Went up against a team of 5 yesterday, one of them was level 100.
Somehow ive done it 5 times, gold everytime, however ive tried the mission at least 15 times. One tip: have Reyna drop shields on top of nova and keep an eye on the door from where you enter the arena and the upper left side people donāt realize enemies chuck grenades and spears from those two points and think the thing is bugged.
Saboteur is quite easy. Iāve been running it solo with a few high dps melees (that have some form of health regen). Iāve done if several times on adv/hardcore without much trouble although I do hit the occasional rough patch where it seems all enemies are targeting the defense point regardless of where on the map they are (Last def sequence).
Is there enough information in this thread for a comprehensive āguideā for completing Saboteur on Advanced? OH! And why the hell do those force-field bastards spawn in on a tower defense mission?! COME ON.
Looking through, I donāt see anything telling, but Iām bad at finding things, so thereās that.
All Iāve been able to gather so far is:
- High Damage
- Have Regen
- Donāt have 5 people
There was good advice about the types of trap and turret to build. All the times Iāve been in a random group and failed, this has been the problem.
- Equip gear in loadout for shard generation
-
Donāt trigger the node until the team has built all turrets and traps
- the turret up and behind the node is critical; you can reach it from above
- personally prefer thumper turrets for the AoE and short stun
- Choose helix options for damage and regen
- Have at least one person blocking the lane (ISIC is good)
- Have at least one person covering the rear
- did this last night as Oscar Mike with concussive air strike, fire 'nades, and shield penetration
- Have someone who can pick off enemies at distance (Thorn, Marquis, ISIC, Oscar Mike/sight helix)
- Repair/rebuild turrets and traps between waves
- COMMUNICATE! This is not a mission for those lone wolf antics Noble 5ā¦
Edited to clarify a point from @dbobenham that shards are v. important!
2 Likes
I had all those things (no ISIC) last night and still failed on the final wave :-\
The thing that really put the nail in our coffin was the forcefield guys.
I could write up a strat, but itās you donāt need high dps or regen. I did it solo on Advanced. Only died once, earlier in the mission, when I jumped off a ledge and into the abyss. lol
Only thing Iād say is needed if you want to solo this a shard regen item. By the time I got to the 3rd and final defense area I had 4.2k shards walking into it. Thumper everywhere that could be a Thumper, a Flash turret just beside the protection area, and mostly flash eveyrwhere else, with maybe one or two flame turrets. And keep them up.
I personally used Thorn since, when solo, her Blight can kill any group thatās standing in it in a few ticks. I stayed between the protection spot and the back area, and never ventured down stairs. I prioritiezed the bigger enemies and only worried about the small enemies if I saw their dot on the radar getting close to the node. The turrets WILL do most of the work.
The boss was the easiest part. As soon as he wasnāt immune to damage the Thumpers went to work on him. Only other tip I can say, before that part, was to enter the final area at the far left side. Itāll take you to the rafters on the left. Rush past the first guy and buy that Thumper turret, and then clear off that catwalk. I also stress this in groups. Itās very hard to survive if your group thinks walking in through the front door is a good idea.
Recently beat this mission on advanced, ran with Deande, and Marquis. It took my wife and I days to beat this. For the final area we decided that having all turrets and traps built was key, put a shards per second relic on and made sure to keep all traps alive! Thatās crucial, the trap right in front of Nova needs to be temporal, and the two upper turrets have to be thumpers. With the rest we built fire turrets to aggro the smaller minions. Deande posted up inside Nova and I played sweeper out in front, biggest issues were the small crawlers because they could absolutely wreck Nova. We finished with silver and about half life remaining on Nova. It can be done just takes a bit to memorize the spawn spots!
Iāve got Gold on this more than 50 times.
If you want to play it with me on Steam my profile is attached to this forum account.
My main tip other than taking each stage slow as a team is do not build a single Fire turret.
Watch out for the Varelsi Scaven. One of them is nearly invisible and can destroy Nova in a blink of eye.
Wouhou!! I got gold on solo advance with Kleese. Thank god for turrets. Last stop, Heliophage solo advanceā¦
PS4 player here, have completed it quite swimmingly on Normal and with arduous effort on Advanced. Used Orendi, and, umā¦ Miko IIRC? This was solo.
Rendi has great wave clear with her Shadowfire, and Miko can mass-slow with his Spore grenade. Both of those characters also have quick cooldowns as well.
Build turrets and trapsā¦ lots and lots and LOTS of turrets and traps.
I got bronze on both completions and was happy with thatā¦ silver or gold would surely require help.
@jmsitzman
I personally completed Silver on Saboteur advanced with Kleese solo, almost effortlessly, by using thumper turrets with flash traps and linked energy rifts with extra health.
Thumpers cause, well theyāre Thumpers.
Flash traps because a frozen enemy canāt deal damage & it buys me time to move around killing majors.
Linked energy rifts clean up trash mobs that wander too close to the defence point which allows me to address bigger threats.
Also, like most advanced missions, itās important to understand your characterās strengths and the lay out of the area youāre defending. You need to know how to reach troublesome areas quickly.
It also helps to have a strong white, green, or blue character specific loadout so you have more shards for turrets / traps. Also remember to prep the area before you start.
Iām Playing on PS4, so lag isnāt a problem for me. Managed to complete The Saboteur on Normal very easily, even got a Gold Medal. However, the Advanced Difficulty mode is just ridiculous. Nigh impossible.
Iām a fairly good player myself, got Gold Medals on ALL the missions. Except for The Saboteur on Advanced Difficulty.
If anyone on PS4 wants to try and group up to clear it. Iām up for it. Just add me on PSN, Tutufoxx.
Iāve ran it two nights in a row solo on advanced hardcore using Attikus and got gold the first time with somewhere around 61K points. Second time only got silver but a faster time. I gear him for attack speed and helix build pretty much all health regen and life steal. Take the attack speed helix aug too! (Duh!) Super easy! Just look out for the thrall that shoots the final core on the ledge by the thumper turret. Bastard almost made me fail.
Okay. Freakin finally!!
Just completed it on Advanced Difficulty, with a Golden Medal!!
This is how I did it:
Team of 4: Phoebe, Thorn, Miko, and I was playing ISIC.
Up to the third terminal, everything went as usual, so Iām not gonna get into it. At the third terminal, I positioned myself in front of it, blocking the entrance, and activated my ult, gunning for the tankier and bigger enemies, while Miko healed and kept me alive. While, in the lower part, Phoebe ran around aggroing the enemies and killing them so they wouldnāt attack the terminal from far away. Thorn ran around between the high and low parts just distributing damage and killing the smaller enemies, most of the time she was aiding Phoebe.
By the time we finished the third wave, the terminal had about +30% health. But I think we couldāve finished it with higher health, the problem is I got distracted and let some smaller Varelsi into the circle, so they attacked it.
And that was the last Golden Medal I needed! Now I have Golden Medals in all of my missions 
PS: I think a Oscar Mike would be quite useful too, either in addition to Thorn, or in her place.
Itās the way the balancing team is balancing for PvP. Theyāve shown time and again that they have absolutely no experience with PvE balancing, so every choice they make is a PvP focused one that harms the PvE experience.
Thatās the problem. There are too many characters that simply arenāt at all viable for a number of PvE missions. All that happens with The Saboteur is that it brings those failings to the forefront and makes them obvious. The problem isnāt so much with the map, but in what the dreadful balancing has done to characters in PvE. Too many characters in PvE right now just have trouble keeping up.
And thereās too much of a massive divide between top tier characters who can just about get the job done, and then the rest who get absolutely wrecked. Take Ambra, Ghalt, Kleese, Alani (with her DoT and damage speed gear), and Oscar Mike into a match and you may find it quite a bit more manageable. Not easy, mind you, but manageable.
This is why I keep begging Gearbox to separate PvP and PvE balancing and to put a new team on PvE that has PvE balancing experience.
I still think the problem is in the map. Just changing spawn spots for mobs (so that they come in from a few spots on the sides of the hall) would be enough to get rid of most issues.
[quote=āmaskerader, post:262, topic:1386648, full:trueā]I still think the problem is in the map. Just changing spawn spots for mobs (so that they come in from a few spots on the sides of the hall) would be enough to get rid of most issues.
[/quote]
Agreed. Saboteur should be easier than Experiment because you donāt have to deal with the same point being assaulted multiple times (and it doesnāt even get healed!), but it ends up being way more difficult (at best, itās on par).
The incredibly spread out (and often in close proximity to the protected node) spawn points make it incredibly difficult to set up a reliable defense. It doesnāt help that those damned Scaven can easily sneak past everyone in a massive melee and completely demolish the node in a matter of seconds.
What might make it easier is providing more turret/trap points. Experiment provides a copious amount of turret points (generally at least 1 for each ālaneā) whereas Saboteur provides, I believe, 2 turrets at most for any of the defenses, each of which have heavily distributed spawn locations and that generally coalesce into roughly 4 ālanesā (which means youāve got each turret covering 2 lanes and easily getting overwhelmed). If they did that, theyād probably also need to add some shards as well, to make them more affordable too, but I donāt really see that as being altogether problematic.
Hey, if anyone is still having trouble, check out my guide linked below. I hope it helps: