Amygdala

Nice.

I actually see the potential for TPN to be relatively easy going on smaller leagues. I've tried a method posted here where you send everyone to the buildings to boost Public Opinion and completely ignore the Telepathists outside. It's actually relatively easy and that way you don't have to split the damage inside and outside. I've had two successful runs using this strategy so far.

I was going to say, it seems like the more people do MoM and get comfortable/more efficient with the second phase battle, the more "accidental" Perfect Storm badges are going to happen without giving it too much thought. Just a hunch.

On most runs taunting them over seemed to work pretty well. There was one run where they would not come over despite being continuously taunted. I'm pretty sure that had to do with someone having Force Bubble up.

In terms of pulling the AV into their path, interesting idea. But like others have said, a lot of the time we just fought her at her spawn point. So unless her spawn point already overlaps with the path, I don't think doing that is necessary. It would be a good strategy if no one on the league has Taunt and is worth investigating for that reason.

I'll have to run it a few more times.

I've also recommended that people glance at the timer in the iTrial window if they find they're often caught off guard by the pink patches. They are called World of Anguish there, and it tells you how many seconds you have until the next batch of them.

Here.

The truth is that not all iTrials are created equal in terms of their level range and difficulty level. It is quite possible that the league leader was attempting a higher level trial. For example, BAF, Lambda and Keyes are all trials where you face level 54 AVs. In the UGT, you face 54+1 AVs. For the two newest trials, you face 54+2 AVs. As someone mentioned, the greater the level difference between you and an enemy, many of your powers become less effective. Additionally, iTrial fights with AVs are timed. This places even more emphasis on having enough DPS in a league to take down the AV and be able to compensate for any setbacks you may encounter (league wipes can be fairly common on UGT for example). Another example, the last AV fight on MoM trial is 3 minutes only. This contrasts most AV fights in the rest of the game, where even a weaker team can tough it out over time.

As to your concern about how to get started with iTrials, it is not that difficult. I would not take this single experience and assume people are selective about levels on all available trials or that all leaders follow this practice. It is actually extremely easy to get your first level shift with your Alpha slot. BAF, Lambda and Keyes (more so since the changes) are all very suitable trials for a newly born 50. You can do these trials to unlock your Alpha slot or you can do Mender Ramiel's arc. Shards now drop from all available content. The Weekly Strike Target is another way to get salvage for higher tier Alpha powers. There are also numerous ways to convert Empyrean and Astral merits into salvage you can use to create abilities. I'm probably forgetting a few other options, but the point is there are a lot of them available to you, especially for Alpha abilities.

Personally, for BAF, Lambda and Keyes I will take any willing and able body. I enjoy the experience of having people brand new to trials come along and learn the basics. For UGT, I ask that people bring a character with at least one level shift if possible. That is my only requirement, otherwise any AT goes. I do this for a few reasons. First, I have found that because of the level gap, the more straight 50s I have on my league drastically increases the risk of a UGT failing. Second, being at least +1 puts you at the same gap that existed for the previous trials. I think this gap is reasonable since BAF, Lambda and Keyes can be challenging to a league of 50s but still manageable.

While I fully support providing people with a learning experience, such an experience is only really helpful if they can actually get through most of the trial. Otherwise, the only thing you learn is that you should probably try it again when you're stronger. This was very much the case when I tried MoM on beta. It became very obvious very quickly that a league of 50s was not suited to this trial, as we constantly died and couldn't even make it past the first GM in the first phase. (Note: in this trial there are 3 GMs in the first phase and 5 phases total).

Given the above, I don't think it's unreasonable for players to get at least one level shift to participate in trials that are level shifted themselves. Your first Alpha shift is arguably the easiest one to get due to the variety of options you have available. I know other leaders that might not ask for a single shift from everyone, but I have seen them try to compensate in other ways by asking people to switch to higher level characters until they feel there are enough of them to carry the 50s. That is one way of doing it, but in my opinion less fair. In the event that a large number of people want to bring their 50s for the iXP (and believe me, this does happen) it leaves you to pick and choose who should switch. This is why I go with +1s across the board as a minimum so I'm not stuck playing favorites. Regardless of how leaders handle this, realize that a lot of us are just trying to give the league a fighting chance in many cases and not actively shun people.

Thus, while there may not be a hard level restriction for these trials, by raising the level of the enemies it more or less creates one. That is, if people actually want to succeed at them on a standard PuG. I actually find it misleading that the game advertises that you can unlock your Alpha slot in MoM and TPN. Those trials are not suitable for people in the early stages of the Incarnate system at all. Meanwhile, TFs like Tin Mage and Apex have stricter requirements than all of the iTrials and a penalty in the form of a debuff if you don't have your Alpha slotted. Something about that doesn't seem right.

By not providing a level gate on these trials, it leaves it to the players to create them. Whether this is a good system or not, it means that you'll encounter more selectivity as the trials become more challenging and are higher level. If the selectivity isn't over level shifts, it'll make an appearance in other ways, such as AT selectivity.

I wouldn't read too much into this. Trial leaders can sometimes get umpteen tells at a time. It's easy for one to get lost in the shuffle, especially if you're dealing with questions in various channels and League Chat at the same time. Heck, maybe they went AFK. Maybe they crashed. I don't think it's a fair to automatically assume rudeness in this case.

These are good points. I'd also like to point out that Placta has been updating the initial post of this thread with notes compiled from previous attempts. If you'd like a breakdown of what we're trying, I'd check there first.

(If your points are in reference to the badge runs I lead, I just wanted to clarify that I never asked people not to use melee attacks overall. What I had asked was for people not to melee the terminals, as it tended to cause many melee players to lose visibility of the beam area, especially if the beam overlapped the terminals. I also recommended players save their Judgement powers for such an occasion, providing them with an effective ranged method of taking the terminals out quickly. However, this strategy was abandoned after I decided it was easier to just leave the terminals all together such that all anyone had to focus on during Anti Matter's regeneration were the beams. Notes from these runs can be found here.)

If time is not an issue, I'd say leave the terminals. I've seen too many people get caught in the corners on the first and third set of terminals, or 'scrapperlock' on them and lose sight of the beam.

As per July 20th Patch Notes pets are not supposed to count against the badge any longer.

I could only stay for the third run, and on that one I remember Fire Imps getting caught by the first terminal. But later on, a player was most definitely caught in a beam between the first and second terminals. So if it's the same run I'm thinking of, it wasn't the pets. (So don't worry Steel!)

The only reason I would advise that pets be dismissed is because they add bodies to the area, some of which have PBAoE effects like Hurricane, that make it more difficult to spot the beam. That, and because we've been going for Loves a Challenge at the same time, and we don't want the pets attacking the terminals by accident.

Overall, everyone did a great job this week. Congrats on Loves a Challenge. We're definitely getting closer to Green Stuff too.

I think the confusion may be the result of the following section of the patch notes:

I am assuming 'Molecular Stop' refers to the 'Time Freeze', in which case there is a window of time where he would not heal back. That's certainly not to say that he never heals back and people should just ignore Disintegration entirely.

Ran one today. It's significantly easier during the reactors. One annoying thing is that it seems the green orb that usually identifies disintegrating players is absent. This might make it tougher to spot people to heal for badge runs. At least it's not doing as much damage, though.

If you type [Lethal Force Authorized] it says in the power info "Does not require line of sight".