Amygdala

Looks like a typo. Reactor Hope and Reactor Genesis should be swapped since Anti-Matter is not needed by the terminals at the first reactor (Hope) and no restocking occurs at the second reactor (Genesis).

In a recent UGT, I kept an eye on Hit Rolls during the War Walker fights. After popping several purple inspirations (unfortunately this character did not have Barrier), Lethal Force consistently had a 95% chance to hit, whereas Crowd Dispersal and Arrest Mode had a much lower chance to hit and actually missed completely quite a few times. Ironically it seems like the best way to avoid the mez attacks, aside from avoiding targeted players, is to have a high defense, as the magnitude of the hold and the fear are far too high to mitigate via Clarions.

That said, I'm curious, has anyone seen Lethal Force's chance to hit dip below 95%? I haven't been able to see the results with capped defense yet.

As others have stated, the AVs scale according to league size. For example, I've checked Marauder's HP on a few leagues of different sizes and it is easy to see he has less on smaller leagues.

On that note, I wouldn't hesitate to try to run a smaller league UGT. I did one with about 15 people and it was one of the best UGTs I've ever been on. The proportion of level shifted characters on your league seems to have much more of an effect than the size of the league itself.

There were a lot of decent suggestions made in this post. I've included what I feel is most important above.

However, if nothing else is changed about the Underground Trial, the single most important improvement would be visual indicators for the War Walker fights and Regenerative Lichen. I wouldn't necessarily mind changes to the length of the trial, but I don't think these alterations are as urgently necessary.

I also agree that improvements to the actual trial design should be prioritized over adjusting the rewards of the trial.

This illustrates a common problem. When I lead UGTs, I go over the War Walker fight at least twice (once before the trial even starts and once directly before the actual fight). If the Extinction War Walker fight doesn't go so hot, I'll review it again before the Self Repairing and Lichen Infested War Walkers. So information is most certainly provided as to how this fight works, how to tell if you're targeted and what to do if targeted. Providing this information is not enough, as it is still common for me to see leagues wipe because of Lethal Force. From a leadership perspective, I can't possible identify who is having difficulty, so I can't help them beyond repeating myself in League Chat over and over again. Instead, I find myself basically telling everyone in the league to avoid all other players if they see the "Lethal Force Authorized!" warning. Basically, my strategy has become 'trust no one'.

Here's the link to MA Mondays.

The LFG channel that currently exists isn't a chat channel. It's for error messages pertaining to leagues. E.g., if someone isn't eligible to join your trial, you will get a message in this channel.

Otherwise, I think something like the OP suggested should exist.

Vary rarely does the lemming approach accomplish much. If it does, it usually works over a much longer period of time than would an organized approach. Remember that the Avatar fight on the UGT is timed.

Recently, I've switched strategies for the Avatar fight based on the first UGT I ever lead and a tactic used as a fallback method when the normal method wasn't working. Normally, Lore Pets during the final fight would be avoided due to the fact that they could turn on you if confused. Sometimes this wouldn't work out for various reasons and as a last ditch effort, pets would be brought out to try to turn the tide. Sometimes this actually worked, though it required people to be able to regroup mid fight. Therefore, I decided to try to start with Lore Pets to take advantage of the fact people are naturally grouped up right before the end fight. Using Lore Pets relies very heavily on having enough Confuse Protection.

• The magnitude of the Avatar's Confuse is 20. Before even entering the trial, make sure people with Tactics are evenly distributed across teams. Leadership buffs affect your team only, not your league mates. Therefore, having these people all on one team isn't helping the other 2 teams. Of course, there are other forms of Confuse Protection, such as Steamy Mist, CMs, etc. However Tactics, being a pool power, is one of the most easily accessed since any AT can have it. On a full league, I'm usually able to find 3-4 Tactics for each team. You'll also want a count of how many people with Clarion are on your league.

If you have reason to believe that each team can safely maintain a Confuse Protection of 20 or above, do the following right before the Avatar fight:

• 1) After the cutscene, have everyone gather up at the doorway.

• 2) Have everyone summon their Lore Pets.

• 3) Have everyone cast their Destiny buffs, especially Clarion.

• 4) Have everyone run in and dogpile the Avatar. The only time you'll want to move away is if you're targeted by Grasp of Gaea, a power that can cause Avatar to heal.

• 5) You should have enough DPS and Confuse Protection to take him down in approximately a minute, or before buffs run out.

I've seen this work extremely well twice so far when used as the initial strategy for the Avatar.

In terms of league communication, League Chat can get fairly cluttered such that people who want to listen have difficulty reading. The use of Request is a good idea in theory, but relies on people actually turning Request on. There are times I have difficulty getting people to turn on League Chat alone. There have also been other times where people have commented to me "Gee, Leader X is awfully quiet today" only to realize they missed the part about turning on Request. If you can get it to work, it could definitely be a useful tool.

There are also ways to cut back on League Chat spam without having to resort to an additional channel, such as having people not test macros while instructions are being given. There is nothing more annoying than having DISINTEGRATING! pop up while you are trying to read up on what you're supposed to be doing. Asking people to test macros and hold questions until the end helps to limit that kind of interference.

In general, it's important to realize that sometimes things don't work out, even though it may seem like they should. I have seen a great many highly successful PuG UGTs. I've seen PuG MoUGT runs as well. Overall, everyone does a great job, so try not to get too down if a run fails. I think the biggest cause of failure at this point is that people get overly confident due to previous successes and forget why certain steps are important. Sometimes a good kick in the rear can serve as a useful reminder.

Personally, I don't really like the idea of having to single people out to stay in the hospital. I've seen these badges earned a few times with everyone in play for the final fight. I think what would probably help the most is doing more than 2 runs at a time, or at least finding a way to maximize our time working with a consistent group of people. When I hosted the badge runs for Keyes I aimed for 3 to 4 attempts. The first couple runs were always a bit of a disaster, but by the third and fourth runs we got Green Stuff and Loves a Challenge or came extremely close.

The issue with doing more runs is that the league seems to dissipate after the second run. I realize only two runs were scheduled at a time, but even the times Placta has suggested a third most people seem to be on their way out. I think perhaps we are cutting it too close to dinner time? Maybe setting the start time an hour earlier would allow us to get a third in. We could also focus only on Green Stuff and Loves a Challenge and try to whip through the runs as quickly as possible in order to fit more in. Anti Anti Matter and Bunker Buster add a good chunk of time to the runs.

As for the Time Freeze, Placta has made an effort to call this out and time it properly. I know a couple times it was abandoned because we failed Green Stuff on the first beam. The other issue is that people are still getting caught in the beam without interference from the Time Freeze. Thus, we would not see benefit from attempting to co-ordinate the freeze with the beam until people are able to dodge it for the remainder of the fight.

Other pointers I'd make:

- Green Stuff runs often fail on the first beam. This is usually because players start clumped at the first terminal. It would probably help if we made an effort to spread out more and stay spread out as much as possible.

- Despite being asked each week to adjust Rebirth colours, people are still not doing this.

- Despite being asked not to fly, I still see people flying around.

- People are crowding the Disintegrating player far too often. You really, really can't do this if we're going for Loves a Challenge. All too often I see people die because someone of opposite Entanglement runs in to try to heal them with an aura. If you have single target heals, use them at range.

- Likewise, people who are Disintegrating aren't moving away from other players. So just as people shouldn't be running towards you, if you find yourself in the middle of a bunch of people, move.

- IMO if you're going for Loves a Challenge, you're pretty much going for Green Stuff, or at least you should be trying. The reason being that the Obliteration Beam itself kills players. Just because we're not officially going for that badge doesn't mean people shouldn't still be mindful of the beam.

- If we fail early in a run, we should still keep trying. After all, it's free practice time and an opportunity to pick up on ways to improve.

Please note that Placta does an excellent job of reviewing the above pointers each week. I just feel they deserve to be emphasized again.

Lastly,

Roster
@Placta - elec/elec blaster
@Spatch - Peacebringer
@tenjoy - MA/SR scrapper
@Amygdala

This. Bunker Buster was failed the last couple runs. Placta explained the plan for this badge very clearly but people were not following instructions. Please don't assume you already know what you're doing just because it's an easy badge. It's only easy if people stay focused and are paying attention.

This as well. If we want to give ourselves the best chance, limiting visual distractions is key. I'd also like to add a reminder not to use Fly. I saw quite a few people doing that as well last run. Air Beams are a good way to fail.