This guide can be found at the /r/stobuilds wiki here:
http://www.reddit.com/r/stobuilds/wiki/advanced_tactics/vol_1_azure_nebula_rescueBasic ANRA Guide: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 or 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!
Comments
Something that can also help a lot, especially against tarantulas, are TBRs. Approach the tarantula from behind hit TBR and possibly evasive manouvers and push the ship as far as possible, then turn around and go free the falchion. Since you push the tarantula from behind it will take longer for it to turn and come back. If you also have GW, IT or any other slow ability to through on the tarantula once you pushed it away that will help too.
This is possibly the fastest way to deal with 5 point spawns.
With 1,2 and 3 point spawns, TBRs are somewhat less effective since they just push the npcs away from each other but not enough to free the ship safely, so follow the advice of the OP in the *exotic damage part.
Hope this can help too.
Get the T3 Intel spec points for Space Flanking 1&2, it'll give you up to 10% extra damage when hitting the rear arc of an enemy. That can be a serious boost if you are going for the DPS approach.
Unfortunately it takes me around 1.5 minutes to solo a point. This means I can't quite solo 2 points. So I no longer play this.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Just an fyi.