Standardise the Abandoned Sewer Trials level

Pretty simple really, right now the Sewer Trial is capped at level 40, right? Simple enough, you'd think. Minimum team is 4. No problem...

The mobs on a level 40 team spawn at level 42.
They are incredibly Boss heavy. Like, 3-4 bosses per mob. And these are Rikti; they hit hard. Really damn hard.

Now, that in itself wouldnt be a problem either. We on a team of four, with a scrapper, blaster, defender and a controller. We'd managed to do fairly well so far. While it wasnt fast, it also wasnt by any means a struggle.

Except the 'Defeat Hydra Head' mission is timed. Oh, and its a defeat all. And did I mention? There are multiple Hatched Krakens in the level, 4 alone in the Hydra Head basin. All monster class, all at +2, all capable of wiping the team in a very short ammount of time. The only reason we were able to defeat them was because my blaster was AR/Ice and the controller was Gravity. We managed to spam enough holds to keep the things locked down solid while we whittled away their health.

So, I'm rambling now. What is the suggestion?
-Get rid of the +2 lock. That in itself makes the trial less fun and much more of a chore.
-Cut down the Krakens to about 2. They dont give Merits or anything, their just a massive roadbump.

If none of that is 'possible', then;
-Increase the time limit.

Or, even;
-Raise the minimum level of people. Because it says 4+ people should be able to do it. And thats simply not true. Certainly not at a +2 setting no one asked for.

tl;dr

Make the Sewer Trial work like every other TF/Trial and obey the level settings or the Team Leader. Stop the Rikti and Hydra being cheating little [Bleep]s

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

I've got to admit - while I haven't run this in a while, the only thing that's tripped up teams has been either the "Don't let a 50 touch the temp powers" bug, or not communicating well enough to deal with the shield generators. The krakens were a touch irritating (and I wouldn't expect merits, given how they were farmed at one point,) but the trial itself was doable.

Then again, we had a larger team than the basic four.

See my Guides and Tutorials

It's also meant to be a trial. Hence the increased difficulty.

It's one of the trials that does not reward 'Run in and smash!' tactics.

There are enough external resources (paragonwiki, for example) to enable teams to plan ahead.

I am therefore against the idea of 'standardising' this trial.

I ran this Trial with a HUGELY capable 8-man team... I think we finished with a ton of time to spare. However, it wasn't easy and required vast amounts of communication, above and beyond what any other set of missions has ever required for anything in the rest of the game (granted I have never run the Eden Trial). And yes, the no map bit is quite annoying... especially when one considers just how unique the map is.

I am all for it being slightly altered (level, etc.) to make it easier to do in a PUG situation. Yes, it is a Trial, but, the concept of a Trial being a separate variety of TF/SF pretty much went the way of the dodo before CoV even came out.

I would like the Sewer trial to remain difficult. If the +2 level and the minimum team requirement is a problem, then a warning can be put in the description about the level and the difficulty. Actually, the respec trial is a bit too easy now, maybe it needs a sewer trial treatment. Teams are usually ambushing the spawns at the doors rather than the other way round.

the sewer trial in my opinion has some issues, the +2 diff default isnt that bad, only a minor annoyance but it DOES add challenge

the generators mechanic and how to defeat the hydra head, both are fine

however, in my opinion, the ONLY thing that needs to be done to the trial is increase timer, 1.5 hours is BARELY enough for most teams and a PuG is nigh impossible to complete before the time limit is down

i suggest the time limit needs to be increased, it does not have to be a lot, just adding 30 minutes to the timer would give most teams ample enough time to finish it

if you all dont want to increase the timer, then give things like hatched krakens the "safeguard" treatment and give you time back for killing them (like 15 min for each kraken, since on average thats how long it takes to kill them unless you have debuff or dmg heavy team)

I tried this for the first time this week. It wasn't fun because you need to follow a carefully worked out plan or "cookbook", and it ended up feeling more like baking a cake under time pressure than it felt like being heroic. Some of the stuff you need to memorize and do in particular ways is just arbitrary, and I found myself thinking "We do what and why?" multiple times during the trial. Examples include who gets what temp weapons and what each temp weapon does, the careful timing with generators, what to fight and what to avoid, and so on.

If I was to ever do it again, I would like to see the timing be a little more generous. In the trial we did we had one or two teammates who knew what they were doing and a few like me who had never done the trial before. The leader had a rough time of it, and probably ended up not having much fun, because it was a *lot* of work for the leader to educate the first timers while working against a strict time limit.

I wasn't bothered by the levels in a significant way, and neither were my teammates.