STF PUG Experience

[Adamence]

So I was looking for something to do very early this morning (at about 1AM) and so I went to IP and volunteered EigenValerie's blasting services for an STF PUG.  We got a team together, but unfortunately, after two missions, the stone tank and a scrapper vanished, so we had to restart, but man those first two missions went by quickly.  So we went back to IP, and rebuilt the team and started again.  I must say, this team was really built pretty solid for the STF.  The team members were a Stone/SS tank, two fire/kins, two ill/rads, a pb, a dark/regen scrapper and myself (fire/energy blaster.)  We literally tore through the AVs, but more on that later. 

Now this was my third time running the STF, and my first time with a group of people from outside the community, so I'm writing this up to offer everyone a view of how others do it, and in the hopes we can start doing the TF faster, so we can start doing them in a night instead of split up over two days. 

Just because I have no idea if  there's anyone around who hasn't done the TF and doesn't want it spoiled for them, I'll toss the rest under the spoiler tag.  (Which I have no idea how to use, so I'll go find that out now...)

[spoiler]The first mission was a breeze, just destroyed web factory parts until we hit the cutscene, skipping as much unnecessary battle as possible.  Ran back to the AV and knocked him over in about a minute.  No problems at all. 

The second mission was really only annoying because of the cutscene you're forced to sit through.  We get it, Dr. Evil Meejub is kinda dumb, it's funny, but once you've seen it once, you don't need to see it any more.  Each of the AVs in the second mission comes with its own wonderful spawn of baddies for all that fulcrum shifting goodness, and with two sets of rad debuffs, none of the four offered any serious trouble.

The third mission was much faster than my previous two times running it, namely because one of the illusion/rads also had recall friend.  Stealthed to the end, ported everyone, then two quick sweeps around the room (once for CoT and once for the vines) and a very fast AV fight later, and the stoney has the fabulous Evil Meejub stopping power.

The fourth mission started out with some good luck.  The search for the security guard or whatever he was ended rather quickly as he was in the first spawn we checked (which was the closest one to the start.)  That alone saved us quite a bit of time, so I'd naturally expect this mission to generally take longer most of the time.  Once inside, the AVs were handled in a similar manner to in mission two, and Dr. Evil Meejub was no trouble at all.

The fifth mission also involved a bit of good luck on our part.  First off, we cleared one of the ramps leading up to the land bridge towards the AVs.  We cleared both sides of the bridge, but you could get away with just clearing the left side.  We decided to take out Ghost Widow first, and with a bit of SB and invisibility, one of the kins went forward and tried pulling her with siphon speed.  She came towards us, but Scirroco came much faster, the stoney grabbed Scirroco's aggro, and GW decided to go home for a nap or something.  So we took what we got, and pounded Scirroco firmly into the ground.  Using the same technique, we pulled GW again, she came to us and we started pummeling her.  At about 50% health, Black Scorpion decided to show up, so we had two AVs to deal with, but with some immobilizes on Scorpion, he wasn't any trouble and immobilizes on GW kept her from getting into anyone's melee range.  The Stoney kept taunting Ghost Widow as we pounded her from range, with no one in melee range for her to heal herself from.  After our longest AV fight of the TF, she fell, and quickly afterwards so did Scorp.  We pulled Mako up the ramp, and with three sets of leadership buffs on us and the pair of rad debuffs, had no trouble dispatching him.

Then came the fun part, Lord Recluse himself.  We cleared one of the trenches leading to his tower, but we also should have cleared the trench running parallel to his tower, because when we started attacking the towers, they rushed us resulting in deaths.  Also, we didn't wipe out the flier, and we really should have.  The plan should be to lear the trench, then the flier, then if the flier respawns later, don't worry about it.  Oh well, that's not how we did it, so we had to put up with occasional flier aggro.  The tank and a rad took care of Lord Recluse, pulling him to the side of his entry way, away from the towers and away from the path of the flier, while the rest of us started clearing the towers.  Unfortunately, no one had anything to really keep the repairmen from getting close to the towers, so we had to kill them very quickly.  Something like repel or hurricane would have been a huge help, but we still managed.  We took down the towers Red, Yellow, Green and Blue (which is how we've been doing it, and apparently how everyone else does it too) and then Lord Recluse was toast. 

We restarted the TF at approximately 1:30AM, and we finished at approximatley 4:00AM, so the entire thing from start to finish was only about two and a half hours.  There was a great team build and some luck which contributed to getting it done so quickly, but I don't think it would be too difficult for us to start running them in the 3-3.5 hour range. 

My thoughts after all my runs through the STF are that team build, while not necessary, helps a lot.  The second time I ran the STF, we had three tanks, which was definitely tank overkill.  One good stone or two other tanks should be plenty of tanking.  Debuffs are so important.  Having two rads to debuff AVs made things so quick and painful (for the AVs.)  Illusion as a controller primary is excellent just to grab the Alpha off the AVs you're not pulling.  Having a handful of controllers was helpful for the Inner Circle, especially to keep Scorpion and GW immobilized.  Having a kin was great, but two was probably overkill, but I'll rarely complain about having two SBs on me, and the double transference and double transfusion helped a lot, but having an empath instead of one of the kins would have been even better.  As for damage dealers, I'd say you generally want to go with blasters over scrappers, not that scrappers are bad, it's just really nice to have all that extra damage for fighting GW without needing anyone in melee range.   

So that was my STF PUG experience.  It was fast, it was fun, it was filled with rewards and gave that great sense of accomplishment you feel after saving the world, or eating a big sandwich.[/spoiler]

Well, I think that's about it, if I remember anything else later, I'll add it. 

Edit: One thing I totally just remembered that was drastically different from the other runs of the STF I've done.  Not one Shivan was ever summoned. 

[MikeB7]

'Evil Meejub'...   :lol:

[El Condor]

He DOES look like him. I also noticed Emjay slipping out just before the cut-scene.  Hmmmm..... :huh:

EC