Turbo_Ski

Awesome piece. I love the little Mels

Also here is the biggest clear sign that this is the way it was intended.

Nictus Essences don't give XP or any kind of reward upon defeat

Romulus will give rewards everytime you kill him.

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Are you saying that if your tank pulls Romulus to the top of either the left or the right tower the Nicti cannot follow and if you break line of sight between the Nicti and Romi he will not rez? I have tried this TF twice and ech time we could not separate Rom and the Nicti in any significant way. I would like to know. I would also like to know has anyone tried detention field or the sonic equivalent on either the nictus or Romi? I made an alt specifically to use those powers for this fight and want to know if it is worth leveling the toon.

Master Gabriel

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no, the nictus will follow but the Cimeroran ambush that Romulus spawns will not and the sharp corners of the building allows the team to break line of sight with the nictus but still be in line of sight of Romulus. The nictus will still be in Romulus's line of sight but not with the players' line of sight.

Once again, if you're trying to take down any of the Nictus Essences then you are doing it wrong. Fastest and safest way to complete this encounter is to focus entirely on killing Romulus 4 times after pulling him to the top of the left/right tower.

Here is how it all works:

One essence spams a clone of Sunless Mire that buffs Romulus's dmg and tohit based on the number of players hit.

One essence spawns unbound nictus pets like a normal Shadow Cyst Crystal does

One essence spams unique version of Twilight Grasp that has about 70 ft PbAoE range to hit players and about 10 to 15 ft heal radius. It heals itself and allies once and then heals itself a second time for the same value as before. This is a variable heal that heals allies for 278 per player hit with the debuff portion and heals itself for exactly double that amount. The debuff will -11% dmg players for each instance and stacks up to two times. Recharge on this ability is 5 seconds.

Each essence resists all debuffs and controls HEAVILY almost to the point of being immune. Their damage resistance is also much higher than Romulus's. They have the same HP count as Romulus.

Romulus has normal AV resistance and has almost no protection to control effects outside of Purple Triangles. When Romulus dies he will attempt to kill one of his Nictus Essence companions if they are in range. If he hits one the Nictus will die and automatically cast Howling Twilight on the team for a high mag stun and rez Romulus if he is in range.

Separating the Nictus from Romulus is not a good idea since this will hamper his rezzing. However it is a good idea to set Romulus next to a corner of the geometry so that the team can break Line of Sight with the healing nictus and still damage Romulus. Pulling Romulus to the top of the left tower (right in front of the door on the roof) will allow the team to easily do this.

Killing any of the Nictus Essences is not worth the team's time and effort at all when Romulus goes down literally 10 times faster.

some of the Elite Boss versions of the generals toss out [diseased] debuff

Zikar, you never left...

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Balance: The +Defense shields in Cold Domination aren’t affected by buffs, namely Power Build Up, while the Forcefield shields are. At the sametime, this means Cold’s shields aren’t affected by debuffs like Weaken, while Forcefields would be. Is this difference intentional?


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I know a easy way to fix this...
<starts chopping off the Power Boost effect on Power Buildup with an Ice Axe>
<carefully cuts away some excess recharge>
<bandages up the wound and puts in an IV of +DMG>

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# Balance: Archery seems underpowered in groups due to lack of inherent enemy debuff.

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Ranged criticals would be how I would do it conceptually but that would be a bit too much probably. Maybe a Toxic DoT with the concept being poison tipped or maybe just a damage increase because it's lethal damage?

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I'm deflecting everything to say that I want to thank Servo for a wonderfully awesome piece that she did. I was out of town for a few days and completely missed the pic as it went up, as well as the post that got buried here in the landslide of BAWWdramah.

A friend of mine managed to grab it before it was taken down, so I could see it. It was extremely nice and I thank you for sharing it. :3

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unfortunately I missed that...

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You can also just kill the crystals and run away. The ambushers stop where the team was standing when the crystal died. If you aren't standing there they won't come looking for you.

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not always true. We've had them spawn on far off AFK teammates instead and directly on top of us as well.

She puns all

Not exploitable

Darrin Wade's final mission "Infiltrate Midnight Club"

Already fixed on Test Server

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If they were going to make epics so generic why not give us a cooler class of villains like freakshow, think of all the costume options for them, or even rikti since they were in the last issue so much. Heck i'd rather play as a rikti monkey. Im not one to usually complain but my 50 vill has been waiting for epics since issue 7, and I hate Lord Rec-looser and ive always hated the fact that i feel like im working for him...*sigh*

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Arachnos > all other enemy groups in coolness

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OK I just tried the "Kill Rom 4 times" method but there was a problem. We killed him once and he fell back into a wall when he died so was unable to rez.

We ended up killing the Nictus anyway and completed the TF so I now have my armor for Lord Vestereo. For a while there my main characters lost their matching costumes.

(Got a Blue and White costume on my hero while my villain wears Black and Red versions of the same costumes. Not completly the same but verry simular. I even put the spiked roman crest on my villain while my hero has no crest.)

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Yes the line of sight thing is critical to the kill Rom 4 times strategy. I tend to pull the Healer so that its about 10 ft from Rom and tell the team to not pull Rom away and to not let him run as that will break the pull I have on the healer. The healer is still hitting my toon and likely some of the team but it's heals aren't hitting Romulus

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see we just ignore the healer entirely. As long as the majority of your team stays out of sight of the healer nictus and keeps all the nictus relatively close to romulus, you should be fine. This is why I highly recommend pulling him to the top of the left tower since it has sharp corners that makes this strategy easy.

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you'll get it in the end

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Which end?

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I didn't mean that at you specifically, just that these are still as good as the first

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I think Zenny was referring to Red Kite's superheated body and Turbo-Ski's heat absorption talents.

people still kill Lusca?

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The first time I did the TF we tried to go straight for Rom, couldn't even DMG him and we all died. How's that method supose to work if he can't be DMGed?

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preferable with 2 people w/taunt. you want to separate the healing nictus and the other nictus's away from rom. rom is a squishy compared to the nictus

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Ah, now I get it. Most of the teams I been on who try to seperate them end up attacking the Nictus first not Rom. I'll have to try that next time I do the TF or at least sugest the idea and hope the team will try it. Some people don't wanna go for the whole "Kill him multiple times" thing but that does sound easier and more rewarding than Killing Nictus.

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Don't forget that you don't necessarily need two taunters. Immobilize rom and taunt the nictus away from him works too.

And if you are patient, ganking the heal nictus from 80 feet may be more time effective for your group.

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you can also keep Nictus -jumped with Entangling Arrow and/or Web Grenade. I still find the pull to the top left tower to work out the best without any of this separating nonsense.

I kind of wish we had access to the snake models...I would so love to see a Mamba in a scarf...

Thank you alex for the Kite on Ski action!

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The Healer Essence targets anyone within 80 ft. and has a targeted heal off of them. So, send one Scrapper into to attack the Essence. If the Scrapper can't do more damage then what is healed off of the Scrapper, then that Scrapper isn't helping to defeat the Essence, but hurting that effort. Similarly for any other melee type that can't outdamage the heal. They need to back off and stay out of range.

Anyone with a ranged attack that is longer than 80 ft can stay outside the range of the heal and slowly whittle away the hp of the Essence. Most ranged attacks are exactly 80 ft., so, unless there is slotting for range, not many ranged attacks will work here.


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My team tonight/this morning tried both methods to kill the healing nictus. We were able to defeat the other two nictus and finally Romulus without having him rez but couldn't overcome the healing nictus.

We could damage it but it's regen stayed ahead of our damage output. Our problem may have been we only had one blaster on the team but we were doing well up to that point so it was a little disheartening to stall at the end.

We had:
1 x Tank (Me)
2 x Defender (both emp)
1 x Stalker
1 x Scrapper (SK'd up to 50)
1 x Blaster


The best result we had on the healing nictus is when we decided against a plan and just rushed the sucker but just couldn't overcome the regen. It ended up feeling like we needed to have somebody with -regen or a damage heavey team and that left several members with a bad taste about this TF.

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I had the same problem when Romulus didnt eat the last essense (the healing one). We couldn't bring its health down. I told everyone to back off, so that the stone melee brute and my dual blades brute could beat it down.

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Did you drag the nictus essence too far out of range or did you break line of sight between it and romulus?

- The Heart Plus bottom bothers me a bit, maybe one of the standard tights w/ skin textures would be better.
- You also might want to try making the wrappings a different shade or a different color entirely.
- Also since when do snakes have hair?

I also have a character named Mental Scale (mind/Psi dom and Future fortunata) that resembles a snake because of a forced mutation of his DNA. I pretty much kept his skin color and clothes the same as a normal human but gave him the viper/reptilian features underneath and monstrous hands.

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Interesting to read the bit about Rom offering rewards but the nictus aren't. May be a clue as to how the devs -want- us to approach this encounter.

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I think the fact that he has a rez that eats one of the nictus should have been more than enough proof...

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Also that the Essences supposedly can't be debuffed but Romulus can....

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-recharge, -heal, -spd, and -res immunity is all I could throughly test and prove in open beta. There are far too many factors with ToHit and Def debuffs to accurately measure without a Bane Spider using Surveillance (which is one of the reasons why I'm leveling a Bane). I still stand by that Romulus should be given Quasar and the essences tweaked down slightly and given names.

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I just wanted to note that romulus seems very easy to immob. My ice controller could keep him from isolated with a single cast.

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All AVs are like that unless they are specifically immune to it. Purple Triangles does not protect against Immobilize. However Romulus does seem to have almost no protection to knockdown effects since my sleet and oil slick easily kept him on his back the entire time.

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Interesting to read the bit about Rom offering rewards but the nictus aren't. May be a clue as to how the devs -want- us to approach this encounter.

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I think the fact that he has a rez that eats one of the nictus should have been more than enough proof...