So what do you think of the new Trials?

Here's my perspective on the two from the viewpoint of an Earth/Rad Controller (still my only 50.)

BAF: I love this one. The escape event seems almost designed to take advantage of my ground targeted controls. Those work well on the last stage adds, too. And the three Rad debuffs are great for the two AV's.

Lambda: This one makes me feel a lot less useful. Controls and debuffs are a lot less useful until you get to the Marauder fight. My pitiful damage doesn't add much to the container busting, best I can do is through a few controls down to keep some mobs off the rest of the group. I haven't run it since I got my Judgement slotted, so maybe I'll feel a bit more useful with it.

The other thing on Lambda that can be frustrating isn't a problem with the trial itself but with some players who absolutely can not seem to understand the concept of molecular acid. I've been on several where I KNOW we have enough acid to take out the gates (Because we got all 10 in the gather phase) but someone was just holding them despite repeated instructions from the league leader to check temporary powers and use em if you got em. I've not seen this particular problem with the pacification grenades, but that may just be because you usually don't need them all.

Do you like the new trials?

Yes. Now that I have a handle on what we're supposed to do during them to succeed I think they're pretty dang spiffy.

If you aren't leading do they seem brainless/too easy like the CoP?

Nope. It's always a challange to see if we can find a better way to do it.

How long should we hold spots for people who disappear when forming?

Individual leader's choice I'd say. It depends on how well you know the player I suppose.

And, don't get too upset if someone leading gets short with you about something you are doing because often times they are trying to send tells/messages to 4 other people as well.

AMEN! I've run one of these (Lambda) so far and yeah... it's scary having to communicate with that many folks at once. Especially as I didn't use binds.

I like both the trials quite a bit. At first I preferred Lambda, but now I think I like BAF more.

I do have a gripe though about how iXP works... I don't like that the reward is not normalized across all members of the league. A damage heavy team can earn quite a bit more iXP than a buff/debuff team. I have heard arguments/complaints about people being put on "weaker" teams meaning they'll be getting less iXP. That may impact the league leader's method for forming teams. There can be such a huge variation because of this from run to run. My scrapper got 63% toward unlocking Judgement in one run. The next run I was on, my defender got only 8%. Now there were other factors in play - on the second run, we were going for the keep em separated badge, but, still, I don't like that team makeup can effect what your rewards are. All players in the trial should get equal iXP based on the total number of enemies defeated. It shouldn't be directly related to the damage percentage caused by "your" team.

I like the new trials, I do not like the cumbersome Incarnate system. I also do not like the map servs, but I almost expect several disconnects when I play.

I haven't lead one, and probably won't since I'm leaning towards not using the Incarnate system other than the Alpha slot unless they pare down salvage etc. While participating in them I don't feel mindless, even though I just follow my team leader to the spawn points and look at league chat for other directions. I do however feel "leechish" sometimes as there is so much lag I can't tell if my powers are recharged yet, other times I have to click a power 2 or 3 times before it goes off.

I enjoyed the runs lead by you, MP, and Ele, but I think it's time to work on that Fire/TA Corruptor now.

I agree with everything that Masque said. The trials are a lot of fun; they're fast paced, but they still require strategy and often require thinking while on your feet.

(Also, I apologize for going off and fighting the adds in that BAF run when he told me not to. Scrapperlock and all that. )

I did lead a couple Lambdas early on last week, before anybody really had level shifts... it was a little too stressful for me at the time, but I think I could do better now that I've got a few more under my belt. I was sure everyone probably thought I was a bossy jerk, but a few people sent me PMs to thank me for at least trying to run a tight ship.

Soooo... who wants to try for the Master badges tonight?

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Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!

You call lightning down from the sky and it chains across multiple targets, yet you call that not discernible? I notice it whenever someone uses it... but maybe things have been really busy when you fired it off? Ionic and Pyronic are both pretty spectacular with how they look.

Anyway, I sincerely hope that they shift rewards to going across leagues... this was a huge oversight on their part. I would say teams should be balanced anyway (and most leaders are doing that), but until then, beware of how rewards are parceled out and make sure to let people know and have duties parceled out. Be especially careful of any team leaders suggesting them and 3-4 other people handle the adds. I can't imagine any decent leaders on Victory doing this, but someone in the Suggestions thread has had this happen.

Anyone, for the merit debate... I'm holding on to a few astral merits since we may be able to buy something with them eventually, but I cash in most. Do NOT, however, cash in empyrean merits, unless you are using them for rare salvage. If you don't use empyrean merits, you will have to pay scads of influence for your rare and very rare tiers of the new incarnate slots... and I think even most diehard marketeers would want to think a little before dropping 500 million on a purchase. Nor are most of us in that category.

I'm okay with the lack of the jumping electricity graphic. I just think Ion is friggin' rad.

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Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!

First off, I'm loving the new trials. I'm trying not to get burned out on them, as there are only two trials, but at the same time I want to get stuff unlocked and slotted for my level 50s. (Been working on the electric brute and electric blaster -- have a long ways to go on both.)

Many random thoughts:

1) On the B.A.F., the newer North road / South road strategy seems to be the way to go. It's far less confusing and you don't need to open up a map and decipher it, which got especially confusing because Team #s would typically change upon zoning in and people wouldn't notice.

2) Voodoo's observation on the Molecular Acid's is interesting, but considering how many people are incapable of following simple directions on some of these trials, I suspect it's a lack of attention to detail or not listening.

3) Tested and confirmed, but it is NOT necessary to hand all of the pacification grenades to one person. If Marauder becomes enraged and a grenade is in the process of being thrown, another one can NOT be thrown. (You get an Invalid Target message.) If you give all the grenades to one person, and they get smooshed and trapped at the hospital for 20+ seconds, your teams could be pretty much hosed. Also, on the last phase when he goes Invincible, USE A GRENADE. We had the "one person holding the grenades" refuse to do this last night.

4) Most of the leadership has been good. I've been wanting to lead one for awhile but have been ending up just joining, and I hope none of the leaders get offended when I start acting as a drill sergeant when people aren't listening to the leader. Totally not trying to steal anyone's thunder, but...I type really fast, and if people aren't doing what they're supposed to be doing, I will get on them. Oh, and if you get on a league with a bad leader (had that experience the other night), it's pretty jarring. Leading one of these is a lot more than just filling up roster slots.

5) Speaking of leadership, if you're going for one of the special badges, make sure people understand that before going in. This has not been a problem (Masque has been trying to get these, which I'm all for, and he's a pretty solid trial leader).

6) Every time we've TRIED to get the Synchronization badge, we've failed. I've gotten it on both characters I've run Lambda on without trying though. Go figure.

On a good run, I average about 5 threads, 5 astrals, and a rare drop table. That's basically 2.25 commons per run, plus 1 if you break down an empyrean. I actually have no problem doing this, but only because I run them all the time and don't have any problem getting VR drop tables. If you're having problems getting higher salvages, then I could see that being necessary.
I've finished getting all t3s on two characters now (and a t4 Ion on one of them), and I have seen no shortage of rare or or uncommon drop tables (and I've gotten...at least 3 or 4 Very Rare tables between the two toons), but I have *always* had a shortage of commons.

Threads also don't even seem to be random drops... it almost always seems like they drop at the same time and place for each trial... it's odd.

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Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze I hate to be the bringer of bad news... but Willpower sucks!!! you're better off rolling a regen

Great Post Defenestrator-
I thought I would post a few things we (a group of us that are normally on vent when we run stuff) have noticed and theorized.

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Originally Posted by Defenestrator 1) On the B.A.F., the newer North road / South road strategy seems to be the way to go. It's far less confusing and you don't need to open up a map and decipher it, which got especially confusing because Team #s would typically change upon zoning in and people wouldn't notice.

Totally!!! I give credit to Elegost for first wanting to run this strategy on Victory, I am sure others were already running it but it is becoming more and more popular.

A few key things to note though, when we run this strategy we overload one team with AoE damage (like sleet, RoF, fireball, Burn) that is the north team. There are only 2 "groups" that run this north path so 1 team of 8 can hold it just fine.

The south path has 4 "groups" that run it, so you need lots of people down there, so we send 2 teams of 8 down to hold that path.

I have seen people trying variations of this technique like team 1 north, team 2 south, team 3 splits up and covers north and south. This typical leads to leaks to the south exit (because twice as many spawns run west, along the south path as they do that runs east).

One variation that I have been using lately is to send one high damage (ranged character is best) to cover each exit, that person just patrols to keep an eye out for lts who make it through the gauntlet of pain.

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2) Voodoo's observation on the Molecular Acid's is interesting, but considering how many people are incapable of following simple directions on some of these trials, I suspect it's a lack of attention to detail or not listening.

Every run that we have had all 8 people on the acid team on vent we can account for all 10 acids. I think there maybe three contributing factors to "missing acids".

1) If someone from the wrong team does damage to the containment chamber then anyone from both teams can get the acid (someone who is only looking for grenades may not realize that they got the acid).

2) DCs, we have seen on numerous runs that someone gets an acid or two then DCs when the cut scene starts.

3) *Totally hypothetical"- Perhaps missing acids are being awarded to people who are dc'd during the trial? For example, I do damage to the glowie, but before it dies, I DC, the glowie is destroyed and the drop goes to me but I am not online to get it. I am suspect of this theory as no other temp does that in game but who knows.

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3) Tested and confirmed, but it is NOT necessary to hand all of the pacification grenades to one person. If Marauder becomes enraged and a grenade is in the process of being thrown, another one can NOT be thrown. (You get an Invalid Target message.) If you give all the grenades to one person, and they get smooshed and trapped at the hospital for 20+ seconds, your teams could be pretty much hosed. Also, on the last phase when he goes Invincible, USE A GRENADE. We had the "one person holding the grenades" refuse to do this last night.

It takes amazingly bad luck with timing to waste the temps (but it can be done). It is basically the same thing as people stacking veng if both click at the same time yes you can waste either temp. We have seen it with acids (once) and grenades (once).

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6) Every time we've TRIED to get the Synchronization badge, we've failed. I've gotten it on both characters I've run Lambda on without trying though. Go figure.

LOL... same- we got it on two runs in a row by accident and then we tried and almost ran out of time.

I think when we get better at these the way to go would be to clear spawns around glowies and leave one person at each, then try to blow up multiple glowies on each team at one time, like 3 crates and 3 chambers that would give a lot of leeway.

BTW- one last thing that affects both trials as far as badges and such is the damn lag. We killed both NS and Siege and had them both respawn (at the same time) because of what we assume was game lag. I also thing that game lag is what causes issues with the synchronized badge if one team has lag and the other doesn't (for me the munitions map lags TONS more then the training map).

Oh one last thing, I hope people on the trials I run realize I am totally not trying to steal iXP when we overload one team.

For lambda we have been overloading the acid team- just because it seems like at this point acids are more important then grenades. I had one person comment that we were taking all the iXP from the guns and I totally didn't even consider that when I set up the teams, so for anyone on those lambdas I am sorry.

For BAF, I think it all works out, north path (overloaded team) has less mobs so less iXP, then for keeping them separated, we split into 4 groups (2 on each av) so ixp should be fairly distributed. When we do Strong and Pretty I try to send one person from each team with AoE damage and judgements to the spawn (doms are awesome for this) so the iXP should be sort of close.

Again, I apologize to anyone who got hosed on iXP because of overloaded teams, I've been recently trying to come up with ways to more equally distribute damage along team lines.

Oh, and I'm not really all that concerned about one team getting "ALL THE XPs" for something simply because the number of times you need to run these things to get your components, and with there only being two trials, suggests you're going to unlock your slots in due time. Getting 25% XP versus 30% XP is really not a huge deal.