Cathedral of Pain - 11am BST Saturday 14-10-06

Seductress · 10-11-2006 06:57 AM

Hi there!

Now that the Cathedral of Pain is up, I am really keen to do this trial for the Pariahs SG. Its a difficult task, as I understand it and accordingly, we'll need a good solid crew of people.

AFAIK, the trial involves the destruction of three pylons within an hour. These pylons are guarded by a spawn of mobs which you have to destroy before you can take the pylons on. Destroying the pylons allows you to take down the another thing. I'm not sure of the details here. The thing is, you have to destroy said pylons at the same time. This means you need at least three groups.

The trial allows multiple teams and therefore, ideally, I would like a minimum of three groups of 8.

More would be better.

I am not certain what level the mission is (I went in at level 50 and the mobs were 50, however, I suspect that they will be formatted to the highest member of the party).

So, if you are interested in taking part in this, we're looking at doing it on Saturday 14th October at 11am.

Tommy_Saf · 10-11-2006 09:19 AM

Well, only one little trouble with it. You all need to be in the same SG. And the base need certain equipment. Are you sure your base is ready?

Defiant:
Cunundrum, Defender (Generic Supergroup 101)

Other servers too.
New Global: @cunundrumEU

Seductress · 10-11-2006 10:02 AM

Surely you only need to be in the same coalition to enter the base? Then join the trial?

Also, the base is definitely ready for it. Its been ready for ages

6 Dimensional Anchors, a trophy room and a trophy base (obviously got mission computer/oracle and raid teleproter).

Maelwys · 10-11-2006 01:44 PM

No, you need to be in the same SG. Coalitioned forces can't join your raid i'm afraid, unless you invite them to your SG temporarily. All members of your SG get the "IoP mission" flagged up when you start it, you use the Raid Teleporter to access the zone (set in the shadow shard) and everyone gets auto-sk'ed to 50.

The bit outside is actually the easy part. 3 pylons to kill which respawn pretty fast, each pylon is protected by what amounts to a shield generator. Both pylons and shield generators are guarded by mobs. Kill shield generator, then kill pylon (when shield drops). Need to beat all 3 within a fairly small time frame, but it's quite possible to beat two simultaneously then converge on the third one to beat it in time... just need to FIND them all first! Silly Shadow Shard maps!! Once all pylons are down, the gateway to the temple is accessable and remains so for the duration of the mission.

Inside the temple are 3 spawns of mobs spaced out in a circular chamber. The middle spawn also has an AV in it. The object of this second bit is to kill the AV.

Unfortunately, the AV is nasty. He possesses a one-way PFF... he can hit you but you can't hit him. The Force Field will only drop once all the other enemies in that room are defeated, at which point you have 60 seconds to kill the AV before all three mobs spawn again and the AV's shield (and health recovery rate) goes back up.

You need a LOT of damage to take out the AV within 60 seconds. As if that wasn't enough, the three groups of mobs in that room keep on respawning at a very fast rate as you are trying to kill them off. We found that you really need to defeat them all simultaneously in order to clear the room.

With a fairly unorganised group of 12 people on a first attempt (all level 50s I think. Very mixed group of ATs), we managed to clear the room three times, each time getting the AV down to about 20% Health before all mobs in the room respawned. The AV does a large amount of smashing and psionic damage in AOEs and fairly wide cones, and will be attacking you constantly. For "large amount of damage" read "more than a level 50 /regen scrapper can handle without Dull Pain + Instant Healing"... although if all else fails, you can "kite" him around a pillar indefinately with just integration running.

If you want to beat it first time, I'd suggest taking along about 16 people, or at least having a lot of spike damage output. If we had had some -res debuffs and used a kin to dump a "fulcrum shift" on our melees just before killing off the surrounding mobs, we probably would have taken the AV down in time with just 12 people.