Lord Recluse Strike Force/Strategy

Strike Force Strategies

Lord Recluse's Strike Force has earned much notice and generated much discussion amongst the City of Villains community, given its high difficulty and entry threshold. Thanks to this discussion, there are a number of viable strategies discussed - even though most proponents of one strategy voice dissent at the validity of the other strategies.

Ignoring the controversy for now, the Strike Force has a number of possible strategies to make play easier, and for some players, make defeating the Strike Force feasible.

General Strategies

Listed here are some basic tactics employed by many players. Some of them are regarded as exploits, and others signs of design problems, rather than as entirely legitimate tactics in their own right.

Time Saving Tips

Spawn levels: Recluse' contact should have his/her reputation set to the lowest possible. Additionally, the team might also consider using the lowest level teammate for this role. The heroes will spawn at defined levels, but the Longbow and Malta agents key off the leader's level.

Zone time: Another option is to have the teammate with the fastest zone time be Recluse' contact, so that (s)he can reach Recluse and grab the next mission as quickly as possible. The rest of the team can meet directly at the launch point for the mission without having to head into Grandville's center.

Critical Powers

There are certain powers that many teams won't consider starting the strike force without. Again their necessity is a subject of much debate on the forums. It is quite possible to finish the mission without any given powerset in this list.

Stone brutes: They have the highest resistance of any brute defensive set, and have the highest survivability against heroes.

Kinetics corruptors: Stone brutes move incredibly slowly, and they in particular need kinetics to help them out. In addition, kinetics heals have a -regen component and speed boost is widely regarded as one of the best buffs in the game.

Radiation corruptors: The debuffs in this set are amazingly strong, and given the huge regen and resistance base that the Freedom Phalanx starts with, they are in high demand. The debuffs in this set serve much the same purpose as Chemical Burn warheads from Warburg (see below).

Thermal corruptors: The buffs and heals in this set are nice, and particularly if you have a non-stone brute for holding aggro on the last map, you may need them for sheer survivability. The debuffs are also welcome although not held to be as critical as Radiation's.

Dark corruptors or masterminds: Tar patch is a great AoE resistance debuff, and resistance debuffs seem to be a critical component for succeeding against the ridiculously high hit point and regen base of the Freedom Phalanx.

Vengeance: This is a critical component of rush strategies that require huge initial buffs (see above). While vengeance does not, by design, stack (i.e. subsequent casts after the first have no effect), it is possible to exploit a timing bug to stack it nonetheless, by casting simultaneously. Apparently the window for stacking is the length of the cast time for Vengeance, which, while small, is nonzero. The key to stacking vengeance is having everybody with the power set it on auto, while targetting a dead teammate, out of range of the power. Then, have someone with Recall Friend teleport the dead teammate to the group, and the Vengeances set to auto will fire simultaneously. This is considered an exploit and devs have stated it will be fixed one day.

Stealth or Grant Invisibility + Teleport: There are several opportunities to stealth and TP through parts of the first five missions - particularly the middle of the second and fifth missions. Using a stealth + teleport strategy can help keep the team moving quickly and the faster you reach the last mission, the fresher and more alert you will be.

Temp Powers

Shivans: The Shivan Shard is a temporary power acquired by completing the Shiva Strike Mission in Bloody Bay. Each of its 5 uses summons a powerful Shivan Decimator, which is an Elite Boss capable of going toe-to-toe with even the Freedom Phalanx heroes. With some practice a team can fully equip itself in about ten minutes - well worth it for any team build. Starting this Task Force without a full complement of Shivans is usually considered foolhardy.

Warburg Weapons: These are quite powerful, but extremely tedious to gather; the instructions are detailed in the article Missile Launch Mission. It's easiest to use teams of three, where you grab three technicians at once and trade them off to whoever is getting the nuke at the time. Gathering these in advance is highly recommended, since large teams getting techs all at once just get in each others' way, and overall, more time is wasted before the strike force proper can start.

Here are the possible warheads and their capabilities, listed in order of desirability:

• Chemical Burn - Ranged AoE Foe -Res(All), -DEF: These are critical for lowering the Freedom Phalanx resistances so that your damage output exceeds their regeneration.

• Biological Mutagens - PBAoE, Ally +Regeneration, +Dam. These can help buff the damage from Shivans as well as teammates. Shivans do huge amounts of damage at base; with damage buffs they are unbelievable.

• Nuclear Blast - Ranged AoE, Extreme DoT(Energy), EMP, Foe -End, -Recovery. Combined with Bio and Chem, these can dish out a huge amount of damage all at once.

The warheads really shine when they are stacked, and the bio warhead shines when it buffs the Shivans. Chemical warheads are such a huge debuff stacked that they can cut the time to defeat an individual hero down into half or less of the length of time a set of inspirations lasts - meaning you can max your defenses with inspirations and get a good part of the way through the Freedom Phalanx before they wear off. See the "Warhead Rush" strategy above.

Enchantment of Serafina: The Enchantment of Serafina is a team buff awarded to the leader of a successful Ice Mistral Strike Force. Activation not only grants resistance to psychic damage, it also adds psychic damage to all attacks - both very useful for the final battle with the Freedom Phalanx. The buff has 10 charges.

Accolades

Demonic is very commonly used by aggro brutes to increase survivability.

High Pain Threshold and Born in Battle are desired for any character to help survive the high burst damage from the Freedom Phalanx.

Inspirations

You will definitely need to use Inspirations throughout the whole Strikeforce. You can get them from the Arena in St. Martial, from the vendor in Ouroboros, or from base storage. Most useful are going to be defense, resistance, and life inspirations.

With the issue 7 changes, characters with no other defensive powers will max their damage mitigation from purple inspirations on the 4th small luck. After that characters should start using orange inspirations. Brutes and stalkers may have additional defense that makes the 4th or even 3rd luck wasted. Both purple and orange inspirations are recommended for the final encounter because it is so brutal.

Mass Hypnosis Strategy

There is a way to single-pull every hero in this Strike Force by having a Mind Dominator. The information below is quoted from a now-deleted post on the Official forums.

I will only list my tactics for the last mission, as it can be applied to the 3rd and 4th as well. You will need to 6 slot Mass Hypnosis with 2 acc / 2 sleep / 2 recharge to start. If you can get 3 Acc/Mez SHOs and 3 recharges you will be golden. Also have hasten with 3 recharges obviously.

On your team you will need 1 brute of any type, and a minimum of 2 /Kinetic Corruptors. After that you just need damage dealers; Stalkers, Masterminds, any Corruptors, and more Dominators. Still try to have the debuffs and heals, but the Kinetic's heal alone seems to be enough.

Start off with targeting Citadel, as he is most centered among the heroes. Then pop megalomaniac and force of nature. Stacking as much duration as you can is most important on first few pulls. Jump up and hit Mass Hypnosis, and keep at it until you are sure all heroes are asleep. Then have a corrupter pull Numina to start, avoid flying because even though Statesman is asleep he can still call out for Liberty

As long as Statesmen doesn't say "This is for Liberty" the heroes won't join the fight if they wake up from a missed sleep. However as soon as Statesman says "This is for Liberty" any heroes you miss with sleep, and awake, will attack. You must use your single target sleep on any missed heroes after this point. The single target sleep does have a damage componant, so heroes will sometimes get one shot in. Always make sure you are at full health to avoid being one-shotted.

You can pull heroes in any order, but if Statesman does call for Liberty, I always go for Synapse after he says that. The reason being if I have to single target him he runs so fast he can run out of aoe sleep range fast.

The /Kinetic Corruptors MUST keep the Mind Dominator with 2 SB at all times, or Domination will stop and the heroes will wake up, and it becomes ugly.

This method has given me a 100% completion rate on the LRSF.