Well for pure convenience I pug this event on normal across multiple toons every day. It really seems to be a flip of a coin as to which type of group I get. The runs tend to either go as smooth as silk or they descend into complete chaos.
One thing I have noticed is that I seem to come across an extraordinary number of cruiser fliers who seem to think they can't close rifts, even when the station is fully powered up. I've lost count of the number of times I've seen cruisers engage enemy ships and then fly off leaving the rift.
Although my personal favourite was watching an engineer in a Mirror Vo'Quv die over and over again. I applaud the guy for this achievement because I fly one on an engineer myself so I know how durable that ship is. Even when engaging multiple Typhoons my shields barely drop and my hull rarely goes below 50% and given the amount of healing options available to that ship any damage is quickly fixed.
As with the other events, high ratio of leechers. Don't blame them - blame the design of the STFs and support giving a damn about leeching. If you open your mouth to rant about it, guess who is guaranteed a ban and who gets away with leeching.
People often say that raw DPS isn't enough for something. 99% of the time, they just don't have enough raw DPS. :cool:
Yeah. I feel like posting Picard pics when I see Scimitars and other big ships with glorious names fight hard and for their life against 3 mirror frigates. :rolleyes:
however another fight, i deliberately drew aggro because another player was more insistent on closing the portals then actual combat, so i was left carrying dead weight. but after a few of these i think he or she got the massage and started trading aggro on rift mobs, one closed and switched.
I'm sorry, but how were they dead weight?
If what I've read of your posts is true, you not only could certainly handle all that aggro, your aggro rating is probably high enough to draw fire even if you're just sitting there closing rifts. Sounds like the other guy was doing it exactly right, and probably thinking "This guy is the BEST TANK EVAAAAHHHH!!!!"
"Logic is a little tweeting bird chirping in a meadow. Logic is a wreath of pretty flowers which smell BAD." - Spock
Since we're sharing some tactics, one thing I like to do on my Vesta is if I come across a rift that's guarded and can't close it without drawing fire is I fire scramble sensors. So confuse the guards. Get them shooting at my runabouts or whatevs, and close the rift. Then bam, go back to finishing up the enemies.
Works pretty good in a pinch. At least until the overwhelm starts, then there's just too much FAW spam as some have noted, for even that tactic.
And the funny thing is when you switch from close rifts to fight the ships, because you dont have a choice, since you are alone, and you wait for someone to come to close the rifts. And someone comes, and instead of closing the rifts, he starts fighting the ships as well with you. Yeah, i like company, but seriously??? how people cant be so blind.. sigh.
Sure it is. I ran this last night on my Rom in her Scimitar and was with 3 other Scimitars and a Fleet Defiant. We wound up waiting the better part of 4 minutes in the first phase as each of us was more than capable of wiping out the initial trio of Mirandas and closing a portal. We sat above the station commenting to each other how easy this mission is. DPS ships can easily do this.
Oh DPS can totally wreck this mission. BUT, the caveat is, to get to where you've got 4 minutes left and nothing to do, you have to close the rifts. Which harkens back to the OP getting yelled at for ... closing rifts.
I've had some runs go insanely smooth, but the common denominator among all of them is: The rifts get closed. I've had some runs go pear shaped even with a lot of damage dealers in the group, and the common denominator there has been no one's closing rifts.
Sometimes it's ignorance (people don't know to do that). Sometimes it's happenstance (too many rifts in one spot, so the NPC FAW starts to make it impossible for anyone to close a rift until you look around and see nothing but open rifts and Typhoons getting on your case). Usually it's a bit of both. And sometimes an AFKer thrown in for good measure.
If what I've read of your posts is true, you not only could certainly handle all that aggro, your aggro rating is probably high enough to draw fire even if you're just sitting there closing rifts. Sounds like the other guy was doing it exactly right, and probably thinking "This guy is the BEST TANK EVAAAAHHHH!!!!"
That is very true. I could grab aggro with my Hegh'ta by pew pew spam, and reasonably tank it on Normal, even with a Typhoon. Multiple Typhoons, not so much.
I could also stay cloaked all the way to the rift and shut it while the bigger ship FAWs. How is this a problem?
Usually, i go for the rift because when i CSV spam to tank in my BoP, the other person starts pew pewing instead of closing the rift.
If you are in a big ship, why cant you tank? Especially the chicken cruisers that patrol already cleared satelites to power it up again while staying out of the fire.
Please clarify. Are you suggesting it's not helpful to click on the satelites after they get turned off?
I believe what he's talking about are cruisers who do nothing but sit next to one satellite and only power that single one while doing nothing else. I've seen it a few times myself, especially with cloaking cruisers. They will power the satellite and then cloak and sit there. They don't even move to go power other satellites. It's pretty much one step short of leeching.
If all you're after is the spark plug, everyone can sit there doing nothing until the 2nd round starts. That's the pitfall of timed content.
In my experience, more often, it's everyone sitting around because all the rifts have been closed and there's still 2+ mins left on the timer....
If there's 25 or some rifts, why not just make it so you can't proceed until the rifts are all closed? Why have the clock at all? It seems like a shameless attempt at extending playtime (in addition to the 1min briefing, and unskippable 2nd round briefing).
Also it's BS that only lvl 50 rep chars can access the event. Mirror has always been great for low level STF spamming for exp, I don't get why you remove that? I'm incredibly sick of episodes, and the foundry doesn't even pay half the exp an episode does (wtf, i thought you want people to use the foundry?).
As someone with two sci characters to run through this every day, I try as hard as I can to close rifts. Unfortunately, science ships are a bit lacking in DPS, so by the time I've got the area cleared of ships, another portal's opened up and I get sucked into an endless loop of defending myself against infinite FAW cruisers and ninja Mirandas. It's especially frustrating when I'm just about to close a rift, then a group spawns at the next one over, and one Miranda is in range just long enough to ping me with one shot, and I have to start over, and now this rift's spawned a new group and AUUUUGHHH
In short, it's not as easy as you make it sound.
I am NikkoJT, Foundry author and terrible player. Follow me!
There used to be a picture here, but they changed signatures and I can't be bothered to replace it.
As someone with two sci characters to run through this every day, I try as hard as I can to close rifts. Unfortunately, science ships are a bit lacking in DPS, so by the time I've got the area cleared of ships, another portal's opened up and I get sucked into an endless loop of defending myself against infinite FAW cruisers and ninja Mirandas. It's especially frustrating when I'm just about to close a rift, then a group spawns at the next one over, and one Miranda is in range just long enough to ping me with one shot, and I have to start over, and now this rift's spawned a new group and AUUUUGHHH
In short, it's not as easy as you make it sound.
Best advice I can give you is to not go off on your own in a sci ship. Shadow someone else and wait for them to grab aggro from the surrounding ships. Once they have it, close the rift and then help them mop up what's left. I have great success doing that.
Best advice I can give you is to not go off on your own in a sci ship. Shadow someone else and wait for them to grab aggro from the surrounding ships. Once they have it, close the rift and then help them mop up what's left. I have great success doing that.
Carriers are good for this. Your minions can target and attack at 15km+, so if you engage them all that way, you'll be able to swagger in uncloaked and dissipate the rift.
I believe what he's talking about are cruisers who do nothing but sit next to one satellite and only power that single one while doing nothing else. I've seen it a few times myself, especially with cloaking cruisers. They will power the satellite and then cloak and sit there. They don't even move to go power other satellites. It's pretty much one step short of leeching.
Yes, this precisely. I see that every other day at least. At least 1 in 5 times.
I can understand DPS cruisers. I can even appreciate cruisers that want to be the rift closer while i grab aggro on the Typhoon with my Hegh'ta BoP.
I dont understand the ones with cruisers that just power on one satelite when it turns off, over and over. Yeah, the cowards who sit 150+ km away, you can identify them as shameless leechers. Do the chicken cruisers have some modicum of shame about their leeching, so they pretend by flipping the switch on a single cleared satelite?
What's really humorous (in a sick way) is in a few pugs I ran in, everyone in the science ships and cruisers were out playing DPS cowboy, and I was going around in my 7.9k or so DPS S'Golth, closing rifts and activating power relays.
Now on other pugs I have seen ships pair off. 1 escort and one science ship or cruiser, and start clearing rifts in two groups, while the fifth guy defends Vauthil. These groups of course tnd to get maximum marks. So as with all pugging it's a spin of the roulette wheel.
Carriers are good for this. Your minions can target and attack at 15km+, so if you engage them all that way, you'll be able to swagger in uncloaked and dissipate the rift.
Cool! Next time, i will run my Vo'quv instead of my Hegh'ta to see how it does for me. I am far more suited to BoPs, but i dont even run Sci in my Hegh'ta any more for this Mirror thing.
So slow, though
I dont look forward to getting on top of a rift with my slow Vo'quv.
As someone with two sci characters to run through this every day, I try as hard as I can to close rifts. Unfortunately, science ships are a bit lacking in DPS, so by the time I've got the area cleared of ships, another portal's opened up and I get sucked into an endless loop of defending myself against infinite FAW cruisers and ninja Mirandas. It's especially frustrating when I'm just about to close a rift, then a group spawns at the next one over, and one Miranda is in range just long enough to ping me with one shot, and I have to start over, and now this rift's spawned a new group and AUUUUGHHH
In short, it's not as easy as you make it sound.
Not always. My fed science destroyer can close rifts and wipe ships effectively. Science ships can really kill the ships on the mirror invasion event as well. But they will take more time, specially if your ship is based on beams. I have a quantum + transphasic cluster + phaser build on my fed science destroyer, plus GWIII and TRII plus other great science aoe skills, and it owns. In normal circunstances, i can wipe out the first groups of "easy" ships in seconds, and i can close the rift right away, now the last groups are the harder ones.
But i use to close rifts first, when my team is 75% tacticals.
As people say, there must be 2 guys in every rift, if possible. It is maybe the essential and most simply rule of this event, and for some reason a lot of people seem to not understand it.
I am doing this even for 3 of my 6 toons, and i am already tired of it. I need 5 more transporters for each one, and i dont see the end of this event lol.
It is really so bad when you feel that you need to "work" instead of "play". Really really bad. But well, cryptic this is the way they took since time ago.
My primary is an engineer so generally I try to deal with the upgrades. And then once thats taken care of I will pop my threat generating stance and tank the ships that no body bothered to close rifts on. Do I get yelled at, sure, but my goal at that point is to keep them off the station and on me. My build is designed all around surviving.
Do I close rifts? Yeah of course. But my first priorities are like I said, the upgrades and keeping the ships off the station. I do my job. It just frustrates me to no end though when people derp thru the event.
Example: Yesterday I was on my klingon, flying a bird of prey. I had some noob put me on follow and botted the entire thing. Once I figured out what he was doing I intentionally would fly thru the station and get him caught up on that. I really hate lazy and stupid people, just sayin. :mad:
I can sneak or distract equally well, so I just modify my tactics based on what the pugs are doing. When I see them dive in a draw aggro, I sneak (amusing to do in a 25k JHDC), and if I see a Dyson ship cloak and sneak I'll fly in shooting.
You've got to be adaptable. The wildest variable of all is other people.
I am running 5 chars on this and usually get good pugs for some reason. The first few days I had the horror stories told here but lately it has been 2/3 minutes of waiting for the dreadnought to show up on almost every run.
I always do the same thing. Pick two sats, power them, then clean the rifts between them. Repeat once the defense goes up a level.
Also, some tips to maximize marks:
-Run normal if you pug.
-It is best to kill the ships before closing the rift if they are a common group of 2 frigates +cruiser/escort since that prevents damage to the base. In the same venue, it is best to avoid rifts that are too close together, just go close other rifts, eventually the whole team will deal with them, once all the others are closed.
-Some CC consoles like antimatter spread can help close difficult rifts. Pets work as well, even something as simple as the bop/aquarius of a bortasqu/odyssey can draw aggro long enough to close a rift.
-You only get interrupted at closing rifts if you take hull damage. Powers that prevent hull damage can let you close difficult rifts. For example the warbird power quantum absorption or the Vesta shield bubble.
Some free advice: Try to avoid pugging in PVEs that require more thought than "blast everything".
If you haven't already, type /channel_join PublicEliteSTF into your chatbox. What I've been doing with MIE after I pugged the first one and got my TRIBBLE handed to me is making private instances, starting with any fleetmates that are available and filling out the roster from that channel.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
PUG are the only thing which keep STF interesting to be honest.
These elite channels are not only unnecessary with the current difficulty level of STF, they make for incredible boring runs if they actually provide high DPS teams.
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
PUG are the only thing which keep STF interesting to be honest.
These elite channels are not only unnecessary with the current difficulty level of STF, they make for incredible boring runs if they actually provide high DPS teams.
Actually, I still consider it pugging, just with a more consistent quality of team.
When I've got a roster composed entirely of the core twelve or so guys from Strike Team Alpha, things tend to be super easy. We know each other's ships, skillsets, and moves (because we PVP against each other as well as PVEing), our ships are well-specced (not gonna say incredibly well, but last time somebody had a parser going the Andraste chalked up 8.5k DPS), and we coordinate over TeamSpeak.
You go in with a PubESTF roster, the ships you get are a crapshoot but the captains generally at least know the routine. It's still chaotic, though: Typing takes too long and I have to pause my keybound firing cycle, so you can't really coordinate. With exceptions: Last night we had one rift left on the DN stage and the DN jumped out. While we waited for it to come back I texted one of the science guys to pop the rift when it became poppable again, and told the the other three to help me draw fire. Worked like a charm.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
My strategy of late has been to look for someone fighting, help them kill nearby stuff, and then close/power everything nearby. In my runs, if at least one other player's doing something similar, and no one's a complete idiot, then you get at least 2 minutes to sit and talk, while waiting on the dreadnaut.
i tend to pug this with one or two friends/fleetmates accompanying, so even if we have a couple idiots on the team who aggro everything, we can still get things done.
may not be perfect or pretty but we do it
also..is it just me or is it high time cryptic makes a cooldown meter for your toons when it comes to these 20 hr items? idk about the rest of you but there are times i can't remember when my cooldowns are up when i'm doing content like this
KDF for Life! Romulan at Heart Fed cause they made me ~ :P
Comments
One thing I have noticed is that I seem to come across an extraordinary number of cruiser fliers who seem to think they can't close rifts, even when the station is fully powered up. I've lost count of the number of times I've seen cruisers engage enemy ships and then fly off leaving the rift.
Although my personal favourite was watching an engineer in a Mirror Vo'Quv die over and over again. I applaud the guy for this achievement because I fly one on an engineer myself so I know how durable that ship is. Even when engaging multiple Typhoons my shields barely drop and my hull rarely goes below 50% and given the amount of healing options available to that ship any damage is quickly fixed.
Yeah. I feel like posting Picard pics when I see Scimitars and other big ships with glorious names fight hard and for their life against 3 mirror frigates. :rolleyes:
If what I've read of your posts is true, you not only could certainly handle all that aggro, your aggro rating is probably high enough to draw fire even if you're just sitting there closing rifts. Sounds like the other guy was doing it exactly right, and probably thinking "This guy is the BEST TANK EVAAAAHHHH!!!!"
Thanks. I've been reading the new comic, and been missing the olden days and the game.
Works pretty good in a pinch. At least until the overwhelm starts, then there's just too much FAW spam as some have noted, for even that tactic.
Oh DPS can totally wreck this mission. BUT, the caveat is, to get to where you've got 4 minutes left and nothing to do, you have to close the rifts. Which harkens back to the OP getting yelled at for ... closing rifts.
I've had some runs go insanely smooth, but the common denominator among all of them is: The rifts get closed. I've had some runs go pear shaped even with a lot of damage dealers in the group, and the common denominator there has been no one's closing rifts.
Sometimes it's ignorance (people don't know to do that). Sometimes it's happenstance (too many rifts in one spot, so the NPC FAW starts to make it impossible for anyone to close a rift until you look around and see nothing but open rifts and Typhoons getting on your case). Usually it's a bit of both. And sometimes an AFKer thrown in for good measure.
That's PUGging for ya!
That is very true. I could grab aggro with my Hegh'ta by pew pew spam, and reasonably tank it on Normal, even with a Typhoon. Multiple Typhoons, not so much.
I could also stay cloaked all the way to the rift and shut it while the bigger ship FAWs. How is this a problem?
Usually, i go for the rift because when i CSV spam to tank in my BoP, the other person starts pew pewing instead of closing the rift.
If you are in a big ship, why cant you tank? Especially the chicken cruisers that patrol already cleared satelites to power it up again while staying out of the fire.
IKS Korrasami (Fleet B'rel Bird of Prey Retrofit T5-U)
Please clarify. Are you suggesting it's not helpful to click on the satelites after they get turned off?
I believe what he's talking about are cruisers who do nothing but sit next to one satellite and only power that single one while doing nothing else. I've seen it a few times myself, especially with cloaking cruisers. They will power the satellite and then cloak and sit there. They don't even move to go power other satellites. It's pretty much one step short of leeching.
Mine Trap Supporter
OHHHHHHHHHHHHH. That does indeed clarify. Thank you very much.
In my experience, more often, it's everyone sitting around because all the rifts have been closed and there's still 2+ mins left on the timer....
If there's 25 or some rifts, why not just make it so you can't proceed until the rifts are all closed? Why have the clock at all? It seems like a shameless attempt at extending playtime (in addition to the 1min briefing, and unskippable 2nd round briefing).
Also it's BS that only lvl 50 rep chars can access the event. Mirror has always been great for low level STF spamming for exp, I don't get why you remove that? I'm incredibly sick of episodes, and the foundry doesn't even pay half the exp an episode does (wtf, i thought you want people to use the foundry?).
In short, it's not as easy as you make it sound.
There used to be a picture here, but they changed signatures and I can't be bothered to replace it.
Best advice I can give you is to not go off on your own in a sci ship. Shadow someone else and wait for them to grab aggro from the surrounding ships. Once they have it, close the rift and then help them mop up what's left. I have great success doing that.
Mine Trap Supporter
Carriers are good for this. Your minions can target and attack at 15km+, so if you engage them all that way, you'll be able to swagger in uncloaked and dissipate the rift.
Yes, this precisely. I see that every other day at least. At least 1 in 5 times.
I can understand DPS cruisers. I can even appreciate cruisers that want to be the rift closer while i grab aggro on the Typhoon with my Hegh'ta BoP.
I dont understand the ones with cruisers that just power on one satelite when it turns off, over and over. Yeah, the cowards who sit 150+ km away, you can identify them as shameless leechers. Do the chicken cruisers have some modicum of shame about their leeching, so they pretend by flipping the switch on a single cleared satelite?
IKS Korrasami (Fleet B'rel Bird of Prey Retrofit T5-U)
Now on other pugs I have seen ships pair off. 1 escort and one science ship or cruiser, and start clearing rifts in two groups, while the fifth guy defends Vauthil. These groups of course tnd to get maximum marks. So as with all pugging it's a spin of the roulette wheel.
Cool! Next time, i will run my Vo'quv instead of my Hegh'ta to see how it does for me. I am far more suited to BoPs, but i dont even run Sci in my Hegh'ta any more for this Mirror thing.
So slow, though
I dont look forward to getting on top of a rift with my slow Vo'quv.
IKS Korrasami (Fleet B'rel Bird of Prey Retrofit T5-U)
Not always. My fed science destroyer can close rifts and wipe ships effectively. Science ships can really kill the ships on the mirror invasion event as well. But they will take more time, specially if your ship is based on beams. I have a quantum + transphasic cluster + phaser build on my fed science destroyer, plus GWIII and TRII plus other great science aoe skills, and it owns. In normal circunstances, i can wipe out the first groups of "easy" ships in seconds, and i can close the rift right away, now the last groups are the harder ones.
But i use to close rifts first, when my team is 75% tacticals.
As people say, there must be 2 guys in every rift, if possible. It is maybe the essential and most simply rule of this event, and for some reason a lot of people seem to not understand it.
I am doing this even for 3 of my 6 toons, and i am already tired of it. I need 5 more transporters for each one, and i dont see the end of this event lol.
It is really so bad when you feel that you need to "work" instead of "play". Really really bad. But well, cryptic this is the way they took since time ago.
Do I close rifts? Yeah of course. But my first priorities are like I said, the upgrades and keeping the ships off the station. I do my job.
Example: Yesterday I was on my klingon, flying a bird of prey. I had some noob put me on follow and botted the entire thing. Once I figured out what he was doing I intentionally would fly thru the station and get him caught up on that. I really hate lazy and stupid people, just sayin. :mad:
You've got to be adaptable. The wildest variable of all is other people.
I always do the same thing. Pick two sats, power them, then clean the rifts between them. Repeat once the defense goes up a level.
Also, some tips to maximize marks:
-Run normal if you pug.
-It is best to kill the ships before closing the rift if they are a common group of 2 frigates +cruiser/escort since that prevents damage to the base. In the same venue, it is best to avoid rifts that are too close together, just go close other rifts, eventually the whole team will deal with them, once all the others are closed.
-Some CC consoles like antimatter spread can help close difficult rifts. Pets work as well, even something as simple as the bop/aquarius of a bortasqu/odyssey can draw aggro long enough to close a rift.
-You only get interrupted at closing rifts if you take hull damage. Powers that prevent hull damage can let you close difficult rifts. For example the warbird power quantum absorption or the Vesta shield bubble.
Out of the 10 times I have done the event, I think only 3 of them so far have been truly successful...
If you haven't already, type /channel_join PublicEliteSTF into your chatbox. What I've been doing with MIE after I pugged the first one and got my TRIBBLE handed to me is making private instances, starting with any fleetmates that are available and filling out the roster from that channel.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
These elite channels are not only unnecessary with the current difficulty level of STF, they make for incredible boring runs if they actually provide high DPS teams.
Actually, I still consider it pugging, just with a more consistent quality of team.
When I've got a roster composed entirely of the core twelve or so guys from Strike Team Alpha, things tend to be super easy. We know each other's ships, skillsets, and moves (because we PVP against each other as well as PVEing), our ships are well-specced (not gonna say incredibly well, but last time somebody had a parser going the Andraste chalked up 8.5k DPS), and we coordinate over TeamSpeak.
You go in with a PubESTF roster, the ships you get are a crapshoot but the captains generally at least know the routine. It's still chaotic, though: Typing takes too long and I have to pause my keybound firing cycle, so you can't really coordinate. With exceptions: Last night we had one rift left on the DN stage and the DN jumped out. While we waited for it to come back I texted one of the science guys to pop the rift when it became poppable again, and told the the other three to help me draw fire. Worked like a charm.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
may not be perfect or pretty but we do it
also..is it just me or is it high time cryptic makes a cooldown meter for your toons when it comes to these 20 hr items? idk about the rest of you but there are times i can't remember when my cooldowns are up when i'm doing content like this