Union Cathedral of Pain recon run 1

Well we tried again but but a purple AV again. We just couldn't clear in time and there wasn't enough -regen to keep his health low enough. So demoralising.

First off:

My apologies for not being able to attend last night, without going into too much detail my sister needed a bit of family backup late yesterday afternoon and evening.

Anyways, we'll come out fighting again next week, bring plenty of HVAS (recent runs have had fewer and fewer I've noted) everyone!

I was thinking with the Purple AV, should we try everyone sticking at range (scrappers and Melee just keep their HVAS near the willforges to just fire on the AV) so we have less time switching to cubes?

Lady Arete suggested a good tactics - make sure there's at least 1 (preferably 2) blasters per team then when the tank has secured agro, each blaster nukes. It will clean up the mobs a lot quicker than single target killing. I think melee chars should only go into melee if they have a lot of acc insps.

Also what few HVAS there were yesterday, it seemed that they just wanted to stand there and not do anything at all.

In order to guarantee everyone has a HVAS I suggest that we meet in Pocket D, form the teams and then go and do a mini raid ourselves. That way everyone on the teams will have the merits for a HVAS before we start.

Or Soul Storm, like we do for Hamidon Raid.
Make certain there is some scheduled events the day before or something where the players that want to participate in CoP has as you say a chance to get their HVAS.
Also encourage people to GOTO Bloody Bay and get their shivans.

My idea though for the blasters was the following:
The tanker in each team prepares him/herself to jump into the cube spawns, then Taunts. One of the teams blasters jumps in and nukes. The rest of the team mobs up.

If the team has 2 blasters then one of them (designate this in team before you go) holds his/her nuke until the next spawn. I say this, because some blasters have quicker recharge (due to slotting) then others. This way we know we have a nuke ready for each Cube spawn.

When we fight the Purple AV, we should as we have done so far let all ranged stay outside of the hurricane's reach. Only problem here is that we loose some damage (but less then having people rezzing, not hitting, held [insert proper state] ).

If each player with a Hvas and/or Shivan manages to spawn their pet(s) just before Rularuu is vulnerable (and make them fight aswell), Rularuu being hit with Howling Twilight, just before his shield goes back up, and generally gets debuffed like crazy...then we have a good shot at taking down the big Purple.
But it all comes down to how fast we can jump from the middle to each of our cube and take down the cube monsters. The faster the better.
Players could remember to simply count to 45 when Rularuu is vulnerable, cause that is the time we have to make dents in him.
If players also do not play in first person mode, then they also have a good chance of seeing when the cube spawns starts to well.. spawn.

Perhaps just after the weekly mothership raid, the raid leaders should remind people that if they are going to attend the CoP... buy that big HVAS before they leave the zone?


Last thought (as it is late): I was distraught to see the HVAS not attack properly. I had to run behind or past Rularuu so the Hvas would follow me, then it would attack.
Previously the bind made for masterminds, worked with the big Cataract in RV, I seem to remember (maybe in error) that it also worked on the HVAS. So I was shocked that it did not.
The problem lay in that when I then returned to my HVAS and the rest of the raid force... the big lunk of metal (many of them) would stand silent, non aggressive behind the rest of the ranged players.
If this is a bug then I hope it gets fixed pronto, if we can make a bind that works for the big lunk, then we should find it.

Hey guys,

Which nights are you running CoP and more importantly do you need an old Mind/Rad troller in your teams.

Even I am playing exclusively on Defiant since my come back because of lesser lag, my first home was Union.

Highest Regards,
Knightly

Heya Knightly. Make certain you have your Union Taskforce channel open (it gets announced there).
Friday nights about 7pm gmt.

I have a regular/SG team going on Friday nights. I will keep an eye open for an opportunity tho'.

Good luck on your attempts.

Just an update (nice to see you Knightly!) but Union gave the "Purple" AV a good kicking heroside tonight! My thanks to everyone that took part, we proved that we can do it with enough damage, debuffs and HVAS

Yeah, awesome run tonight. Well done everyone!

Yes, first successful CoP for me.
It was a sweet victory, since I've been with Tsu and Soul on several attempts where we faced big Purple and could not beat him.
Victory was our this day and it was sweet.

Well done Union.
We managed to debuff him and the groups understood the importance of defeating the cube spawns quickly.
Thank you for the early warnings of cube spawnings Tsu. I think that helped rushing people back to their cubes.

I found it useful to put notices out to re-debuff and prepare for mobs about 25 seconds after the shields go down, although its a nightmare fighting, running comms and counting to 25 lol so it was a few seconds out on more than one occasion, but the important thing is that it works!!!

I hope come I19 we can be successful more frequently given the rewards that it will bring and that like last night, everyone can work together on the mobs to get the shields back down!

Well I type the briefings each time which allows me to amend details on the fly each time, so I'm trying to keep it as understandable as possible for new CoP'ers while making sure everyone knows what to do, its nice to have the effort noticed, so thankyou guys!

I really do want this running regularly and smoothly each week so that when I19 hits, we can run the CoP for incarnate rewards as well as the badges!

Just wanted to offer my thanks again to the people of Union for 2 great runs on the CoP, we got the Red AV both times, however with the number of HVAS and the teams running perfectly against the mobs as directed, we could have taken the Purple in my estimation!!

Apologies for the abrupt redside run and the lack of a recogniseable character to lead on, but it was an impromtu raid led off the back of much rejoicing from the sub 15 minute heroside run!!!

Yeah we managed to complete the Red AV on both Blue and Red sides. I do think the purple would have been more than doable tonight!

I gotta thank Starscreamer for letting us use his Ultimate Darkness SG redside, it's big but purdy and it got the job done!

2 Runs tonight, both Blueside.

1st run, Red AV. 20 mins of faffing around on the first stage before we got it sorted (the usual problems, obelisks getting out of phase with each other's cycles), then the AV went down fairly easily.

2nd run, Purple AV. Obelisks dropped like a sack of spuds. We bounced off the AV for 15-20 minutes then gave up. We were scratching him, but not deeply enough or for long enough.

The first run was quite startling for me during the pillars, normally teams are balanced roughly be having a fairly standard assortment of AT's, and while my team had an extra blaster we were able to deck the pillar in about 7 seconds.

Alpha abilities do seem to be quite effective as I have taken a team consisting of the same people (mostly) in previous weeks and still not been that far ahead!

I did try and compensate for that on the second run, so hopefully that was evident.

Our second run faced the Purple AV as noted, and whilst we had the DPS to drop his HP, we alas didn't have significant -regen capability or HVAS remaning to complete the trial within the timer, we could have fought on, but I didn't want to incur massive debt on everyone for a situation that would have been unnessarily frustrating!

My thanks again to all that attended!

well, that was pretty awesome , my first successful CoP trial. All went very smoothly, especially considering the number of first time CoPers. I think it coan be safely said that Tsumiju Zero's explanation of objectives at each stage are very clear. Hope to get another one done soon.

Raid report 11/02/11:

First blueside CoP: We encountered the Storm AV and pasted his white butt across the floor in under 25 minutes. A fantastic raid which everyone followed strategy wise, to the letter!

First redside CoP: We had problems with the pillars for pass 1 and 2, however with a little patience and adjustment to attack rates, we got a good pass at the pillars and took them down. We had a few rogue players attacking before the order, so we had to do a combat reset, but once we were in the pattern from AV to mobs, again the Storm AV fell to our collective might.

Second blueside CoP: Alas we were lacking in firepower by way of HVAS etc on attempt 2, our first run expended a lot of our temporary powers and we wern't able to burn through the HP as fast. Still, 2 Purple takedowns in one night is still something that Union can be proud of!!!