Soloing Task/Strike Forces

[Citizen Razor]

I haven't played since shutdown, so if this has already been addressed let me know and I'll close this post.  

 

I realize that a lot has already been done to make Task/Strike Forces more soloable.  You can start it alone, simultaneous glowies have been changed, etc.  However, I was wondering if it was at all possible to make the Archvillain / Elite Boss switch apply to Task/Strike Forces as well?

 

A lot has changed in the past 9 years, and I don't have the time or ability to join long-term task forces anymore (taking care of three kids will do that), but wouldn't mind being able to do a solo Positron or solo Dr. Quarterfield on my own time without being concerned that I can't take the final AV(s) down and being unable to complete them.  

 

Edited:  This could be done as missions/quests given out in Ouroboros. 

Edited June 4, 2021 by Citizen Razor

[Rathulfr]

3 minutes ago, Citizen Razor said:

This could be done as missions/quests given out in Ouroboros. 

 

Having AVs in TFs is kind of the point of TFs, IMO (how many more acronyms can I squeeze into a sentence?).  It's part of what makes a TF different from other missions.  So I would prefer to keep the AVs in regular TFs.  However, I do like the idea of having "alternate" versions of TFs where the AVs can become EBs, instead.  I don't know if that would be done with Ouroboros or by some other means.

 

[Citizen Razor]

Good point.  And I also didn't think about the potential pitfalls of solo players farming TFs for the merits as EBs would be easier than AVs, as well as discouraging teaming in general.  

 

One possible work-around would be to have the "in-game" TFs always have AVs no matter what, and have these give out the full rewards, while the Ouroboros version allow for EBs and offer half the rewards (so, for example, if a TF gives 50 reward merits, the Ouroboros version would give 25 merits).  

Edited June 4, 2021 by Citizen Razor

[Razor Cure]

12 hours ago, Citizen Razor said:

A lot has changed in the past 9 years, and I don't have the time or ability to join long-term task forces anymore

Not to be insulting at all, but the definition of 'long-term' TFs has also changed a LOT. I remember back on Live, and just about all of em took over an hour, often close to 90 mins. Nevermind those god awful shard TFs.

But now..sub 30 mins on a lot are pretty common, and its rare to do one over an hour. Obvious exceptions are Shard TF and Synapse. Others like Manti, Numi, Citadel, Ice Mistral, Renault etc are all commonly done in under an hour!

As long as the team isn't super under leveled, you should be fine!

[Parabola]

15 hours ago, Citizen Razor said:

A lot has changed in the past 9 years, and I don't have the time or ability to join long-term task forces anymore (taking care of three kids will do that), but wouldn't mind being able to do a solo Positron or solo Dr. Quarterfield on my own time without being concerned that I can't take the final AV(s) down and being unable to complete them.

The good news is that it is perfectly possible to solo those end of tf av's. The bad is that it might not be easy to do it on every character. If you are prepared to buy yourself a stack of envenomed daggers from the pay to win merchant then that opens the field up considerably though.

 

Tf's all scale to team size so if you are set to ×1 you won't have to wade through hordes of enemies along the way (although that takes the fun out of it as far as I'm concerned). When you get to the av you just need a certain level of survivability and a certain amount of dps to beat them. The daggers or other -regen powers lower that dps requirement considerably which helps a lot.

 

Generally for survivability you want to be reliant on self affecting things such as defence or resistance rather than enemy affecting debuffs such as -tohit, as av's heavily resist most debuffs. Inevitably this means that the easiest way to go is generally melee at's such as scrappers, brutes or tanks. However there are various support type combos that can do the same, rad/sonic defenders and ill/cold trollers are famous examples but there are many others.

 

If you are worried about whether your chosen character has what it takes to defeat an av and you don't want to only find out at the end of a tf then you can test it. Build the character on the test server and try to solo a pylon in the rwz or fight an av in an ae mission. The pylon test isn't an exact analogue to an av fight but it's good enough in the sense that if you can down it then you are likely to be able to down an av. They do have a lot of kb though which can be a pain depending on your level of protection.

 

In general I think it is reasonable for soloing tf's to be limited by the ability to beat the av at the end. The field of characters that can do it is actually pretty wide, I've talked about the easier options but I remember reading someone soloing tf's on an empathy defender so pretty much anything is possible!

[0th Power]

daggers and shivans make a solo tf pretty easy