90 Days to the Apocalypse -- Day 24

I've been on a few ITFs from hell in my time, and I don't know that the one I was on tonight would qualify as the worst.  But it was probably one of the longest and weirdest.

To start with, I was PLing my new toon Swift Sky a bit (from 22 to 27 actually) and a friend asked me if I wanted to do an ITF.  This was before he announced he was forming it.  I don't know that I've ever done an ITF with this person, but I've run many other TFs with him, so I had no reason to be worried.  But right after I joined, he proposed PuGing the rest of the team.  That worried me a little.  And I wasn't able to respond, because I had a sudden graphics glitch and decided to reboot.  By the time I got back, he'd already started filling via the LFG channel.

I was on Forest Goddess, a Nature Affinity defender.  My friend was on a corr.  I suggested I could switch to some kind of melee type, but he said we'd be just fine.  Anyway, I broadcasted to a couple of channels and two people I knew joined, so I wasn't that worried.  We had two scrappers and a tank who didn't have taunt, but he was an invul tank with a lot of set bonuses showing.

Our leader gave up the star to someone who was 50 and after discussion decided to run at +1.  We didn't have any incarnates on the team and a lot of sub-50's, but he figured we could handle it.

Our first problem came in the first mission, and it didn't seem like such a problem to me.  Leader announced that when the door was unlocked he'd head up to the temple and ATT everyone there.  He did this while we were fighting the last couple of guys in the tunnel leading to the outside, so we left 2-4 enemies behind, and we skipped the path.  I know the group I normally team with likes to take the path, but not everyone does it that way.  But one of my other friends threw a fit.  "Why the hell did you teleport everone up here?  I didn't know we were doing a speed run!"  He was way overboard, the leader apologized, said that's the way he'd always done it, and then my other friend was still complaining in one of our global chat channels about it.  I really thought he was blowing things out of proportion.

Anyway, in the second mission someone asked if we were going to wait for the ambuses, and when the nominal leader said yes, friend2 said, "So we're not doing a speed run anymore?"  But anyway, mission 2 went well enough.

When we got to mission 3, friend2 asked what the plan was, and the leader asked what people wanted.  This seemed to be his M.O. for the rest of the task force, let other people decide what to do.  I said it was a good thing to be decisive and tell people what the plan is, and he asked me privately why he should say anything if we were just going to "be boring and steamroll the TF anyway".  Well, for starters, you haven't said we're going to steamroll, or speed, or kill all, or go for shards/XP, at any point.  That's part of the problem.  Plus I like steamrolling an ITF -- at least, on a good team that can steamroll quickly and efficiently.  We weren't that, exactly though.

At the computer leader said he was going to pull the AVs... well actually, he asked if people thought he should, but he was encouraged to do so.  This failed, and we defeated the computer with the AVs still waiting up top.  There was general disagreement about whether they should be pulled down or we should just fight on the platform -- I'm all for fighting on the platform, especially since we'd already finished off the computer without pulling them, but I was on a defender, the tank decided to pull and the leader insisted that the turrets up top would kill him quickly.  Anyway, we pulled, and didn't bother clearing the platform.  Oh well.

Things got more interesting in the final mission.  By this point, even I was annoyed that our leader wasn't really giving any instructions.  Which path we took was essentially a vote.  We got to Rommy and cleared around him, and leader said we should attack him where he was instead of pulling him to the grass -- he asked what good it would do to pull him to the grass, which just set friend2 off again in private channels -- anyway, we charges in, and here's where thing went from slow and sort of disorganized to downright stupid.

The tank couldn't keep Rommy taunted.  At all.  I don't really understand why not, Invulnerability has a very strong taunt aura and an invul scrapper can taunt Rommy pretty well, I've done it, friends have done it.  But our tank couldn't do it.  I think NA's debuffs tend to make enemies want to run, but what am I supposed to do, not debuff the AV?  Most of our team was level 49 and Rommy was level 52, so that was a problem, we had trouble generating a lot of damage, but basically the main problem was Rommy ran everywhere, even under the ramps to one side of the platform.  It was a nightmare.  We had a dom on the team too, but she didn't seem capable of holding Rommy except on very rare occasions when she'd lock him down for, oh, 30 seconds.

At one point the scrapper who was the 50 placed in charge died, and then mysteriously vanished, never to return.  I know things were going bad but I really hate people that just quit like that.  That's one reason I prefer to run with friends, you know what they're capable of, you know how they like to do things, and most of all you know they won't bail on you.

The entire ITF took 2 hours and 20 minutes.  :p  We did stay around to clear the towers and part of the right path so that friend2 could get the final bubble to 50.  Forest Goddess got level 44 and more than halfway to 45, so that was good I guess, but it was a long and painful 1.5 levels.