A Virtue Guide to the CoP

Hey Everyone I just wanted to write up a guide for us on doing the CoP. This is v 2.0

Forming Teams-
I have found the best team set up is
1 Tank/Brute
3 Damage
4 Support

Damage consists of: Blasters, Scrappers, Soldiers of Arachnos, Kheldians, Stalkers, and Dominators.

Support consists of: Defenders, Controllers, Masterminds, Widows, and Corruptors.

That is the most broad sense of forming teams. When building them you must take into account the amount of Psionic Defense and Resist.

Some support that offers Psionic Defense or Resistance are: Dark Miasma-Shadow Fall, Widows-Mind Link, Force Field-Dispersion Bubble, and Pain Domination-World of Pain.
These sets are the most helpful for keeping everyone alive against the onslaught of Psionic damage that Rularuu. All the other damage they put out is less important to worry about.

Set up- I am trying to do these runs without temp powers but as of now they seem to be very important. The temp powers that are important are the Shivian from Bloody Bay and the HAVS from the Rikti War Zone. The more of these you bring the better for the team success you have. Other AoE buffs and Pets are all useful as well.

The Mission-

Obelisks

Before Starting-

Designate each team to an island. The three directions are North East, South East, and South West. After each team should pick someone on their team for Assemble the Team. This person will go to the Island clockwise to that of their group. If the teams are not well balanced this is one way to help balance damage output.

Once the teams have assembled on their islands they will begin buffing and wait for the Leader to call out Attack. Be sure that the Assembler knows the name of the Obelisk the rest of the team is at.

The Mechanics for the Obelisks work as such. The Cubes near the Obelisk will spawn Rularuu (There will be a spawn there to begin with) After defeating the spawn the shield on the Obelisk will drop. The Obelisk will spawn some Natterlings around it. These Natterlings will offer the Obelisk additional regeneration. The Obelisks must be all dropped in thirty seconds of each other to open the portal to the AV.

The Obelisk Assault-

As soon as Attack is called The teams will move in to defeat the spawn. As soon as they are all defeated all attention will be focused on the Obelisk. The damage output by the team should be more than enough for you to ignore the Natterlings. This is when the Assembler is important. If the island they are at is lagging behind once their teams obelisk reaches zero hit points they will assemble their team in to help take out the surviving Obelisk. This is why it is important that the assembler know the name of the obelisk the team is at so they can monitor its health. This should make up for any damage issues teams have.

Yay the Obelisks are down and now the portal is open!

The Portal

As you enter there will be a cut scene. This is where your hopes can be instantly crushed. There are two different AVs (I want to put the rumors to bed about there being four or eight or seventy five different ones.) They are both named Aspect of Rularuu. The first one I have nicknamed Big Red. The other is Stormy. If Stormy spawns for you He will be purple and during the cut scene he will have a Lightning Field and normally brings up his Hurricane. This is bad! I recommend that if he spawns you do not continue with the CoP. The amount of effort put in to forming the teams and collecting temp powers is not worth the difficulty and low success rate of fighting this AV. If Big Red spawns you may cheer and continue with the CoP. This is a guide for PuG CoP runs and this is only based on my personal opinion. I will detail what is needed for each AV fight.

Setting Up-

Once everyone enters you should gather at the bottom of the ramp. I have had issues with the ramp obscuring AoE buffs so moving just past this will fix any issues with that. Everyone should begin buffing at this point. Much like a Hamidon raid first all long term buffs like shields and status protections first. While buffing summon all pets including Shivians and HAVS. Finish up with AoE buffs.

The Aspect Assault-

This encounter works much like the Obelisk encounter. There are 3 cubes that spawn Rularuu and their existence is what keeps a shield on the Aspect of Rularuu. Everyone at once should then move to the center of the room. Any AoE Heals should be spammed to create a healing bubble. Tanks and Brutes will split off and taunt the mobs into the center for all to kill. The Tanks/Brutes can be designated to which cube they should pull from based on which island they were on before. As you are fighting the Rularuu be sure to get dead people up as quick as you can. Characters who are less squishy can at this point leave the healing bubble to take down any stragglers. As soon as the shield is shattered everyone will focus all their attention on the AV. All people on the team that have -regeneration powers should begin firing them off. The important part right now is to get long term -regeneration powers on him right before the Rularuu respawn. As the Rularuu respawn everyone should break off from fighting the AV and refocus on the spawns. Tanks Brutes bringing them in to the center to kill, Non squishies killing stragglers, Dead being picked up, Everything that was done during the first spawn. After the shield is shattered again its back on the AV. This is a wash, rinse, repeat the most important part of this is getting -regeneration on the AV before he reshields so he does not have the shield time to get his health back.

Yay you won. At least I hope you did. This strategy is pretty solid. If you have anything for me to change/add let me know.


Aspect Breakdown-

Each Aspect has a weakness and a strength. I shall detail each part of the AV's stats here so you can understand what those are. If not stated the Aspect share the same stat numbers.


HP- 76692.89
End- 800
Regeneration Rate- .78%/sec 597.58
Recovery Rate- 3.34%/sec 26.68
To Hit and Accuracy Bonus- 70% and x1.5
Resistance:
Smashing-
Big Red 40%
Stormy 10%
Lethal-
Big Red 40%
Stormy 10%
Fire-
Big Red 10%
Stormy 10%
Cold-
Big Red 10%
Stormy 25%
Energy-
Big Red 40%
Stormy 25%
Negative-
Big Red 10%
Stormy 10%
Psionic-
Big Red 10%
Stormy 10%
Toxic-
Big Red 40%
Stormy 10%
It should be noted that the resistance floor for the Aspect AV is 10%

Defense- 0.0% across the board

Hold Protection- 0.0-50.0 with Triangles
Immobilize Protection- 0.0
Stun Protection- 0.0-50.0 with Triangles
Sleep Protection- 0.0
Knockback Protection- 100.0
Confuse Protection- 0.0-50.0 with Triangles
Terrorize Protection-- 0.0-50.0 with Triangles
Repel Protection- 100.0
Teleport Protection- 0.0

As you can see Big Red has higher resistance compared to Stormy. What Stormy lacks in resistance he makes up for with a 57.6% to hit debuff hurricane. When building teams to fight Stormy you need to bring enough to hit to overcome this. The major issue fighting Stormy is not missing him it is missing the respawns. If you do not get them down quickly another spawn will be made. If you allow this to happen your -regen powers will wear off and he will soon be back at full health.

This worked wonders!



HOO-RAH

Looking forward to the day where I might be able to contribute. My stalker is sitting steadily at 39 but hoping to break the 40s here soon and huff it to 50 :3

Here my 2 cents, if you think any of my little experience can help on your guide.

I leaded 4 runs so far, red side CoP only.
First attempt was 25min and we won. I was expecting to fail on first try lol, but we pulled it.
Then 2 fails, 1 and half weeks ago and last aftertoon (agains the purple aspect). Then last night somoneone dragged me into leading one again and we pulled 35min (agains red aspect).

The 2 we won we started advertissement 1 hour before hand, on various channels. Had ppl group outside sharkhead base portal (if anything append, the hosto is next to portal). Im lazy most of the time, so i pretty much deside to lead 1 at last minute (which is not a good idea for those).
The 2 we loose we did not advertised much before hand and took more time to form with less balanced team setup. I would admit that pre-schedule those would be a better plan.
Also for all 4 runs no temp power were used, or barely (maybe 1 or 2 shivans used on the first run).

Team composition is key. at least 1 good brute/tank per team WITH taunt. lot of healers/debuffers/rezer/buffers. Last night the AoE +def only was nuts, 70% to psi def (the weak spot on my invul). you dont have to stress too much on def values when AoE do the job itself.(side note: disampointement when i realize the 2 rads on my team had no rez <.<, we swaped ppl around). Also on the 2 fails, we had a few weak brutes, with no taunt (sorry guys if you seems the hat suit you :P).

Pre asignment:
----------------
When all 3 teams are ready and seems balanced enough. All get in base if not already done. give basic instruction on phase 1 (the obelisk). As already pointed out by BlazingTiger, have each team a designated obelisk. I rather call them by position (east, south and south east) then by name cause its not common knowledge (yet) which is where.
Then have all 3 team leader click mission puter to start it (or only one need to do it and we had lag/delay that one time i was wondering).


Phase 1
----------------
Teams get in position. We havent used AtT, i think ppl can jet pack or fly there as fast as 1 AtT'er.
When team leaders aknowledged they ready, buff up and attack the mob guarding the obelisk.
Having all to start at same time should help having shiels up/down at same time.
At that point, i strongly suggest team leaders shout in request channel, when shields is up and down, they only have to type UP and DOWN.
Everyone in zone can see the 3 obelisk hp bar but not when shield is down or up. I also instruct ppl about this before we go.
I also instructed ppl to reduce DPS at 50% of the obelisk hp bar. and hold at 25%.
On each Trial runs, it took us some time (maybe 10min) to get it right, but having leaders shouting the shield status was a huge hint to know when to kill that last 25%.


Phase 2
----------------
Go inside, regroup start buffin. Take 2min to give instruction on phase 2.
We tried the pull to Center, i was sure it was the best way to do it.
We tried the pull behind a pillar.
we also tried 1 team per cube and i saw teams die horribly for each methods.

What seems to work the best is to kill mob on there spawn spot ( 1 team per each cube).
They are already grouped, and you dont have to run for stragglers.
If one team is weak, this methos become an issue real fast , as they will die. But you need balanced teams that can deal one cube alone, period.

Additionnaly, when the mob respawn when you are attacking the Aspect, and everyone is already grouped on one cube. The AoE already in motion kill the mob on that cube in few seconds. The brute on that team should have the aspect taunted (note, it seems you cant taunt off, when the shield is up).

The two other teams move back to there cube, the remaining team almost have no mob to fight and can go help the 2 others.
You can have doubt about this method , but it worked like magic last night (and on the first win, 2 week ago), the last spawn was dead in few seconds on all 3 cubes, the Aspect barely regen'd.
With enough dps and debuff it take about 3 to 5 mob respawn to complete it.

Last night it was something like:
- tried the pull to center, shield got down, got him down to 80% maybe, shield back up, brutes were busy pulling mobs to center. Aspect decimated ppl.
- hosto/regroup and ask for ideas. was decided to fight on spawn location, 1 team per cube.

- Get his hp from 100% down to 75%, then mob respawned, time the mob was dead, his hp was back to 90%ish.
- Got his hp back down to 50%, mob respawned, his hp was back to 75% when shield was down again. Seems the further we were into it, the better the teams reacted (was the case for each attempt, even the failed ones).
- Got his hp back to 25%, he only got it back to 30%ish when shield was down again.
We killed it.

I have to say, i really think we got lucky on the 2 wins, to have decent players, with good builds and balanced teams. Specialy for something barely scheduled.

I just wanted to give some of my experience here, as not a lot of ppl have the chance to lead those and can report it.

This also give me the opportunity to thx Everyone who joined my runs, the ones we succeeded as well as the failed attempt, as we all learned from each runs.

Concerning the Obelisk Strat
I've been on quite a few CoP's now, both PUG's and scheduled Angel ones. I've seen the obelisk phase take over 30 mins (with much cursing and bad feelings) and we've done it easily with little effort in under 2 minutes.

The key to dropping the obelisks efficiently is syncing the teams. If teams are balanced, then the best time to have sync is the initial attack. Teams should be charging in together, dropping the shields together, and then destroying the obelisks together.

If the initial attack fails to drop all three, all teams should continue all-out thru the second round of clear spawns/kill obelisks. By observing the shield up/down calls from the team leaders in request, and the kill rates on the obelisks in the window, the leader should get a good feel for what's happening.

After two failed attempts, the teams should pull out, back to the zone entry, clear any agro and allow things to reset fully. Then address any problems in delays, communications, or team imbalances.

Again, initial attack provides built-in sync across the teams. Trying to hold teams back, pull mobs around, or urge others to maintain some percentage on their obelisks can lead to a lot of frustration and delay as synchronization is lost. Balanced teams will perform the tasks in sync together. Using the AtT method will correct for slight imbalances or delays. And full resets, instead of continually banging your heads against the task in hopes of getting lucky, is better.

One more thing: I recommend that the leader refer to the obelisks by location as NE, SE, and SW. Using their names or N E S W alone can be confusing.

The AtT method
This small adaptation we developed early on when we saw that one obelisk was sometimes lagging behind the others. The cause was usually a team imbalance, which led to delays in that team clearing the mobs or killng the obelisk with the others.

Send one person with Assemble the Team (vet power) from each team to the next obelisk clockwise around. That person will act as a member of the obelisk team there for killing/support so there are still 8 people per obelisk. However, if when the obelisks are being destroyed the AtT'er's obelisk is lagging and might not finish in time, they assemble their team to the site to assist in the kill (AFTER their own team's obelisk is down). It provides that bit of extra power to cover small team imbalances and see the thing through.

About the Fun Factor
I'm posting this to prevent the spread of bad impressions/feelings from participants on raids where the obelisks prove to be taking too long or causing people to become turned off by this fun and exciting trial. If the obelisks are perceived to be incredibly 'stupid-hard' or seemingly impossible, then people might become disenchanted by the trial, and that would be a shame. It really is a fun task and the game needs more challenges like this. I want to encourage people to take up the challenge!

A good guide. Thanks to BlazingTiger and the other contributers.

My two cents:

The Trial can be amazingly easy or frustratingly difficult. The only difference between those two are balance and coordination.

One easy way to coordinate the initial attack is to have the leader of each team, AND ONLY THE LEADER, go to their designated pylons and either port everyone to them or have folks gather behind them. Frequently, players unfamiliar with the trial (or pets) will get aggro early by flying by the willforge or gathering too close. This should help eliminate the problem.

I suggest that teams congregate on the ground behind the pylon and opposite to the willforge. That provides a nice flat surface to summon pets, is big enough to accomodate the whole team, and should have all three teams at about the same distance to the rularu spawns.

I also like to tell my teams to break off attacking when they see their bar get to the "c" in "Psychic". This not only helps them have a visual aid rather than determining how much is 25%, it also makes everyone on the team keep an eye on the bar and hopefully will learn to speed up or slow down to keep pace with their neighboring teams.

Although the AV's crazy regen and ocassionally the storm powers are problematic, I believe that the biggest cause of failure (other than lack of coordination at the pylons) is team wipes from the rularu spawns. They are the bane of most melee characters. Lots of psy damage which is a whole in many armor sets and the eyeballs cut through soft-capped defense like it wasn't there. As stated above, anything that provides psy defense or resistance is great for this trial.

Remind your teams that they can craft some psi protection at the base empowerment station, buy a psionic shield from the Vanguard Merit store, and use the Elusive mind accolade from participating in Rikti Invasions. None of them provide extraordinary protection, but sometimes you only need to have one more hitpoint to hit your heal or pop some greens.

Having a few dark armor, willpower, widows, or dark miasma players can be very beneficial because of all this psy damage.

It's important to note that teams usually don't have trouble outside at the obelisks defeating the Ru spawns to bring down the shield, and they generally do this without help from the other teams. So when doing the same thing inside the cathedral, it's doubtful the Ru's are responsible for the majority of team wipes.

And while the Ru spawns are closer inside and therefore could overlap multiple groups onto a single team, the teams themselves are closer and overlapping their support, which generally is a wash as far as increased threat. Coordination, playskill, and build account for a large degree of survivability.

There is one major difference inside though: the AV. Currently, the AV is bugged, as he is able to act while his shield is up. This is not the way he is supposed to function, since he is flagged to be affecting self only (like a PFF). But he blasts and debuffs at will, nearly one-shotting most players, who could then be easily picked off by any stray attack.

The storm AV is so problematic because of this bug. Being hurricane'd and freezing rain'd nearly the entire fight quickly takes the toll on most teams. If when the bug gets corrected, I suspect the storm AV will be more doable. The red AV lacks these huge aoe effects and his massive attacks can be better managed with buffs and a healing bubble.

Even assuming they decide to keep the bug in place to become 'as intended', it is clear that the red AV is a pushover when compared to the stormer...or the red AV is the appropriate challenge level and the stormer is simply 'stupid-hard' and as BT suggested not worth the trouble.

Either way, one is broken relative to the other, and I don't find her advice too far off the mark given the current circumstances. I am interested however in the advice and tactics of people who actually have defeated the stormer (were the players 'purpled out'? how many temp nukes, pets and powers were used? what methods were employed?); and even more, I'd like to hear of players who have success without using temps at all (which to me is the real goal; temps are a crutch).

I enjoy this challenge a lot as previously stated, but I've found the stormer AV simply sucks the fun out of the trial; and I too would rather wait and reset for the red AV, who is a very appropriate challenge level (even with the bug).

Also I would like to note this Guide is to encourage people to not only join CoP but encourage the server to start running more semi and full PuG runs of this trial. This guide is ment to be easy and allow anyone to read and employee the methods to run their own CoP. I dont disbelieve the Storm AV isnt killable but on a semi or fully PuG run he is just not something worth the groups time.

And yet you wont say anythig beyond it happened why dont you expand on how? How can what you did be reproduced by other teams or can it even be done by normal teams?

I was also on a team on Justice that did it. Our melee folks were whiffing left and right. I was on a double raged tank with some other tohit buffs flying around so I was hitting fairly regularly.

I can't really describe how we did it, beyond the strategies that are already in this thread. My group did have lots of temp powers and especially lots of HVAS which prefer range and have a -regen attack.

Maybe that made the difference. *Shrug*

Im quite done with you Champion people. It is quite obvious that you have no intention of doing anything helpful in this thread and are only here to wave your e-peen around. Either offer up strategies that would help or you can stop responding.

I'm from Justice, not Champion.

Oh, you were talking to the blue guy above me, weren't you?

*sigh* A mix bag of AT with or without IOs. No specfic power coralation (ie No mass of X ability like everyone with Tactics) No stacked Veng. I will even give the bonus of The team is all on the same SG and has played with eachother often so they are familiar with each other.

My questions come from How do you deal with the massive debuff and damage of the Storm AVs auras? How Do you recover from when the AV drops a ice storm that pretty much decimates the entire area? And How do you deal with unmanagable agro because the AV is untauntable with his shield up? I know the AV is weak to holds only has 50 mag protection in triangle mode. This doesnt mean most teams that are Pugs can gather enough controllers/Dominators to do this.

I know you may not see yourself as an expert Amygdala but gathering the information from what you do know might help formulate a better strategy for the Storm AV or may confirm the status of too hard for a PuG at this point. I would like to hear what you have as of now.

Thanks. I think at the moment most people here on Virtue are looking for the badge as the IoP or Merits are less then astounding. This makes teams less than perfect.

I would like to see a good way to deal with the Storm with these teams that are showing up. So far as I mentioned the issues I have run into are:
The AVs auras, their debuffs damage, ability to hit through the bubble, and size.

The Ice Storm, its size and DoT damage can take down quite a few targets and without a Dark thats quite some work to get everyone back up.

The unmanagable agro from the AV which i will also ad to it he has a massive attack range on his single target so moving him from where he stands is not easy.

I too would like to not need any Nukes or Shivs to do this. For Big Red they arent needed but I offer up the strategy to make it go faster/easier. For the Storm AV it comes down to dealing with the issues I outlined above. I have seen issue when taking down the respawn because of the AVs hurricane stopping people from hitting the spawn near the cube he starts at. The major part of the CoP is making sure you get the respawns each and every time. If you miss one time the regen on the AV becomes an issue.

Also would love to see a perma held Aspect CoP but that will have to come later ^_^

For the record, and if im not mistaken...
- Woe is South
- Despair is South East
- Gloom is East

You are welcome to confirm.

They have the ability to switch places. Why we assign by direction.

Last night we did a solid attempt to the purple AV.

Best attempt agains him so far. First thing ppl were staying alive. Ok we did wiped 2 maybe 3 times <.< >.> *look shy for a sec*

But for the most part, we were solid on our feet. We were able to stay alive and get back to AV for a few cycles. We got his HP bar down to 75% 6 or 8 times, if not more. Each time his hp was back to 100% after we killed the mobs, Except one time... and that one time just prooved this AV is beatable.

On that one time, we got the shield down and he his hp was at 95%.

All that with no nuke what so ever.
We did had some shivans tho.

We had a good crew last night but had some non 50, in those teams. was maybe just 2 or 3, but replace those with uber IO'ed out lvl50 and maybe that would had made a diff. Also, the last "try" we did, we were 23 ppl only, 1 guy dc'ed (most prolly quitted on us). And that last attempt was the best we did.

As for the rest of the teams composition, it was pretty well balanced setup. I think we had 1 kin per team, 2 in mine. lot of darks, spread on all 3 teams, 2 cold, 1 thermal , 1 rad (maybe 2 ?). Well you get the idea, enough debuff/heal/rez/buff to help us out. And 1-2 brutes per teams.
We also had few doms, veat, etc.

Just saying, the teams where good, they could had been even better.



My toughts about The purple AV at this point:

We need good team setup, lot of heal/buff/debuff/rez, and a truck load of -regen and +tohit. Just gimme a team full of tactics already, :P.
Also neet 1 or 2 good meat shield (brute/tank) with taunt if possible, per team.

Most -regen power have 30sec duration, while mob respawn every 45 sec. Im pretty sure we fight him for 20-15sec ++ each time to bring him down to 75%hp, so that mean if casted right the -regen can be in effect the whole time his shield is up.

This idea is not new and I was a bit agains it at first. Why? because its better to use a -regen then wait all fight to use it, and even miss if you are too late. But now, if i crunch numbers, i see the 45sec cycle, the 30 sec duration, and ...the cooldown on benumb, ling rad, etc. Yep maybe its not a bad idea after all. Just need someone to yell the cycle/time, and ask ppl to cast it, 5sec, in adavnce... but again in all the chaos...

Transfusion/twilight grasp have base cool down of 8sec, 20sec duration on -regen, tho, so spam it.

That lead me to another point, ppl should spam heal each time the power is up, if you a dark or a kin, make sure you dont target the AV while his shield is up, you will miss. If you are a brute / tank, make sure you target something close, if the kin want to target you and use auto assist to heal you and your teammmates. I dont want to tell ppl how to do there job, but i do feel the need to point it out. specialy if you are a dark or a kin, because of the -regen effect. Beside more heal around is best, you may heal a guy not on your team, and that same guy will save you next round.

That said....

Build some momemtum.

How you fight the AV is at CoP Leader discression. I perssonaly like to fight mob at the cube. After last night run, i am thinking each team should have at least 1 dom. As soon as the mob spawn the dom go and AoE immob/holds them in place, brute/tank should even be faster or at least be close by, because the Dom will get lot of agroo from doing that. Meatshield have to take or retake that agroo b4 the dom die. The idea is to kill them in place real fast, the faster they dead, less time the AV is shielded. Ive seen some rare case where the 3 mobs where dead in 10sec (mostly agains red AV, where momemtum was easier to build). So it is possible to have those mob killed in few seconds. and the best way for that is to kill them in place. We move a lot faster then they do. Beside, When they move, they scatter.

If things go well, you will create a mometum, each cycle will become faster to kill those mobs. At least its the idea.


About nukes. The thing about nukes is... for Red AV i dont believe you need it. For the purple AV there is a lof of chance you waste them on the first try. if for some reason there is a wipe, all the nukes would had been a waste. The Bio nuke still good, and could be streamed. but last night we did not had any. Even... we were all out of insp, on our best "try".

At this point i think the purple AV if to be beated would need more cycles then the Red one. And using a nuke maybe better if later on when you do know momentum is there. and/or have them stream on each cycle. Its just and idea.

About shivans, they are rather easy to get. if you compare to nukes. and they are 5 charges. Personnaly i can solo a shivan run in 10min, 7 with prototype elements. while it take me about 11min to solo 1 nuke, 8 with an access bypass. but i need to do it 3 times (i get bored of doing this if i do it like 3 times in 1 week, im done for a month). While on the other hand i do shivans while i chat and take it easy (except for the fire base). Im no saying not to get nukes. IM saying if you lack guts to gather nukes, you have no excuse not to get shivans. in fact you have 2 excuses, 1 you are lazy (that sound like me), the other, you are late and cant attent a meeting in time and prepared (also look like me).

Anyways, just some toughts...