My guild farms HAAT regularly and my contribution is decent but not great. I do not have any purpose-built HAAT teams and have been advised not to build any until I've finished my legendary characters farm (finished Thrawn and Palpatine, currently working on CLS team). So I'm stuck with what I have for a while but would like to maximize my effectiveness with what I have.
This is what I have right now:
https://swgoh.gg/u/letareus/collection/
Basically, my best team is my arena team consisting of zPalp, zThrawn, Vader, Tarkin, and TFP. My only other real team is Phoenix (Hera, Ezra, Kanan, Zeb, and Chopper - Sabine is still at 6 stars). Then I have my leftover team which is not a real team but consists of all my other current 7 star toons - Boba Fett, KRU, FOTP, Biggs, and ST Han.
So what I would like to know is what teams to use with which leaders in which phases. I can also swap some toons from my leftovers into my arena squad, like KRU as a tank.
Right now, purely from experience, trial and error, and reading the description of the raid, I put everything in phase 2. Phase 1 is an annoying mess with constant taunts, debuffs, and the fact that Grievous seems to be immune to TMR. I seem to do OK in it with Phoenix but my Phoenix seems to do better in Phase 2. I've tried Phase 1 with a Thrawn lead instead of Palpatine (zeta on Thrawn is on his unique not his leader ability and I just got it today), which helps somewhat but I still seem to do better in Phase 2 with a Palp lead. I used to use KRU instead of TFP in Phase 2 but lately I've been using TFP.
In Phase 2 I'm also not sure what my best option is. Should I fracture the tank chassis or the main turret? Should I focus on the turrets and ony focus the chassis when the tank is disabled, or ignore the turrets and focus the chassis? Currently with my Palpatine squad I fracture the main gun and focus the chassis but eventually kill the turrets with AOE's. With Phoenix I attack the main gun until it's disabled then ignore the other turrets unless they're low from counterattacks.
I've tried Phase 3 once or twice but only with my leftovers since I don't want to gamble most of my damage on a phase I don't know much about when Phase 2 is a known quantity. I've never seen Phase 4.
Replies
In phase 1 Grievous is very much susceptible to TM reduction. Immune? What gave you that idea? However, the trick is to make sure, he has buff immunity on him, and that every 7th hit lands TM reduction.
With a zeta on Vader Lead you should be able to do a couple of million damage in phase 2 with your Empire + Boba (Zader, TFP, Thrawn, EP and Boba Fett). The tank is immune to TM reduction, but by building up large stacks of DoTs you can do some pretty high numbers with saber throw. Alternatively try with a variant of the tiepatine team in phase 3 (EP lead, TFP, Thrawn and 2 tanks or similar). With fracture on the boss, it doesn't counter. Make sure to have EP buff your team just before the canon fires. Zader works quite well in phase 3 also, since the boss is susceptible to TM reduction.
Thanks. Now I wish maybe I had put that zeta on Vader instead of Thrawn's unique. So in Phase 2 should I be focusing the tank or the turrets (to disable the tank)? The main turret can potentially one shot one of my characters if I let it go off. I guess I need one answer for my Empire team and one for Phoenix. And since the tank is immune to TM reduction, should I fracture the main turret or does speed down have some effect on it? What should I fracture?
The trick is to kill all three turrets without the main canon (the boss) taking a turn in between killing the first turret and killing the last one. This will give you an extra buff while the tank is toppled. Try having Vader's saber throw ready during topples. Depending on his speed you may be able to use it both on a turret and during topples. Save Vader's force choke (AoE) for his first attack after the tank.comes out of topple. And yes, don't let the top turret shoot. Having buffs on all team members will reduce its damage substantially, but it's better to not have it shoot at all.
For Phoenix, until they become strong enough to topple the tank I would just let them attack the boss (possibly just auto it). With aæl their buffs (prot. up) they may even.survive shots from the middle turret.
So my first try at HAAT since I posted this was a wash, partly because I only had a minute or two to get credit in and didn't have time to properly sit down and do it, and also because I missed phase 2.
But I did get a chance to try Phase 3 and it went rather badly. I think I did something like 600k damage with my Palpatine team, less than I would in Phase 3. What I used was Palpatine with one tank - Palpatine lead, Vader, Thrawn, Tarkin, and KRU. Basically, I knew nothing about what Tiepatine is supposed to be and I had like 2 minutes to mess with it, like I said. So if I were to go with the Tiepatine variant in phase 2, what would it be with what I have? I don't have RG. Can I do it without zeta Vader? My next Zeta will probably be Vader, though I'm not 100% sure on that yet.
Also, if I use my arena team in phase 2, what leader should I use? zPalpatine, Vader, or Thrawn?
Finally, is it bad to have too fast a Thrawn in raids? My fracture with a zeta'd Thrawn unique seems to not last as long as it should because my Thrawn is too fast (speed 240).
Ideally, the other two should be strong tanks. You should have no trouble getting R2 to 7 stars at the next event. He can be useful for directing damage to a particular tanky person (such as Vader) and the stealth will prevent counters if Fracture isn't up.
Keep in mind there is a damage cap with this team. With no tmr (Palp and TFP are using basics) the 5% tm gain will proc on the boss every hit. I would say you'd be hard pressed to do over 4 million with this team. There was a Krennic/Thrawn/Shoretrooper team back in the day that could solo it; I think it used Jyn and Tarkin and took a long time.
But honestly, CLS, BB-8, and Wampa are great HAAT toons once you get them. Ventress can be quite good as well.
600k in phase 3 is about 4%. Not bad, but you can do better. You forgot to include TFP, who is the main damage dealer in the tiepatine team. Vader and Tarkin don't bring much to the table in that phase. You don't want to kill the adds off too fast with AoE, since you want that bonus TM gain for your TFP. Phasma could actually do better with her low damage AoE speed down and her Victory March.
Zeta Vader works well in both phases 2 and 3. In phase 2 the tank is immune to TM reduction, but you can build up some pretty good stacks of debuffs if you include Boba Fett and Tusken Shaman as well. In phase 3, you can kill adds and then try keep removing TM from the fractured boss.
A fast Thrawn will have his fracture off CD and ready for reapplication (which also removes som TM and buffs) faster.
But I did about 700k less damage. I think the difference was that with Palpatine lead, I was able to more often destroy all the turrets before the boss got a second turn each time. I can't do it every time no matter which lead I have, but I can do is some of the time, and with zPalp I was somehow able to do it more frequently, possibly because of the increased potency and TMG. I was a bit confused on target priority and skill use with zVader, whether to use single target vs AoE, etc.
So what am I doing wrong (besides Boba Fett being undergeared, which will be improved in time)? Is my potency/speed too low (I already have higher speed and potency than most top players in my arena shard)? What potency/speed targets should I be aiming for with which characters? Would I do better in other phases (like phase 3) with what I have now?
Zader can worknin phase 2 or 4 with a realy heavy dots team.
Thanks. One thing I really want to know though is whether I should use Palpatine's Power of the Dark Side (AOE with offense up) when the tank is down to buff Vader's saber throw or to use it to help kill turrets. Another issue is that my Boba's basic was rarely applying dots. Maybe his potency is too low? Also, my Vader's aoe slow was not applying on the boss sometimes even with 69.1% potency (which I think is relatively high for such high speed) .
I got Zader for Phase 2 b/c of Waqui's recommendation much earlier in the thread.
Good to have a long range goal, but which Han? Raid Han? And does that solo the entire raid or just a phase and which phase?
I would say Thrawn is essential in that team for those phases to restore protection. Since your Tarkin is g12, you could try him in that team to help get topples. Depending on how your team is modded for speed, you could have Palp do the offense up before it comes out of topple, Vader does culling blade, Tarkin does potency up, and then after it comes out, on Tarkin's turn he could do some real damage on his AoE (you could even use Thrawn to give him his turn). If this works well then absolutely use Boba's execute on the tank (with offense up). You can try to lay down dots on his other turns during the topple, or with his AoE when it's not toppled IF the tank has low tm and you think Tarkin can take it out soon.
If you have trouble laying down or keeping Speed Down on the tank, you can Fracture it, but do it while it's toppled, otherwise the four hits will give the tank 20% tm.
If you can keep the team alive long enough, then you might get more damage in p4, as the tank only takes one turn coming out of topple instead of two, but you have to make sure Palp buffs them to survive the airstrike.
Since you have Thrawn, you can try an all Empire Zader team on p3 if you wish (Tarkin will be even better for tmr here...save his AoE for when the boss is close to taking a turn or after he's used his basic a lot to stack up potency). You can experiment between this and Tiepatine with Thrawn to see which gives the best results.
One thing you absolutely should never, EVER do is use Zader in p1. All the dots count towards the taking damage 7 times, so Grievous will go into an infinite turn loop and kill your whole team.
The Ackbar lead team works well with Hermit Yoda. The team variant with raid Han will solo p1 and do at least 40% of p2. I've had better p3 results leaving Han out though--with AA, BB-8, Thrawn, CLS, Hoda I went in with 39% left of p2 to finishing p4, for a total of 31.8 million damage. I could've done a few more percentage points in p2, but not much. You can then save raid Han for p1 and only have to escape CLS from that phase--but of course, by the time you have this team, you may find it hard to get in multiple teams because your guild kills it so fast, and you will likely have 7* Kenobi so you may not even care that much. The only reason I took the time to do a huge run was so I could get the tank tamer title (which ironically, I'd taken #1 many times months ago before I had him 7*, but the game never kept a record of that). I just got 7* wampa, so I want to play with him on a Zader team next time I have time for a tank, but other than that, I'm probably either posting 0s or sticking in a team on auto.
Results are from p2 only.
I also got CLS now but haven't been able to do much with him yet. All I know about CLS is that he's supposed to be able to solo Phase 1. The first 2 times I tried that though he died after dealing abot 20k in damage and didn't even get a chance to escape - admittedly he was extremely undergeared and didn't even have all his skills at 7 yet. Since then I've upgraded his gear a bit (G8.15 now but.on hold for a while, I've decided to start gearing up Sion/Nihilus) and have all his skills at at least 7 and all non-Zeta skills omegad. We'll see how he does tomorrow.
Now that I have CLS, what would you recommend I do? Just use him to solo Phase 1/escape? Or use him in some team? What would be the best team I can use him in with what I have now and in what phase?
From what I gather, one option is Ackbar lead, BB8 for tenacity down, a healer/buffer, a damage dealer and CLS. Make sure he's the only rebel. Whenever anyone uses a non-attack, CLS will hit Grievous and hopefully remove TM.
Also if you're looking for options:
https://www.swgoh.help
Gives excellent/tried and tested options for each phase for all raids, Heroic and standard.
BB-8 is not in that team for tenacity down (which CLS gives anyway), he is there for fast, repeated non-attacks to call an assist and for Illuminated Destiny.
Congratulations on your new results :—)
CLS alone in phase 1 is a bit risky. Add Han Solo (zetaed) for better results. Even better would be Datcha lead, CLS, Zolo, QGJ and Rex until your CLS and Zolo are fully geared (however, I realize, that you don't have any of those last 4 toons).
CLS could also work well in a Wedge lead rebel team for phases 2 and 4 (apart from the AA lead team, which has already been mentioned several times.