KaizenSoze

Side note, nice trick when soloing the ASF cauldron fight. Once, the turrets activate, placate the AV while taking out the turrets. The turrets are too widely spaced for an effective placate, but at least you don't have the AV shooting at you also. On topic, I have the AV just seem to forget about me when clearing turrets after a placate.

A little more elaboration from me might help. I have Short Circuit slotted with a Power Transfer set. That's nets you -74% end in Mids. Also, my traps/elec is a high recharge build. I always have a single target attack up. Between that and Voltaic Sentinel, there is plenty of -recovery. Once, I drop Tesla Cage next build. It will be obvious if I was underestimating Tesla Cage's benefits. I was testing this build against 54x8 PI radio mobs, Council and Arachnos. It wasn't fast, but as long as I didn't pull two groups of Arachnos. It was safe. I even could survive that most of the time. Yesterday's build:

Yes, I have seen exactly this behavior. Mobs lose aggro and just walk away or remain passive long after the placate timer has ended. I was doing the cauldron EB-AV fight in ASF. One of the EB just stood there even after I hit him 5-6 times. Still probably existing placate bugginess. Just more obvious with more targets.

Overall I am liking the changes. Except for one power, Tesla Cage. I have tried electrical blast defenders with storm, poison, and traps. Storm does lots of damage and the endurance return from electric blast helps a lot with the end issue. The issue with storm is between the tornado and lightning storm fear issues, zeroing out end triggers even more running. Mob just scatter at max speed. Poison just didn't gel. Oddly, I enjoyed traps the best. Since, you can hang out in point blank range the safest with traps. I was toe bombing mobs with poison trap and acid mortar after I zeroed out their end with short circuit. Caltrops gives you enough slow to get them grouped out for your AOEs. Scatter was a worse issue with my first build w/o caltrops. But Tesla Cage at least on a defender just isn't worth it. Defender have such effective end drain that the other attacks do enough. Tesla cage doesn't proc particularly well. Raising the recharge from 10 to 12+ sec would help it proc much better. The damage isn't worth enhancement, then chaining damage increase doesn't seem noticeable. The hold is just ok.

TT:Offensive. I like that %33 toHit resistance, but something had to give.

Experience from the beta server. The extra damage is nice, but the defensive power of the new placate is the special sauce. Getting swarmed, placate. Need to take an annoying mob of the fight. While you deal with the other annoying mob, placate. You get the picture.

I have definitely seen some buggy behavior with placate. It probably existed before the change. Just using the power more. I have placated a mob and started hitting him and it's like he's still placated. Just stands there. No extra crit damage, just no return attacks. I'll see if I can reproduce it consistently.

I wasn't seeing any better times on Trapdoor tests. I think the new placate will have some defensive utility. Being able to remove five targets attacking when you're getting overwhelmed should be helpful. @carroto Would be interesting to see what benefits most on Night Widows. Right now, I pair placate with Slash, since that is by far NW's strongest single target attack. But that doesn't follow the double animation guideline. Only NW AOEs are double the animation time on the new placate.

From the patch notes: Pandora's Box Completing the last mission of SSA2 Pandora's Box will trigger a Nemesis invasion in a zone matching the arc's alignment. SSA2 is Pandora's Box Episode 5 (Levels 40-50). Not Pandora's Box Episode 2 (Levels 35-50) The contacts are: Hero: Heldenjaeger (Located in Steel Canyon.) Villain: Inconspicuous Female 39757 (Located in Sharkhead Isle.) Complete the arc and a Nemesis zone events starts somewhere. I think it's worded very badly in the patch notes and have said so. If you find it confusing I suggest adding a comment here.

Still watching, but I see familiar faces from our run. <== Customer Service Rep The bio tanker is holding up pretty well.

I am sure this suggestion will be greeted with boos and hisses. Devs, when you get around to adding these modes to the ITF. Make sure and add plenty of -fly at max difficultly. One of the main reasons that people can solo it is the relatively weak ranged attacks. That isn't the only reason, but it helps a lot. This from someone who mostly plays VEATs which get shredded in melee on ITFs. But a flying Fortunata can solo it.

On a humorous note, given the incredible ingenuity of player base. What is the betting line on how long it take before someone solos relentless mode? I say three months, then twelve months after that someone will post their emp defender soloing it. 😛

Two things that really help with Super Reflexes. 95% DDR and double stacked mez protection. Not sure what if any -def Goldbrickers do in ASF. They do at high difficultly have +20 toHit and run tactics. Arachnos can drop -25% def on you for each Tarantula Mistress. Accounting for the level difference, it's usually -33. Combine the -def with +toHit and you'll want all the DDR and defense you can get. At least at relentless. Then toss in massive -resist. On relentless my SR/DM tanker was running with 100%+ positional defense. Not sure about the rest as I didn't have those monitored. I would routinely seem -9-20% resists in s/l, from a base of 66. Energy resists would be even worse, -20-30%, with a base of 44%. I was very happy with ever scrap of defense I was getting from my teammates. 🙂

Yes, but I am talking about Relentless, not 2x8. Relentless is much much harder, than 2x8. 2x8 is a walk in the park in comparison.

Yes, the Bane mace animations are slow. Mace in general is slow. It seems like there is rule where no matter the damage/recharge a mace ranged attack must take at least 2 seconds 😞 Web Cocoon would be useful is the animation wasn't so long. IMO. At the moment, the best Bane is a mixed Bane, the combo of surveillance, venom nade, and frag nade can do a lot of -resist and damage. It the one thing that mace Brutes/Tanks/Scrapper cannot do.

I have seen examples from other non-HC servers where they turn the crabpack into something entirely difference like a set of little drones. I think that would be a good alternative.

I have had a day to think about the relentless run. Voice chat is mandatory The tank will almost always be aggro capped. You need at least two forms of aggro control. Second tank/brute Illusion controller with perma Phantom army High levels of stealth is still useful to bypass mobs Have 1-2 teammates with Incandescence for two reasons Bypass mobs Move the team out of nuke range. I won't elaborate as to not spoil things Buffing, nothing is bad Resists will be extremely useful, but won't save you w/o a strong team My SR/DM tanker with 100%+ positional defense would often see -10% on resists The worse I saw was -66% s/l and -96% energy Recovery buffing is needed, as you get your recovery zero'ed out fairly often Healing Due to the amount of -resist from mobs. Single target healing is useful, but often too late. Absorb shields and heal over time might be better Natural Affinity might be very useful, but we didn't have one Having at least one 1-2 teammates with rebirth is also useful. My tank uses the Radial heal/regen version Revive You'll need 1-2 players with revive powers Large revives inspirations do work on relentless Consider slotting the Radial barrier that rezes up to two players

We ran this on relentless today. I have to stop due to time constraints just before King Midas, we were close to three hours. It's by a huge margin the best TF in the game. But being the only tank was exhausting. If you're going to run on relentless bring two tanks. So, one can take a break.

Yep, I know that now. I even triggered on the beta, but initially I read it as episode two that wasted time trying to trigger it through the wrong arc. Everyone else I have asked has also gotten it wrong. SSA2 is not enough information figure out which one to run. It's just not obvious to most people.

Pandora's Box Completing the last mission of SSA2 Pandora's Box will trigger a Nemesis invasion in a zone matching the arc's alignment. I ran this bit by several SG mates and no one guessed correctly which Episode was supposed to be run. Really need some elaboration. Contact and/or zone would be enough.

@Bopper The awesome person that he is, found a bug in TT:Offensive, which is fixed in this patch. Combat Training: Offensive (Arachnos Soldiers and Widows): Removed the IgnoreStrength flag from the +Accuracy effect to allow slotted Accuracy to enhance it. The power is now set to Ignore Strength from external sources which will allow slotted enhancements to buff the accuracy effect, but not outside powers. Placate is now an quick firing AOE with a cap of five targets. The Placate targeted power, typically found in Stalker power sets has been changed to meet the following standards: Range 60ft (some versions were set at 50ft) Cast time 0.8s, down from 1.5s (sometimes 1.67s) Instant Hit (down from 0.5s delay upon activation) Changed from Single Target into 15ft radius Sphere AoE Target Cap increased from 1 to 5 This applies to the following set categories: Stalker Melee Bane Spider Soldier Widow Teamwork

Now, that you have beaten the ITF a bunch of different ways. Next AE 801s and Doc Aeon's SF.

Not sure. Since, he doesn't give any badges I had forgot about him. I'll check on my level 50 VEATS to see if I can get those low level missions.

@Bopper I took your version of the Night Widow Tank out for a spin on the beta server. 801.5 didn't complete to time constraints, but I cleared about 30% of the map and only died twice. Any of version would have died every other fight I think.

Just curious, no Aura of Confusion? On one of my early test runs of just 4x8. I found that Aura of Confusion with the Coercive Persuasion would confuse the entire crystal spawn. That might not as you want, because you're trying to kill the crystals off at almost the same time.