What is a good strategy for sappers?

[normalperson]

Doing villain arc with a friend, the Tac Ops Sappers just turn my Martial Arts/ Rad brute into butter.             One hit and I drop all toggles, get mezzed, and just plain die. 

 

Is there any strategy for that?       I can't find any insps on the market that give you End resist, and by the time I can pop a blue, well......... there is no time to pop a blue.   You're at zero before you can react. 

[Maelwys]

(i) Pop some Purple inspirations before engaging them.

Sapper Endurance drains are coded as Energy typed so you can floor their hit chance.

 

(ii) Mez/Kill the sappers first. Targeting binds are your friend.

 

(iii) Get Endurance Drain resistance. As a /Rad, Gamma Boost ought to be reducing its effect by 69.2%... which realistically should make you functionally immune to them as there's only ever one Sapper per group of Malta. So I assume you just haven't taken it yet. Ageless Radial Destiny helps too at Endgame.

[Uun]

In addition to the above, there's an empowerment buff you can craft that provides 20% end drain/recovery resistance for 90 minutes. But seriously, you shouldn't be having this problem if you have Gamma Boost.

[Troo]

On 8/9/2025 at 10:14 PM, normalperson said:

Doing villain arc with a friend, the Tac Ops Sappers just turn my Martial Arts/ Rad brute into butter. One hit and I drop all toggles, get mezzed, and just plain die. 

 

Is there any strategy for that?

 

Yes, there is a strategy. It's not very complicated:

Target them first. (“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles." - Sun Tzu)

and then 'Defeat' them. 

 

There are a couple of priority targets in the game, Sappers are but one. 

Some priority targets heal your targets so you can't defeat the one you are beating on. Some priority targets will Blind you so you can't see targets, etc.

 

Edited Thursday at 06:01 AM by Troo

[normalperson]

So listening to the advice given here, I decided my best bet is to shut down the sappers before they shut me down.        But sometimes there are more than one, or I target them but they survive long enough to still hit me. 

 

So, I decided to try mezzing them.       And also in my build I had taken the Presence Pool to get Unrelenting, and I made an amazing discovery.

 

Invoke Panic is AMAZING for brutes!!!!            It's only 7.56 seconds (more with enhances, of course), but for a brute that doesn't matter!        If you're doing it right, half the spawn will be dead before that timer runs out. 

 

At this moment my toon is almost a tank.   I can jump in the middle of x4 spawn or even x6, wait a second for Beta Decay to lower their defense, and then mezz the entire spawn for 8 seconds while I start killing them. 

 

[tidge]

I kinda love the Presence pool... both for Invoke Panic and Unrelenting. The latter is a power I've 6-slotted with Defense, or Heals, or franken-slotted with both. Global recharge benefits Unrelenting.

 

For melee characters, I really like Combat Teleport. I'm not a fan of Fold Space, but IMO if a player wants to build towards that... Combat Teleport should be the first pick from the pool. I shake my head when I see melee characters (Tankers, Brutes usually) relying on Fold Space but I almost never see them using Combat Teleport... it feels to me like they are leaving a LOT on the table by not using Combat Teleport to get to enemies... or rescue allies... it has a much faster recharge time and doesn't require a ToHit check. Of course, the player literally has to be reading the room, which is probably where the deficit lies.

 

As mentioned above, have a targeting bind (I'd have Sappers, Cairns, Sorcerers, Surgeons all on the same bind) and then add a targeting macro to BAMF to your target and wallop.

 

 

 

 

[ninja surprise]

On 8/11/2025 at 7:02 AM, tidge said:

For melee characters, I really like Combat Teleport. I'm not a fan of Fold Space, but IMO if a player wants to build towards that... Combat Teleport should be the first pick from the pool. I shake my head when I see melee characters (Tankers, Brutes usually) relying on Fold Space but I almost never see them using Combat Teleport... it feels to me like they are leaving a LOT on the table by not using Combat Teleport to get to enemies... or rescue allies... it has a much faster recharge time and doesn't require a ToHit check. Of course, the player literally has to be reading the room, which is probably where the deficit lies.

 

Well, that depends on technique. Combat TP is pretty short range.

I take Teleport and make at least two binds for it, one to TP max distance forward for traveling, and other with "powexec_location target" to TP me to a target, as if I had Combat TP. It's only a tiny bit slower but has much greater range. And I can even use the team roster or the mini-map to select a teammate I can't see and TP right to them if they need help.

Then if I'm building for Fold Space, I'll take Teleport Target so I can recall friends.

 

So if I'm facing Sappers, I press Tab to target them automatically, like so:

tab "bindloadfilesilent tab.txt$$target_enemy_next$$target_custom_next enemy alive Sapper"

Then Q to TP to it, then I smash the Sapper.

 

[UltraAlt]

On 8/10/2025 at 1:14 AM, normalperson said:

Is there any strategy for that? 

 

Teams I'm on tend to have teleport target on one or more characters.

We teleport them around the corner and out of the line-of-sight of their mob and jump them.

If a character or more on the team have holds, we uses the hold(s) on the Sappers as soon as they materialize from the teleport target or first if we directly engage a mob with sappers. 

[tidge]

6 hours ago, ninja surprise said:

 

Well, that depends on technique. Combat TP is pretty short range.

 

 

Combat Teleport is base 100' and the range of the teleport can be enhanced.