I did it on the first day, before they lowered the difficulty--2 deaths, both by an altruistic blaster. That was with my controller, all of us were level 33...fighting 35s the entire time, with no less than 3 bosses per group. That was with they Sky Raiders. The second time was a joke, with the Freaks.
I then started a new character, with a friend. We destroyed the Sky Raider version...it was just me (DM/SR), my tank friend (Invuln/SS), and an FF defender. That's it, 3 people. I'm confident that we would have beaten it ourselves, but the FF defender wanted to stick around. He did help though, of course.
As for being gimped...yes. We were in it for the respec, so we could fix ourselves. If anything they need to make it harder.
Justice
Incarnate - 50 Elec/SD
Keplar - 50 DM/SR
Gravaton Cleric - 50 Grav/Kin
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Just to give you a stat side...
The success rate on the respec is a tad over 75%.
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Wow, that's better than I thought it'd be. Gotta love data-mining.
I helped 3 members of our SG do their first Respec on Saturday.
They listened to my comments on strategy and how to do the mission and in the Reactor they were all saying is this all there is? I said yup.
They said people think this is hard? Seriously read my little guide just before you do it.
It's a mistake to assume the prime function of the respec trial is to fix broekn toons. People starting alts and new characters today KNOW they will have three respecs. This means people are not just doing the respect to fix mistakes. Respec has become a key to build strategies. Have a power you get at level 12 that you know will; be useful for the next 10-15 levels but not after. You no longer have to agonize over taking it (even slotting it!) you can take it and just respec it out post-24.
If respec were even easier than it is now we wouldn't just have Flavour of the month builds we'd have flavour of the level builds!
Last time I did the trial we had 4 controllers and 1 spine/invul scrapper. We had 1 death the whole time and that was from me drawing too much agro with hurricane and had about 5 grenades lobbed at me at once. We were all around 39-40 if I remember correctly, and 1 of the controllers lost connection before we got to the reactor so it was just 4 of us and we OWNED. We never even had to heal the reactor and we were even waiting around by the doors for the Freaks to spawn.
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Yep, I'm still perplexed by people who don't have 2 hours. Heck, that's just going from 6 hours sleep to 4 hours sleep in a night, and there's this magic drug called "Caffeine" that I'm still addicted to from my 60 hours work + 50 hours EQ weeks...
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And there's also this thing called life, and having a wife, childrens and stuffs...
>Atta at level 11 I found much harder since he knocked me back constantly and did a hell of a lot of damage to boot. I leveled to 12 and had a hard as hell fight. Had to burn every inspiration I had and with dull pain he nearly got my scrapper.
That's kind of the point. I never have much trouble with him at L9-10ish, but you can get this mission assigned as early as L6.
You really shouldn't have to level up once (or several times) to crack a mission you've been assigned through normal channels, particularly not in the newbie stage. Consider new player on his first trip through the levels, getting wiped out by Frostfire (or killed on the way to the mission) a half dozen times...discouraging, no?
And running through the L10-12 large angry mobs at L6-7 is a non-trivial problem; getting to the mission door alive is possibly as big an accomplishment as surviving the mission.
The main thing that causes problems during the respec is not realizing that more than any other encounter I have seen you need balance. Every archtype is VERY good to have in the fight and you likely will need some of each to complete it.
Originally we tried with a tank 3 defenders of various types and a controller. We did fine but we just did not have the dps needed to take the bosses out fast enough. We wound up advertising for a scrapper and a blaster when we got them the event was a joke. People were actually getting a lil bored cause we would clear the waves so fast that we were sitting waiting for the next reactor wave to spawn.
If you go in there with an unbalanced group you likely will die horribly and often.
Honestly I think more missions and taskforces should be balanced like it as it really makes all AT shine for what they do for the group.
kaid
Ah, thread number three thousand on this issue. The skyraider Respec seemed much harder than the freakshow version, but both are quite doable. Take people you know and trust, make a plan, and stick to it.
There are many fine guides to the Respec on the boards. Give them a glance and try again.
If you are on Pinnacle, I would be glad to exemplar down and give you a hand.
Capt. Impervious
Pinnacle
Funny I only bite the big once running to a contact in there and that was due to a bugged spawning. I never died on the way to a mission there either. Only way you could get atta or frost fire at level six is to die so many times you are in perma debt but even that is a real hard stretch.
Frostfire is just a boss. Electric Eel was a pushover. Most people I know didn't have a problem. Bone Daddies and Damned were just as deadly.
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And there's also this thing called life, and having a wife, childrens and stuffs...
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Presumably the benefits you get from those are greater than you get from CoH.
I'm not married. I don't have kids. I don't come onto this site complaining about how I don't get tax breaks or child allowance.
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The respec difficulty is Broad Sword? 
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Hehe...I read it as 'Ballistic Skill'. I guess I play too much Warhammer 40K.
across my characters i've done it 8 times. one on day one of respec with 3 deaths on that one. just have to have a competant team .
Ah, yes, another thread on respec.
My record with a kin/dark: 2 (hard version) failures on test; 2 (hard version) failures on live right after update 2. Test were raiders, live were freaks.
One one failure, the reactor blew before we even made it in to the room. LAME.
One failure after it was made easier: not enough awakens for the final wave. Oops.
One failure after it was made easier: several members dropped out.
Success after it was made easier: good coordinated team, everyone else from an SG that had teamspeak.
Success again the next day for my own SG: huh... I had already respec'd for defense... I don't KNOW that that ensured the 2nd success ... but I didn't die once on it after I respec'd... and only a handful of deaths in any case.
So personal record on my kinetic 6 failures, 2 successes.
My fire tank: right the first time on the skyraiders. I may need to respec my kinetic, but wouldn't say that I'd be a driving force to getting it done - bubblers, provoke tanks help with that much more than my kinetic.
My fire tank eats freaks and skyraiders (if exemp'd) for breakfast. I wouldn't guarantee that I can keep everyone alive ... but I would guarantee that everyone would get their respec.
It's about teammates, knowing what to do, and preparation.
Whether it's hard or not depends on your build IMO.
A pure empath defender... not going to be able to guarantee success.
A good provoke tank with defenses and some offense, facing enemies that generally can't kill them even en masse and +3/4... much easier.
A bubbler to protect the core - much easier.
It's a harder, and more annoying TF than most. I won't say it's impossible, but you need to know what you are doing, and make sure the team works together.
Hardest? Certainly the hardest TF/trial you'll come across in the pre-level 32 game IMO... unless you've got a good team.
In which case, it should be pretty straightforward IF people can work together.
Currently: 50s (5), 40s (3), 30s (5)
Red and blue side, mostly Infinity, Virtue, and Freedom.
On doing it with a small group:
I have over 20 wins in groups larger than 6.
I have done it multiple times: More people = better chance of winning (and I was one of the biggest mouths when it came to bringing down the difficulty back when it was hard)
A bubbler is all you need; and several scrappers. Make sure melee are the highest levels (if you have a 30 defender, make sure all the scrappers and tankers are 30 or higher)
Best odds at winning are with the same level team - all the way through...
The difficulty is 3 things
1) The game ramps up in difficulty at an INSANE rate when you get larger than 4. 6 is boarderline undoable until post 28, at which point it just gets hard and requires a good Inv. (or regen which shines levels 28-40 if well specced)
2) The game requires a VERY tight level spread, if your not all close together in leves, you are screwed. IN regular missions you can get away with it b/c there is not really a big punishment other than that the upper levels guys are getting very little xp b/c the guys are too easy, or the lower levels guys are useless and the highers carry them through the whole thing.
3) Scrappers (one of the largest played ATs) are generally crappy before level 28, when their good defence powers stick in. I just exemplared down to do a missed TF the other day and I and the other scrappers died CONSTANTLY... leading to the rest of the team either dying or running until finally enough people quit that the spawns got small enough to handle
The mission is pretty easy if everyone knows what they are doing.
Me on my inv/ss tank and my wife on her emp/drk defender, were able to save the reactor, just the two of us. We failed the first try with a pretty full team with another tank, another emp defender, scrapper, 2 blasters, 1 blaster left before the reactor. we failed close to the final wave.
After the failure, everyone quit the TF, except for my wife and I.
We learned that after you fail the TF you can still go back to the contact where we got the mission to save the reactor again.
For us the toughest part was getting to the reactor since both us only had SS as a travel power. Once inside we cleared everything all the way to the hall leading to the reactor where she was defeated by getting too close to a proximity bomb she didnt see. After her rezzing. We went on to the reactor. The rest went without a hitch, the reactor got to 50% once the rest of the time it stayed above 75%. Our levels were: I was lvl 28 and she was 27. I had only taunt and not provoke. Her healing powers are slotted heavily, attack powers arent slotted much. So I did all the damage, while she focused on healing the reactor , and herself. I focused on taunting things away from her, and taunting only the bosses. We always stayed close together. I think that was the biggest fault of our previous group, we couldnt get them to stay close and allowing me to taunt away from them and the healer to heal.
Hope this helps anyone in their future attempts.
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The success rate on the respec is a tad over 75%.
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Wow. Just another example of the devs hiding the numbers and never giving out the facts about this game's mechanics!
Oh wait ...
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i honestly believe that if you don't have two consecutive hours in the day to complete something, that you should stop wasting your time playing video games and learn some serious time management or get a less hectic schedule.
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I honestly believe that if you spend more than two consecutive hours in front a computer playing a video game you need to get out more. Just thought I should mention that since we were talking about what we believed !
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*snicker* no kidding. what's this 'out side' everyone speaks of? no four walls? no glow of the monitor? /e runs away screaming in terror!
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heh, if you think it's this hard today, you should have seen it before they lowered the difficulty.
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What he said....did you try it the first weekend it came out? Spawns of +3 lvl bosses higher than our highest player, and the reactor would blow prematurely.
Bring a TANKER!! or 2
The first time I did respec was maybe before it was made easier; it was extremely hard, I can say that. The team had a bit of the level spread problem and no controllers.
We also had 2 of the 7 players on the team go afk at various times in the final mission. 1 of the 2 dark defenders, and 1 of the 2 blasters.
Overall we had 1 kinetic defender (me), 2 dark defenders, 1 tank, 1 scrapper and 2 blasters. We all died enough to hit the cap and never even got to the reactor room. We were fighting groups of 5-8 purple sky skiffs at all times. (and the dark defender who did not afk, did not have their toggle debuff which would've greatly helped)
This was after breezing through the first mission with no deaths, by the way, for those who say you can tell from the first mission. Losing the afk dark defender and the afk blaster hurt us badly.
The second time I tried the mission, we succeeded. On this try we had 3 scrappers, a tank, and 2 kinetic defenders. No deaths till the very last couple waves. On the last wave, all but the tank and one scrapper went down. the other Kinetic defender and I used awakens and buffed before going down again.
The hardest thing about the respec, for me, once in the reactor core, was finding the way around. There is no map (it's the only place in the game I've been without a map) and I couldn't tell where to go to exit and get another red bubble (which protects you from the reactor damage). It was that, and not the enemies, that killed me after the awaken - I couldn't find where the red bubble exit was.
So - whatever about the sewer trial etc, but for a level 24, this is the hardest mission yet that the level 24 will have seen, unless they tag along on missions +4 levels to them regularly or something.
Want some Cheese with that Whine, Troll?
Ran the Respec TF 3 times this weekend, just for fun. I love this TF. Took my lvl 29 DM/Invuln scrapper to lvl 31 (with some bonus missions on the side). Was successful 2 times. Third time wasn't good cause of disconnects (my compy decided I'd played too much, then Guardian rebooted or something. Not a good omen). The first one we ran, we didn't even have a defender for Terra Volta. 3 controllers, 2 tanks and 2 scrappers. We ruled TV. We were tossing the coolant at each other between waves for kicks.
I really don't even consider the third a worthy try, cause all the disconnects and junk happened before we could start the second mission.
Key? levels. Levels, levels, and levels. Keep the SK's down. SK's aren't up to snuff as non-SK's cause they're missing powers and enhancement slots. Exemplars are dangerous because they're so easy to drop. Below level 28 this trial is especially hard, because you are missing key powers that you need. Levels 26-28 are the late pubescent years of your toon. The powers you get there usually change the way you arrest enemies. Above all else, keep playing. Don't tell others how to play, and learn how others abilities actually work.
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So you MUST KEEP THE TEAM SMALL.
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While your strategy is sound (and I sure wish my sg had a bubbler around to FF the core...), it is NOT necessary to keep the team small. I keep seeing people say that, and I can see how it makes it more doable, but the mission is very doable with 6-8 hero team.
Our group for the core the last time I did it:
2 blasters
1 tank (invul/ss)
1 scrapper (kat/invul)
1 defender (empath)
1 controller (mc/rad)
I was the controller.
Our strategy was simple. The tank and one blaster worked bosses if the spawn was one group. If multiple groups, they worked one group and then the bosses for other groups.
The scrapper and one blaster worked non-bosses for a one-group spawn, or an entire group in multi-group spawns.
The empath and I worked the entire fight. She focused on healing and buffing. I threw AM every few minutes and focused on holds.
My personal plan was quite simple:
1-group spawns: Simple. Mass Dom the group, let the tank/scrap/2x-blaster destroy them. Throw debuffs as soon as the group was controlled.
2-group spawns: Mass Dom one group for the scrap/blaster duo, then use individual holds and debuffs on the other group for the tank/blaster duo.
3-group spawns: Mass Hypnosis one group to sideline them. Then proceed as if 2-group spawn. Finish the snoozing group after the other two are dealt with.
Obviously deviations to the plan occur ... occasionally a specific villain needs to be held, or one slips through to the core and needed to be dropped by the empath or me. But in general, the methodology worked just fine. Though modestly challenging, I don't recall any point at which the outcome was in doubt.
It's all about teamwork, having a plan, and trusting that each member will handle his or her responsibility. Other than perhaps one or two exceptions (villain breaking through to the core) I don't think I executed a single 'damage' attack (ahem ... not that I really HAVE one) the entire time in the core. You need to know your job and focus on it.
RC