Strategy for Defeating Artillery Commander

[WC_]

I haven't got one, but I thought we needed a place to exchange what knowledge we had acquired in our first encounter, so that we might formulate some possible tactics for the next. The intent is to maximize the intelligence we can garner from each attempt, because it is so difficult to spawn the Art Cmdr. We could conceivably go weeks, with unsuccessful attempts yet. When we do spawn him, we should have our best tactics prepared, with everyone doing what they can to gather information on what he is doing.

Each force that battles him, really should have at least 1 fraps running.

General Strategy

The Artillery Commander has this inate-resistance profile --> Equip_Artillery_Commander_1_1

This means the following debuffs can, and should be, used on him:

1. Doc UBT (50% chance to pass inate resistance each attempt)
2. Crat Improved Red Tape (no inate resistance)
3. Crat snare when needed (no inate resistance). Needed to prevent ArtCmdr from chasing anyone running away from him (see Batter Up)
4. <alternate if crat not there> Fixer snare when needed (no inate resistance)
5. Anything else ?

Batter Up

From the ripped database, we thought the procedure Batter Up, which comes from one of the 6 weapons that the Artillery Commander can wield, the Artillery_Commander_1_4_400 weapon would be our greatest threat, and what would end up killing us. I don't think anyone was killed by this procedure, but I really don't know. I certainly wasn't.

It might be that actually being hurt by that procedure is really remote. After all:

1. The procedure is on only 1 of the 6 weapons that the Art Cmdr can wield at a moment of time.
2. It only has a 20% chance of landing on a successful hit.
3. A successful landing of the procedure must be followed by another successful landing within 60 seconds, or the procedure sequence must start over.
4. The sequence must proceed to the 3rd level, before everyone in the area is affected by it (and take 8k damage)
5. Getting to the 3rd level, will certainly kill the person affected, but it only does 8k damage to everyone in a relatively short 10M area

More than that, if I remember correctly, Tankosaurus has reported that he was unable to hold aggro on the Art Cmdr. He suspects that continual hate-list wipes, or simply random targeting is being used. This makes the chance that this procedure will end up killing us all even remoter. The procedure has to progress 3 levels, and if he's not even hitting the same person, then maybe we would never see this batter up occur to the 3rd level.

But before I turned to what killed me, let me just say that the Batter Up procedure on that 1 weapon, is sufficiently devastating, that we must have an initial strategy to prepare and handle it.

It would seem that the only strategy to combat this is to run, until we find out more about it. We don't all have to run, though. Just whoever is infected by the procedure. This would mean, that whoever has aggro for even a moment, needs to keep an eye on his NCU at all times, looking for 1 of 2 hostile nanos.

1. Hostile Detected
2. Target Acquired

Both nanos have a sunburst icon, and last less than 60 secs, so should be easy to spot. Once spotted, the affected person must have a pre-determined position to run to, and the ArtCmdr snared to prevent chase.

Alien Seeker

This is what I died from. I think everyone that didn't die from direct weapon damage, might have died from this.

You were attacked with nanobots from Alien Seeker for 7845 points of fire damage.
You were attacked with nanobots from Alien Seeker for 8668 points of fire damage.
You died of nano program damage!

Here is the Alien Seeker's only weapon, and template

Alien_Seeker_attack1_400
Equip_Alien_Seeker_attack1

The weapon appears to be completely benign. He appears to be solely a nuker. I don't know if it was single, or AoE nukes he was using for the attacks that killed me.

NOTE: I have never seen a template like this for a MOB that didn't exist as a VISIBLE mob in the game. I am guessing, that this Alien Seeker is some kind of summoned mob. I never spotted this mob though. He must be small. I have effects turned off normally, so maybe he can only be seen with effects turned on. Maybe he is invisible. We need to figure this out, because this guy killed me, and I think almost everyone.

Perhaps they are like a zix pet. If you kill it, another one immediately respawns. Therefore they wouldn't be worth killing.

Perhaps they are like the hovering-ball-guardians of the director in Foremans. They keep spawning at regular intervals, as long as the ArtCmdr is alive. If they aren't killed, they could build up to overwhelm us.

Debuffs to be applied to Alien Seeker, once we identify him:

1. Doc UBT (50% chance to pass inate resistance each attempt)
2. Crat Improved Red Tape (no inate resistance)
3. MP Dominate <insert nano skill, probably MC> This might shut up his nukes, all by itself! Immune to nano-shutdown though
4. Anything else ?

West Raidforce Movie

The only fraps anyone had the foresight to make, is this one, during the West Raidforce Battle. --> http://files.filefront.com/sector42_.../fileinfo.html

I have watched this movie many times now, and looked at the pictures posted on both west and norths battles. I have been unable to positively identify this Alien Seeker. Does anyone remember seeing it, or even tabbing it?

I have seen something in the movie, that might be the alien seeker however. About 2/3rd of the way through the movie, a small mob moves to the right, out of the blob, and then move to the upper right, standing next to the dead tower for a bit. He darts back into the center of the battle, right as the person frapping dies.

This may be nothing more than one of us leets. Really hard to tell, because the resolution is too poor to discern more than a vague outline, and the name above it is illedgible. It does look different than a leet, to me though. Is anyone able to say that was him, or know it is just a leeted one of us. IT may be just someone that moved to loot the dead tower, as the tower corpse disappeared while it was near it.

In an attempt to garner more intelligence about what the ArtCmdr is wielding in battle, can anyone identify what the different effects are that occured by the ArtCMdr?

What happened in that green vertical column beam from the sky, that happened twice in the movie? It was about 2/5ths and again at 3/5ths of teh way through the movie. It appeared to be centered on the Art Cmdr himself.

What happened in the 3 times an expanding yellow circle occurred. This appeared to be centered on one of us each time. The fact that is was an expanding circle implies there was some effect on all of us, since we were all within the circles range each time.

Can anyone answer these questions, or add questions currently unthought of for us to ponder. Any ideas and thoughts that might be useful to us in the next attempt?

As a general rule, next battle, ranged should stay at max range, and spread out. If you are ranged, find a safe area in which you won't pull a patroller onto the raidforce, and max your range on the Art Cmdr.

[kuznechik]

Engi pet snares maybe for snaring?
Like 3 engi in raidforce and you can be sure he'll be snared for -1000 constantly.

Also looks like seekers can be rooted. Just need to find/pull them to desolate place.

P.S.: Maybe use enf+doc to pull both patrollers and keep them busy? Easy, no?

P.P.S.: After looking at vid - seeker prolly is AoE. It's either something that hits after some procs landed or some add. Well, weird if you was unable to tab them tho. So - to check it out - tab like mad next try

P.P.P.S.: After watching it few more times - looks like explosion happens in direction where that "patroller" attacks. Was it patroller or seeker maybe?

[Zx9256]

1. Doc UBT (50% chance to pass inate resistance each attempt)
2. Crat Improved Red Tape (no inate resistance)
3. Crat snare when needed (no inate resistance). Needed to prevent ArtCmdr from chasing anyone running away from him (see Batter Up)
4. <alternate if crat not there> Fixer snare when needed (no inate resistance)
5. Anything else ?

If the raid have lured one of the mythical beings known as a Trader out of hiding, I can see a few more possible debuffs, none of which are mentioned in the immunities list.

[Shaoshin]

MAs Red Dusk can be chained if multiple MAs present..

[Pala]

If the raid have lured one of the mythical beings known as a Trader out of hiding, I can see a few more possible debuffs, none of which are mentioned in the immunities list.

what is trader?

[Tankosaurus]

I did get to see the alien seekers (mainly because i survived their nukes). They look like silver balls, that float around - very similar to security cameras. I remember seeing 'Attacked by Alien Seeker' spam in my ncu, and I know there was at least 4 different seekers, all arriving at the same exact moment in time.

I believe they came from the opposite side of the darwin fence, but i cannot be certain on that.

I know for sure that I had 'Hostile Detected' running in my ncu, but not Target Acquired or Batter Up.

When i get home i can look to see if i still have the log files from that day, to see what else was happening.

What killed the raidforce definately seems to be this: http://www.aomainframe.info/showitem.aspx?AOID=260242 , the question is - who got hit with the 50k nuke first (causing the 10-16k aoe nuke)

[Lunaspell]

Nano drain might be it since all the attacks seems to be nanos of some sort, crat speech can remove 330 nano every 20 sec, isnt much but who knows how big the nano pool is. Traders have nano drains to I belive (the idea of crat and traders being needed in a raid scares me quite a bit)

The Hostile detected thing has a 10 AoE, not being blobbed reduces the impact of that, considering that all raids is blob and assist and this is supposed to be different, well maybe spread out a bit

Alien seeker attack has only 2m range... if it can be snared or rooted, you might be able to avoid it, and when weapon is equipped, root and snare resistance is reduced to 40%, while engi offencive auras is 85%.

I am still wondering, if the complete raid force is spread out in 3 spots, and the Artillery Commander comes walking to 1 spot after another... will he always come at west first?, what happens if he dies, the north and east force get loot to?, it took some time before he came walking, where all raid forces supposed to run to center to face him?, would make more sense in a way but I think to remember that there where still Patrollers and such near the fence so getting to the center might be hard

[DaviasI]

Referencing the video posted.

At 40 seconds two green beams of light appear on the field. These were the aliens seekers.

Its difficult to see them because they are obscured by the artillery commanders right appendage.

At 41-42 seconds you can just make out the sphere floating under the AC but well above anyone else before it is obscured by the camera rotating.

At 43-44 seconds you can barely make out the sphere again as the AC rises up and down repeated revealing the sphere obscured by its claw.

At 47-48 seconds both spheres self destruct one after the other.

Lag allows for a few seconds of extra viewing time as the explosion completes its graphic at 50 seconds and the sphere vanishes at 52 seconds.

At 54 seconds the cameraman drops.


Items of note:

If you can parse the damage log you'll notice that at 50 seconds the cameraman took 2 distinct hits from Alien Seeker. One for 6.9k damage and one for 9.7k damage in addtion to being hit from the AC.

Look at the team window. The camera man drops after the second seeker explodes (and thanks to lag we get a few more seconds to watch). But the tank is virtualy unharmed. Yes Ryph probably has 4-5 times the HPs of Nogoal, but notice that his HP almost doesn't move. I am presuming this is because Guardian was on Ryph at the time.

If this is the case the strategy to win this battle would be a mix of Beast and 2nd floor IS.

1) Let the tanks attack and get aggro while everyone else moves to a safe distance, root and snare if possible before leaving.
2) Soldiers continually Guardian the tank then move out of range.
3) After the tank has secured aggro, pets and ranged only at max range. Melee and short ranged should not participate
4) Multiple targeters search for the Alien seekers, this shouldn't be two hard with effects on as the green shaft of light should announce it and it should be the only thing near the AC that isn't the tank or pets.
5) Treat spheres as FANATICS and all ranged open fire on them, make it fast as it seems you only have about 6-7 seconds to take them out.
6) Once spheres are gone long range and pets only on AC to prevent "batter up"

Due to red font I can not tell what type of damage the AC is doing but the spheres are obviously using energy based explosions so you might want to swap to increase energy based defenses anyway you can before the AC shows up.

[Tankosaurus]

The problem with 1 'tank' doing it beast style is the ball proc, which will nuke the tank for 500k damage (eventually), on average this will occur on the 15th hit, or about 30 seconds after attacking the boss.

Some basic strategies i think that must be followed:
1) Kill it as fast as possible. The more hits it lands, the more people get the proc running, the more chance we have of getting AOE'd.
2) Swap agg if you get proc'd. As soon as you see the first proc appear in your ncu, you need to stop attacking and get out of attack range.
3)Docs need to stay max range to hopefully avoid the AOE if it goes off.

If you notice in that fraps video, Ryph also was not holding aggro on the AC. I experienced the same problem when it came to north, so the question is what sort of tactics does the AC apply for choosing a target. I had aggro from it initially, then lost agg on it, and it went to a seemingly random soldier and stayed there until we died.

Unfortunately, it takes a large effort to spawn it, and is seemingly difficult to kill it. We may find that spawning it is the easy part, and killing it is the hard part, especially given the time limits.

[middrums]

I am of the mind that the other two section raidforces should just stay put and wait for the commander to roll to them.

I think that this weekend this strategy should be tried first because for one thing its the easiest . My biggest fear is that the 2 raidforces racing back will lose a few members and take so long that the raidgroup tanking the art commander will wipe and the art commander will go on the move. Then we wont know where it is, or it will come flying smack at us while we are dealing with a bunch of adds from the center.

If it dont work, then we can try with moving back to the spawn side (probably west).

[harkness]

I think there are two strategies that seem reasonable.

First, a slight varient on last weekend where we just beef up the West raidforce so that they have a stronger force after defeating the Proto-Embalmer. (This would have the side effect of making it easier/faster for West to get the proto embalmer down, as well.)

Second, have the forces start like normal, with all three kiling the first tower at the same time and letting the signal hacker rebuild. But as soon as east and north kill their general, they leave 1 team behind, and the other three teams work their way back to the center area. The teams left behind don't touch the rebuilt signal tower yet. The two groups from north and east (6 teams total) meet up in the center. As soon as West finishes their general, the west raidforce and the teams left at east and north take down their towers. The merged group of 6 teams in the open area waits to face the Artillery commander. West can work it's way back down the canyon at this point, to hopefully arrive and provide additional support on the Commander.

I am really curious whether the Artillery Commander went to west first as a random chance, because it's preprogramed that way, or because west was the last tower taken down.

[Minge]

Taking down the artillery commander in the center with all those adds sounds way too hard.
I think we should try the "beef up west" strategy first, thought it's silly that the other raid groups can't help.

[WC_]

Great work DAVIAS! *sprinkles gold stars around name*

Alien Seekers are IS-fanatic type mobs. We have about 6 seconds to kill them, before they explode, causing the expanding yellow AoE damage we see 3 times in the video. Priority mobs as soon as they appear.

I agree with the Middrums/Minge/ArriensPart1 strategy of letting each raidforce try to kill it in turn, next attempt. North was doing fine damage on the ArtCmdr, with just 4 teams, and healing wasn't really a problem until the alien seekers started exploding. Unless He's got more tricks in his bag, it looks like 4 teams can take him down with the right tactics.

The reason we might need to do an ArriensPart2 strategy in the future, is so that more people within the raid can get a chance to win the loot from the ArtCmdr. By the time he would be taken down, we would all have but just a few minutes left on our recall nano. Might not be enough to make it to the ArtCmdr corpse unless we start before he dies. Difficult to fight this guy in the center area though, as mobs repop every 5 mins. Adding cacoons to the battle might make it quite a bit tougher. Might be easier for the 2 non-ArtCmdr-battle raidforces to move to the area that the ArtCmdr is guaranteed to go to first, after we discover the rule.

Still thinking about Ball Proc, but have no further comment.

[NoGoal]

If you check the video at 6 seconds, mobs disapear. Don't know if it's because I moved a bit or not. Worth checking next time.

Also, I have the uncompressed video and I can say that it's someone leeted who run to the tower and the I can clearly see the Alien Seeker @ 52 secs.

Alien Seeker was attacked with nanobots from Alien Seeker for 50000 points of energy damage.
They don't hit someone for 50k, they hit themselves then they do 10k+ AoE damage. Got that message 3 times and got hit 3 times.

Dmg types:
You absorbed 6307 points of poison damage.
Artillery Commander hit you for 2957 points of melee damage.
Artillery Commander hit you for 5577 points of projectile damage.
Artillery Commander hit you for 2249 points of fire damage.

You absorbed 10000 points of fire damage.
You were attacked with nanobots from Alien Seeker for 658 points of fire damage.
You were attacked with nanobots from Alien Seeker for 6816 points of fire damage.
You were attacked with nanobots from Alien Seeker for 8796 points of fire damage.

That's with 3% reflect.

I also see Alien Seeker was attacked with nanobots from Battlemule for 4900 points of melee damage. Alien Seeker was attacked with nanobots from Battlemule for 4822 points of melee damage. and some Mongo so guess it can be killed like Fanatics.

[lugoman]

Kick it in the nuts!

[Betos2]

If he always spawns in the west and then moves to the north, would it be possible for the west team to hold him of long enough for the east team to join the north team?

[middrums]

also of big importance is for us to be good to go before we enter the sector. I know last time it took almost 2 hours for us to even zone, but then it took an additional 10-15 min for us to start once we did zone. By the time the Art commander was spawned, I had 10 min left on my recall nano. Ouch.

Beefing up the west will help this i think, but also, as organized as we are, we need to be moreso at the start.

[NoGoal]

I doubt FC made 42 by thinking that only 1 group will be allowed to get items. There must be an easy way to regroup to AC before or after it's dead.

[Slipster101]

also of big importance is for us to be good to go before we enter the sector. I know last time it took almost 2 hours for us to even zone, but then it took an additional 10-15 min for us to start once we did zone. By the time the Art commander was spawned, I had 10 min left on my recall nano. Ouch.

Beefing up the west will help this i think, but also, as organized as we are, we need to be moreso at the start.

Once zoned in GOGOGO !

None of this waiting for ppl to come back from AFK or 'Buffing'

[Hemsut]

I doubt FC made 42 by thinking that only 1 group will be allowed to get items. There must be an easy way to regroup to AC before or after it's dead.

This pf was clearly designed to be fought by cooperation and coordination (as you have shown). I don't believe, that FC didn't take that into account, if it comes to spreading the "phats"

go, go, go!

yours,
Hemsut