Some post-release advice for ALL players.

You don't need to be running the Trials to win them, people.

You don't. Hear me out because I'm dead serious.

Right now the trials are feeling nigh-insurmountable. Some people have finished them, most have not. Let me give you a tip that has altered my view a little.

The trials, at this stage, are for unlocking your Incarnate slots. Don't go in to a trial with the mindset of "We have to win this or it's all for bust." That will come in time. You need to refocus your determination on unlocking your slots with Incarnate XP.

Run it to unlock the slots, obtain the materials/threads needed to craft your level shifts, and return to the tasks of the BAF/L-Sector when you have your level shifts from Interface and Destiny. When you have those, you're 3 levels stronger if you count your Alpha shift.

By then, you will have incredible abilities tied to your powers, and the Judgement/Lore slots at your disposal if you've crafted them. By then, the playerbase will know the "routines" of the trials. The trials will run smoother. The tasks will complete. The merits will be rewarded. The spice will flow.

For now, fight for your power. When you have it, bring it to those who've bested you and unleash it in their faces.

Well not sure how things are on the US server but this evening, thanks to the amazing Damz and Sgt. Nick our record on the BAF was 2 fails, 1 bugged when we were just about to win and 5 completions, so far ran one Lambada and got one completion.

I think the bonus we had with the BAF was that it was always the same core group for the 8 of them I ran, the very first one failed on the Prisoner stage as was expected but we nailed down a setup which reduced the escaping prisoners by a lot (think our best was 8 escaping) the second failure was on the last stage because of the boss spawn spam on Seige but after that people made a note to pause and clear out the bosses.

Lambada is...interesting but it pretty much just resorted to 'throw acid grenades at portals, throw pacification grenades at Marauder, leap out of Nova Fist then rehuddle and smack him around'.

I'd say the BAF is difficult mostly because of coordination and despite their being an award badge for keeping Nightstar and Seige seperate, that actually seems to be the best way to do it.

Lambada is difficult not so much on coordination but just on the amount of stuff to keep track of during the final fight.

Well said. You probably don't even need to get to Rare or Very Rare. Even a Common/Uncommon Judgement power in the hands of many of your leaguemates can make short work of unwieldy mob sizes.

Don't give up, even in the face of certain death - simply kill more for iXP and threads so you can come back stronger next time!

I think the "you don't have to win" is slowly dawning on players
What I find funny is that they have some animalistic need to watch as the tank pulls the avs in BAF, they literally run with the tank and die while the rest of us are buffing up in the court =P

I just ran my first BAF trial on my Emp/Psi, and while it was confusing at times (nevermind the battles - just getting used to targeting and the new team/league interface) and we ultimately lost, I don't really mind.

I made 31% progress on my Alpha slot, picked up 7 threads, and did so with a minimal investment while staying relatively inconspicuous. Sure it would be nice to succeed (we made it up to the dual-AV battle), but if I can make progress even with failure I don't mind. It's much less painful -- and much less draining -- than failing a TF.

I'll chime in with some evidence! This is the result of running mostly BAFs for the past several hours. I've done a few Lambdas; just to get the Interface experience high enough to do some reasonable thread-to-xp conversion.

This is with... about a 60% loss-rate.

Ie. play to win, but *expect* to lose! So it takes twice as long and you don't get those uncommons...

yay.

Still here, even after all this time!

Sound advice, as far as I can tell. Sure, it's always more fun to win, it practically always is. But failing a trial isn't a total loss. You get iXP and Threads, some times a lot of it. Plus you can learn from it. I did a Lambda and learned that we probably needed to use more Acids next time, for instance. It's the other way to play: Play to Learn. If you don't learn, you'll never win, or only on a fluke. So learn, get powerful, then crush the trials.

That and I'm actually amused by having some CoH content that puts up a tough fight. I'm so used to slapping a pair of forcefields on the team, keeping them in range and helping the defense capped team tear a path through anything that moves. It was easy and a little stupid. I can't do that on these trials, which is refreshing.

I'll probably be annoyed at the grind later. But not yet.

To be honest, I finished the first one with a win, was presented the reward table... And didn't have A CLUE what to get or what I needed, I hadn't even advanced much on the unlocking itself (18%).

Of course, winning feels good tho =)

The thing is after all the hype about I20...
You need to keep failing the Trials to unlock the slots. Great!
Feels like theres nothing in this Issue. I know we will discovering the I-slots slowly but right now feels like just 2 Trials were added to grind them.
Not like,"The awesome I20 is here".

a piece of advice for someone who ran two lambda's yesterday on Triumph, first a fail, the second a win.

the second time, with almost everyone from the first failed (which was 9 people), we realized that we needed to make a full 16 two team league to start. we also spent 5-10 minutes explaining the whole trial and what we learned the first time.

also, we realized that the key is not to rush through, unless the timer is going, which it isn't for half of the trial. defeat everything before entering lambda sector, including turrets is huge help - not to mention a huge amount of iXP and threads.

seriously, your goals right now are to get as much iXP and threads that you can, and if you win, you get extras, like merits and salvage.

knowledge and coordination are key to defeating these. you often will learn more when you fail than if you win, so failing isn't pointless, and at least we get something for running it, even if we fail.

btw, i got 56% interface XP from the above mentioned two trials. defeat and grow large with food (iXP and shards).