Unsolicited Jedi Luke event advice
I'm FtP and was busy with GL Rey when Jedi Luke was first announced, but I was determined to be ready this time. I was ready & I have my JKLS & I thought I'd pass on some things I learned. Other people with anything positive to say should feel free to add to this as well.
Relic levels:
Vader = r4
All others = r3
I'd saved up signal data, but was trying to avoid spending it so that I could use it on toons that require higher relics for their events. I saved all of it, since Vader has been r4 for a while, I think even before the Jedi Luke event was announced.
Tier 1: Wampa
This wasn't working well for me until I decided to swap out mods. Now, I **hate** mod management and do everything I can to avoid it, but I was getting killed by the TM removal of CLS. I set up a load out of the mods I normally have on Wampa (which I'm generally happy with) and one for my Nest (high-tenacity counter-attacker's mods). Either offense arrow or speed arrow is probably fine, but I had a Speed arrow, CD triangle, and Tenacity plus. Total speed +78. It worked wonderfully. As long as CLS can't prevent you from taking your turns, you'll get there.
Tier 2: CLS
This never worked well for me. Guides encouraged potency, but I never found the right mix. However this wasn't really a problem I used my normal 3x Potency sets (+99 speed total), started the event, set it to auto, failed, restarted. Since there's no particularly special mechanics and no 2nd encounter for which you have to be ready with appropriate cooldowns or health/protection amounts, restarting and setting to auto wasn't really at a disadvantage to playing the tier manually. I don't really remember how many attempts it took. More than 5 or 6, less than 20. This was by far the most boring of the lot, and it felt frustrating too, until I realized no special tactical tricks meant auto until success was a viable option.
Tier 3: ROLO (L), Cap'n Han, Chewie, Threepio
On this tier offense is important, but even more important is controlling the battle space. This is the first tier with 2 encounters, so use Cap'n Han's healing early in order to reset it for later. I started with Leia's AoE and hoped for ability block. That seemed to work okay. The other option is to go for Leia's basic first and use it on the Stormtroopers. This inflicts Buff Immunity and thus they use their special but waste their turn falling to gain taunt. With Threepio you can effectively do this twice and hit both stormtroopers before they take a turn. The downside with this strategy is that it leaves the big damage dealers with their specials intact. Kill order = StormtrooperOps/ Snowtrooper (about the same priority), Snowtrooper Commander, Stormtroopers. StormOps is more deadly but Snow feeds TM to the team (including Ops).
The 2nd encounter is a race: if the enemy takes 20 turns you automatically lose. However, I had no trouble beating this even with terrible mods. I can't replay it, so it's possible that I had fantastic RNG, but the first time I made it to the 2nd encounter was the first time I won. so it can't be that hard. Kill order is the same as in the first encounter.
Chewie & Threepio can use your standard mods, Cap'n Han needs a speed/survivability mix (probably Health), and ROLO would benefit from +50 speed and decent offensive output (CD triangle, offense or CD set) and a potency plus. Guard (from Chewie) was on ROLO.
I completed this tier with +26 speed on ROLO (no, really) and grey-to-blue 5-dot mods. I did have an offense primary on the Arrow & Triangle, with potency on the Plus. As long as you're generally modding for offense & potency, you should be fine.
Tier 4: Fleet.
I beat this on the first try. I have a g12 Raid Han, so my Falcon isn't impressive for someone who qualifies for the event. Kill the TIE Bomber first, then be careful not to attack any TIE with Retribution unless either they have Foresight or you're attacking with the Falcon (which will dispel the Retribution). This shouldn't pose any problem to anyone who kills the bomber and avoids counterattacks.
Tier 5: CLS & Hermit Yoda at the Cave
In the first encounter, spread stun around, then while the enemy is stunned kill Snow, then Officer, then Storm, taking every opportunity to heal yourself with Call to Action until you have full Health, full Protection, and all remaining enemies stunned. Then keep attacking with basics to spread debuffs and (hopefully) maintain stun lock. This allows you to enter the second encounter with max survivability and zero cooldowns. You can burn Hermit Yoda's assist, though, since he does not participate in the 2nd encounter and thus his cooldowns are irrelevant.
In the 2nd encounter you fight Vader. Remain in your high-tenacity/max counter-attack basic stance as much as possible. You don't want to get any DoTs at all. When it is necessary to use Call to Action, cycle back to your defensive stance ASAP.
Tenacity, Offence, CC%, and CD will help you more than adding Health, Def, or Prot. Your debuffs, other than SpeedDOWN, are useless, but try to score SpeedDOWN right away with a basic.
Tier 6: ROLO, Threepio And Chewie (replaces both C-3PO and legendary Chewbacca), Lando
Often said to be the hardest tier, this does NOT require ROLO's zeta. It requires lots of offense and reasonable speed. Scoring Ability Block and Blind as often as possible will save you over and over.
My Lando mods = 6x6-dot mods, 4xCD, 2xCC%, +100 speed total. Offense primary arrow (+12 on the secondary), CD triangle, Offense plus.
My ROLO mods = 4x5-dot, 2x6-dot, 4xCD, 2xCC%, +109 speed total. Speed primary arrow, CD triangle, Offense plus. Gave her the increased speed set to keep the Ability Blocks flowing.
Chewbacca & Threepio had their regular mods.
The strategy is simple: spam Leia's & Lando's AoEs and TAC's Blind. The only time you want to hold off on those is right near the end of the first encounter so your cooldowns are fresh for the 2nd encounter.
Without the ROLO zeta this might take a few tries, but if you can ability block or blind Boba before his first turn of the 2nd encounter, you'll likely win.
Tier 7: CLS
Again you're fighting using CLS vs. Vader and the strategy is the same - stay in the defensive stance as much as possible. When it's necessary to heal, cycle back to the defensive stance as soon as possible. You want to finish the first encounter with full health and your Call to Action cool down no higher than 1.
At the beginning of Encounter 2, you can choose to attack Vader or any of 3 objects. Pick any object and attack it. Vader will use his turn to use the force to send the other 2 slamming into you. This does a LOT of damage and your next turn should be to use Call to Action to heal right away. Plink away at Vader. The next time the objects appear, you should have enough time to attack 2 of them before Vader's turn. Definitely do this! With good offense, the objects will not appear a third time, but if they do, use that same strategy again.
The mods for this one I borrowed straight off Lando from Tier 6. 6x6-dot mods, 4xCD, 2xCC%, +100 speed total. Offense primary arrow (+12 on the secondary), CD triangle, Offense plus. If you wanted to do so, a Tenacity plus would probably be even better because preventing DoTs also prevents Vader's healing mechanism, but it wasn't necessary for me.
Tier 8: Vader
Basic strategy here is to spam your AoE to land as many DoTs as possible. These are your source of healing and also the key to activating the EventSpecial ability. The event special starts on a 25 turn cooldown. Every time a DoT expires, that CD is reduced by one. I tried many times without the zeta on Vader's lead and never came close. With the zeta he gets a great deal more healing and CLS can't stop the reappearing DoTs. The cooldown blazes by very quickly. Use it once and you have an automatic victory (like Old Ben in the original CLS hero's journey). Although it's probably possible with an r7 Vader to do this without the zeta on his leadership, there's no particular reason to think this will be easy without the leadership zeta. I would consider it mandatory and just drop the zeta. If you don't have it, the zeta on Vader's unique that prevents TM reduction is also probably mandatory, but I've had that one for a long time.
Vader mods = +86 total speed, 6x Potency, potency Plus, Offense triangle, Offense arrow.
Hope this helps someone!
Relic levels:
Vader = r4
All others = r3
I'd saved up signal data, but was trying to avoid spending it so that I could use it on toons that require higher relics for their events. I saved all of it, since Vader has been r4 for a while, I think even before the Jedi Luke event was announced.
Tier 1: Wampa
This wasn't working well for me until I decided to swap out mods. Now, I **hate** mod management and do everything I can to avoid it, but I was getting killed by the TM removal of CLS. I set up a load out of the mods I normally have on Wampa (which I'm generally happy with) and one for my Nest (high-tenacity counter-attacker's mods). Either offense arrow or speed arrow is probably fine, but I had a Speed arrow, CD triangle, and Tenacity plus. Total speed +78. It worked wonderfully. As long as CLS can't prevent you from taking your turns, you'll get there.
Tier 2: CLS
This never worked well for me. Guides encouraged potency, but I never found the right mix. However this wasn't really a problem I used my normal 3x Potency sets (+99 speed total), started the event, set it to auto, failed, restarted. Since there's no particularly special mechanics and no 2nd encounter for which you have to be ready with appropriate cooldowns or health/protection amounts, restarting and setting to auto wasn't really at a disadvantage to playing the tier manually. I don't really remember how many attempts it took. More than 5 or 6, less than 20. This was by far the most boring of the lot, and it felt frustrating too, until I realized no special tactical tricks meant auto until success was a viable option.
Tier 3: ROLO (L), Cap'n Han, Chewie, Threepio
On this tier offense is important, but even more important is controlling the battle space. This is the first tier with 2 encounters, so use Cap'n Han's healing early in order to reset it for later. I started with Leia's AoE and hoped for ability block. That seemed to work okay. The other option is to go for Leia's basic first and use it on the Stormtroopers. This inflicts Buff Immunity and thus they use their special but waste their turn falling to gain taunt. With Threepio you can effectively do this twice and hit both stormtroopers before they take a turn. The downside with this strategy is that it leaves the big damage dealers with their specials intact. Kill order = StormtrooperOps/ Snowtrooper (about the same priority), Snowtrooper Commander, Stormtroopers. StormOps is more deadly but Snow feeds TM to the team (including Ops).
The 2nd encounter is a race: if the enemy takes 20 turns you automatically lose. However, I had no trouble beating this even with terrible mods. I can't replay it, so it's possible that I had fantastic RNG, but the first time I made it to the 2nd encounter was the first time I won. so it can't be that hard. Kill order is the same as in the first encounter.
Chewie & Threepio can use your standard mods, Cap'n Han needs a speed/survivability mix (probably Health), and ROLO would benefit from +50 speed and decent offensive output (CD triangle, offense or CD set) and a potency plus. Guard (from Chewie) was on ROLO.
I completed this tier with +26 speed on ROLO (no, really) and grey-to-blue 5-dot mods. I did have an offense primary on the Arrow & Triangle, with potency on the Plus. As long as you're generally modding for offense & potency, you should be fine.
Tier 4: Fleet.
I beat this on the first try. I have a g12 Raid Han, so my Falcon isn't impressive for someone who qualifies for the event. Kill the TIE Bomber first, then be careful not to attack any TIE with Retribution unless either they have Foresight or you're attacking with the Falcon (which will dispel the Retribution). This shouldn't pose any problem to anyone who kills the bomber and avoids counterattacks.
Tier 5: CLS & Hermit Yoda at the Cave
In the first encounter, spread stun around, then while the enemy is stunned kill Snow, then Officer, then Storm, taking every opportunity to heal yourself with Call to Action until you have full Health, full Protection, and all remaining enemies stunned. Then keep attacking with basics to spread debuffs and (hopefully) maintain stun lock. This allows you to enter the second encounter with max survivability and zero cooldowns. You can burn Hermit Yoda's assist, though, since he does not participate in the 2nd encounter and thus his cooldowns are irrelevant.
In the 2nd encounter you fight Vader. Remain in your high-tenacity/max counter-attack basic stance as much as possible. You don't want to get any DoTs at all. When it is necessary to use Call to Action, cycle back to your defensive stance ASAP.
Tenacity, Offence, CC%, and CD will help you more than adding Health, Def, or Prot. Your debuffs, other than SpeedDOWN, are useless, but try to score SpeedDOWN right away with a basic.
Tier 6: ROLO, Threepio And Chewie (replaces both C-3PO and legendary Chewbacca), Lando
Often said to be the hardest tier, this does NOT require ROLO's zeta. It requires lots of offense and reasonable speed. Scoring Ability Block and Blind as often as possible will save you over and over.
My Lando mods = 6x6-dot mods, 4xCD, 2xCC%, +100 speed total. Offense primary arrow (+12 on the secondary), CD triangle, Offense plus.
My ROLO mods = 4x5-dot, 2x6-dot, 4xCD, 2xCC%, +109 speed total. Speed primary arrow, CD triangle, Offense plus. Gave her the increased speed set to keep the Ability Blocks flowing.
Chewbacca & Threepio had their regular mods.
The strategy is simple: spam Leia's & Lando's AoEs and TAC's Blind. The only time you want to hold off on those is right near the end of the first encounter so your cooldowns are fresh for the 2nd encounter.
Without the ROLO zeta this might take a few tries, but if you can ability block or blind Boba before his first turn of the 2nd encounter, you'll likely win.
Tier 7: CLS
Again you're fighting using CLS vs. Vader and the strategy is the same - stay in the defensive stance as much as possible. When it's necessary to heal, cycle back to the defensive stance as soon as possible. You want to finish the first encounter with full health and your Call to Action cool down no higher than 1.
At the beginning of Encounter 2, you can choose to attack Vader or any of 3 objects. Pick any object and attack it. Vader will use his turn to use the force to send the other 2 slamming into you. This does a LOT of damage and your next turn should be to use Call to Action to heal right away. Plink away at Vader. The next time the objects appear, you should have enough time to attack 2 of them before Vader's turn. Definitely do this! With good offense, the objects will not appear a third time, but if they do, use that same strategy again.
The mods for this one I borrowed straight off Lando from Tier 6. 6x6-dot mods, 4xCD, 2xCC%, +100 speed total. Offense primary arrow (+12 on the secondary), CD triangle, Offense plus. If you wanted to do so, a Tenacity plus would probably be even better because preventing DoTs also prevents Vader's healing mechanism, but it wasn't necessary for me.
Tier 8: Vader
Basic strategy here is to spam your AoE to land as many DoTs as possible. These are your source of healing and also the key to activating the EventSpecial ability. The event special starts on a 25 turn cooldown. Every time a DoT expires, that CD is reduced by one. I tried many times without the zeta on Vader's lead and never came close. With the zeta he gets a great deal more healing and CLS can't stop the reappearing DoTs. The cooldown blazes by very quickly. Use it once and you have an automatic victory (like Old Ben in the original CLS hero's journey). Although it's probably possible with an r7 Vader to do this without the zeta on his leadership, there's no particular reason to think this will be easy without the leadership zeta. I would consider it mandatory and just drop the zeta. If you don't have it, the zeta on Vader's unique that prevents TM reduction is also probably mandatory, but I've had that one for a long time.
Vader mods = +86 total speed, 6x Potency, potency Plus, Offense triangle, Offense arrow.
Hope this helps someone!
