Ms Liberty Task force

[Psyonico]

of course, if you're trying for a Master of Miss Liberty, you need a tank that has Fly and not just the Jetpack since Temps aren't allowed.

[Pzn]

On 4/23/2020 at 7:26 AM, Zeraphia said:

A huge tip (I don't know if it's been mentioned yet, but you can buy a temp power Jet Pack from P2W (get the tanker to do this), have the Tanker use a large purple or two, have said Tanker fly up to one of the 4 poles. On that pole, there are essentially four little "spikes" tell the Tanker to situate himself between two of the spikes, close to the pole but not ON the pole. 

It will look sort of like this if you are standing above, the little cross is the pole's spikes, the dot would be the tanker. The Tanker needs to stay in this position between the two spikes.

 

Doing this will cause LR to repeatedly jump on the pole to try to "catch" the player, but because you are in an awkward position, LR will repeatedly fall down the pole, and he will not be able to use his attacks. You essentially "hold" him hostage by doing this strategy until all of the viable towers are done. 

 

There's the big Tanking trick way to cheese LR.

 

I took a trip to Grandeville to give a more detailed guide on how to do it!

 

These are the poles I am talking about that the tanker will fly toward with LR (this tanker needs to grab LR's attention for a brief minute, one large purple is all that's really needed provided you have decent res (40+ to E/S/L) and 20%+ def, taunt him, make sure when you taunt him, you get him before and after someone on your team hits the first tower. 

 

After that, fly toward the pole in this EXACT position

 

LR will never hit you again after that and your team can safely take down the towers with ease. 

 

Basically why I think this works is because enemies will try to hit you with the most damaging power they have that is in their range, when you fly up to this tower, you are just inside of his theoretical "melee" range, meaning the higher hitting attacks would hit you, but not far enough away for him to use his channelgun power. So he keeps trying to get you on this pole, and just keeps falling down, because he gets so close to using his hardest hitting melee attack, but unfortunately, because you're in the air, and he keeps falling down, he doesn't quite "get in range" to do it because he keeps trying to take the pole.

In my experience, the exact spot isn't that important.  As long as you are at the correct height (like in your picture) and somewhere between the back 2 poles then it works fine.

[Zeraphia]

4 hours ago, Psyonico said:

of course, if you're trying for a Master of Miss Liberty, you need a tank that has Fly and not just the Jetpack since Temps aren't allowed.

This is false information. Jetpacks/flight travel powers from P2W ARE allowed during Masteries as well as iTrials. 

 

Test this yourself if you must.

[Elmyder]

As long as blue tower is up, you'll need 75% defense to soft cap against him. Go in with large purple and orange inspirations. Monitor your defense and resistance stats. His power types are smashing, lethal, and energy. Keep your defenses against these over 75% and your resistances to these at cap (90% for tanker). If you do this, approximately 10% of his attacks will miss you. Those that hit will only hit for 10% of their true value. With tanker max hp, this will not come close to killing you, even with red tower up. Don't even need a healer at this point. Just use greens to absorb the few hits you actually take.

 

As for holding aggro, tanker taunt should do it. Don't taunt him away from towers because he will be teleported away. And yeah, as people above point out, you can bug him out with a flight ability, but the above strategy is arguably easier to execute, and it also makes you look more badass! haha. Just face tank him where he spawns, spam taunt on him, and keep on top of your inspirations. Easy.

[Call Me Awesome]

I'll give you my method for melee tanking Lord Recluse, I've done it on MoSTF runs with Invuln, Stone and Shield tankers... your secondary really doesn't matter much, and you don't need a babysitter to keep you alive.  You MUST HAVE TAUNT!!!!

 

First, I have an Insp load out for it, I carry 4 big oranges, 8 big purples and a pair of big blues and greens.  This varies with the tank I'm running... for example with a Stone tank you can skip the orange and blues... you'll be at or almost at the 90% resistance cap with Granite and a decent build so Orange is pointless.  Rooted makes you nearly immune to end drain so the blues aren't needed.

 

You will want to be at 90% resistance to S/L/E damage while the red tower's up (which doubles his damage output) and you'll want 75% defense while the blue tower is up (it's a large +tohit buff for him).  Keep in mind you'll find it almost impossible to actually hit him since the tower also gives him a massive defense buff, this is why you MUST have an auto hit taunt to keep his attention.

 

Ok, you've done your homework and have your strategy and load out.  Enter the mission and clear the 4 patron AV's, the Flyer AND all the mobs in the courtyard.  If you leave the mobs they'll come and be a nuisance while you're clearing the towers so get rid of them first.  One more point, the Flyer will respawn at the 20 minute mark from when you entered the mission, it's a good idea to keep an eye on this so it doesn't take you by surprise.  It will spawn in the center of the towers on the platform and if you're still fighting towers at this point it will likely aggro on you. 

 

After you've cleared the patrons, flyer and mobs then make sure everyone is on the same page, eat your candy and jump in to say hi to LR.  I pull him to the rear of the platform away from the team to keep them away from any splash damage while they take down the Red tower.  This also has the effect of keeping him and me away from the point where the Flyer will respawn if the mission runs long.  If someone on the team has a placeable damage power like Bonfire then have them keep it on the tower, this will kill the repairmen that spawn at 50% of the tower's life.  Hurricane also works here.  The repairmen are the team's #1 priority to kill immediately, they'll heal the tower back up to full amazingly quickly.  Fortunately they're only around level 40 minions so they're easy to kill.  Knock them down, keep them away and don't let them use their heal.  Bonfire loaded with damage usually kills them all by itself.

 

While your team is killing the towers, preferably in this order: Red/Blue/Orange/Green you'll be taunting LR and keeping him away from the team.  While the red tower's up maintain ~90% S/L/E resistance and 75% defense (S/L/E or Melee/Range/AOE).  When the red tower drops you can allow the orange insps to wear off while maintaining your defense until the blue tower dies.  Once the blue is gone he's pretty much an ordinary AV and you should have no problems surviving if you have a decent build.  The Red tower buffs his damage output by 105%, the Blue tower buffs his ToHit by 30% and gives him Speed Boost, the Orange tower grants him 200% defense so you won't be hitting him while it's up and the Green tower gives him a massive regeneration buff as well as a constant heal and +HP.

 

If he gets lucky with either an attack or his end drain eat a green or blue, or hit your heal if you have one.  Don't stop taunting him!  If taunt wears off of him he WILL decide to kill your team!  Your aura alone won't hold his attention, and if it isn't auto hit then it likely won't affect him.  Stone's Mud Pots and Fire's Blazing Aura for example require a to hit check and while the orange tower's up it won't hit him 95% of the time.  Invuln's Invincibility is marginal for maintaining his interest unless you slotted it's taunt component.  YOU NEED TAUNT to hold his attention, and I highly recommend spamming it.  Don't waste endurance trying to attack him while Orange is up, at best you'll hit him 5% of the time and at worst your endurance will be low when he nails you with his drain and your toggles will drop.

 

Once the towers are down I keep him at the back of the platform and the team attacks him from behind.  This is important, LR has a really nasty cone attack that will do major damage to your squishier teammates so they need to stay behind him.  When LR gets to 25% he'll start summoning minions, everyone should ignore them and burn him down, they'll all vanish when he dies.  In all the runs I've made I doubt there's been more than 2 or 3 times that the adds were a problem, most teams can drop LR the final 25% faster than they can spawn, target and start to attack.

 

That's the method I use when I'm tanking, doing it in Melee gives me more control of his position than hovering over his head and some tankers don't work as well hovering as they do on the ground, Stone for example, and Invuln so you keep the defense buff from Invincibility.  It does require a tougher tank and you need to pay attention.  I frequently put Taunt on auto fire while I'm tanking him to make sure I don't get distracted and loose his aggro.  If your aura is auto hit then it's also contributing to holding his attention if you're in melee.

 

If you simply want to range tank him you don't even need a tank... I did it a couple times with a blaster firing from extreme range and making damn sure to get him to the opposite corner from the rest of the team since I obviously didn't have any lock on his attention.  One time I got him to jump up onto the top ledge of the building behind him and his AI glitched so he just stood there not moving.  After killing the towers the team had to fly up and kill him there while he never moved or attacked.  It only happened once and that was shortly after the STF was introduced so whatever bug allowed it may have been patched.

Edited May 1, 2020 by Call Me Awesome
Had the wrong tower listed.

[SuperPlyx]

44 minutes ago, Call Me Awesome said:

Don't waste endurance trying to attack him while Orange is up, at best you'll hit him 5% of the time and at worst your endurance will be low when he nails you with his drain and your toggles will drop.

I think this is one of the biggest mistakes people make tanking LR. You're not trying to kill him,just keep him busy while team does towers. 

[Shred Monkey]

Just to be sure the tower data is being identified properly, the table below is from Paragonwiki.com:

 

 

I'm 100% certain the buffs are attributed to the correct towers.  I believe the magnitudes of the buffs are accurate as well. 

 

Killing the blue tower means you will no longer need above soft-cap defense.

Killing the orange is what allows you to hit him.

Killing the green is what stops him from healing faster than you can do damage.

Killing the red reduces his damage significantly.

 

Most runs I'm on skip the blue tower.  Some runs I've been on skip the red tower, too.  

[Elmyder]

Can confirm the paragonwiki data is accurate, I checked it with power analyzer before. You can skip red tower if you have enough sources of non s/l/e damage.

[Call Me Awesome]

20 hours ago, Elmyder said:

Can confirm the paragonwiki data is accurate, I checked it with power analyzer before. You can skip red tower if you have enough sources of non s/l/e damage.

IF you have enough non-S/L/E damage in the team.  I'll bet that a minimum of half of the team deals mainly or exclusively those damage types, and likely most of the team does.  Any Scrappers on the team?  Almost certainly they do one of those damage types so they'll be useless against LR.  Tanks?  Likely the same boat.  The majority of attack sets in the game are based on S/L/E damage either completely or in part.  

 

Skipping Red is a bad idea, LR hits twice as hard... hard enough to one shot a non-melee character and unless the tank natively has 90% resistance to S/L/E he'll likely end up dropping before LR.  Many of your teammates will be unable to damage him at all so he'll go down much slower.  I always want Red down first, followed by Blue, this drastically reduces his danger level.  I've been on a few STF's where the team decided to leave the Blue tower, it always made for a harder fight and twice lead to a team wipe once the tanker was out of purples and couldn't maintain the 75% defense.  Oh, and I was on one where the idiots decided to leave both Red and Blue and couldn't be convinced they were wrong even after multiple team wipes.  That was the only TF I've ever bailed on.  They were ABSOLUTELY convinced they could kill him without taking ANY towers down, then it was "We just need to kill the orange tower" and then "Just the green tower".

 

Red and Blue are the towers that make your Tanker's life hell, kill them FIRST.

[Elmyder]

15 minutes ago, Call Me Awesome said:

IF you have enough non-S/L/E damage in the team.  I'll bet that a minimum of half of the team deals mainly or exclusively those damage types, and likely most of the team does.  Any Scrappers on the team?  Almost certainly they do one of those damage types so they'll be useless against LR.  Tanks?  Likely the same boat.  The majority of attack sets in the game are based on S/L/E damage either completely or in part.  

 

Skipping Red is a bad idea, LR hits twice as hard... hard enough to one shot a non-melee character and unless the tank natively has 90% resistance to S/L/E he'll likely end up dropping before LR.  Many of your teammates will be unable to damage him at all so he'll go down much slower.  I always want Red down first, followed by Blue, this drastically reduces his danger level.  I've been on a few STF's where the team decided to leave the Blue tower, it always made for a harder fight and twice lead to a team wipe once the tanker was out of purples and couldn't maintain the 75% defense.  Oh, and I was on one where the idiots decided to leave both Red and Blue and couldn't be convinced they were wrong even after multiple team wipes.  That was the only TF I've ever bailed on.  They were ABSOLUTELY convinced they could kill him without taking ANY towers down, then it was "We just need to kill the orange tower" and then "Just the green tower".

 

Red and Blue are the towers that make your Tanker's life hell, kill them FIRST.

Whether it's a good or bad idea is really going to depend on the team. I was just pointing out that it's possible. If the team contains inexperienced or unbuilt characters, it's a bad idea. So don't try this on the first MLTF you run! lol. But for some teams, it's a great idea. Did one today, lots of fire blasters and corruptors. Whole tf is done in 16 minutes, 0 deaths, no tank, skipped red and blue. Just pop some inspirations or alternate barriers with someone and Recluse can barely even hit anyone. I also tested skipping red last year where 6/8 teammates were s/l/e. We all used BP lore pets, and those were enough to kill him in about 15 seconds. So not bad at all with the right team.

 

Additionally, fwiw: Skipping orange and green (without using clever tricks to stop their effects....hint hint....) is *probably* impossible. May be able to skip orange with some insane stacking -def and capped to hit. Maybe. Doubt it would be faster than killing the tower though. Skipping green, though, I believe is actually literally impossible. A team on Torch did it once and recorded, but it was done during the infamous degen bug....so yeaaahhh lol. When I saw this, I decided to do the math on what kind of dps was needed to overcome his regen. I can't recall off the top of my head, but suffice to say, it was impossible levels lol.

Edited May 2, 2020 by Elmyder

[Call Me Awesome]

11 minutes ago, Elmyder said:

 

Additionally, fwiw: Skipping orange and green (without using clever tricks to stop their effects....hint hint....) is *probably* impossible. May be able to skip orange with some insane stacking -def and capped to hit. Maybe. Doubt it would be faster than killing the tower though. Skipping green, though, I believe is actually literally impossible. A team on Torch did it once and recorded, but it was done during the infamous degen bug....so yeaaahhh lol. When I saw this, I decided to do the math on what kind of dps was needed to overcome his regen. I can't recall off the top of my head, but suffice to say, it was impossible levels lol.

When the STF was first introduced it WAS actually possible to avoid all the towers, their effects had a limited range and you could pull LR back to the boat.  That particular strategy got nuked fairly early on.  Ever since then I've been a fan of killing all towers, the extra time in killing the potentially skippable Blue was more than made up for in the reduced pressure on the tank and the lower numbers in the 20% spawn.

 

My record time taking 4 towers and LR down was under 4 minutes, if your team is good it's no big deal taking down 4 towers instead of 3.  Even a slow team if they're competent should be able to kill a tower in 2 minutes.  If I'm leading I usually set for a MoSTF run so leaving the blue tower up with it's tohit buff and speed boost is a pointless risk.

[Hyperstrike]

Just be VERY careful with repairmen.

I've played teams where they haven't killed them, just kicked them all over the place.

Suddenly we're in the middle of breaking a foot off on Recluse and BOOM, two towers come back up...

NOT FUN!

[tidge]

8 hours ago, Call Me Awesome said:

Red and Blue are the towers that make your Tanker's life hell, kill them FIRST.

This has been my experience, at least with successful runs. The other towers are rarely necessary.

 

I've been on a few MsLib TFs where someone INSISTED that we not take out the flier first? Can anyone explain why this would be a good idea, and why someone would be so adamant against it?

 

Edit: The only thing I can think of is there is some peculiar desire to 'complete' the TF in less time, but that seems like very poor reasoning.

Edited May 2, 2020 by tidge

[Elmyder]

7 hours ago, tidge said:

This has been my experience, at least with successful runs. The other towers are rarely necessary.

 

I've been on a few MsLib TFs where someone INSISTED that we not take out the flier first? Can anyone explain why this would be a good idea, and why someone would be so adamant against it?

 

Edit: The only thing I can think of is there is some peculiar desire to 'complete' the TF in less time, but that seems like very poor reasoning.

That is precisely the reason. Personally, I exclusively do speed runs. That is the reason I personally skip the flier and red and blue towers. Basically, if it's not necessary, it's skipped. This is obvious a very particular playstyle and doesn't apply to your average run. That said, the flier honestly doesn't pose much of a threat.