All-Blaster Lambda Sector forming!

Since I have been derelict in my "make a thread for Victory to discuss news" duties, I gave you the February Producer's Letter!

Incarnate Trials... not TFs (somehow), but can be completed in 30 to 90 minutes with teams of 8 or 16 (Lambda Sector) or 12 or 24 (BAF). I don't know if this is going to placate the soloists, but it is interesting. Are they not TFs because they aren't a series of missions? Who knows?! Also, you supposedly don't need cookie cutter teams for this.

My prediction: Masque with have the Trials down to 15 minutes in a month.

EDIT: Ok, I just read about the Turnstile queues... now that is awesome.

Victory... discuss!

Raiding has finally come to City of Heroes! The Devs can call these whatever they want, but this is a RAID.

I'm less bothered about this than I thought, but the turnstile system eases some of the pain.

I wonder what'd it'd look like if 24 Blasters all clicked their Nuke's at the same exact moment during the BAF Trial... You'd probably see the explosion all the way in Nova.

But would an auto-hold affect an untouchable target? I don't know because I don't know the specifics of the power they use. Someone should try Phase shift to test.

My main worry about sequestration is that aggro isn't really a toggle you can turn off and on... sure, you can play with it, but it's not necessarily that easy to shift things to another target if you're a tank. I can only figure that if you had two tanks, you'd need to switch off taunts, and not attack too often to keep this somewhat controlled. Or find some way to get around the whole process.

Ah, I understand your issue now. I don't think Sequestration will only happen to those who generate aggro, GP. I think it will be random, and then the team has to react and get the attention off of whoever is the target. Otherwise, this power disproportionately affects aggro-generating ATs (Brutes & Tanks). That's how I've seen it work in other Raid-friendly games, and I assume it will work that way here.

Assuming Ryxx quoted someone in the know, this is what made me worried. "• Nightstar has the ability to sequester her target. Her current target is issued two warnings that they are about to be sequestered, before the third warning locks down the target and all who are nearby. The only way to prevent this is for someone else to draw her attention!"

Her target, assuming that these raids do not monkey with CoH's aggro rules, will be the person who has her aggro. So teams are going to have to juggle her aggro, or find a way around the sequestering by using Tier 9s, Hibernate (if that works), etc. I'd probably prefer to juggle the aggro... sets with Tier 9s that crash are a pain. WP might be in the best spot, with that angle. I don't think I'd want to rely on Shield's tier 9 if I'm held, though.

The quote (which is actually from the dev-posted description of the BAF raid) gives no indication of how the target will be chosen. I'm saying that because this is a special raid power, the normal aggro rules won't apply, and in fact range may not even apply. Whoever is chosen as the target will get the messages, and they will have to alert the team to "distract" Nighstar or Siege so they won't get locked down.

If Sequestration was just a mega-hold based on regular aggro rules, it would be pretty predictable and not as interesting. That's not usually how other games with this type of mechanic do it, and we shouldn't expect that's how CoX will do it.

I suppose I should check in the I20 preview forums to be sure and ask from people actually seeing how the mechanic works.

However, what you are suggesting throws current aggro rules out the window, MG. If Nightstar and Siege pick a target at random, how are you going to shift their attention? What would be the added benefit of random target selection, something that throws out how CoH works and how people are used to things working (and like we need a third system of rules for CoH, PvE, PvP, and now... raid aggro?).

I guess I'm not seeing what would be more fun about sequestration being chosen randomly, especially given there are specific ATs that are supposed to manage aggro more than others. I'll go ask in the I20 forums, but I'm hoping this isn't some new system, just a wrinkle in how the current system works.

It wouldn't be a new aggro system if it ONLY applied to the Sequestration ability, GP. I'm saying Nightstar can be aggroed on a Tank, but try to Sequester the Defender in the back.

I'll pop in with my experience with sequestration; Ran the trail twice Thursday eve. with KT. The 1st time I joined a raid already in progress, had no idea what was going on, and died alot. Second raid I was there at the start. When Nightstar spawned the league leader called for Nightstar to be pulled to the tennis courts, they're a turret dead spot. I popped unstoppable and pulled her over. I was the only one taunting her and I'm fairly sure I was the only one in mêlée range. I had her full and undivided attention the entire fight and never lost agro even when sequestrated.

During the fight I got sequestrated 3 times and I didn't see anyone else get sequestrated. The sequestration power had a warning and graphics similar to the orbital lance power the war walkers use. You get a text warning on the screen that such&such player has been targeted for sequestration x number of times and a light circle would form around them, one circle for each time targeted. The third time you get hit with an auto-hit, unresistable hold. Powers that reduce hold times will affect this hold. The first 2 times I got held unstoppable was running I was held for about 5 to 10 seconds. The third time I was running eye of magus and some purples and the hold lasted significantly longer.

Based on the response to your thread, GP, it does sound like Sequestration is aggro based... so Brute and Tanks are hosed, and if you don't have anyone with Taunt or Taunt-generating attacks things get very interesting.