Incarnate Trials: Failure/Success!?

Multiple Lambdas w/2 successes. It is certainly the harder of the two Trials and requires better team co-operation, better knowledge of what your toon can and cannot do and paying attention to the leaders and doing as instructed.

Only 1 BAF but it was a success. I'll likely be running almost purely BAFs from now on as those two slots are the only ones left to unlock and slot, plus the reward for time/effort invested has a much better return.

Both Trials are good but Lambda will take awhile to either teach people to follow instructions, or weed them out once they've unlocked the slots.

Was on my first Lambda last night, which was also a success thanks to XM Radio, Beo, and the rest of the league. Major props to the team for when my graphics card was all, "LOL, BRB, BIO!"

Bayne was there, so it was also awesome to see another old Virtue fogey.

4 Lambda's (well 3 crashed out early on one) all failed. 2 BAF's both failed. My plan is to spend the weekend getting drunk and failing repeatedly until I get enough threads and xp to slot up the powers.

So.

Tried my hand at the BAF for the first time last night. FWIW: I'm a fairly casual player if you base that definition on time spent playing. Not so casual if "planning" and "build goals" and such are part of your definition. That said, I have 1 lvl 50 so how dedicated can I really be.

Got myself into a League being formed by folks who clearly knew each other. League Leader was awesome. Flora (can't remember the other half of your name), if you are reading this I just want to say again that I would have been clueless without you breaking down the event in chat before we started our first run.

Started out really strong on our first run; but ultimately we failed on the prisoner escape phase with around 10 seconds left on the clock. Very close. I tried the "DPS chases runners" tactic with my brute - but that floors Fury, and without being attacked I'd get no uff from AAO. Basically felt like my damage was worthless when chasing the runners.

Most folks stuck around for the second try. A few swapped toons and we went back in. Tore through the first 2 phases again, got to the escapee phase and that went way better. Everyone held positions better, and I tried staying right in front of one of the spawn doors. That worked much better. I could tag entire groups with KD (cc, sc, shatter) and at least maintain around 60% or so fury. I'm not on a top end build for recharge or anything, so that seemed good.

A bit dicey during the last round, but we nailed 'em. Sequestration is annoying, but ultimately not that big of a deal. Having the taunt aura means getting far out of range, and for Siege that can be annoying, but doable.

Right at the last moment several folks on the team got sequestered. If it was me, I apologise, but I'm fairly certain that I didn't come back to the AV's until after my rings cleared. Either way right when I got there; held, *smack* *smack* dead. I only say that because I was being hyper-aware of the rings. I would usually get one after attacking one of them once; a couple times just for wading in with AAO on. Let's just say I had those rings, alot, but really really tried to let them clear before coming back. So again, if I am wrong about all this - mea cupla. But it really seemd like I got tagged out of the blue from someone else's rings.

Either way, NS and Siege were down shortly after that point and there was much rejoicing.

Final thoughts:

When I was looking at the amount of "currency" needed to just craft Judgement, Destiny, et al I was very disheartened. As I mentioned, I'm a pretty casual "on again off again" player (have been since launch) so I went into it thinking I'd basically never open the slots, much less craft the shiny.

I.

Was.

Wrong.

The drop rate far outstrips the shard drop rate (or it seems that way because there are more things to get; threads, 2 merits, bonuses with 1st badges, etc). Doing 1 failed run and 1 successful one gave me enough to unlock the Judgement slot and get me 1 common away from crafting the first Void piece. Not too shabby - especially considering I'm still 20 shards short of a T4 alpha.

Ultimately, I think I've decided that the doom and gloom about all the "cheap tricks" in the BAF (can't speak to the LAM yet) can simply be ignored. If my only about 2/3 built WM/SD brute can do it with a relatively crappy player like me behind the keyboard - anyone can. No macros, just knowing where the buttons are, the rythym I need to prevent attack chain gaps, and knowing his limitations.

Is it tough, you bet. Will it be easier with a full League of +3's?

You bet your sweet bippy it will. Escapee phase with a League full of BadA@#'s laying down Judgement's all over should be a breeze.

Final Thoughts; TLDR Version:

You only need 2 things to succeed at these. A League Leader that can give solid, clear, and timely instruction. And a team willing and able to listen and follow the leader.

Everything else is gravy. Adding this bit because I recognize that my initial experience with the new Trials was heavily influenced by the skill of the LL, the two other team leads, and everyone else playing their parts.

Yesterday I ran a BAF with Voodoo Girl and 23 other people, then we split into two different leagues to tackle a Lambda trial. The league I was on was successful with the Lambda. We got the astral merits for getting all the acid, all the grenades, and the merits for achieving both of the tasks.
BAF was successful, except for me Mapserving twice, and crashing so hard that I needed to press the reset button on my computer.

First 2 days:

15 Lambda: 15 success.
4 BAF: 3 success, 1 fail (escape phase).

One BAF run we stopped all the Resistance and got the badge too.

For those with the high success rates; please state if they were pre-made or just queueing and ending up with random teams, both in composition and league size. The number of people has been a key point in my experience . It would be interesting to see if there is any noticable difference between random/pre-made and how large that difference would be.

First day: got on a PuG BAF after launch. Couple quit. 7 of us could not even take out Nightstar. Pug Baf again, Got Nightstar and Prisoners, Not Siege. Next Baf PUG could not take out both. Still was getting somewhere, raking up some astrals and threads.

Yesterday I started with a few Lamda's to get those unlocked. Not had much luck on those. I swear I was on a team that got all 10 of each, but somehow we still didn't win. I can not remember why.

However, was on two PUG (10-14) people successes of BAF last night, and then was on a 24 man PuG (I assume most were from a preformed that joined the queue and it added me in.) and got the "not on my watch badge" and a success. Did one more pug BAF success. Got one common at the end, but my first three successes gave me the rare componont pop up. I was feeling very lucky.

I found in the BAF, that size was not the key factor to success. I completed with 12-15 a couple of times. I have failed miserably with 22-24 (because of prisoner phase). I have failed with 6+ controllers/dominators in the prisoner phase. I passed the prisoner phase and came close to taking down both AV's in the last phase on a 14 man team all melee (well one PB) and NO support/control/debuff/heal.

What stopped that last team was not the prisoner phase. It was not lack of support. It was THE ONE KEY, that I have found. STOP THE ADDS.

In the four successful runs last night, a couple (on the smaller teams) or a few of us on the almost full team, took on and kept taking out the bosses. Every non-prisoner failure was due to overspawn and complete annilihation by the lvl 54 bosses swarming.

Enough people had realized this that a few of us (with maybe a suggestion in chat).

On a pre-formed league my suggestion would be to have one of the three teams on bosses. In the first two AV fights, have two teams on AV's, one of bosses. On the last phase, One team on Each AV and one team on adds. (adjusting to keep the healths even, of course)

I only had success on the 5 Lambda trials I was on last night. Four out of five were full teams arranged by a leader, the other used the LFG system and had about ten people involved. No failures. These successful runs hinged on people being willing to work together and pay attention, and required pro-active leadership - running through instructions beforehand and during the phases of the event.

I'd like to give a shout-out to Annihilius for taking point and leading so many successful runs last night, and for giving so many of us first-time runners an idea of what's needed. The Lambda runs felt more like a Rikti raid than a task force; more "smash" than the grind that it's being made out to be. All in all, it was a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to the BAF tonight.

Good lord we're raiding

1 for 1 on BAF

0/1 on Lamda nova fist isn't a big deal....the adds are. Hope I get another shot, have to make it up to some folks.

Finished a BAF, we had enough people for a change. Instead of tanking the AV's I took on all the adds, and that seemed a good strategy as it let most people focus on the AV's and we won.

Just did Lambda with a team of eight and beat it. Not sure how much time we had to spare because when I went to check the window was updated. Either way, the original hand picked leader switched leadership to me since I opened my big mouth. We had a lot of DPS going but it didn't look promising; not until we actually went into the warehouse and labs.

I split the team into two:

Team 1:
Tank (KM/Invul)
Widow
Stalker (me)
Warshade
(forget the last two classes, I want to say another dominator and scrapper but can't remember after that fiasco )

Team 2:
Tank (SS/Stone)
SoA (Crab)
Mastermind (Demons/healer)

Team 1 -> Assault labs and zerg containers
Team 2 -> Assault Warehouse and zerg crates


We managed to keep the time up by an average of three minutes and when containers were destroyed Team one reconnected with Team 2 for elimination of the rest of the crates. From there on in, we just chased Mar down after portals were shut down. Everybody was on top of their grenade tossing.

Very well done... G-F-G
That makes it 1-2/10 (I count the one the other day when the servers were shut down, so unfair T_T)

-Nanashi Takayashi

BAFs are coming pretty smoothly now. Have done 5-6 in a row with no failures. Stick to the tennis courts for AV fights, assign a small team to handle the adds and you will be fine.

I've run five or six so far, all successes. Never was part of a PUG type where I was ported in. Tried a Lamba, as well, was going awesome, but then it just evaporated, not sure if the leader DC'ed or what, but poof, we were done. shrug... bug? Intentional? Who knows... I've been on teams where the leader knew what he was doing, though. This helps. Sometimes the leader isn't a very NICE person, but they are at least willing to provide direction and boss people around when they're not paying attention. There's far too many people who have their own agenda and just go off and do their own thing. I want teams that size to start using the chat, acknowledging people, etc. Better yet, if you're going to have teams this size, implement an in-game voice chat, so we can coordinate fully with minimal hassle. At least that way people can HEAR what needs to be done if they don't bother to look at their chat window.

I enjoy the trials, but they're super grindy to me, and a huge step back for the Incarnate system as a whole. It's like another job, and makes me think this must be what endgame is like on other very popular MMOGs. The random element of the drops and rewards means that some people will get the shaft, others will prosper, and most will meet somewhere in the middle of that. Fine, fine, but at least give me a solo option to help compensate for the issues my pathetic luck creates for me, k? And no, shard conversion is NOT a reasonable alternative to actual thread drops for a soloist.

kthxbye

I do like the new Incarnate Trials as they offer something fun and challenging to do. However, I have a few criticisms...

1: These Trials seem heavily dependent on the presence of Controllers and Dominators. Last night in B.A.F. was a night of Brutes, Tankers, Scrappers, Corruptors, and Blasters with almost every group lacking controls becoming duds at the final phase. One group had a perfect no-escape, but couldn't do anything about Siege's and Nightstar's support.

Lambda also seems to be plagued by this lack of control issue. With control, groups can breeze through the 5-minute phase and pick off a ton of containers (possibly crates as well) and make the Marauder fight become a walk in the park. Without controls it becomes a support's nightmare. Try keeping everyone alive and buffing everyone at the same time.

2: Much of the issues of the first point made is related to another reason. This is in light of using the LFG tool, which only pulls bare minimum people for the Trials as opposed to making full/almost full Leagues most of the time. One can skip the need for control if one has a lot of offense and support to handle reinforcements and the AVs (for B.A.F.) or actually split two teams to take on each facility for acids and grenades (for Lambda). Considering LFG randomly puts people together without so much as a solid algorithm for setting up balanced teams (which teams at bare minimum standing WILL need control), this tool makes doing these trials much more of a pain than they should be.

How can 12 people without any form of holding power expect to smash Nightstar, Siege, and their reinforcements? So far, just from last night, I can give four instances of this very situation, all spelling out disaster. How can 8 people without any form of holding power expect to get all the grenades and acids they need? It is just like B.A.F.: disaster. Does this mean people suck? Of course not. It means things are way out of control in ways that only a Controller or Dominator can effectively handle. Again, this is in light of the LFG tool because that consistently gives Leagues of 12-13 for B.A.F. and Leagues of 8-9 for Lambda when these are designed for Leagues of 20-24 and 14-16, respectively.

3: I definitely have a large issue with how the new Incarnate powers are rewarded. This is what discourages me from trying for Incarnate powers on any other character. Shards were fairly acceptable because shards were obtainable, whether in Task Forces/Strike Forces or playing alone. The costs to rare salvage were also reasonable since you were only working on one Alpha most of the time.

With the Incarnate Trials and the four new Incarnate slots, things certainly took a 180 on the community. We -have- to do Incarnate Trials for our Threads as opposed to doing solo missions, group missions, or Task/Strike Forces for shards based on preference. Much of City of Heroes/Villains I've noticed revolved around this flexibility for people. Naturally, larger groups merits more reward opportunities but does not restrict solo players. However, the new Incarnate slots are limited to just these trials, which is forcing people into these large group settings. LFG issues aside, this detracts from something that makes City of Heroes/Villains very attractive and starts to show the mentality that other MMOs reflect: enforcing the end-game as solely being large group (raid) experiences.

As for the salvage, itself? Let's weigh things for a second. To get just one Tier 3 Alpha with shards drains 50 million inf plus shards and materials that require shards. That's just one Alpha, though. You're not getting every possible Alpha lest out of boredom. 50 million is a lot, but not the end-all, be-all of existence. However, there are FOUR slots with I20, each rare salvage draining 100 million inf. I'll put it this way: I could have nothing but Tier 2 Incarnate powers and still not see a single rare (except from the lucky Trial completion drop, which said completions aren't consistent enough to be considered reliable) for a long time. Considering Destiny and Lore give Incarnate shifts that can help tremendously in these trials? Just to have two Incarnate shifts will cost a person 200 million inf. Combined with the absurdity of draining inf to convert shards to threads or threads to slot experience, it's a poor attempt to putting value in the game economy that many MMOs do: make everything absurdly expensive in the end so that people have to grind or buy inf from some website (I don't condone inf buying).

I can understand the inf needs to be used somewhere, but the idea of pressing the players for millions also puts a restriction on end-game accessibility. If City of Heroes/Villains is supposed to be accessible to every player, why should we be restricted by our wallets?


Of course, pointing out flaws in these things have no weight if feedback does not offer suggestions.

Suggestion for point 1: put a limit on the size of mob packs and reinforcements, especially for small group settings. A reinforcement of 6 9CUs for a group of 24 is not even close to the difficulty of 3 9CUs for a group of 12. Considering mobs are level 54, it takes way more than 30 seconds to nail a crate or containers since mobs cannot be ignored, no matter how hard one wishes to try, and mobs are built to be in packs suited for 8 players. If LFG is going to stick us with the bare minimum and with a poor sense of group balance, rescale the Trials to support it!

Suggestion for point 2: tweak the LFG tool so that it is making larger Leagues. If rebalancing is not an option, make the LFG look for more people to have larger League sizes. If we're going to be stuck with just brutes, scrappers, tankers, corruptors, and blasters for a trial, give us the manpower to make up for a lack of controllers and dominators! League power shifts exponentially with more people, not linearly.

Suggestion for point 3: cut back a lot of the costs and make threads as accessible as shards. There really is little logic to making people spend inf for converting shards to threads or threads to inf that can be seen, outside of just having an excuse for someone to spend inf as opposed to saving the inf for something big. For those that have tons of inf, kudos to them, but not everyone is sporting 9 or 10 figures worth of inf. In regard to how many slots are available (and the importance of having two particular slots at Tier 3), the cost of rare salvage could use a solid drop, lest there's a way to get 200 million inf without relying on luck that is not restricted to those that can afford to power grind.

As for accessibility of threads, I also see no reason why we shouldn't be allowed to do the missions and TF we know and love for threads, just like we can do those for shards (if limited to being level 50 missions/TFs). If regular missions/TFs do drop threads, then I retract this part of the suggestion. If not, then having threads drop like shards (if more frequently, though) would offer more accessibility to players. Sarcasm aside, I believe accessibility is a good thing.

I have not seen this need for control on these trials. I have run on and led numerous successful trials, and many have had few or no control ATs. No specific blend of ATs is needed. Holds are nice but certainly not necessary. You talk about "stuck with just brutes, scrappers, tankers, corruptors, and blasters for a trial" as if it is a bad thing but that would make for a fine league. Hell, I find myself wishing for more ruptors/blasters on these things, and have never once thought "we need more control."

I was on an 8 man pug Lambda last night, succeeded handily without any issue. Split into four-man teams to handle the training/weapons facilities, and we got every power and the Synchronized badge as a bonus. I have run undersized pug BAFs and succeeded in the last day or so. I was under the assumption that spawns scale with league size, and my experience bears this out. As far as the super reinforcements thing goes, I like it. It actually makes these trials a challenge instead of a war of attrition that the players know they are going to win. I especially like the 9CUs and their ongoing buff, makes the league think about prioritizing versus just dogpiling the AV.

I don't see the costs as a problem to be honest. People who don't want to run the new content won't get the rewards as quickly. That's how it is. You can still work towards the new slots by running the TFs and missions that everyone has down to a science. It's going to be slower because it's avoiding the threats and challenges that incarnate heroes are meant to take on. Think of it as the slow-slow path to Incarnatehood, for those without the gumption to take on the threats that count.

You know what bugs me about the LFG groups? I can't join them. I joined one just fine. My only Lambda run. Now? I join a queue, wait five minutes, it says an event is 'about to start'... and fifteen minutes later I'm still sitting around wondering when 'about' is going to become 'now'.

And I'm not even doing anything. Not going to other zones, just sitting in the middle of Atlas. Not even toggling powers or managing enhancements of anything. Just sitting, waiting... and nothing ever comes of it.

After having run a bunch of these I think they are accessible enough and threads come plenty fast. Once you get the slots unlocked you will be surprised how quickly you can get things done.

I'm not exactly part of a big network of people, so I've relied on LFG to match me up with people. I can safely confirm that LFG is the worst system ever created. I have thus far only succeeded in BAF twice, every other attempt (And there have been MANY) at either trial has ended in broken bones and shattered dreams. Somehow I've managed to bludgeon my way through enough to unlock my T2 Judgement and T1 Interface, and I'm still trying to motivate myself enough to grind out the next two slots. Judgement has made things easier in BAF, but Lambda still gives me nightmares.

From all other testimonials I've seen, the key to success is having allies you can rely on. Attempting to play through the Trials with randomly selected teammates is a recipe for disaster. So far I'm miserable, angry pirate and really don't want to suffer more for my slots. It's that bad.