The_Masque

The way I look at this is I certain earn 20 million running TFs/SFs to get those 50 merits, so the merits+inf earned= double merits. I'm all for that.

Maybe I'm thinking about it wrong, but if we get these as inherent powers at lvl 2 don't we kind of get 4 more slots.

You really need a decent team make up, it would be nice to say that a group of any 24 heroes could do this, but honestly that probably just isn't the case.

Optimally teams would look something like this:

1) Tank/brute- they need to be surviviable against psi and alpha strikes.
2) Emp/Pain dom/Therm- heals are nice, and you will really want someone with a CM type power to protect your buff/debuffers.
3) Cold/FF- Colds are preferred because they bring some great debuffs
4) Damage- Melee is preferred because they typically have mez protection.
5) Damage
6) Debuff- Dark/Kin/Rad/Sonic/Cold/Poison
7) Debuff-
8) Anything-Badger spot.

Tips for the raid itself-

Temp pets can help, more so on the 2nd part of the trial, but if your obelisk isn't going down fast enough a shivan might help speed things up.

Envenomed Daggers do -regen and can be nice if you get everyone to use them at the right time (try to hit the AV just before his shield goes back up, rather then leading off with them when his shield goes down).

If you only have the team leaders in the same SG/VG they need to zone in 1st or you may end up with peolpe on difference instances of the trial. We typically check this by each team sounding off in broadcast to double check that all 3 teams are in the right instance.

Have the team leaders on Vent/skype/TS. I wouldn't recomend having all 24 people on voice though because it gets confusing. Team leaders talk about how each team is doing and then communicates to their team via chat if they need to speed up/slow down/kill the objective.

For the 1st part:

-Prior to entering the Tper have the team leads pick which way point they are going to head too. I have almost always used the names of the way points (gloom/despair/woe) but FMP came up a better idea which was to just pick which direction your team was going to head. Typically the points can be named: South, Southeast, and East.

-Teams gather at the waypoint and once all three teams are in position everyone attacks at the same time. This *helps* to keep the teams in sync, but honestly you also need to balance your teams during selection as well. If one team has way more DPS then the others you can really screw yourself.

-1st round take the obelisks down to about 30% there is some massive lag on the healthbars that everyone can see. Warn your team of that and tell them to use their Targeting widow. If your teams are really great you can kill the obelisks the 1st round but we typically try to use 2 rounds, due to the fact that if one team is a little slow you can get massively out of sync by killing an obelisk whereas if you adjust your 2nd round based on the performace of the 1st you can get the obelisks down typically in 2 rounds.

-2nd round, kill the obelisk. Again, adjust based on the 1st round, if one team is slower, that team lead needs to tell their team to kill faster, while the other teams leader needs to tell them to slow down.

2nd part:

-Gather at door, buff/shield everyone not just your teamates.
-Enter and drop pets.
-Rebuff/reshield including pets (for this typically its just your team).
-Team leads pick which cube they will attack (left/right/center).
-Attack at the same time.
-AV's shield drops, and attack him, people with range attacks may need to run past the AV then back to range just so their pets actually attack and don't just stand there.
-Once the AV's shield goes back up (you don't get a message) you need to reclear the cubes. Sometimes the people in melee can't see the respawns so its helpful to say "Cube" or "AV" in broadcast just so they know where they are suppose to be.
-*Very Important* All debuffs should be saved for AV, toggle types can be placed once the shield goes down. Transfusion should be spammed as often as possible. Other -regen debuffs that are cast and have an affect time duration should not be cast at the start of the fight but closer to when the AV's Shield goes up.

-IF you get the purple AV (Stormy) anyone who is not a melee should stay back and try not get their to-hit debuffed. Melee characters should be hit with fort/forge to keep their to-hit up.

updates


Tentative- Penny PA

I have so many things to say about this... but since its not Jan 1st 2011, all I will say is....



Hi Arky!

I think that when CoV was introduced the powers that be (were) tried to put a pvp slant on some of the Villian powers/ATs.

Most people (who play redside) first get their feet wet in PvP playing a stalker, there is a good reason for this. You can choose when you want to engage a target and you used to be able 2 shot most squishies. I think the stalker AT was put into the game more for PvP reasons then PvE.

Energy Aura is a strange beast, some of its unique properties makes me believe that it was again put into the game with PvP in mind. It has tp protection, what enemy group (besides Hamster) teleports you? It has a stealth shield with an aggro aura... stealth with aggro.... what possible function could this serve? However, in PvP having some stealth is a great thing.


So honestly, I think 'if' there was a point to stalkers it was initially for PvP, however, with side switching, that pretty much killed that.

I need two more 50's (one kin melee and one electrical control) to have one 50 of every power type in the game, and I am only at 57 50's. That is with a lot of repeating power sets.

Numbers can be an amazing thing, while they should be objective people often find a way to make them subjective.

I can't believe you doubted me.

Sorry I missed all your Birthday TF fun.

I didn't know about this issue, and its really good info for masters runs. The only reason I can think of that you got insta-death that one time was perhaps your temp power timer ran out? The 5th will shoot at you through the doorway as you are clicking the fail safes but that usually is a slow death process rather then a spike.

The Devs put in a target cap on all attacks (the exact number eludes me at the moment) by doing this they really neutered the 'kill switch' along with the dom+corr temp powers.

So far the best strategy I've used for the end room is to wait for ambushes to 'start' to spawn then everyone ozone port out then gather up and fight your way back to the red room, this way you only get front aggro as you move (clearing abushes along the way). When you get to the red room, there should be 3 mobs left (maybe 4): left of the machine; right of the machine; and one at the bottom of the stairs. If you have a scrapper/stalker with good defenses they can run into the machine get the temp buffs and then hit the lazer room and pull both kill switches. They will be getting aggro from outside of the room so again good defenses or use of insps/shields is helpful. Then you are pretty much just left with Reichs who isn't that bad alone.