdotal evidence, I did an LGTF yesterday where we killed the pylons first and then moved on to the Mitos. Hami himself remained fairly docile and didn't aggro on us while we were dealing with his Mitos, so I'm not sure how true it is that the Pylons reduce his aggro range.

Now as far as I'm concerned, the Pylons do nothing and just exist as a plot justification for why a team of eight can take down a creature that normally takes 50 supers. However, if there's someone who believes that the Pylons somehow help, I have no problem just leaving them up. After all, nobody actually believes the Pylons make Hami stronger, right?

In the end, I'm just not really interested whether the rumor's true or not. If a player's more comfortable with the pylons up we just deal with them last, and if everybody thinks they don't do anything we kill them together with the Rikti. This is hardly an issue that deserves a rigid stance as far as I'm concerned.

So I've been thinking about how expensive the Rare Boost might gonna be, and I figure it might be either 60 shards (28 shards + Uncommon Boost) or 68 (36 + Uncommon Boost).

I'm making two assumptions here. One, that the Rare Boost will use three components like the Common and Uncommon Boosts, and two, that there won't be components rare than the uncommon components.

So I figured, if the Common Boost uses three common components and the Uncommon Boost uses two common and one uncommon components, the Rare Boost would either be two uncommon and one common components, or just three uncommon components.

'course, we all know what they say about assumption. In any case, if I had to bet on some shard costs for the Rare tier, those would be my guesses.

Bribery is such a Rogue thing to do. If you're a true villain what you do is kidnap an aspiring hero's loved ones, then proceed to tell the hero to walk right into that Paragonian Bank, distracting the PPD and local hero presence while you calmly go get your badge.

Then you kill his loved ones anyway because the hero didn't even blow up any cars while you were there, that spoilsport

One somewhat annoying thing about this game is that, being heavily instance-based, most teams will just be inside doing a mission instead of being in-zone in range for your broadcasts.

Global channels somewhat mitigate that problem, and I am pretty sure every server had a dedicated LFT channel, but even then I found that saying you're looking for a team won't have you fare that much better.

It's basically like Dechs said. If the mountain won't go to you, you have to go to the mountain. As a side effect of the stuff I mentioned, there's a lot of unteamed people just waiting for you to invite them. Taking the initiative yourself makes a world of difference when it comes to teaming.

I really hate to sound like a huge, condescending b-word, but tip missions are supposed to be hard? Short of the Malta ambush in that one Hero tip (which I heard got nerfed anyway) I didn't find any tips harder than the other content in the game.

Didn't we have this thread already last week?

The safest course of action might just be purchasing the Going Rogue Complete Edition from the NCSoft store.

So yesterday I led a Statesman Task Force for the first time. I've been on plenty of STFs before and one time I helped a STF-newbie throw a team together because he needed the component and gave advice throughout, so you could sy I led one by proxy, but this being the first time I properly led one, I was actually kinda nervous. After all, this is one of those TFs that have a reasonable chance of being failed.

So anyway, I tend to take a "take what I can get" approach when recruiting for teams, even TF teams. That one time I had a Kahn TF team consisting of a Fire/Storm Corr, an Ill/Rad 'troller and the rest was Scrappers and Blasters. It certainly made for a pretty intense Reichsman fight, but we finished the TF after only about ninety minutes and 38 deaths! But I digress. I mostly stuck to my "take what I can get" approach, but this time I took special care of filling two spots with a Tank and a debuffer, for those tricky fights at the end. Eventually I got an Invuln Tanker, a Rad/Rad Defender, an Emp Defender, a Plants/Emp 'troller, a Blaster, two Scrappers and lastly a Peacebringer. A pretty nice and even mix of ATs and powers, I thought.

I got pretty scared when half the team spent the fight against Sands face-down on the floor. I feared I made some grave mistakes at the team composition, that we'll hit a brickwall at the Patrons. My mood lifted again when we pretty much steam-rolled the AVs in the second and fourth missions. Doctor Aeon was similarly tricky like Sands, but I didn't feel as bad about that because, from what I hear, he's one of the biggest reasons Master runs fail.

So, the STF mostly went smoothly and we finally got to the final mission. Clearing out the passage into Grandville was pretty uneventful. There were some hiccups when pulling the Patrons, but we got Mako alone on the second try and eventually managed to isolate Black Scorpion on the Longbow ship after a time-wipe or two. Ghost Widow decided to join the fray just as Blacky fell, and eventually we managed to overcome her regen and heals. With that healing monster out of the way, I had no doubts about our victory anymore and beating Scirocco was just a formality now.

So after we dealt with the Patrons, as with most STFs, we went for the Flier next. That's when I realised something was missing. Waaaaiiiit a minute, there was no cutscene with Recluse and his towers! It turns out we missed Lord Recluse's most nefarious lieutenant, the dreadful and menacing White Dwarf! He was standing on the same platform as the giant statue, looking over the plaza the other four Patrons were gathered. After an arduous battle that lasted almost a century we bested this all-powerful foe and completed the STF uneventfully, after two hours and fourty-something minutes and 67 deaths.

TL;DR Kheldians make the best things happen.

During the third mission of the Statesman Task Force, you run into a Treespec team:

Dr. Eva Lone: "Curse that Demon! I think this is the right way."
Sardonic: "Uh-huh?"
Dr. Eva Lone: "This is my mission! What are you doing here?"
Sardonic: "N00b!"
Contemptress: "Every one of you is an idiot!"
Misadventure: "Hold on. Gotta kill some weirdos. I'll call you back."
Comrade: "The only thing I like better than American rock-and-roll is killing heroes!"
Bad Penny: "TAILS AGAIN! I CAN'T STAND IT ANYMORE!"
Pyrelord: "Did you know that I like fire?"
Dark Sabaoth: "From the heart of darkness, I stab at thee!"
Dr. Eva Lone: "Sure."
Sardonic: "Have you ever done this before?"
Dr. Eva Lone: "Really! Plenty of times!"
Sardonic: "Ha! Right!"
Dr. Eva Lone: "These ruins aren't easy to navigate!"
Sardonic: "Then how come you're lost?"
Dr. Eva Lone: "The maps are incomplete!"
Sardonic: "That's why I'm downloading a map from the internet right now."
Sardonic: "Just let me be the leader already."
Dr. Eva Lone: "Never!"
Dr. Eva Lone: "This is my mission and I formed this team!"
Sardonic: "I'm blogging how much you suck right now."
Dr. Eva Lone: "..."
Dr. Eva Lone: "If you're so good, how about you take point to draw agro when we get to the tree?"
Sardonic: "Uhhh..."