When do Trials happen on Victory?

Since it looks I'm going to need a metric butt-ton of Astral and Empyrean Merits to afford all the new costume stuff in I20.5, I definitely need to ramp up my Trial runs. My problem is that I can't seem to find when they're running. During my normal playtime (8PM - midnight EST), I log in and check out Pocket D and most of the time no one is running a Trial (or it's already going on and there aren't enough people for a second). Last night I was in D, and we had about half a Lamda ready, but no one even knew how to start a Trial (I think it has something to do with the LFG Queue... I'm right about that, aren't I?).

In the short term this issue will be resolved by I20.5 hitting on Tuesday, which means there should be a healthy resurgence in Keyes Trials, at least. In the longer term I'm wondering if enough Trials are running to keep me in Astrals and Empyreans.

Am I the only one having this issue? Do we need to turn Voodoo Tuesdays into Trial Tuesdays?

I need ~30 more empyrean merits to get everything, so I will need to run more trials.

Trial fever isn't what it was for the first... month or so, but it happens pretty regularly... if you announce in globals and start forming, you should get enough for Lambda rather soon, I would think. If you're the league leader, you just have to go to the queue and join whichever trial you would like to being for your league (I would agree that is not as clear as it could be).

Mental, you seem to be on most nights that I am (Monday, Wed., and Saturday), and I'll usually be up for joining in. I just wanted to get my Scrapper through the Striga TFs and get him some merits, so I went with Striga Spectacular last night. Probably would be up for trials or a Statesman on Monday.

Do keep in mind that the costumes are global unlocks, so if you're not going to need to get components with merits on a character, you can devote those to the costume stuff. I'm not going to worry about very rare on most of my characters, so my Controller and Blaster that are going through the trials currently are going to use up their emperyeans on the costume stuff I want, I think. Grey Pilgrim may be able to as well, since he has two very rares so far. I'm probably not going to get very rares on him for ages (I'd rather get incarnate stuff on more characters), but he will eventually.

Last night at least, I witnessed at least 6 being run (One of which, Zwill himself came and joined).
I imagine you'll be fine after 20.5 drops and everyone jumps on Keyes Island. you don't *have* to buy all the incarnate shinies right when they come out :P
At least a lot of the stuff is account wide, not character specific. So you don't have to do it for every toon.

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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

It's not a matter of wanting all the shinies right now (even though I do). It's a matter of getting a head start on a crazy grind.

I tried starting my own Lambda tonight, but the team was very blaster/'troller/scrapper heavy and we had no tank. I'm convinced we could have made a go of it, but we only got 3 grenades and 6 acids in the sabotage phase, and I guess I focused the team on grabbing extra stuff from the weapon drops instead of beating on Marauder, and we didn't succeed.

Remember the days when you could slap a wacky team of 8 together and get stuff done? I miss those days.

trials have definitly slowed down lately

first 3 weeks, i ran about upwards of 6-8 trials a day

in the previous 2 weeks of today, i might have run 1-2 trials at most, while i really wanted to incarnate more of my toons out, the trials are ridiculously repetitive and i have been almost avoiding them in the last few weeks

and from what i have seen and experienced of the keyes trial, i am NOT going to like it hardly at all and will basically only run it for badges or on toons that can spam heal

Yes Trials are hard to come by on 'ol Vic. But for what it's worth forming and leading them aren't that hard technically. Assuming you can get folks, and THAT'S the hard part on our server, expand the League UI using the 2 arrows on the right of the league window. This allows you to drag and drop players onto different teams as needed. Once you are set up and ready to start, you do indeed use the LFG tab at the top of your chat window to start the trial.

I want to do more trials on Victory because I WANTS MY SHINEYS!! I have lead several trials on Virtue, but I only have one 50 there, so can only earn 2 Emps per day there. Whereas if I could run trials with my 8 50s on Vic too I would have shineys and extra lore pets to spare.

For the record I'm also willing to run trials. I ain't perfect, but I haven't run a failed one yet.

I led 2 trials earlier. The BAF was pretty unorganized since I haven't ran a BAF in a few weeks. I came into the same problem with nothing but blasters, scrappers etc. Debuff and control light was pretty rough, but in the end we finished the BAF. The same with the Lambda; finished the Lambda, but was missing a few acids and the ADDs got us. After closing the rest of the doors and regrouping, Marauder went down pretty quick.

Since trials were the new hotness, we were able to run them with preferred teams filled with colds, rads, tanks, etc. Now everyone has their slots unlocked and boosts crafted on their mains, now they want to run the trials on their 3rd or 4th strings. I can't say that I blame them, COH is an alt game. Those 3rd and 4th string toons are nice, but not optimal for leagues when everyone runs the same type of toon

With Keyes coming out soon, there will be a new hotness out there and then people will want to run that trials numerous times. I can see lots of people running BAF, Lambda and Keyes each night and I will be joining them. I will get my new shinies, oh yes, I will!

Tried to make one last night but admittedly very late. Hey I only just got that ancient brute to 50... I only care about getting my T3's on everything but I'd have to say it's not gonna be easy with 50 number 5. I might have to temporaily move him.

I have not been able to play as many nights as I would like due to work, but I am always for trials if you see me online. I have a cold who could use more schwag, and I never mind running more with the kin.

Just send me a tell or something and I will try to form with you. I can usually scrounge enough people up for at least a lambda. I have built up enough server karma to apply peer pressure to at least a few people

im not worried about poeple having bad alts or something, the trials design and reward structures are just very off puttting to me (sorry if this gets a little rant-like)

just today in fact i tried to do one of each trial but it took me 4 attempts

first attempt lambda-my comp lagged out right when the popup came up so i missed the trial

second lambda-i get in the trial but 10 sec into it game crashes and when i get back in they are almost done the sabotage phase, my reward is the damn threads table

first try BAF-my internet decided to flicker for 10 sec right when popup appears and dc's me, i miss the trial

second BAF, this is the only one that went without a hitch and even netted me a very rare, but the previous 4 were 3 hours worth of frustration


i mostly stopped doing the trials because every other trial it would crash on me, there is a noticeable lag increase in the trials, the rewards are off putting because they automatically dismiss poeple who crash because of the games fault and 9/10 give them the doorsitter prize even if they did help while they were there

other reasons i dislike the trials is because its too fast paced, starting one feels rushed, participating feels rushed, timers make it feel more rushed, all in all its just the pacing that turns me off of them, i HATE tf speed runs and these are basically 1 mish speed tfs

also with the keyes trial and testing it on the beta server when it was first opened to public month ago, i was instantly disgusted with it, if your not on a toon with fast charge heal or hugging the healer, you WILL die approx every 90 seconds not doing jack because of some unavoidable unresistable dmg that takes 50% or more of your hp every 30 sec. not to mention the badges are also ridiculous, one of them is for keeping antimatter at 10% or less hp for all 3 reactors which means that unavoidable unresistable dmg will be taking 90% of your hp every 30 sec (50% unresistable, 40% resistable, but that dont mean jack to squishy)

i REALLY hope that the underground trial will be better because the trials have become worse rather than better, and at first i did not mind running trials now and then, but with how the rewards are structured it is a forced grind since there are no other options except for expensive conversions

We ran some tonight! turned in my flames of prometheous for notice of well, and that for 40 threads and squeeked out a T3 Alpha with the other goodies I got (one was a rare on 2nd trial!)
5th level 50... +1 in a single night! I had to bust my buns on the controller for 4 nights to get his first +1 and had to get it with emp merits. That was a lucky brute tonight...

I will run a BAF every night starting next week, mon-fri, 7pm EST, assuming I am home. These will be speed-bafs. It gives you 1 emp a night, so better than nothing. Ill be running with 84, so at least I wont be bringing dead weight. I will spawn it as an open trial so everyone gets warmth, and _will_ spawn it once we hit min requirements. I absolutely will not hold off to max the trial.

Just a reminder:

One of the new features of i20.5: "Incarnates Ascend" is that you can now invite people to trials already in progress! It should be a LOT easier to get started now than it used to--just build to minimum team size, hit start, and keep inviting people until you're full.

The little radial button on the LFG tab that asks if you would be okay with joining an already in progress trial now works, too! PLUS, if you go this route, you get a temporary damage/recharge buff from Prometheus!

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EDIT:

Also, for those of you who hate the cutscene at the start of the BAF Trial: the cutscene will be automatically skipped if everyone in the league has already seen it once.

Seriously, I @$#^ing love i20.5... <3

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

Necro, where is all that damage happening? I haven't run the Keyes trial yet, but I thought the damage was only going to happen if you're standing next to someone with an opposite charge, and if you hit Keyes while you're taking out the reactors.

I would agree that the badge is kind of asinine, since it require so much healing, and it goes so much against surviving the trial that you would normally do. I guess you could say the same thing about MoLambda, but they at least adjusted those, and it's not quite as punitive if you don't use the nades.

Chad, I would agree that the cost changes along with what you mention are going to make the trials much better. I still say the new currency and limitation to the trials (alleviated slightly by the Apex, Tin Mage, and Notice of the Well changes) were bad approaches, though.

I rather hate irresistible damage... it tells me that player powers were not balanced well enough to allow the devs room to make encounters challenging enough. I'm somewhat okay with it on Hami, since it can be focused (rather than hitting the whole team), but I still dislike it there, since it makes CoX into a game where healers are suddenly needed, when that isn't usually the case.

I don't know that it's particularly necessary, either... I know my lone characters can have a rough time on the trials: it's much better to work in groups on them.