Hildy and Torchy continue to churn through 41, navigating PI with relative aplomb (though on the one AV mish we’ve had to date — Psychic Clockwork King — we dropped the difficulty to get him to an Elite Boss … and he still, um, cleaned our clocks the first time we attacked him).
We’re dying in more or less even numbers. Torchy might be dropping a bit more than Hildy — Hildy’s on the front line, but Torchy’s awfully squishy, and if we get taken from multiple sides, I usually kiss pavement pretty quickly. It’s hard to say, though, as Hildy has Rise of the Phoenix, so even when she goes down, she gets back up again shortly (usually, though not always, before the remaining mobs carve me into chutney, and usually, though not always, successfully enough to finish taking them down).
I did end up making a mad sprint through other-dimensional Oranbega last night, various Malta troops and a Herc-class Titan on my tail (yes, looking back down a long tunnel and seeing that wonderful spiral of rockets heading your way is a wonderful last sight to carry off with you).
Malta are probably the worst opponents we’re facing now. Nemmies are annoyingly long-ranged in their attacks, but rarely a huge threat. Rikti are just more grunts to churn through. But Malta are pretty problematic, especially the Sappers, which can take either of us to Useless pretty quickly — either of which is usually lethal for me, since as soon as Hildy’s armor drops, even for a moment, everyone’s attention gets turned to the Big Flaming Damage Dealer across the room.
Fortunately, at 41, we both ended up with a Hold — which is does decently to take down the Sapper if we’re lucky, and which (if we do it together) can hold a boss-level (which is a nice way to deal with Paragon Protectors before they go all invulnerable on us). The alternative, which is also effective, is for me to snipe the damned Sapper, which (if I buff up) will usually one-shot him without drawing aggro from the whole room.
I do like the Malta group, for a variety of reasons (not least of which is the hi-larious mission dialog from Indigo and Crimson), but they’re probably dealing us 80% of our deaths right now, and continue to refine our tactics (and add Accuracies to our holds) seems an imperative.