Flaming1

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::Puffs smoke then falls over.::

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Quit bogarting!

Puff, puff, pass -- cummon, already!

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LOL. No stock options for me. I'm one of the founders here!

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H4X?

Yee!



Also, Yee, yee, yee and yee!

Or, in true comic book parlance:

"Ascended to a higher plane of existence..."

Possibly, with better benefits. Also, stock options.

Yeeey!

Grats.

This one is actually months, nay years, old: NinjaChick 6489 kicking Tsoo, uh --

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Please also note that the Cathedral of Pain trial has been switched off, pending some upcoming changes.

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So it seems we may get another patch soon to make it more difficult again? We'll have to see what happens...

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Interesting, interesting.

I think maybe you jump the gun to presume that it's all going to get more difficult.

From our testing, I can only preliminarily conclude that the difficulty of Cathedral increases the more IoPs you have. This makes teleologic sense to allow smaller, poorer (in Prestige terms) SGs the ability to more easily acquire a couple of IoPs -- whereas larger, better equipped SGs will have to work harder to earn >2 IoPs.

Our dataset is relatively limited thus far (only two different groups are reporting this in this thread at present), so we can't really consider those conclusions to be wholly validated just yet.

Let's mull the possibilities (not all of which are mutually exclusive) from our testing, posted in detail upthread:

1) The ability to asynchronously defeat Obelisks, one of the most widely reported changes in the most recent testing cycle, is not intended.

2) The increased time between Willforge spawns in the Main Room during our first two (successful) attempts are not intended.

3) The rapid respawns on the Willforge seen in the Main Room during our third (unsuccessful) attempt is not intended.

4) Aspect's ability to attack from behind his Unaffected cloak may be unintended, although we see several examples of this already in-game.

5) The scatter-aggro effects seen in our second and third attempts are not intended.

6) The near-instant aggro upon entering the Main Room during our first attempt is not intended.

7) The ability of Willforge spawns to follow players out of the Main Room is not intended.

There are plenty more, but I think you get the jist -- that the most recent cycle of Cathedral testing has been been providing hard-to-explain, often incongruous and contradictory results. At present, the scaling difficulty theory is the best explanation to reconcile these issues teleologically.

However, with very limited testing data -- it's difficult to claim these as definitive conclusions.

My suspicion is that if the scaling difficulty theory is correct, then the changes Bridger is posting about may not be so easily defined as increasing or decreasing the difficulty of Cathedral. It may be a matter of increasing the difficulty toward the low-end, decreasing the difficulty of the high-end, or fixing unintended bugs irrespective of difficulty. Again, these possibilities are not mutually exclusive.

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Gratz Plasma. It's about time you got a 50.

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Seriously!

All the cool kids are doing it, after all.

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I know there are 8 or 9 different IOPs ... what happens when there are 60 supergroups doing the trial all at the same time (yes i am exaggerating, but it is entirely possible) and everyone completes it ... does this mean that all those SGs will actually get an IOP, or will it be first come first serve ... the rest get booted back to their base ...


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This we can address.

Everyone who completes Cathedral should get some form of IoP. The Common IoPs are unlimited in number. They should be available for as many SGs complete the Trial, and have space to store them.

However, the Uncommon and Rare IoPs (we have some indication that there are actually three tiers of IoP) are limited in number by server. It may be possible that high-pop servers like Freedom may see greater competition for a small pool of Uncommons and Rares. It may also be possible that those high-pop servers will actually have more Uncommons and Rares in circulation, so the relative competition will not necessarily be greater than lower-pop servers.

This is all very black box territory -- a great many variables, no small part of which depends on player behaviors and desires. We know that there are a lot of SGs -- even on the lower-pop servers, that are capable of running Cathedral. We don't know how many of them actually have a legitimate interest in running it though, or running it on a semi-regular basis.

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And another thing, can someone explain the mechanics behind raid scheduling for IOPs ? like how many times can you be raided per day/week, and how often (IF you can defend yourself that is) ...

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From the Base Building/Raiding/Prestige FAQ, we seem to have indication that your SG will need to define a 3 hour window during which you are raidable per week. You pick the hours, but depending on who fires up an assualt, your base might get picked.

Mind you, we have even less testing of scheduled raids -- mostly because that content is gated on the IoP trial.

Looks good, Crim -- especially with all the new modifications made for Attackless.

Don't forget to add with link to the Guide to Guides, stickied to the top of the board.

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are there any screenies anywhere of the CoP?

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After looking through my screenshot folder, I'm afraid not. Too busy running for my life, dontcha know.



Oh, and as for the Final Room -- the Cathedral, I'd imagine -- it's pretty much the final AV room for the Faathim TF, IIRC.

Frank Gehry only has so many original ideas.

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It's believed to be random, all luck as to which one you get, but i wouldn't be surprised if changing the Trial's difficulty level and the number of people you have with you would change your chances of getting a better IoP, as well as the time you complete it in...

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Hrm. Granted, it's all conjectural -- but I'm not convinced of this. We know that larger, more PvP-oriented SGs will probably be more likely to attain multiple IoPs, by virtue of having greater Prestige acquisition capacity for a larger base, and being able to more reliably complete Cathedral multiple times (especially if the scaling difficulty is dependent on number of IoPs, as current testing suggests).

It seems to me like they don't really need more of a chance to shut smaller SGs out of the possibility of attaining the rare IoPs.

On on hand, we know that the base raid mechanism will only allow SGs to raid upwards -- that is, raid other SGs who own a greater number of IoPs. In that sense, raiding will be gated to prevent large SGs from hoarding IoPs by virtue of continually harassing smaller, probably poorer-equipped SGs.

If a large SG wants to hoard IoPs, then it'll be incumbent upon them to defeat Cathedral reliably (possibly another reason for the scaling difficulty on Cathedral) as well as be on perma-defense from other SGs.

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The week I prayed to God/Jesus I got 3 out of 10 prayers answered. The week I prayed to Captain Spock I got 6 out of 10. I'm gonna keep praying to Spock, he's more efficient.

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An overstatement -- you fail to qualify the fact that such content is gated on resource-acquisition: Prestige.

Having Cathedral open Live with CoV launch would be mostly useless -- it would not be possible for most any VG to even be able to attain a Base worthy of firing up Cathedral.

Moreover, since the final Raid mechanic is essentially PvP-centric, the level inequity between Heroes and Villains prior to I7 further suggests that having Base Raids active before Villains reach L50 substantially impairs their ability to successfully defend or launch a Raid.

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The CoP trial was completed with a kinda-sorta Pickup SG raid. and we succeeded so its very possible by competent gorups

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We had several pick-ups in our first large-group attempt at Cathedral. With a little explanation and patience, everyone picked it up rather readily. Even with those pickups, the whole affair took less than fifteen minutes from portal to portal.

I'd definitely agree that in that instance, with large-numbers, PuGs are probably going to be just fine.

With the strange aggro and respawn mechanics we saw in our third go-round, I might be concerned that even a larger team of PuGs would still be confounded.

Aight, new testing results.

Lemme go ahead and summarize the whole of our previous testing results:

1) The other night, we were able to easily defeat Cathedral with >20 assorted players on three reasonably well-balanced teams. We verified that the First Phase of the Trial no longer requires simultaneous destruction of the Obelisks; this remained constant in our other attempts. Upon zoning into the Main Room, we observed something novel -- several Wisps appeared to be on patrol routes, bringing them into near-instant aggro range of the door. Most of our Raid Party zoned in to immediate aggro. In this testing run, the initial aggro at the door chained us to the nearest two Willforges, which had spawns. After defeating those spawns quickly, we backed up against the wall and proceeded around the periphery of the room to the Willforge nearest Aspect, noting that neither of the previous two Willforges had respawned at all. Clearing the last Willforge and defeating Aspect was quick and trivial, and we were rewarded with a Fury Monument.

2) Tonight, we wanted to see how a small team would perform against Cathedral, so we took in an assortment of 3 Blasters, 2 Scrappers and 3 Controllers (with Rad, Emp and Kin). The First Phase was defeated quickly. Upon reaching the Main Room, we did not encounter any immediate aggro as before. We proceeded to defeat the first Willforge spawn on the left, before proceeding to the second Willforge on the right. After defeating those spawns, we did not observe any further respawns, before continuing on to the third Willforge and defeating Aspect. We were rewarded with Anger Monument.

3) In order to more explicitly test the respawn mechanism in the Main Room, we immediately restarted the Trial with the same 8-man team as before. The First Phase was defeated quickly. Upon reentering the Main Room, we did not encounter any immediate aggro, as before. We proceeded to engage the first Willforge on the left, before immediately proceeding to the second Willforge on the right. In contrast to our previous attempts, the Willforges continually respawned at semi-regular intervals (on the 0:20 second marks on the timer, in confirmation of testing during the previous Cathedral testing cycle).

As of present, we do not fully understand the respawn mechanism. Beinig unable to fully clear the room before players had to log (our second Cathedral in a row, mind you) -- we'd made the following observations:

a) The Willforge spawns appear to follow very odd aggro mechanisms. Snipe pulling a single target, in one instance (a Storm Elemental), caused that mob to fly away across the room. A Controller finished off that mob while he was near the other Willforge, pulling the aggro from that spawn. Another single target pull of a Wisp Overlord caused the entire Willforge spawn to fly away and scatter throughout the room.

b) Aggroed Willforge spawns will follow out the door of the Main Room.

c) At one point, we had cleared the first two Willforge spawns with no resulting respawn. However, aggroing the third Willforge, near Aspect, was coincident with respawns at the first two boxes. We are not certain of a causal triggering relationship.

So what do we have in conclusion?

In three instances of testing, subtle differences between each Trial suggests several possiblities. The Devs may have patched some of the aggro mechanics today; there may be bugs associated with this -- we're not clear. Most importantly, we do not have consistent experience with the respawn mechanism on the Willforges. It's possible there may be some randomization elements to the Trial which could also explain those inconsistencies.

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Yup, that appears to be the case at the moment - I'd like to see the simultaneous element back as it does provide a nice challenge, however I'm not sure how close to each other they needed to be destroyed before - but I think 2 minutes would be a good number to aim for.

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In figuring out workable strategies for this phase of the Trial (I call the strat Delayed Gratification, for those of you in the know), it seemed to me like there were several arguably conflicting principles at work:

1) Reasonably well-balanced teams seemed quite important. There seemed to be a good role for every AT in the Trial, especially the first part. Unlike, say, Hamidon - there's nothing really even resembling a superfluous powerset in Cathedral.

2) There was simply a non-scaling hard-gate on sheer manpower. The spawns didn't appear to differ, in terms of relative con and numbers. The previous "Tough" Cathedral probably couldn't be completed by less than eight players in most circumstances, although I am aware of some claims in that regard.

3) Likewise, the one most appealing thing (to me, at least) about Cathedral was that it required coordination of players across teams -- in a manner not really seen outside of Hamidon or, arguably, Lusca. Simple communication becomes that much more challenging, and that much more necessary.

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I think the lair section isn't too bad at the moment - however he does go down very quickly with a full-sized trial party. I wouldn't want him to be buffed too much if it made taking him down too difficult for smaller sized trial parties though.

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In all fairness, it seems that high-end raid content in CoX suffers from these problems of accessibility-versus-challenge that appear to be common in other raid-heavy MMOs like WoW. While there are plenty of good arguments for or against scaling, remember that Cathedral itself is not necessarily an end-unto-itself -- it serves as a gateway to the Base Raid mechanic, so it seems likely that some degree of fine-tuning would be needed to ensure that enough SGs are capable of reliably completing Cathedral, without making it so accessible that it negates the need for having an SG of any notable size or coordination.

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Sounds like it's too easy for y'all.

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Frankly, having tested each incarnation of the Cathedral -- the previous "tough" version seemed like it might be a little bit of a problem, at least at the outset, for even a moderately-sized (say, 12-24 players of moderate playtime) SG.

While I suspect that we're going to see complaints in both directions about this current incarnation of Cathedral (somehow, it's simultaneously too easy and too tough, depending on who you ask), I have little doubt that many more SGs should be capable of completing Cathedral without resorting to extravagant measures.

If the Cathedral were set too hard, how does it help spur the Base Raid PvP mechanic if only a small handful of SGs were capable of completing the Trial on the smaller-to-medium population servers?

The Cathedral should present challenge, yes. But since it forms the basis for additional layers of content, it should also be reasonably accessible to enough SGs to foment the Base Raid system -- which is ostensibly its very purpose, after all.

Cathedral-farming for fun-and-profit, huh?

Sounds like the quiet-PL-workaround that dedicated PL-advocates keep searching for.

Moreover, not as much need to spam for bridges or pads or whatnot -- seeing as how just being able to access the thing is predicated on having at least a moderately-sized SG, and that despite having been made easier since the last testing iteration, still requires substantial team effort from most of the teammembers.

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Pinnacle's premier TA/A.

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If not only TA/A!

Grats, Lumi! Vacation time?

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And thanks for watching the climactic maturation of two digitalized, female characters, Flamer?

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For science, dear Alloric. For science.

Great guide. I especially like that you've taken time to discuss the tactics involved with Fire Blasting, something I wish more guides would consider doing.

A small point. Your discussion of pulling -- Fire Blast may not be the best equipped set for pulling, but one doesn't necessarily have to pull with a snipe. Fire Blast (the second single-target power) isn't sufficient damage to kill a white-con, and has a base range around 70-80'. It can be used to great effect to pull.

The other option that I've seen used a great deal lately is using Fire Ball to pull. The benefit of an AoE pull is in drawing the closer of two tightly-spawned mobs, to minimize the risk of chain agg. Also note that in contrast to a single-target pull that happens to grab additional NPCs, a mob pulled by AoE is more likely to arrive in a nice, bunched-up group, rather than a trickle.

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I didn't mean for that post to come off quite as bitter as it did, I just tire of the binary concept most people have with Regen. The immortality line just doesn't work for me, because there are ways around that.

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Without naming names, the one poster with the "Regen is like Snowboarding -- you either look fabulous, or you're dead" line?

Yeah, that one always irritated me as being wholly incorrect. Even champion riders wobble here and there; the skill is in recovering.

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I just disagree with the immortality line. I agree it exists, I just disagree it makes Regen as binary as many would claim. I know far too many Regenners who use the immortality line as their cutoff point, and refuse to find ways to push past it, which frustrates me to no end.

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I find it telling that in the aftermath following I6, the Regen players of my acquaintance have seemingly congealed into two populations: the players who still manage to remain wholly survivable and use the set skillfully and purposefully, and those who eat floor at every possible opportunity.

Suffice it to say -- I find it to be evidence that the powerset was previously allowing any Joe Schmoe with a copycat build mini-Godhood status.

I'm not bothering with you.

It's beneath me.

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Surely I deserve more of a rejoinder than: can I have your stuff?

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Not really, no.

Here's the skinny. Thanks for the kind words, but the rationality is useful for arguments of reason.

It simply doesn't stand up to problems of preference. I prefer Coke. You might prefer Pepsi. There's no rational discourse to broach that topic. You could go on and on about the reasons you prefer Pepsi to Coke, but that's simply extension of the essential subjectivity of the argument.

Blaming Statesman for the "disasterous policies perpetrated on a game I've been following since it was merely a dark development forum years and years ago" is aggressive, non-constructive and frankly inappropriate.

Nevermind the fact that the game's initial success are at least as attributable to him. Or that I, among other players, am actually having more fun now than ever in the game.

If you're not -- well, sorry. But you don't speak for me, or for anyone else in the playerbase. Conflating your argument is a falsehood.

I don't find your argument even remotely worthwhile to address its many points of inductive, rather than deductive logic, its fallacies, or its inappropriate presumptions.

No, really. Stuff. Now.

Also, the door hitting you on the way out and all that good stuff.