Union Cathedral of Pain recon run 1

Thanks for the succesful CoP run last night, had a lot of fun and got to use vengeance a bit which is always nice

I believe a redside run was mentioned for this Thursday which sounds like it should be fun

We had a few goes tonight at the Purple AV redside. Now whilst we didn't get a win, we did learn about dealing with the multiple instance bug!!

I'm also sad to report we had a few issues with potential griefing, and we had to compensate on the fly for some unintented attacks on the pillars! but on each occasion, the great majority did union proud in working to try and overcome those problems, and for that you have my admiration!

Special thanks tonight to @Flints, @Tancred and @Li Sensei for their support and VG base!

Sadly red attempts 1, 1.5 (instance bug) and 2 weren't successful.

However a big thank you for everyone who attended, and the previously mentioned Host and other team leaders.

Things weren't quite as smooth in that run, while the pillars went down fine (Unions got stage 1 down to second nature now.) the purple AV is still causing problems, Soul suggested and Champions "No shivan/HVAS purple win." data makes note that the ranged ATs staying together for buffs such as Fulcrum is vital.

I didn't manage to get my power analyser off on the AV as its range is inside the KD hurricane, so I couldn't keep an eye on how we were doing for regen sadly, we may need to work on that and a repeat of the successful system of calling at the roughly 30 sec point to cast all -regens.

Not having the ranged teams in range to use the Dagger temps also might be a problem there, however I did see the most HVAS and Shivans I've seen since the first attempt where the majority of players had nukes prepared also.

The AV's half was hovering around the 80% mark on each attack wave however, and if the regen issue was solved we could have got him down in 10 or so minutes.

A list of my team-mates except one person who had to leave after the first attempt, apologies to them as I didn't get their name.

Ejekutiva
MiniGremlin (@NightShade)
Solvent Abuse (@Soul Storm)
Prototype 101 (@Prototype)
Sniper
Radical Illusion (@Chappers)
Ultima

Meh, the base worked first time, which was a bonus since I threw that CoP wing together in about 30 mins. But I need to move the Computer closer to the porter...

It was a couple of good attempts. Both scuppered by Purple Boy.

I'm not even going to mention Phase 1, it's becoming more straighforward as we do more of these.

First run we were pretty decent at taking out the cube respawns, and actually made a reasonable dent in the AV a few times.

Second run was just an annoyance. Flints' team ending up in a different instance to Tsumiju and mine, and people were getting tired and a little sloppier towards the end, meaning that we weren't getting the cube spawns fast enough and even had a respawn or two.

Poison Trap was suicidal to attempt to use against Purple Boy on a MM, which didn't stop me trying it several times (it appeared to make no difference at all )

Warning, Rant incoming.

Now, on to my current pet hate. The Friggin' Robotics AI. I was constantly resummoning my pets, and losing damage output (and -regen from Mr. Stompy the Assault Bot's Plasma), because the moronic little wastes of metal insist on running into melee when on any orders other than follow/passive.

Get BACK here you stupid little.... <resummons pets, while swearing>

Other than that annoyance, hope the base was useful, and eventually we will get the sod.

Well done to those who stuck it out. 'Ya boo sucks to you' to those who didn't, and see you for the next one.

Thanks for organising it guys. See you next time

Well done on the purple AV take down tonight.

There were so many more HVAS than the other night, I think that may be the key.

I'm pleased to make a triple announcement!

1. Tonights Redside CoP run went successfully, my thanks to everyone that took part and executed their orders to the letter!
2. We completed a raid against the PURPLE AV, something that Union, until tonight had yet to do!
3. With my friday nights for a while being availiable, I intend to run a raid each and EVERY friday where possible!

Good work Union!!!

Congrats!

That was fun, cheers for the badges

I was running a demorecord from about 1/3rd of that way into the AV fight when it was looking promising, but it crashes every time I try to play it back, so I'll not bother posting it.

Well done folks, enjoy the badges

It was a remarkably smooth run. Phase 1 was a brief speedbump.

Nobody got despondent and left in a huff when we saw Purple Boy.

The healing blanket/ranged turtle worked well, the HVAS' were immensely useful and the cube respawns were dealt with in a timely manner by a combination of melee paying attention and being prompt on the case and members of the turtle helping out.

One thing that will probably be useful for future runs is for people to get an 'attack my target' bind set up for their HVAS', since I seem to remember that MM style commands are available to non-MM's using HVAS'. (please correct me if I'm remembering wrong, it's been a long week)

Code:

/macro KILL petcom_all Attack Aggressive

will do it assuming it works for non-MM's.

I saw several HVAS' standing idle when we were hitting the AV, so getting them put to work can only help matters.

So now I can put on my Union CV -

Hami tank for Union's first successful Hami raid ('cos I'm an idiot that said OK when asked)
On Union's first successful CoP ('cos I'm an idiot)
Team lead on Union's first successful Purple AV takedown. ('cos I'm a stubborn idiot)

That's good enough for me

For the sake of posterity, my team was:

Toybox - Robotics/Traps Mastermind
Eleglin Eldore - ??/Empathy Controller
Termagant - ??/Empathy Controller
Ejekutiva - ??/?? Tank
Wonderfire - ??/?? Blaster
Corten - Katana/SR Scrapper
Jugzilla - Grav/Empathy Controller
Lady Sha're - Robotics/Dark Mastermind

Apologies to those whose powersets I don't recall, but I was having to concentrate on 5 things at once, and didn't have a chance to check everyone's powersets out.

Tsumiju, the base is at your disposal for your proposed Friday night runs.

Typical you manage it when I'm not there! Did you do it red or blueside? What did u do diff to yesterday?

Well done Union, shame I couldn't be there to see Ol' Stormy go down, but I was asleep at the time

So turtling up similiar to MSR's pit of magnus death is the key here, lets do this more until (and beyond) the point where red and purple AVs are to the point where we can just say "Red tactics." "Purple tactics." and be done.

I think the key was that we:

• Had a strategy in mind based on previous encounters, and used the right tactics to carry it out.
• Had everyone waiting for the attack and buffing before each phase.
• Approached the Cathedral interior sensibly (i.e attacking the left Willforge and drawing in the reinforcements) and placing a battery of ranged and debuff in the centre of the room.
• were sensible in how the respawns were dealt with (taunting the respawns immediately into large amounts of firepower is always nice) and dealt with them efficiently in terms of speed.
• Applied sufficient debuffs between shield passes to make the job easier.
• Pounded the cheap little swine into submission with plenty of HVAS and player firepower.

It was a fine attempt
my team had a stone, a ws, a scrapper 2 emp and a controller, an a blaster if i rember correct

this worked flawless

the tactic to taunt the mobs from the cube was real superb so we hadnt to run all the time.

Thx to my great Team as well as Tsu and Li and there Teams

Tancred

I was feeling a little mad tonight after the Mothership Raid so I got Lightnia and Sal to help me to lead a random Blueside CoP attempt. We got the teams together and went for it! We had a little trouble on the first stage (I think we didn't have enough damage on one or two teams) so after a couple tries we managed to get the first stage done and dusted. We were then surprised that we had the Red AV and it was plain sailing from there.

All in all, we completed the raid in about 35 minutes from beginning to end.

(I don't plan to lead random CoP's all that often but its nice to get a good run when it happens that way.)

Next raid will be on Friday evening by Tsumiju

Another 2 notches on Union's belt tonight!

My thanks for everyone that attended, was hoping to see Avatea as well tonight, but sadly that seems to be a no show

Congratulations Tsumiju and Union
(Was unable to join as my rp group had some pen and paper rp happening )

As suggested in this announcement there will be a Mod Attended Halloween costume event on Friday, October 29th, 2010 - 11:00 a.m. Pacific / 7:00 p.m. British / 20:00 Central European Time in Pocket D.

Strangely this is also around the usual time that we kick off Union's weekly attempt at the Cathedral of Pain!

So I hope you will all join me, as quite a few people did tonight, in not only trying to kick Rularuu's backside around the trial, but in a little underhanded hijacking of the attendees to make it a successful run!

Bring your best debuffs, HVAS and Halloween costumes!!!

On that note of the Mod-party and CoP, I'm assuming we'll start the CoP once the mod has left Pocket D? Don't really want to miss out on what effectively can be a free booster pack ;p

You never know, we might be able to convince the chosen Mod to join us and use that oh so lovely "kill target" button lol.