StabbinPayne

Figured I'd repost this here, so it won't die with the old thread.

Make a shortcut to the cohupdater program on your desktop, adding -demoplay after the executable name. Now you can just drag 'n drop .cohdemo files onto the shortcut and they'll start playing .

I.e., the properties for my desktop shortcut look like:
Target: "C:\Applications\Games\City of Heroes\CohUpdater.exe" -demoplay
Start in: "C:\Applications\Games\City of Heroes"

If you want to toy with adding other playback options to the shortcut, Zloth advised that the -demoplay option should probably be included last.

Hey, I found a neat trick to make demos easier to view. Simply make a shortcut on your desktop to your cohupdater and add the -demoplay flag after it. Now you can drag 'n drop .cohdemo files to it, and they will play!

I.E. my desktop shortcut looks like:
Target: "C:\Applications\Games\City of Heroes\CohUpdater.exe" -demoplay
Start in: "C:\Applications\Games\City of Heroes"

I can drag 'n drop .cohdemo files to the shortcut on my desktop and they seem to play fine .

If you want to add any of the other options, you should be able to stick them after the -demoplay.

I did a work up of tanker Burn damage in the previous Brawl Index thead, which you can see here. I got a value of approx 0.3333/tick with about 40 total ticks coming over the 10 second duration.

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If "Yes, I did" doesn't make the matter clear, then I suggest you may suffer from perceptual difficulties.

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Eh, whatever. You clearly ignored/overlooked several of my points or their more obvious implications (i.e. the movement capped flying, the damage output of the controllers compared to base Phantasm damage, the fact that they are operating solo after each round of buffs), and are still ignoring some obvious advantages/implications of having the 8 Ill/Rad's SOLO Hazard groups after each round of buffs. 8 teams of 4-5 AE'ers should hunt substantially faster than 1 team of 8 AE'ers (or 2 teams of 4 defenders more optimally, I think) when the main source of downtime is travel between groups that are only 50-300 feet apart.

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You miss the point totally, which was one of logistics and moving your circus about.

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Eh, what's so hard about moving around 4-5 flying pets at the movement cap 50-300 feet at a time? Each Ill/Rad hunts S-O-L-O with his Phantasms, there is no "circus" when moving. The round of buffs every 100-120s will be a bit of a circus, but mostly one of pets jostling each other around and horrid framerates .


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First it was Defenders have the edge to 18, now to 32. Only have to squeeze out that last 18 levels I guess.

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I mostly meant that the controllers don't completely suck compared to the defenders once they hit 19 (which may only be a matter of 5 vs. 10-15 hours, anyway) when I said they don't really "mature" until then. That definitely wasn't how it came across in my initial post, however, I agree. The Phantom Armies will still defeat stuff plenty fast though, and the logistics can be improved by splitting up into teams of 2-4 between buff rounds (some toying around should determine how many Phantoms are practical to work with).

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EF however does not, despite the mathematical obviousness of it all, work by additively subtracting from resistance. Each one stacked after the first adds the amount of damage it would do were it the only one there. There is no mathematical limit (in the sense you were reaching by considering -100% resistance) this way as you can continue to add +42%. In theory 2 teams of 8 each using EF would bring 16x the benefit, 3 teams 24x, and so on.

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I don't think that's correct, but it would obviously take a field test to prove it either way. I have read elsewhere on these forums that there is a programmed hard cap to just how much a villain's resistance can be debuffed (just like there is a hard cap of +400% to your damage bonus).

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So the routine for the Rad Defenders could be simply to zoom by a spawn, pause long enough to toss 8 Ball Lightnings, and continue on to the next content that by the time they reach the next spawn the last one is dead.

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I think you are grossly underestimating the advantage EIGHT teams hunting very quickly has over ONE team hunting super duper quickly (I think your defenders should be operating in 2 groups of 4 between buff rounds, which would help a bit). Energy torrent does very similar damage to BL (2.6667 BI vs. 2.8333 BI), but the affected area for neither BL nor energy torrent will typically hit everyone except in well clustered groups (I have used BL myself often enough to know), so a blitzing shoot 'n run strategy will often leave behind survivors.

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Yes, I read your post.

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It doesn't sound like you did. I already dealt with most everything you mentioned, but I'll repeat it for emphasis .

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The pets and the Illusionists are getting the same benefits but I don't believe the pets have the same speed of damage delivery.

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Sure they do. EVERY one of them has the damage output of about 6-7 normal Ill/Rad's (you can check the math above if you like), which I can assure you solo very effectively in Hazard zones already (with their measly 2-3 pets at a paltry +230% damage attacking at a feeble 130% normal rate). I team with an Ill/Rad regularly, and I know how effective they are once they get Phantasms.

But for comparison, each Phantasm will have an Energy torrent up every 8s/340% = 2.35s, just the same as any energy defenders in your group (actually I think the Phants get it a slight bit faster, if Hero Planner is correct about the 12s recharge time on Torrent for defenders vs. the 8s for blasters/Phants). Except there's about 4-5 times more of them. Admittedly, I AM talking about the level 33+ game here, not the level 18-32 game where the defenders should have a pretty clear edge (Phantom Army is unbuffable via any means except SO's, although they will benefit from any debuffs).

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The key words in what you wrote being, "they're starting to take out groups as fast as they can drag their horde of Phantoms to them".

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Yeah, that's from 18-32, before they get Phantasms.

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As to danger, I'm pretty sure the Defenders aren't in much danger either. 8 AMs means status effects probably pass in the blink of an eye. 8 EFs makes incoming damage laughable, and 8 Radiant Auras. . .well, any hit had best be a one-shot kill, which is unlikely under 8 AFs, assuming there all that many hits under 8 RIs.

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Agreed, neither team is in much danger. I was just pointing out that the controllers are even more unkillable. But your defenders should be splitting up into smaller teams (probably 2 teams of 4, but 4 teams of 2 might be workable) anyway, which lessens their defenses somewhat. But there IS a cap on how much a mob can be debuffed, so at some point you get no extra benfit from any more EF's/RI's (IIRC -100% is the resistance debuff cap, so only 3 EF's should stack for any actual effect there. I don't know what the -dam cap is, maybe 10-25%?).

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Phantasms don't pass through each other that I've ever noticed. . .they can block both each other and their master's movements. (Had a friend get trapped on a CoT mission due to his own Fire Imps. . .talk about funny.)

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Phantasms FLY, and so will you, remember? And you won't be in missions anyway, each controller will be going solo after Hazard zone groups at the Flight movement cap. New Phantasms will suffer for awhile, true, but it shouldn't take long for them to catch up with groups available every 50-300 feet throughout a Hazard zone.

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Phantasms use Energy Torrent. They'd better be one-shot killing as otherwise what you're going to rapidly end up with is mobs spread all over the place due to knockback.

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See above. With flight your Phants will be doing knockDOWN during your vertical assaults. And yes, they will be one shot killing pretty much all the minions anyway, with any remaining lt's/bosses going down 4-8 seconds later as the fire gets more concentrated.

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Given the Controllers have absolutely no control over the Phantasms and how they decide to attack, their attacks aren't coordinated for best effect, the Defender's attacks are. ("Everyone, target the guy on the center and start blasting when you see me start.")

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Phantasms are retarded, yes, but you CAN control them to some degree. Coordination also simply doesn't matter as much when everything can be defeated inside 10 seconds anyway.

I'm not saying the team of 8 Rad defenders is not sick. They really really are. I should know, I have one myself. But being able to share the benefits of 8*AM over ~36 pets makes every Ill/Rad a mini army unto himself.

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Why do people challenge me this way?

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Did you read my post? The Rad/* defenders don't get anything crucial out of Rad that the Ill/Rad controllers don't also get by level 10 (when they finally get EF). The controllers however will get stealth and the ability to cap their defense via a single click power (Group Invis) at level 12, which the defenders simply cannot duplicate except via pool toggles which can be knocked down, or grant invis which is a single target nuisance every .. (what's the duration on this? 2 minutes?).

I will grant you that it takes the Ill/Rad controllers longer to mature. They don't get much in the way of damage until level 19 or so with some slots in Phantom Army, and they won't truly blossom until level 33 with some slots in Phantasm. But once they get there, I don't think it's much of a contest any longer.

At that point, I'll stack the ~36 damage/defense capped AE blasting Phantasms (don't forget they also are getting hit with AM/invis's) + ~24 indestructible Phantoms against your 8 damage capped AE blasting defenders any day. Phantasms and Phantoms may be dumb, but they still outnumber the defenders over 7:1 . I guess there were 8 controllers there too, but they don't really do anything but buff and summon more pets, maybe hold or nuke some stuff when they get bored. But the controllers won't really have to engage in melee themselves post level 18, which would make getting to level 50 without ever suffering another defeat well within the realm of possibility for them.

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I don't know where this rumor of 5 levels got started. I have a 35 Dark/Dark Def, and RJ45 gave her a 40 damage/mez Hydra-Enhancement. And it's red, and it says she can't use it 'til she hits 37.

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Yeah, I eventually found out the rumor was false too, but not before I could no longer edit the guide.

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The big guy went down fast enough and this time we cleared the tentacles first. Well it turns out you DON"T hav to kill the AVs! So had we just cleared the tents first on try two we would have been fine. Worse still once the mission is over the tmer stops and you can kill the Kraken at your liesure.

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Thanks for the report about not needing to defeat the Kracken for the mission to complete, that could certainly be a helpful shortcut if you're getting tight for time. Hmm, it may remain forever a mystery exactly what you need defeat to complete the mission, but at least I'm pretty sure the Hydra is mandatory . Congrats on the success, and I'm glad you found the guide helpful.

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I seriously doubt anything could top an 8 * ill/rad team, it just takes a bit longer to mature (basically until every hits 19th)

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Oh, that's REAL easy.

AM affects everyone in range. Think about 16 Ill/Rad Controllers doing the same thing in 2 teams of 8.

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Hey, not fair! You know I meant topping it with another team of 8, not just throwing in another 8 Ill/rads.

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In this case you don't need Hasten; you'll probably be at the Recharge Reduction cap.

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Even if recharge is capped with 16 AM's already, Hasten will probably still be worth taking (although superfluous when in your super team, true), just for those times when you aren't in your super team.

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Anyone know the Recharge Reduction cap? If I had to guess, I'd say +300%. But you never know.

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Is there a recharge cap? Drat, that would screw up all my numbers .

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As an alternative, how about Fire/Rad controllers doing the same thing?

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No AE hold at level 6 (not till 18). No pets at 18 (not till 32). No group invis ever. I think Illusion wins.

[EDIT]Took me a bit to figure out you were topping my team by adding another team to it![/EDIT]

I seriously doubt anything could top an 8 * Ill/Rad team, it just takes a bit longer to mature (basically until everyone hits 19th) than a Rad/* defender team, given controller's initial crappy damage. But all the key Radiation powers will be available early (RI at 2, AM at 4, EF at 10), and Illusion provides them with an AE hold at 6 (flash), and group stealth/defense at level 12 (group invis).

So at level 12, 8 * group invis should give everyone +60% defense out of the box (and it's already perma with 8 AM's), which can go as high as +142% after everyone eventually slots it with 6 * defense SO's (and this defense stays up even after you get statused!).

At level 18, everyone gets a permanent Phantom Army with Hasten (which even unslotted is already perma because of the 8 AM's!), and can eventually slot it with all damage. That's 8 * 2-4 pets = 16-32 Phantoms out at all times, who should be 1 shotting minions (and maybe lieutenants) with +228% damage from SO's (at 22nd) and 8 EF's up, and the 8 RI's will cause them to pretty much never miss. Did I mention they're indestructible and draw aggro like crazy? Not that you'll care much about that while yawning invisibly from the sidelines with your capped defense for the 10-15 seconds any fight should take .

After level 32, you can throw Phantasms into the mix, and everything gets completely nuts. Everyone slots their Phantasms for 1*recharge and 5*damage. This gets everyone 4.5 Phantasms each (accounting for perma Hasten), with each Phantasm doing +191% (SO's) +200% (AM) +10% (Assault) = damage cap (why only 1 Assault? read on ), with each one attacking 3.4 times as fast as normal (from the AM's), for a total of 500%*4.5*3.4 = 76.5 times base Phantasm DPS. For reference a standard solo ill/rad would optimally have 2.8 Phantasms up (2 recharge SO's + perma Hasten) doing +187% damage (1*AM 1*Assault 4*SO's) and attacking 1.3 times as fast as normal for 287%*2.8*1.3 = 10.4 times base Phantasm DPS. So now every one of our 8 ill/rad controllers has the theoretical damage output of 7.4 normal ill/rads, but we'll be a little conservative and call it only 6 to account for the on average 35s (about 15% of it's life) each Phantasm will go without AM's.

Everyone should now also have Flight (Hover with a couple SO's might be even better, considering the AM's will probably get it to the movement cap anyway) as a movement power, so you can get your Phantasms off the ground to increase their speed. With 8*AM both you and your Phantasms should be at the movement speed cap, although any new Phantasms you create will be miserably slow and do crap damage by comparison until they get hit with a round of AM's. Flight also allows you to hover above combats with your Phantasms, which keeps them from scattering any villains lucky enough to survive the alpha to all kingdom come with their knockback.

So what do you do? After the round of buffs every 2 minutes, you all split up and destroy Hazard zone groups solo. Each of you has 4-5 damage capped AE blasters following you around, so you invisibly fly them up to a group. Now drop an EF (maybe lead with PA if it's ready) and watch all the minions/lt's drop to the first volley of energy torrents, with the bosses following a few seconds later to all the concentrated single target nukes. Each controller should have a Phantom Army available every 38 seconds (perma Hasten + 8 AM's + 6 * rechargers, you'll yank the damages for recharge after you get Phants) for emergency or opener use. After soloing anywhere from say 3-10 Trial zone groups apiece in 1.5 minutes, you all regroup for the next round of AM/invis. Every hour or two you can take a break to visit the trainer, although you don't really need any more powers or slots after level 34.

So, try to beat THAT . Phantom Army, Phantasm, Flight, Hasten, Group Invis, RI, EF, AM, Assault.. Hmm, that's 9 powers with only 3 of them requiring any slotting, a couple that could probably eventually be dispensed with (RI and Assault), and all but one of them available by level 18. That gives you plenty of leeway to make any kind of Ill/Rad build you want (you can still take 2 power pools and have many powers picks and slots available, after all), including ones that can solo or operate just fine in non ill/rad groups. Really, most ill/rad's would already have all this stuff (excepting maybe Flight and the nonessential Assault), so it shouldn't really be that hard to get any 8 similarly leveled ill/rad's together, switch a few enhancements around, and go to town.

[EDIT] Fixed a couple numbers I goofed [/EDIT]

Your friend should be alright with getting the crates using TP/invis/recall friend, although it may take him a while to get the hang of avoiding the drones (I would recommend he use discipline inspirations while doing this ).

If you don't have resilience and a maxed tough on your regen scrapper, you may want another scrapper/tank to help with tanking duties if your illusion/empath friend doesn't have a perma Phantom Army (perma hasten + 5 recharge SO's); 3-4 chief soldiers can put up some big numbers without any phys resistance, which will KO you if they get a few hits in back to back before you can regen the damage.

Otherwise, I would say all you need to add is some more damage to your team, whether blasters or scrappers is up to you; I tend to prefer scrappers as pick up members, since they seem a bit less likely to run around wantonly aggroing stuff with big AoE's (only because they don't have them, I'm sure ) and are less likely to get killed. A defender or controller who can boost your damage output with buffs and debuffs (rad/kin/dark/storm are the best at this stuff) might come in handy also. Make sure you have 4 in your team (or more I suppose, but I prefer as few members as possible for most situations), so you can make use of all 4 particle cannons at once when you get to the Hydra.

Congrats! All it really needs is a bit of practice so that everyone figures out their roles, and finishing it in under 45 minutes is a piece of cake. =)

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So, what all do you have to clear to actually beat the mission?

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More or less, you need to defeat everything at the bottom: all the Rikti at the generators, the 4 Kracken, the tentacles, and the summoned Rikti. The tentacles sometimes flee up to the lowest level of catwalks, so check above to see if you missed any up there.

This may not be entirely accurate, since we finished the mission a couple times while still fighting a couple Rikti and/or tentacles at the bottom, but more often than not we didn't get a mission complete until the bottom was scrubbed clean of villains.

Also, I don't know that we ever even went for the Hydra without first clearing the generator Rikti, since it was fairly easy and it's always nice to have some "safe" areas to pull or retreat to. But if you're looking for every shortcut, it might be you don't have to defeat the generator Rikti to finish the mission, possibly allowing you to clear just one generator for a safe zone for pulls and rezzes, and squeeze in another 5 minutes of Hydra/cleanup time. If you do try that, be sure to let us know if it works .

I provided the Fallout number, what bad rumor are you talking about? Have people started abusing it with recall friend?

What, no mention of rad defenders in the slow or attack debuff Theme Teams? Lingering Radiation (nearly max slow with only 2 +3 slow SO's, over a very large AE radius, and lasts for 30s) and Radiation Infection (-90 to -100% acc debuff when fully slotted, in a moderate to large AE, no need to hit to put it up, stays up until you drop the toggle or target is defeated) are probably the best slow and attack debuffs in the game!

A further note on slow, I think I remember reading a dev comment somewhere that slow enhancements do NOT affect the -recharge aspect of slow, only the -speed aspect. Anyone know whether or not this is true?

I've thought about this a bit, and I don't think it's an exploit as much as a shortcut. I mean, someone had to intentionally program the shield to go down to holds, since I don't see how that could happen by "accident" otherwise. It's probably just something the designer thought up to encourage people to bring along controllers.

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The Ritki spawns when the head is at 50% and around 25% health appear with 2-3 on top of each player in the area. I never count how many since they just get hit with some kind of AoEs right away. So they spawn in direct proportion to the number of people you have.

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Good to know. I should have mentioned that it can be helpful to keep your teammates all near enough one another for group heals/buffs during the Hydra blasting (excepting whoever has Hydra harassment duty, of course ). This also tends to keep the Rikti summonings in a tight enough pack that you can hit them all with one decent AE hold.

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With issue 3, the increased XP on Ritki bosses should make this trial even more lucrative, assuming the increased HP doesn't wipe out the gain.

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Unfortunately, with the change to monsters, you will probably only be getting even level XP from defeating the Krackens. As I understand it, the change is that a monster class villain always fights YOU at YOUR combat level, even while it is fighting other nearby heroes at THEIR combat level. I imagine that means you will also get XP from it as if it were your level, which would be a significant hit from the XP we get now beating them as +1-4 monsters. The way the trial stands now, you easily make 70-75% of the XP in the trial (if not more) from defeating the Krackens, so losing 40-50% from that chuck of XP will hurt the overall XP quite a lot.

I would bet that you had a controller in your group who was using holds on the Hydra, and that took down the shield rather than any melee damage. When we first noticed the shield going down prematurely, we thought the Illusion pets were taking down the shield because we had read that Gravity singularities also did this (we figured the shield was maybe an untargettable entity, but the pets could hit it for some reason). Later on we happened to notice that it went down right after we were EMP/flashing the tentacles near the Hydra, and no meleer had bothered touching the Hydra yet. Finally, we would just lead with EMP + EMP + flash at the Hydra, and the shield would be down right away. I have also watched scrappers beat on this thing for a fair amount of time with no effect (but admittedly we only tested this a couple times before we figured out the holds were doing it, and never bothered meleeing with it again).

So my SG has just finished up perfecting our technique on this trial (we can no longer get the mission any more, having all hit 41), and there are a few tricks that can be immensely helpful to finishing this up pretty quickly. By the end, we were finishing the final mission of the trial in ~30-45 minutes with just the 4 of us (DM/Inv scrapper, BS/Inv scrapper, Rad/Elec defender -- me, and Ill/Rad controller). Those who think controllers are useless here could not be further from wrong, once you discover the "trick" to bringing down the force field permanently, as described later on.

The keys for us finishing the trial quickly were: 1) high mag AE holds (and not for the reason you might think ), 2) someone with recall friend and high stealth (our controller had SS + group invis) who can move about vertically easily (our controller had hover 6 slotted for speed, which is about as fast as 0-1 slotted flight), and 3) grantable stealth (again, our controller provided this with group invis) if anyone can't become become invisible on their own (with stealth + SS, or whatever).

For us, Phanton Army and Phantasms were invaluable for drawing aggro at the Hydra (there were only 4 of us, and no one with any psi resistance ), but anyone able to draw aggro and take the psi damage should do for this role. Obviously, our scrappers did the majority of the damage dealing (and doubled as the tanks against all the villains who were not doing 900+ psi damage attacks ) with some help from Phantasms (and even less help from my occassional Ball Lightning/SC/TB ). But really any balanced team with good tanking/defense/damage should do for these roles. Our controller turned out to be the only absolutely essential component in being able to complete this trial so quickly, although other AT's with good hold powers (some ice blasters and rad defender builds come to mind) might also be able to bring down the force field (but probably without bringing as many other tools to the table as our controller did ).

Getting to the Mission

Anyway, so the first part is easy. Talk to Maren McGregor in Founder's Falls (a bit north of Penny Preston in the southwestern dock area) to get the first mission. THE ENTIRE TRIAL IS DONE AS A REGULAR MISSION IN A REGULAR TEAM, NOT AS A TASK FORCE. I believe you must be 38th to get the mission from her. If you want to do this a lot (we did), everyone in the team who can should get the mission. Each time you complete or fail the final part of the mission, you can come back to Maren to get a new access code for the maintenance door and try it again, until you hit SL 41, at which point she will no longer give you any missions (but you are still free to join teams with lower level heroes who have the mission).

Now you all head off to the abandoned sewers to defeat 150 Rikti. After that is done, everyone with the mission goes back to Maren to get the "real" mission. Now head to the center of the abandoned sewers, find the maintenance room access door, have someone use their access code to start the 90 minute timed mission, and let the fun begin!

Keep in mind, ALL villains in the mission will be level 42, so anyone below SL 38 is fairly useless unless they get sidekicked up. A small group of SL 38's might have a hard time finishing this in time unless they used every shortcut presented here (we never managed to finish it successfully until we hit 39, but we also didn't REALLY know what we were doing until we were nearly 40th about 5-6 attempts later; yes, you get XP REALLY fast in here ),

Getting the Weapons

After entering the maintenance room, you run around (right or left, doesn't matter) until you get to the opening to the big main central chute area, with it's maze of downwardly spiraling catwalks (the first Rikti group should be hanging out at the lip of the chute entrance). Now your first step is to equip your group with the Rikti weapons.

Our controller was able to do this for us in about 5 minutes (after a lot of practice from our first few attempts which we failed due to time ) using his hover + recall ally + invis, although it was a little tricky avoiding the drones (the invis + SS really cuts down the drone aggro range, but they can still see you if you get close enough). You can tell what is in the Rikti crates BEFORE you open them by targeting them (right click a crate, or left click and move before you finish opening it). This was quite helpful to us once we discovered it, as we could quickly get everyone particle cannons and not waste time on the thermite cannons except for those without decent attacks for the tentacles (in this case, my defender and the controller).


If you don't have any means of sneaking past this part, you'll probably have to waste around 20-40 minutes fighting your way down through the Rikti groups (everything is level 42, with lots of bosses) until the 4 particle cannons have been secured.

Keep in mind the 4 thermite cannons are purely optional for your poorer damage dealers (they can use them to help out on the tentacles), whereas the particle cannons are absolutely essential (you cannot damage the hydra without them). There are 2 Hatched Krackens (monsters) on the way down, which are worth tons of XP (at level 38, the 4 of us were getting ~88k each per Kracken), and are treated in more detail in their own section below.

Clearing the Generators

After everyone has a weapon, you're ready to head to the bottom of the chute. This is easy for anyone with stealth abilities (just jump down and run to a wall when you hit the bottom, and try not to get stunned by a drone shot on the way down ), or you can just wait for your teammate with recall friend to get down and summon everybody to a safe spot.

The layout of the bottom is simple, there is a central area with a giant eyeball (the Hydra) surrounded by tentacles (both minions, and lieutenant versions that split into 2 underling tentacles). The central area is circled around by some broken up boulderish terrain, with 4 equally spaced and partially separated areas containing 1 force field generator apiece between these rocky barriers and the walls. Each force field generator area has a group of 6-7 Rikti (mostly Chief Soldiers with a few Mentalists, Mesmerists, and Headman Gunners thrown in), with a Hatched Kraken (monster class villain) positioned somewhat nearby (although easily outside of aggro range from the generator groups if you are at all careful) at a gap in the rocky barrier, presumably guarding the way from the generator to the Hydra. Everything is level 42.

The first step is to clear the Rikti from the force field areas. This is quite easy and should only take 5-10 minutes. Our strategy was to start doing this at the same time our controller was getting us the Rikti weapons: as each scrapper got a particle cannon he would jump down and start beating up a generator group, and be eventually joined by my defender and the controller once we got our Rikti weapons, at which point a group or 2 would already be dead. This might be a bit tough with less durable (and/or lower level) scrappers than ours, but the invuln scrappers didn't have much trouble defeating groups with 6-7 +2-3 boss/lt's all by themselves (they occassionally died to bad timing and/or poor attention when Unstoppable dropped though ).

DO NOT DESTROY THE GENERATORS YET. If you do, more Rikti will spawn in about 1-2 minutes and repair the generator. If you were wise enough to bring a good controller along with several holds, you won't have to mess with these generators at all, saving a large amount of time later when you start working on the Hydra.

Defeating the Krackens

After the Rikti groups are gone, it's time to start putting down some Krackens. The important things to know about the Kracken are 1) it does a nasty AE foot stomp that hits everyone within 10-15 feet of it for ~800 phys damage at level 40, 2) it has a nasty AE spit attack that does ~500-600 untyped or poison/psi damage over 4-5 ticks (invuln doesn't protect from it, for sure ) to everyone near the target, 3) it's other attacks are run of the mill big single target physical attacks that only your tankers/scrappers should have to deal with.

Defeating these is pretty easy once you get the hang of it. We used a pretty standard pulling tactic: our scrapper would aggro one from range with TP foe (hiding behind terrain to avoid getting spit on), and run to our pull spot behind a large squarish boulder situated kind of in a "corner" of the wall near one of the generators (perhaps using TP foe reacquire aggro if it was a long pull). This allowed him to avoid getting spit on while the Kracken was closing to melee range.

Then after the Kracken was engaged with the scrappers at melee range, the controller and I would debuff the crap out of him. So, after he was inside a bunch of ugly green clouds (moving at a crawl, attacking maybe once every second or two, doing around half damage, and ~50% more susceptible to damage), me and the controller then just let the scrappers and pets hammer the crap out of him until he was down, staying well out of melee range except for the occassional ninja heal or buff right after a foot stomp. After we got good at this it would only take about 10 minutes to defeat all 4 Kracken, and a fair chunk of that time was spent waiting for Unstoppables to drop or for the Kracken to run up to our pull spot.

At ~88k XP (4 level 38 heroes) to ~55k XP (4 level 41 heroes) each per Kracken, you can level in a hurry here, so make sure you're done with any contacts and/or story/badge missions you wanted to do before spending much time down here (I missed 4 of my arcs, but I can't really complain much since playing around down here and figuring out our strategem was the most fun any of us had playing CoH in ages). We all went from 38 to 41 inside of 20 play hours while honing our technique, despite dying alot and even spending some time in level 39-40 acruing intentional debt so we could get more of the special enhancements to play with (which turned out not to be as cool as we had hoped).

Clearing the Tentacles

Okay, so now everything at the bottom should defeated except for a huge eyeball floating in an ugly green sea of sewage, surrounded by a bunch of upright tentacles waving lazily in the air. The Hydra itself has an assortment of high damage, very long range, psionic attacks. One is a big dot that does 5 tics of 90+ to an unresistant level 40, and the other is a big nuke that does about 900+ damage to an unresistant level 40. So, keeping this guy busy is one of your main priorities . The tentacles come in minion and lieutenant varieties; both shoot long range spit attacks for ~100 damage + 5-6 dot ticks of ~10 (I never noted the damage type, but I think our scrappers were resisting it); the lieutenant variety split into 2 underling tentacles when you defeat them.

Now, first things first, have someone occupy the Hydra (in our case this was our controllers Phantom Army and Phantasm decoys), and you will see a shimmery blue force field spring up around him (if it wasn't up already). The Hydra is immune to all damage while the force field is up.

While the Hydra is occupied, commence beating up tentacles. Our approach to this evolved from carefully (and VERY slowly) doing it at range with only myself and the controller blasting while the indestructible pets played with the Hydra, to basically everyone just free for alling tentacles until the Phantom Army was about to expire, then running behind some rocks until the controller could drop in another PA (about 10 seconds down time between PA's), and then wading back into the melee. With a perma army, or any kind of full time aggro drawing tank, the run away and regroup part could obviously be dispensed with, and everyone could quickly clear all the tentacles while the hydra was being kept busy (nearly any paired defender and tanker/scrapper duo should do for Hydra duty, or possibly any regen scrapper all by himself).

Towards the end, we were more or less only clearing a patch of tentacles (about a 1/3 arc around the Hydra) from which to stage our assault on the Hydra, and then blasting the Hydra to death from our clear patch after taking the field down permanently (see below), with me or the controller taking breaks as appropriate to heal and/or EMP/flash the tentacles and Rikti waves out of the action until the Hydra was banished, leaving us free to mop up any remaining villains at our leisure. All told, after getting the Krackens out of the way, we would generally finish the mission 10-20 minutes later.

Defeating the Hydra

Okay, so after the tentacles are out of the way, it's down to just you and the big guy, with that annoying force field in the way. This is where your holds can save you A LOT of time. For us, all it took was this: me and the controller would go stand within range of the Hydra, and do our EMP + EMP + flash, and voila the field was gone and never came back.

I have read elsewhere gravity controllers can knock down the field using singularities, but we didn't have much in the way of strong single target holds to see how effective those were (but presumably enough of them stacked together on the Hydra would eventually achieve the same result). Once you knock the field down this way, you can basically just shoot the Hydra until it's dead, leaving a few members (in our case, me or the controller) free at the key points to deal with the Rikti summonings.

Anyway, after the field is down, you can pull out your particle cannons and begin banishing the Hydra. These things have a HUGE animation time (about 20-25 seconds) during which you can do NOTHING, so be sure the hydra (and tentacles, if you left any) is occupied while you're standing there ghostbustering it's [censored]. I would estimate it takes about 25 particle cannon blasts to finish him off when you are all level 41, probably more like 45-50 shots if you are all level 38.

After The Hydra hits 50% health, he will summon in a large group of Rikti (almost all Headman Gunners, 12-15 or so of them, perhaps 3-4 per person if more are in the team?), so be sure a few folks are not stuck in the particle cannon animation to deal with these (our controller would stop shooting sometime around when the Hydra was about 55-60% health and wait for the Rikti to show up and then AE hold them all with flash + EMP).

At ~25% health, the Hydra will summon another group of Rikti, about the same as the prior one. Again, someone should not be locked into ghostbuster mode who can deal with these (like someone with a big AE hold). After these are dealt with, you can finish off the Hydra, clean up any remaining Rikti and tentacles, and the mission will be completed.

If you are unfortunate enough to not have anyone who can knock the Hydra's force field down permanently, you will have to do it the old fashioned way, which might add anywhere from 10-50 minutes to your trial time, depending on your group's level (affects how much damage you can do to the Hydra in the time the field is down, and hence how many times you will need to knock down the fields) and teamwork (affects how long it takes you to take down the field each time it goes back up).

The field is maintained by the 4 generators you cleared of Rikti earlier, and if you destroy all 4 generators simultaneously, you will get a ~1-2 minute "window" in which the Hydra is unshielded and you can damage it with the particle cannons. After that, Rikti groups will spawn at all the field generators and repair them, bringing the shield back up (at which point you may have done from 1/4 to 1/2 the Hydra's life, depending on the levels of the cannon wielders and assuming they got in about 2-3 shots each) and leaving you to bring them down all over again.

Back before we figured out how to KO the shield for good, our scrappers would "soften" all the field generators by knocking them down to 1/4 or less health without destroying them, to make it easier for us to bring all the generators down simultaneously. If you kill a generator prematurely, Rikti will gate in there and repair it a minute or so later, regardless of whether any of the other generators are down or not. We only experimented with the generators a little before we discovered our far superior strategy, so I'm not sure if there is a better way to deal with generators or not (i.e. if you leave a small team at 1 generator to keep it down permanently, will this keep the field down, or is only 1 generator required to bring the field back up?).

Completing the Mission

Sometime after you banish the Hydra and defeat all it's tentacles, and all the Rikti at the bottom (summoned or otherwise), the mission will complete. I recall at least once the mission completing before all the tentacles were dead, but I think those were only underling tentacles (not entirely sure about that), so I'm not EXACTLY sure when the mission completes after the Hydra has been banished.

Anyway, the special Hydra enhancements are awarded at the time the mission completes. BE SURE YOU HAVE OPEN SLOTS IN YOUR ENHANCEMENT INVENTORY OR YOU WILL NOT GET ONE. I would recommend keeping several open enhancement slots just before killing the Hydra until the mission completes, just in case you get a few from random kills right before the mission ends (I missed getting a few of these from bad inventory management, and/or from getting a few normal enhancements just before the mission completed). For whatever reason, the person whose mission the trial is will not get his enhancement until everyone has left the mission map.

The Rewards

Okay, so what is this Anti Proton Exposure thing you just got? Basically, all the Hydra enhancements seem to be +25% enhancements to several aspects of a power. The Anti Proton Exposure, for example should provide a 25% bonus to defense debuffs, accuracy debuffs, and endurance reduction (read the ingame info on the enhancement to see what it affects). The more useful ones I have seen are +acc/dam (for almost everyone), +heal/-end (useful for many), +acc/mez (mez is a bonus to ALL status effects except slow, highly useful for controllers obviously), +range/dam (for blasters), +accbuff/defbuff/-end (for some defenders), +accdebuff/+defdebuff/-end (for rad/kinetics), +accdebuff/+defdebuff/+acc (for dark/kinetics).

Officially, I have only tested the damage component of one of these enhancements, but it was exactly 25% at even level (all the Hydra enhanemcents are level 40) when I did, and this led me to believe what I have read elsewhere that they provide a 25% bonus to whatever their description says they affect. At level 41, I tested it again, and it provided only a 22.5% damage bonus, so these enhancements also degrade at the standard 10% per level below yours (and presumably increase by the standard 5% per level above yours). Also, I can say with authority that identical Hydra enhancements will not combine, so you can not extend their useful lifetimes via that route.

Hydra enhancements are also reputed to work if your level is within 5 levels of theirs (rather than the standard 3). But basically they provide little to no benefit over a regular +3 SO (which is +38.3%) after they become -2 (only +20% bonuses) unless it was providing at least 3 bonuses you wanted (for example, Anti Proton Exposure is the only one I will be keeping slotted after I hit 42, since it provides 3 useful bonuses in Radiation Infection).

So, they are kinda cool, but very hard to get on your own until level 39 (unless you team with higher level folks), at which point they are only useful for a couple levels unless you have one that is a 3-point (or better) match for one of your powers. Obviously, if you only like one of the bonuses these enhancements provides, you are much better off using a standard +3 SO. These enhancements could make very nice gifts to a level 35 hero who had a well matched power, however.

Possibly, more useful than the Hydra enhancements you get are all the L41-42 SO's you will get from killing all those Rikti bosses, to patch up your ailing L40 SO's until you can replace them with shiny new L45 SO's at SL42. And of course, you can't overlook the ridiculous amounts of XP you rake in from killing all those Krackens (each member of a well constructed 4-man team could easily level every 3-7 hours from SL38-SL41, depending on how quickly you can get all the tactics down pat).

I have a 36 rad/elec, and I find the SS+Stealth combo invaluable while soloing, due to the positioning advantages it can give you for opening a fight. It's also quite useful in teams for shortcutting missions if no one else has invis, and for not drawing undue aggro from nearby villains while they are fighting your teammates (although I'm unsure if this helps much once your clouds have pissed everything off). Should all fail and some meanie villain notices you standing innocently about maintaining your clouds in the melee, then it still provides a nice +9% defense bonus (given a single +def SO).

Anyway, my typical solo fight goes something like this:

1) Find a group of villains nicely clumped for my clouds and go stand in the middle of them with SS+Stealth (don't try this one against Rikti drones or Nemesis snipers ).

2) If no boss is present, proceed to 3. Otherwise, pop a few skittles for +def/res/acc as needed, open with RI/EF/LC and Tesla Cage the boss once (I tend to avoid groups with more than 1 boss since I haven't managed able to fit CC into my build yet) so that EMP will be sure to hit him.

3) Target a central villain. Now Aim & EMP, and everthing should be held for the next minute or so, assuming you slotted EMP for 2-3 holds. I have EMP slotted 3/3 for hold/recharge (with permahaste/AM), which leaves even con villains only ~15s of mobility in the 95-105s (depending on the age of my recharge SO's) between EMPs (assuming they aren't all dead after the first EMP for some reason). Try to be careful not to aggro neighboring groups with the HUGE radius on EMP if you're hunting in a hazard zone, or this may end in a quick trip to the hospital .

4) Put up EF and fire Ball Lightning/Short Circuit before your Aim goes away.

5) Drop all unnecessary toggles to conserve endurance from the EMP aftereffects. Make sure not to drop EF until the DoT tics finish, and leave RI (or CC, if your build has it and can keep up with the end drain after an EMP) up for protection if anything is still awake.

6) Repeat 4-5 until all villains are knocked out, using RI/CC at your discretion depending on whether Aim is unavailable (so you can still hit reasonably) and/or you have a mobile villain or 2 (so they can't hit you).

This tends to be a slow process for me solo since my attacks are only half slotted (this is mostly a support alt I made to play with a less frequently playing group of friends), but it's also quite safe as generally at most only 2 (and frequently zero) villains can even move after the first few seconds of the fight. After I hit 40 and can throw a fully slotted TB at the end of the Aim, it should greatly speed up those fights I have it available (probably every other fight).

But I much prefer doing this with a small (and smart) group. Adding in a teammate with AE ability to jump in after step 4 makes the fights last about 5-40 seconds (depending on how packed the group is and whether it has bosses) with little to no chance anyone even gets hits. And add a nice invuln tank/scrappy to do some pulling, and you can herd huge numbers of villains together around a wall/corner/doorway and keep them locked down and debuffed until their arrest shortly afterwards.