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Azure Nebula, Please educate the people
captinwh0
Member Posts: 783 Arc User
Since delta, i have only completed it twice. and usually very close, like 1 or 2 seconds left
and that was when their was someone to scan while the others distract,
everyone tries to dps their way through it and fails every time.
i have had a few teams that did the distract and sneak approach but failed due to FAW.
So if i am wrong please enlighten me.
and a request, whenever someone enters a queue please try to write a quick tip in team chat just in case
that way people may eventually learn
half the time i think its noobs that don't think it through.
and dev's please get rid of faw on azure nebula, it would make it much more possible to do.
Thanks ^^
and that was when their was someone to scan while the others distract,
everyone tries to dps their way through it and fails every time.
i have had a few teams that did the distract and sneak approach but failed due to FAW.
So if i am wrong please enlighten me.
and a request, whenever someone enters a queue please try to write a quick tip in team chat just in case
that way people may eventually learnhalf the time i think its noobs that don't think it through.
and dev's please get rid of faw on azure nebula, it would make it much more possible to do.
Thanks ^^
]Post edited by captinwh0 on
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Hope this helps.
Now, if you look for a challenge, or something different with your friends/fleetmate, then you can plan ahead, but this topic seems to be aimed to pug.
Gotta be advanced and is problem I find with this game is that being an expected generalization being this is the first mmorpg for most of the players still playing or starting to play. As well there are people who are just wanting to do spam 1 button combat from various games that take no skill to play.
This is just my opinion but something that should have been added long long ago would be a personal ranking system for these queues. Roughly the system calculating how much of an effort per person contributed to the missions objectives. So roughly you have to learn it on normal mode before you can acquire a score high enough to get into advanced so that the queue system can help match making at a competitive level so its not wasting time for players to be shoved into a match with 4 out of 5 ppl not knowing what they are doing just because they know the reward is higher they are going to queue up for the big reward even if they aren't ready for it.
Correction, people who think they know what dps is but don't and try to dps fail every time. Someone who knows how to actually do DPS can solo a 5 on advanced without any effort. Its always funny when 4 of us go into a pug ANRA and camp the spawn points, 1 person each. The little pug is running from point to point with nothing to do.
Normal IS the problem with advanced. NORMAL trains players to zerk in, solo, and kill all the ships then release the captive. Its pretty easy -- even the tier 5 ship spawns can be soloed by many players, and duoed by even some pretty raw recruits.
So it teaches people to do it the hard way. So on advanced, what do people do? The same thing... zerk in, try to kill the ships...
Look at crystalline catastrophe, it has an in-game guide, and it's not very hard, but more complex queues like borg disconnected and azure nebula do not.
Method one
ship 1: repulser beam, it away from trapped ships, gravity well the mob.
Ship 2: free trapped ship.
this will help with timed beginning
Method two, solid dps race, there are many DPS build channels out there for those who would rather take this approach.
The problem with Azure is people running the Advanced one for the R&D material. Normal is far too easy. With advanced, I try and help people, suggest the best way to go, but you end up getting ignored or told to STFU. And yet it is these people that even cause the fail.
They either don't have tactics or DPS. I'm lucky in that I've gotten my ship capable now that I usually end up doing 2/3 ships before another is finished and that is not necessarily just lvl 1/2 ships.
People may not have chat on which is fine as they may just be out to have fun and are not necessarily noobs. You can only get a feel for that if they respond in chat.
my bad, advanced
The old Crystalline Catastrophe used to have little to no guide and it was an exercise in futility - griefers, or people who just didn't understand the mechanics of that particular scenario.
Azure Nebula gives you enough to go on as is. The one big difference I noticed doing normal versus advanced is that the range from which you can disable the tractor beams is about halved for advanced. This means you have to kill or lure/push/pull the Tholians to get close enough to disable the tractors.
Like someone else said, it can be done, but requires actual DPS to clear Tholians by killing them, or some clever tactics/coordination to draw them away so that someone can free the ships.
Unless you have 30k+ DPS, sci will handle the mobs much faster than most builds.
Unfortunately method 1 is not doable by players flying a T6 KDF starship since they only have lieutenant science stations. At least Romulan players flying the T6 Faeht has a Lt. Cmdr science station and can use the repulsor beam or gravity well ability.
You can clear Scimitars with 20k DPS with some time left over.
People don't understand the mechanics of the current, revamped CC either. Saw in team chat a while back someone cursing at people for being so close to the entity and how the shards healed it. ::facepalm::
Why? Because I decided that the "1 distracts, 1 rescues" strategy is a silly waste of time and I solo. I can usually free two ships on my own (if they're low numbers), and I'm more successful if someone comes along with me to attack the ships. That way, I hope, one other person on the team can save one ship and we can succeed.
So I have to ask: if the "1 distracts, 1 rescues" strategy is so awesome, then why can't one player just go around and free ships while everyone else fights? Puggers like to fight, so people who like that strategy should be able to go from station to station doing tractor beams and succeed every time.
But that's not what these folks do. Instead they complain that no one else is rescuing. Maybe it's because freeing ships while be shot at by Tholians with FAW and other AOE attacks takes a lot longer than just killing the ships?
You can DPS your way through it if you don't have a terrible build (if everyone had at least 12K dps this mission would be a cakewalk). This is probably why the other ANRA farmers - I'm getting to know the crowd who's doing the mission repeatedly - do what I do and just kill everything and then free together.
And to the people advocating TBR on this thread: good luck with that! Remember you have to push about a dozen ships (on a 3 station) 10km in the same direction to actually let someone rescue. Not saying that it can't be done (I've seen it done a few times), but usually what happens is a a few ships get pushed like 7km away and all these TBR-happy n00bs have done is weaken my CSV and waste all of our time. Even worse is when they push the Tholians into the Rom ship... Holy Hannah, that's so helpful!
Costs around 2 million ec on the exchange right now. That's less than the EC you'll get from selling 7 Argonites.
I'm not saying that it can't be done since I've seen it done effectively. I'm just saying that >3/4 of the time TBR's in ANRA means the ships are scattered, still within 10km of the rom ship, and I have to attack them one at a time.
You're right, I should have been clearer: don't use TBR unless you actually know what you're doing.
It's the third type who are the real risk in the mission. Why? Because they either insist on soloing everything and often mess it up. Or they do fine soloing one point to start and then go around telling everyone how TRIBBLE they are which distracts from the mission.
The really good players are those who realise they can solo a point but don't feel the need to tell everyone and just go along with whatever happens. If they need to solo a point they do so. If they see a teammate getting bogged down they go help. These are the kind of people I like to be in a match with, not some elitist fool who thinks he is God.
It is possible to solo points in the mission with high enough DPS but for the purposes of playing in a pug surely team play is the better option?
I don't think there's time to do this. I solo a point and hope that the other 4 can do two. Hoping for team strategy in a pug is useless. Even if you push the tholians out of the way, it's pretty unlikely that anyone will cotton on and free the warbird. More likely they will complain.
When I do this mission I expect to fail and am pleasantly surprised not to. In contrast to BDA pug which Will fail.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Ofc, in a pug, the 2 strategies of repel and free or aggro and free are quite good respect of the dps approach (that i, personally, use and prefer).
Btw, we need more guides for new players. I remember in the past when the community always did a good job forming guides and walkthrough for the captains. Now, 'cause of this lack in general activity, lot of things are just like "forsaken".
Idk if there is an ANRA guide out there, maybe im just wrong, but what i'm saying is that with more infos and tips on the forum, maybe even the "evul" advanced qs can be done in pug
A kind of 'queue mastery' skill as it were.
There's this one:
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1310601&highlight=anra
ANRA PUG is still very much pot luck. A couple of days ago I was in one (with sarcasmdetector as it turned out) that ran like clockwork. Next day, the mission failed largely because the scimitar didn't attack for some reason. These days I just assume that no-one else is going to rescue the Rom so I have to do it, and I just follow the ship that looks like it will be best at pulling aggro.
But I respawn
I am duranium!
First you have to make a decision on why you are running ANRA:
Are you doing it to farm marks or to farm 1 piece of Argonite?
If you are doing it for marks then stop, Leave the queue and join ANR Normal instead. Both ANRA and ANR give the same amount of
marks per ship freed, but you can free a lot more ships in ANR due to the reduced difficulty.
Second you have to consider if you are ready for ANRA:
Are you able to solo a Three of Five spawn in Normal?
If the answer is No then stop, Leave the queue and join ANR Normal instead.
The One spawn in ANRA is significantly harder than a 3 or 5 in Normal.
The very basic minimum requirements for ANRA is that you should be capible of soloing a 1 or 2 in about a minute and a 1/2.
Preferable you should be capible of soloing anything in about a minute. If you can't then you shouldn't join Advanced ANR.
You shouldn't rely on anyone else in a pug. Don't expect anyone to aggro, DPS, free ships, crowd control or heal for you. You have to be able to do all of these by yourself.
Strategies:
* Mandatory! Brings Engineering Team and/or Weapon Batteries.
Both will negate the weapon shutdown ability that the Tholians have. Without them you'll spend more time not shooting than actually killing Tholians.
* It takes 2 minutes for an asteroid to respawn after you free the romulan ship. PLAN AHEAD. The biggest mistake pugs make in both
ANR and ANRA is Number Chasing. i.e.: they chase after whatever number they see, or the highest number that has spawned. This is wrong.
If you have to fly to a spawn you've already done something wrong. You should never chase numbers, you have to get ahead of them.
The correct way of doing it is to already be at the asteroid waiting for the spawn.
Again: the asteroids respawn exactly 2 minutes after you free a romulan ship. PLAN AHEAD.
(Sometimes you will get lucky and find someone in your pug run saying stuff like: "Next Spawn is East", or "Go to West". They do this because the already know where and when the next spawns will be showing up.)
* Do not zerg. No more than 2 or 3 people on an asteroid.
Proper team work is covering (and killing) as many Spawns as possible at the same time. Bad teamwork is the whole team sticking together and taking on a Spawn at a time.
Best practice is 2 teams of two captains and 1 floater who helps out who ever needs it. You really do not need 4 or 5 people on a One or Two spawn. If you see that there are already 2 or 3 people at a or heading towards a spawn, then you should find a better place to be.
Additionally: if you are approaching a Spawn and you don't see any damage float ups, or no enemy ships around, and one or two guys already disabling tractor beams, then you are not helping by swooping and hitting disable tractor beam. You should find a better place to be.
(I find it extremely annoying when i'm already halfway through the last tractor beam on a Romulan ship when 3 people suddenly show up and hit Disable Tractor, and when i look around there are a couple Spawns showing on the map that they have completely ignored. These pugs think they are helping but they aren't, they just cost the team some marks.)
Tactics:
* For the first 3 minutes it is best for everyone to split up and tackle a spawn. You should already be capable of soloing asteroids in roughly a minute or so.
It's preferable to do the Easy spawns before the more difficult (though if you have the fire power this doesn't really matter).
The order of difficulty from Easiest to Hardest is: 1 > 2 > 5 > 3.
* Flanking!
The flanking point is always the same for each asteroid.
Northern Asteroid: http://i.imgur.com/2vM3gd7.jpg
Southern Asteroid: http://i.imgur.com/qtwoZ80.jpg
Western and Eastern Asteroids: http://i.imgur.com/3PQkcQA.jpg
Even if you do not have Space Flanking (From Raider or Intel Spec), it's best to use this especially if you see someone on your team using it. You will both benifit!
* Pin and Spike!
Very similar to the tactic used in NWS: Grav Well the Spawn together then hit them Cannon Scatter Volley, (Torp spread with Grav Torp and/or Neutronic Torp also works very well).
FAW with Dual Beams also works nicely. FAW with Beam Arrays also works but it is slower. 15k DPS CSV > 30k DPS BA FAW.
* Exotic Damage!
Grav Well, Tyken's Rift, TBR, etc... all work really well on Tholians as they have a lot of shields but very weak hull.
Please note it is a lot better to group up the NPCs instead of spreading them out! If you plan on using TBR the best tactic would be to use Grav Well first, move in close then use TBR (push or pull). You do not want to push or pull the NPCs out of the gravwell but you do want to them to take damage from both sources of exotic damage.
Aceton Assimilators and other forms of drain/shutdown builds work really well here also, but you need to have some DPS to finish off the Tholians. You cannot rely on others. Bring your own DPS, CC, Healing.
* DPS!
Self Explanatory. Stop sucking!
Just to add to this, using isometric charge on a group of tholians wrapped up in a gravity well is super effective.
And I personally like to kick graga mal off my team quickly and use TBR on any tarantulas that I see. Just my personal preference.