Turbo_Ski

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Also make sure you have a Kin on the team beacuse the Nictus have slows in their attacks and therefore lowering the team DPS

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Colds and Thermals also give Slow resist to the entire team (Artic Fog and Thaw).

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Quick question...
How long is this TF?
How fast CAN it be done, and how long is your average run?
Keep in mind that it would be my first time running it...

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Fastest is 47min 17sec

Average is about 50min

Ran it 3 times on test, and 3 times on live. I suspect we'll get a sub 40min run now that some of the issues have been fixed w/ the 3rd mission map.

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that's not even close to realistic for a PuG or the average team.

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I am extremely let down by the storyline of the VEATs... no new experiences, no new enemies... one mission - wait till 5, 2 missions - wait till 10, unbelieveably boring and poorly designed.

This is a major major let down in my opion as this game has some amazing storylines and arcs in it and the lackluster performance on the part of the devs makes me sad.

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The later arcs are pretty good actually.

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A moot point if the early levels don't hold peoples' attention long enough to get there.

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Gasp if that was a problem then hero side would have been dead long ago.

If you received them without buying the pack, then I would say that is an accident that happened with your account.

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I have done the TF once and I doubt I will do it again. For the most part it is fun and doable, but with a Great group we spent and hour and a half with the last fight. Wipe after wipe. We finally managed to separate and pinpoint one Nictus at a time, but it is just too agrivating to go through it again. I really like the costume pieces, but the fun factor is not in that last fight. And for the record we plowed through the rest of the TF in record time. When Rommie finally took his curtain call there wasn't a member of my group that was pleased with the frustration involved. I say make the Nictus EBs and give Rommie a slow build self heal in addition to the heal Nictus, but unless something changes my one character that needed it has done it and I will be avoiding this TF like a few others out there.

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You guys were doing it wrong, you'll find it much easier if you ignore the nictus essences entirely and focus on killing romulus 4 times.

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I am extremely let down by the storyline of the VEATs... no new experiences, no new enemies... one mission - wait till 5, 2 missions - wait till 10, unbelieveably boring and poorly designed.

This is a major major let down in my opion as this game has some amazing storylines and arcs in it and the lackluster performance on the part of the devs makes me sad.

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The later arcs are pretty good actually.

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Quick question...
How long is this TF?
How fast CAN it be done, and how long is your average run?
Keep in mind that it would be my first time running it...

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2 hours is the average. 3.5 hours at most and 1.25 hours at best.

yeah, I noticed when I first saw the badge art for the bugged Romulus kill badge.

Kiss of the Kite by Peng-Peng

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some AV pulling tips

Mission 3 (do these pulls after Phalanx is done)
- pull romulus to the cliffledge above him and to the right or left a little.
- pull Requem to the cliffledge above him and to the left where there is a V-shaped indention into the cliff.

Mission 4:
- Pull romulus with his nictus to the top of the left tower. His ambushs won't be able to reach him and the sharp corners lets the team break Line of Sight with the essences while still pummeling on romulus.

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Not bad, but since there is payout for taking out Romulus vs taking down the Nictus, I like to keep the Nictus in line of sight to ensure Rom gets revived, just keep the healer out of heal range of Romulus for the duration. plus IF there is a badge coming for x-amount of Romulus kills this method helps with that too.

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With this pull method, Romulus has always remained in range of the essences to rez everytime. What's is nice about this is that you can keep all the essences near romulus but all of their attacks can't hit everyone. This makes the variable heal and buffs the essences do much lower and the damage intake from the "Cyst" nictus much lower.

Removing or Reducing the number of ambushes that occur in mission 3 would fix the lag. Also it wouldn't hurt to remove the unnecessary wandering patrols and the engineers all lined up at the top of each canyon wall that no one ever fights.

some AV pulling tips

Mission 3 (do these pulls after Phalanx is done)
- pull romulus to the cliffledge above him and to the right or left a little.
- pull Requem to the cliffledge above him and to the left where there is a V-shaped indention into the cliff.

Mission 4:
- Pull romulus with his nictus to the top of the left tower. His ambushs won't be able to reach him and the sharp corners lets the team break Line of Sight with the essences while still pummeling on romulus.

It's funny I used to believe this was far too hard when I thought the only way you could beat it was to separate the nictus from rom and kill them. However since I've started ignoring the nictus entirely and having the entire team focus only on killing Romulus four times, I've had no problems with the encounter at all.

Also you guys might want to try pulling romulus to the top of the left tower to kill him. His cimeroran ambush won't be able to follow, eliminating the dangers of a surgeon percent healing Romulus.

This sounds like a trap of some sort

Romulus activates a power that targets a Nictus Essence and Kills it.

Nictus Essence triggers Howling Twilight when it dies and thusly resurrects Romulus only (since Essences don't leave corpses) and stuns the team at the same time. If you kill a nictus it still casts HT and stuns the team but Romulus of course doesn't rez since he will obviously would already be alive.

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so far i did this 3 times successfully with different toons. what we always ended up doing is just killing romulus 4 times. have a brute or tanker keeping romulus busy, and another brute/tanker keeping the nictuses busy and away from romulus. then keep whacking rom till he dies, rinse repeat 3 more times. this is by far the easiest way to do it, in my experience.

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Yep we generally just ignore the essences entirely and complete it just fine doing it this way.

nice!

Have a purple recipe drop as the reward for successful completion of the "Master" runs for the RSF or STF

very nice, that is my favorite of your costumes btw.

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Here is the order in which he consumes essences:
- Mire essence
- Spawn essence
- Heal essence

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I dunno, I think it's random, on a run or two I've done I've seen the healing essence get absorbed first.

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might be. past 3 times though it was always the heal one last for me.

The essences are immune to -res debuffs, so it's in your best interest to focus on Romulus who isn't immune to them. You're only worry should be surviving the mire and spawn essences and killing the surgeons in the ambush spawns (who do percent based Heal Other).

Here is the order in which he consumes essences:
- Mire essence
- Spawn essence
- Heal essence

Muhahahaha

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Mission 3:
(Facing the cliff wall)
- Pull Romulus to the right side of the cliff ledge above him. This will single pull him guaranteed.
- Pull Requiem to the left side of the cliff ledge where there is a small V-shaped indention. Pull Requiem into that indention and he won't slide off like he does at other parts of the cliff.

Mission 4:
Healing Essence
- Heals itself for double what it heals it's allies, so targeting it specifically is pointless
- Heal strength varies based on number of players hit in it's 70 ft radius
- 100% immune to debuffs so don't even bother trying to -heal debuff it.
Strategy: Ignore it, let Romulus consume it when he dies and resurrects

Mire Essence
- does a high damage and EXTREMELY accurate PbAoE damage attack that variable buffs Romulus's ToHit and Damage
- once again 100% immune to debuffs so don't even bother
Strategy: separate it from Romulus if your team is very melee heavy, otherwise ignore it since it's the first essence that gets consumed by his Rez.

Spawn Essence
- Spawns a bunch of nictus essences to attack, identical to what Shadow Cyst Crystals do
- 100% immune to debuffs, but it does help to use it as an anchor for debuff toggles since you'll automatically debuff it's spawns when it activates it's power
Strategy: Kill this Essence first if you have a lot of squishy players or not enough +DEF or +RES buffs. Otherwise ignore it.

Romulus
- NOT immune to debuffs and goes down fast because of this
- When he dies, he will Resurrect by consuming of the Nictus Essence AVs. When an Essence dies it will do a large radius stun. Distance yourself at least 80 ft from any essence to avoid getting hit by it since there is a delay before Rom rezes
- at certain points of his HP he will cause up to 3 ambushs of Cimerorans to spawn. This only applies to the first time you kill him.
Strategy: place debuffs on Romulus and focus fire entirely on him until ambushs come. When the ambushs spawn eliminate the Surgeons IMMEDIATELY. Romulus should fall easily. Repeat 3 more times.

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The pattern is going to be same pattern as everything else, overkill on debuffs and throw damage at it. Include Stone tank for ease of use.

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Except the standard combos that breeze through Master runs of the RSF are dying repeatingly on the final encounter of this TF. Overkilling on the debuffs does not work against Romulus and his Essences, it only works when you overkill on the buffs and damage only.

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Atleast ours was a success Turbo! :-)
Maybe 'flying colours' was a bit of an over statement, it would obviously be easier to do with a well made team that is used to teaming with each other. But it is possible with a PuG, just not the best set up.

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I don't mind a challenge, but there are a lot of things about the final encounter that make a lot of build almost useless. Debuffers can only debuff Romulus since the essences are completely immune to debuffs (which made perfect sense when they were EB, but it's insane now that they are AVs). Low damage ATs like tankers, defenders, and controllers get shafted by the overpowered heal rate of the Twilight Grasp (which wasn't scaled properly when they did the EB->AV conversion). The Mire essence also has it's AoE damage WAY off from what it should be and once again is laziness from when they just increased them to AV class. Also they have the same HP as romulus but because of all of the above they are incredibly tougher to take down.

Now one could argue about just taking down Romulus directly makes it easier, but there are some problems that regularly occur with that plan. First, the mire essence will tear a melee heavy team apart in seconds since it hits really hard and variable buffs Rom's ToHit and Dmg. Range heavy teams generally can't handle the massive AoE from the "Cyst" essence spawns unless they are buffed heavily, since debuffs become fairly useless when the spawns scatter to the wind like they regularly do. The heal rate of the Twilight Grasp only makes these situations worse since it variable heals off living and dead teammates.

The kill the healing nictus first strategy generally doesn't work unless the team has an insane amount of damage or manages to separate the nictus from the herd. Which is a difficult task since their movement pattern is to stick to Rom like glue until they become stationary from Romulus running out of range (like a hostage AI code). The range on this heal is also crazy big like 60-70ft in radius and it debuffs for -11% dmg and can stack twice before wearing off. The healing essence also heals itself for double the amount it heals it's allies since it heals itself and allies for (239 x number of players hit) then a second afterwards gets a heal to only itself for the same amount.

As for the Romulus running away and disappearing bug. This is caused by anyone hovering gaining aggro and Romulus locking on to melee them. However since Romulus can't fly he runs off the map trying to reach his target. It's already well known that there are multiple holes in the final map to begin with so as soon as he falls into one of those your team is screwed out of the TF. Taunting romulus or remaining grounded prevents this from happening. If you must hover do so over the temple behind romulus so he gets stuck in a jumping loop instead of over the plaza where he will almost always run off the map.

One of the things they need to do is nerf the mire and heal essences down considerably and buff Romulus more. Right now Romulus is a pushover by himself, giving him Quasar and super buffed version of Eclipse would do wonders for the encounter. However the essences need to have their debuff immunity removed, the heal toned down, the AoE damage on the mire toned down, and their HP reduced to not be the same as Romulus's but still more than their EB versions had.