ROBOKiTTY

As mentioned earlier, @Salsakitten, but with first letter capitalized. She was married to @Thorgar and was formerly known as @Rowankitten.

She also did this station ID for The Cape: http://www.thecaperadio.com/files/mp...n%20Dreams.mp3

Anecdote: I have two story arcs that hadn't received a single play in like, a year. The other day, I got three 5-stars out of nowhere.

Here's a list of issues that have been bugging me so far.

- A trial cannot start without the whole league on the same map. This might seem reasonable, but there aren't that many coop zones, so server populations are jam-packed into the few we have. Full instances of RWZ and Pocket D make forming up a nightmare in coordination on busy servers. Furthermore, these ultra-crowded instances become unstable and laggy.

I started hijacking Midnighter Club, and friends followed suit. Then two MCs spawned, forcing some of us into Cimerora. What's next, having to form outside the BAF physically for BAF?

- I cannot move league members who are not in my instance. I cannot make changes to a team whose leader is not in my instance. Annoying QoL-wise.

- Entering a league into a trial requires everyone to confirm a popup window. Those who don't click enter (afk, confused, etc) hold up the whole league and get left behind eventually. Why this design? Leaving behind someone who does not confirm within a brief time window is a poor default option. In addition, there's nothing a league leader can do (e.g. when someone disconnects) to interrupt the timer.

- League disbands upon entering a trial and reforms inside. The team leader who loads in first gets league leadership. Team order gets all jumbled up. None of that disruption should be necessary for a league starting a new trial.

- League chat is added to help tab by default and nowhere else. I don't see the logic.

- The helper/help-me system is a pest. Can't the popup show up only once per account? The new name colours also contravene existing colouring conventions. It's disorienting trying to tell apart players who supposedly want to be helped (many I've seen have chosen that as a joke) from purple-con NPCs at a glance.

- Another popup is the team UI one. This one is extra-persistent, rearing its head randomly on zoning multiple times on the same character.

- BAF has a higher minimum threshold than Lambda and is generally harder, but it gives much less Incarnate experience. A full Lambda yielded 20+% Interface progress, and a full BAF put me at 5% Judgement progress. Teams were balanced on both counts. Something is not right here.

- Both BAF and Lambda are lousy for defeat drops. Multiple teams create extra competition, each cutting into the other's rewards. Reward harmonization and reward pool bonuses should be considered.

The patch only went on test on double-XP weekend, but WTFs were not announced and therefore went untested. Kind of an oopsy moment there.

WTF anecdote time. I assembled a team with friends to do STF, and we finished in 48 minutes with three deaths without a tanker. Meanwhile, another team that was forming before we had started was still one short twenty minutes after we finished.

On Virtue, the boat in Independence Port has been as crowded as full raid zones, with horrible lag and people/pets blocking mission entrances. Sometimes there'd be Ouro portals dropped on mission doors, making it impossible to enter. I'm not sure if it was griefers or just people being slow.

More stuff I'm never going to get (since the world blows up in 2012).

xeaon ran yet another CoP blueside tonight, and after taking down obelisks in one go, we ran into quite a snag and only managed to slog through it with less than 15 minutes left. I got my power analyser out and started monitoring his stats early on. There were some interesting things. Here are a couple of screenshots:





He also had 87% regen resistance and 20% extra tohit.

We had a lot of dark defenders, a number of kins, one cold domination, and one trick arrow defender in terms of debuffing. We generally cleared each respawn in under 30s.

The AV's resistance was pretty much always floored at 10%, never going any lower. Interestingly enough, this means chem nukes were basically of marginal usefulness anyway.

In the second screenie, the -regen added up to -3.8/s but was only effectively -0.23/s. His regen during each attack phase averaged around 200-500 HP/s. Right before barrier went up, his regen would eventually sink to 0-200 HP/s -- but all -regen debuffs wore off within 10-15 seconds of each respawn. This meant he was back to full regen often as we were half done clearing mobs.

Hope this helps.

xeaon ran another CoP tonight redside. We got the purple stormie AV. The whole trial finished in 17 minutes.

Phase 0:
We took a nap in Global Co base to refresh ourselves.

Phase 1:
A couple of afkers/DCs at the start, but obelisks taken down in one go.

AV spawn:
Purple guy/Stormie spawned. Peoples facepalmed and headdesked. xeaon went on to talk strategy for ten minutes in request.

Assault:
HIT Aspect of Rularuu! Your Irradiate power had a 19.34% chance to hit, you rolled a 3.64.
MISSED Aspect of Rularuu!! Your Choking Cloud power had a 15.57% chance to hit, you rolled a 95.98.

This was with vengeance and several tactics and debuffs active... However, there were a lot of pets, a couple of shivans, some clockworks, a Vanguard heavy, and a snowman. All these pets clogged his tubes and target-capped him, so hurricane wasn't hitting all of us. This allowed us to take him out in three blooms. We started attacking around the 50m mark and took him down around 43m.

Thanks particularly to xeaon for leading this. Props to everyone for another CoP well done. =D

Colour me unimpressed and baffled by the no-nuke change, too. Are any devs looking at feedback here or regarding the party pack?

On the other hand, the stormy AV obviously needs to be reworked. Let's look at some logs.

08-27-2010 18:42:09 Aspect of Rularuu HITS you! Ion Burst power had a 42.37% chance to hit and rolled a 37.51.
08-27-2010 18:42:11 Aspect of Rularuu HITS you! Ion Burst power had a 95.00% chance to hit and rolled a 17.65.
08-27-2010 18:42:14 Aspect of Rularuu HITS you! Ion Burst power had a 74.47% chance to hit and rolled a 25.18.
08-27-2010 18:42:16 Aspect of Rularuu HITS you! Ion Burst power had a 15.75% chance to hit and rolled a 8.68.
08-27-2010 18:42:19 Aspect of Rularuu MISSES! Ion Burst power had a 15.75% chance to hit, but rolled a 51.52.
08-27-2010 18:42:21 Aspect of Rularuu MISSES! Ion Burst power had a 15.75% chance to hit, but rolled a 49.68.

A massive AoE every 2-3 seconds (1 second animating, 1 second recharge, and then server delay). Did someone misplace a zero again? His hurricane does -57.6% tohit debuff. He's constantly spamming blizzard, freezing rain, and ice storm in and out of barriers. He regens back to full in seconds, even if taken to one third of his health before barrier comes up. Please fix this encounter before taking away the last-resort tools of the few who are even bothering with this trial, whose difficulty is already substantial without this buggy AV.

08-27-2010 18:43:23 Aspect of Rularuu HITS you! Ion Burst power had a 95.00% chance to hit and rolled a 6.56.
08-27-2010 18:43:24 Aspect of Rularuu blasts you with his Ion Burst for 1328.47 points of energy damage and drains some of your Endurance!

I lead raids.

This AI issue is frustrating and unfun. Some examples follow.

1) A DB/WP brute and my rad/rad corr took on Deathsurge. He spawned to the east of the university, and he ran all the way to the northeast corner of the map by the time we had him down.

2) I've had purple/red-conning Hellions/Skulls flee from my lowbies. Similar behaviour on a MA/SR scrapper (not running toggles yet) or an archery/devices blaster. With no travel powers, I could hardly chase mobs that would often jump over high walls in their flight.

3) In-mission soloing: it's very frustrating to solo (at +0/x1) on my rad/rad corr. With groups that consist of three minions, one or two almost always run as I approach. I can pretty much forget about using debuff toggles too, since that's almost guaranteed to make mobs scatter.

4) Many tip missions have objectives that require me to clear out ambushing bosses and minions. Some of these minions would flee on sight, lose aggro, wander off, and become indistinguishable from other mobs. I've had to clear entire maps many times, just because Miss Thystle's PPD minions decided to flee and hang out with a side spawn or some such nonsense.

5) ITF's third mission has one of the generals surrounded by a bunch of EBs that are part of the objective. These EBs are notorious runners. It's not unheard of to have one or two run from the bridge through lag hill, while jumping up cliffs, all the way to the platform near the end of the mission.

Just updating here that blue and red Hamidon raids use the same timer, so no double HOs/full merits without waiting.

Cathedral of Pain has been happening quite a lot, but because it's an SG/VG thing, public CoP runs are rather scarce. We could try organizing regular public runs à la Master Saturday.

The two are confirmed to be on the same timer...

Updated for Issue 18. Not much I needed to add except to cover side switching. More may come if strategies undergo greater shifts down the line.

I will be talking a lot in request as requested.

All Exx's merits are belong to KiTTY.

ADVANCED STRATEGERY

Killing Hamidon through two blooms spontaneously:

This has been achieved multiple times without prior announcement or use of temps on both sides. When Hamidon nears 50% HP, yellow aggro takes off to their positions as normal after buffs. The rest of the raid continues attacking Hamidon, preferably each eating an EoE at bloom time. Yellow aggro will have a new set of yellows on their hands at 25%, and the raid may have to eat a second EoE if the first one wears off.

A risky but epic manoeuvre, requires high damage output and solid yellow aggro control. Failure to succeed with this tactic results in a...

Double bloom!:

Virtue blueside has successfully cleared at least two double blooms spontaneously to date. If we're lucky, this Wednesday will witness a third successful double-bloom clearing. Redside hasn't had a chance to attempt this, as they haven't had a failed push through two blooms (there was, however, a failed 100%-to-0% nuke raid).

Clearing a double bloom is not especially hard. However, it's best done in two waves with an evac called midway at the raid leader's discretion.

Spike teams will need to have designated targeters. Hamidon taunter will need a lot of help, as twelve greens can obliterate a tanker's health bar in seconds, never mind the debuffs. Therefore, certain scrappas and off-tankers will have to actively pull green hate off the taunter. Assault also faces great opposition from twelve blues, so staying at maximum distance is a must.

Blues will need to be cleared before greens, once yellows are all down. Two blooms worth of lightning chains are zomgdeadly even to tankers and will cripple the entire raid if left alone. Scrappas will now form up on a green and attack it to provide additional cover for the taunter and distract greens from healing blues.

Greens are straightforward. There are more of them, but nothing a normal raid can't deal with.

That leads us to future challenges:
Kill Hamidon through 75%, 50%, and 25% (clear only initial mitos)?
Failing that, clear a triple bloom?
Kill Hamidon in one go, ignoring initial mitos?
Failing that, clear a quad bloom?

Minor adjustment to villain strategy. Fixed left/right confusion.

Upcoming next: old strategies and why they were phased out.

And we were so close to finishing that Hammy... ugh.