makerian

Hey Yat, I'd like to bring:

Dark Lord Makerian Dom Fire/Dark 53
Barrier, Longbow, Support
BAF/LAM/KEY/UG/TPN/DD/MAG


Apophenia Prime Fort 53
37 T4s, Barrier/Rebirth, Robotic Drones, Support, etc
MAG

Although, not sure what my time is gonna look like this weekend. If I can't make it, good luck!

I've done 2 RHW, and about 10 HWs.

A combination of tactics and build changes helped push Freedom over the event horizon.

No doubt, it was very fast. Great run.

Another great run. Congratulations to all that got the badge tonight, and great leading Yat. Another KO for Freedom server.

Sadly, I tried to continue the streak with another run, and we only got HW, too many people in the lightning again. It really makes a big difference if people get out and back in.

Congratulations to all those that got the badge so far, and especially for getting it more than once.

Congelateur, if you used even 1 light, you don't get The Really Hard Way, but you can get the MoMAG badge, which is still nice

Kisana, thanks for posting the tips. I think the Freedom runs I've done are missing the melee component. That is, plenty of us are not going into melee if we're ranged, we're staying range to avoid the foot stomp.

Zombie Man, I would agree that against most AVs, LB Cats would do -regen, but check Tyrants Combat Attributes. Based on using Surveillance, I saw the following:

Tyrant has regen debuff resistance = 100% (167%) : +87% from Resistance and 80% from Resist Physical Damage.

So if his regen debuff resistance is 100%, I assume that means nothing can debuff his regen, even a little bit. I did screenshots with his regen in the window, and never saw it affected by player or pet debuffs.

I just want clarification, because I'm sure some people will think -regen is useful on this fight, but I think it was designed to be removed completely from the equation.

Moira, I agree, I think that's the case too. I've definitely had moments where I'm zoomed out and can't see something that's causing me ticks of dmg. Occasionally, that results in a defeat if I trigger an animation and get rooted before I realize what happened.

I was on the first run, I think. It was at 25% health (which probably means a little bit lower) at his lowest point.

The issue seemed to me to be the number of deaths. We summoned pets immediately and within 2 minutes, about 12 people had died, losing their pets, shifts, and buffs.

During the final fight, over 14 people died within the first 3 lightning strikes (less than 100 seconds). That was huge. I think we were close otherwise.

I might be trying one day next weekend. I'll be watching for other people who are smarter than me to try to make sense of what pets, buffs, etc. work best.

Poison choke was nice. I think it did interrupt at least one lightning.

Also, it might be my graphics settings, but a few times it seemed like a lot less lightning, probably just my angles/imagination, but not sure if it was happening.

Thanks for posting Canine.

My experience running these on Freedom is that, yes, DEF/COR/CON/MM will probably make or break a 50+3 league. I think that will change noticeably in the next year when we get 50+4 or 50+5, as you Arcana notes considering purple patch issues, 50+3 against 50+9 is a huge disadvantage.

In the meantime, it seems having a good mix of buffs/debuffs will be essential.

However, I disagree with some of the conclusions people have made that -regen or LB Cats (because of their regen debuff) are helpful against Tyrant. Tyrant has regen debuff resistance = 100% (167%) : +87% from Resistance and 80% from Resist Physical Damage.

That means -regen does not work against him. Looking at his stats with Surveillance, for example, I could see multiple people debuffing him, including Cataphract Essence at a whopping -1.5%/sec, but nevertheless he was only affected by these 3 values:
Base: +.33%
Favor of the Well: +.50%
Scaling: 0.26% (observed at 29% health, it scales once he goes below 50%, so it's not the same number all the time)

What does seem to work is -HP and -RES powers.

Some have observed that Degenerative Interface is good for -HP, although it's stackable only 4 times and only -1000k HP each. Still, it's something.

His RES is somewhat underwhelming as well, it's just counterbalanced by his scaling REGEN.

Some -RES debuffs
Colds have Sleet and Heat Loss
Darks have Tar Patch
Rad has Enervating Field
Sonics have Sonic Siphon and Disruption Field
Storms have Freezing Rain
Thermals have Melt Armor
Times have Slowed Response
Traps have Acid Mortar
Tricks have Acid Arrow and Disruption Arrow
Pains have Anguishing Cry
Poisons have Envenom and Venomous Gas

and there's a host of other -RES powers (e.g., Munitions : Surveillance) available to other players.

Some +DMG buffs
Kins have Fulcrum Shift
Rads have Accelerate Metabolism
Pains have World of Pain

as well as ST buffs on some players, etc.

I'm considering Storm elementals as the alternative to Longbow for the exotic dmg. Ageless probably helps with Storms since they tend to run out of end, reducing their effectiveness in pylon tests (see http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=288994)

If Seers could be recharge buffed with Ageless and make them more effective, then they would probably be best, but never tested DPS of Seers with and without stacked Ageless.

I've also heard several leagues praise Ageless, probably for its Recharge bonus as well as End bonus. I think that's something to take seriously. If you only have a few ST attacks and some long recharge buffs, you want to have the best available asap throughout the fight.

I would also suggest using maybe 1 Incandescent on the league so the league can be ported together for the 2nd summon of Lores. That would help ensure they get the buffs they need and then into the fight. Trying to summon in last 5 mins with everyone spread probably minimizes their effectiveness.

Look at Madame Pistacio's (Victory) league composition here:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=290958



And look at

Canine's post of the successful Union run:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=290653

[URL="http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/411/thereallyhardwayj.jpg/"]

The things that strike me are:

1) Neither team looks particularly similar to each other
2) Both teams have a lot of either Defenders or Corruptors

7 COR, 3 DEF, 3 CON, 1 MM or 14 buff/debuffers
7 DEF, 3 COR, 3 CON, 2 MM or 15 buff/debuffers

I think what is not obvious is whether there's some specific powersets in there that, when added up and used properly, give enough of an advantage to overcome his HP during the final push.

So that's about 2/3 of the league buff/debuff. I don't have screenies of our leagues, but we're definitely BLA heavy (including myself). We had like 7 or more on some runs, several Dominators, etc.

So, our leagues could contribute the same base dmg, maybe even a little more (our pets + our personal dmg). I think what's getting them over the edge are either DMG buffs or RES debuffs, but can't be sure.

Next run, I will probably try to be more restrictive to buff/debuff sets, but didn't wanna go that route at first.

Also, I think MP is wrong about Longbow Core -regen making a difference (unless he does get regen debuffed despite what stats say).

When we did a couple trials with Longbow Cat Cores, we did melt him down to about 35-50% within first 5 minutes, but the second wave of LBs in the last 5 minutes was not enough to do much at all to get him under 30%.

Presumably, we summoned 2nd wave of pets after being shifted, but it still wasn't enough.

I will look into ST DPS for exotic dmg lores. Recommend Cores of another type, esp without a lot of -RES debuffing.

Nuke, I think the solution to Olympians is have about 4-6 people with Barrier that use it during the first 60% of DMG + 1 min to Tyrant. That's how long it takes to get rid of them. Some Olympians will die, some will be absorbed.

I think Kotchie has it right, it's the lack of Single Target that brings them to some squishies more than others.

When I get that kind of aggro, I try to run around in a circle to the other side of the fight while casting Aim or Build Up and hope they get distracted while following

Kotchie, as for Rim, he will summon lightning anywhere I've moved him (that was one of my very first tests, albeit partial, was just enough to see that he does summon lightning outside the bowl).

Yes, I think Sonics and Kins would make a big difference. I haven't seen how far his Res can be debuffed, but I see that it goes negative, it's just that S/L is buffed by +50% from Temp Invuln, and other DMG types are not.

Also, not that it helps, but I think 50+4 or 50+5s with Ultimates and Lores would have an easier time than 50+3s, so there's that ...

Congratulations MP and Victory, awesome!

Made it through Synch and Speed runs, noticed that league mates are starting to get into the rhythm of moving away from and back to Tyrant. There are still too many deaths, but the rate of dmg seems better overall.

We'd use lights minimally or not at all until around 50-70% depending on the speed we were bringing him down. I think that's a good strategy to get leagues used to fighting him without shifts.

Also, considering having some people slot barrier for the first 60% + 1 min of fighting so we can keep Olympian guards to the level of minor annoyance.

If you're coming tonight, please get at least 6 Ultimate Inspirations and as many DMG inspirations as you can. You can get them from Astral vender in OB or market.

Xyzor, it changes within a few seconds of someone joining or quitting/kicked from a league. I think if someone DCs, they still count as part of the league size.

So, you will see a change in HP up or down pretty quick if you add or remove a player.

I'm gonna run a synchronized defeat run today and will check for lightning effects, although in the hectic speed of the trial it won't matter much, you gotta run whether you like it or not. But it might indicate some type of pattern, like it triggers on people closest to him, or people who recently attacked him, or maybe just random.

I'm going to do runs tonight, everything willing.

Another thing I noticed when running around was if I was running in a circle instead of straight back it seemed easier for me to completely avoid dmg from lightning, as opposed to running back I tended to get tagged with 2 dmg ticks. It also seemed easier for me to find a spot to move back in to the fight.

Turg, yes the 16 cap is still there, so I asked people to dismiss Lore before we fell back to Hard Way and 12 lights method. Gave people a 30 second window, based on how fast he collapsed, I'd say it worked pretty good.

Kotchie - good points about the Fly problems. I thought he was doing that on his own. Didn't think that some flyers were causing the issues by leading him up.

Yeah, I was wrong, his HP does dynamically scale. As Tamerlayne says, it doesn't reduce percentages, but I wonder if it could still be used strategically?

I did a quick test on Malaise in MOM, his base HP seemed to be 67,489.74 with 8 and scaled up to 104,302.33 with 16, about 4,601.57 extra HP per person.

It does appear lightning patches are fewer with a smaller league, but I don't know the pattern if there is one.

3rd run, MoMAG successful, but used 6-7 lights. Still no Really Hard Way, but we're having too many deaths even with experienced players. We'll get it tight soon. Good run everyone.

Will post more tomorrow if I have time.

Atomic, 9:30 is good. I'll try to be there as soon as I can, but I specifically set 10:00pm because it's usually after baby bed time.

TopDoc, I think AV HP scaling is the norm with iTrials. Doing a 12 person KEY or 8 person LAM gives a lower HP AV than 24 person trials. I never paid much attention to it.

The HP do not dynamically scale, however. His HP would not drop in half if half quit. If we have a really bad run, we can pretty easily test, by having some people quit the league early, but almost positive you will not see any change (if you did, it would be Bug Hunter worthy).

We ran a full MoMAG test again tonight. Was having issues with closed league.

The test was for Incandescent. As I feared, the flow is too great when a league of 24 is mostly ported together so too many die too fast. At least it's unpredictable. If you know it's coming, you can move right away, but if stuck in an animation or speed suppressed, you're dead.

So, it's going to have to revert back to the pulsating method. That is, manually running out and then back in when air crackles.

SUGGESTIONS:
DO NOT BUTTON MASH. ONE ATTACK AT A TIME.
IF AN ATTACK IS QUEUED, PRESS ESCAPE TO CANCEL IT
ANTICIPATE AIR CRACKLES, SO YOU'RE NOT TRAVEL SUPPRESSED

The run we had was good. We spent about 4 mins just dying playing around with incand. A few more, then we starting using lights. Started getting stuck in the 25-35 range, but got him without too much trouble. It was a nice turnaround.

According to pwiki: "A single target can have up to 4 Max HP debuffs, even from different casters."

But still, on a small league of the debuff HP is the same amount, that's like -4k on a 90k HP AV, that's like a -4.5% debuff, pretty noice.