Smaller, better leagues

I'm sure most of you that participate in the incarnate trials have seen the advertising for mini BAFs. ost are probably keenly aware of what it means but I decided to post here and go over some of the benefits.

Okay lets start with size.. A maxed out BAF requires 24 players and depending on the time of day can fill quickly or take as much as 20-30 minutes to fill. A mini BAF can have as few as 12 players so recruiting takes up much less time

Now lets discuss LAG .. Not everyone deals with this but most of us do in one form or the other and it can cause attacks to take a lifetime to fire off or casue problems as extreme a crashing. The worst lag time on a BAF of course occurs during the Escaped Prisoner Phase and with a smaller team the lag is not nearly as bad and the number of prisoners is much smaller so it becomes much easier to prevent any escapes thus earning an extra astral or if its your first time ... a badge, the astral and a component.

Adds .... Okay this is one area where if you are still working on IXP a mini may not be for you. With a smaller team there are less adds meaning less stuff to kill so less XP. However is you have your Judgement and Lora open a mini means less Adds trying to take off hyour character's head while you are trying to defeat the AVs.

Time in trial .. I haven't really tried to gauge this but I think it's pretty much about the same on a mini as it is on a full sized BAF. Less adds may make it easier to concentrate on the AV but less team mates means it may take a bit longer, depending on the team make up, to defeat them.


Now the important thing with a mini is .. SIGHS .. it does require the players to actually pay a bit more attention to instructions. If you are on team one and team one and two are supposed to go to the south and do choke points ..... standing at a door up north is not helping your team andmay result in the trial failing. Quite a few of us now have multiple incarnates and what we are working on is either tier 4s or just accumulating astral and empyrean merits to but stuff at the stores in Ouroborus.... FAILING the trial because you don't feel like paing attention means you just blew an emp and now get to start all over again. Now keep in mind that 4 astrals = 16 threads while 1 empyrean = 18 at the store and you can see why folks don't like the idea of failure.

I have done both the full sized and the min and enjoyed each but I tend to lean toward the mini trials.. I am not sure but I think my rare and very rare drops may be better since I started joining them. Anyway that gives anyone that has no clue an idea of what a MINI is.. so go join one and see for yourself!

My friend who plays and does lots of iTrials raves about how much faster and easier BAFs are with smaller sized groups.

Having less escapees with better spacing and less ambushers, and the less lag, makes him much happier.

I think he said Lambda was faster/easier, too, but I don't recall for sure.

I prefer the large groups myself.

Mostly as the larger chaos is far more entertaining.

Another slight variation I have seen is Lam/Mini-BAF back to back. Ideally with all the same folks.

Keyes is also much better with a minimum team size, especially if you're going for badges. Less people equals less chance of someone screwing up and getting caught in the green beam and/or dying.

hehehe Okay I definately stand corrected although I am still confused...

Not a single one of my vet powers works during a trial (Sands of Mu, Blackwand, Ghostslaying Axe, Nemesis Staff, etc)

Not a single power I have earned in completing day job requiremnets for accolades. (Ability to heal or rez comrades, smoke grenades, frag grneades ect)

Not a single temp power I battled for or earned doing missions (Shivan, Warwolves, ect)

Not a single power I crafted or purchased (Vanguard HVAC, Back up radio, evenomed dagger, ect)

But for some reason out of all the temps many of my characters have earned my Raptor Pack, Goldbricker Pack and things like Ninja Run do. When the trials first started and every temp I had in trays, and I AM a temp power junkie I had plenty, was useless so I simply assumed that like the old style Master of Task Forces .. the trials were designed to force players to live, die, succeed or fail with only those powers they aquired through training or the well. Even on a master of run things like Ninja Run continued to work because.. well because we paid cold hard cash for the right to own those so the devs left them alone.

This brings up a question.... My Crab Spider Operative Tessa currently has .. Shivan, a Snow Beast, Back Up radio, and a HVAS. In addition she has 3 Spiderlings, 2 Arachnobot Disruptors,1 Arachnobot Blaster and 2 LORE Seers. In short a small army that if I was allowed to summon could make the prisoner escape portion of a BAF much easier. Now the Shivan I worked to earn in Bloody Bay, the HVAS I battled Rikti to earn the vanguard merits required to purchase, the Back Up Radio, like all of the IO enhancements in my power slots, I created on the crafting tables of my base and the Snow Beats was a gift I opened during the Holiday Season.

Now Trust me I already know the answer i am just playing devil's advocate here but just exactly who sat down in some meeting and decided "They can't have access to anything that might add to their ability to buff, debuff, or damage but hey lets let them keep the travel power stuff." Gee thanks Devs.. I battle a solo AV hyped up on, I assume, water from the well of the furries in the Lambda. I battle two Mechanical death Machines that rez and require me to defeat both twice in the BAF, and I battle an obviously insane and obsessed AV with radioactive cannons in space during the Keyes Island trial Don't let me keep anything useful but give me travel powers I don't even really need. Yes I do use Ninja Run to get to the next fight faster or to TRY and outrun mobs and survive (Lambda) but all of the trials are one BIG map.. Why do I need a raptor pack more than an envenomed dagger.

lol Okay all done.. Hey with the incarnates I have who needs any of it. Like I said i started doing trials the day issue 20 hit and it took until NOW to discover I could use my raptor pack.. yeah I was really missing that. I guess the real question I have now is on that Lamda I described where the one MM had no travel power and was begging for teleport. If he used a jet pack a LOT to get over tall stuff.. why wasn;t it in a tray and why didnt he realize it still worked. NOT TOO BRIGHT was he lol

My guess is that they kept the temp travel powers because without them some people might not be able to access specific parts of the trial. For example the guns on top of the walls of Lambda.

Also some players use the temp/pack powers as their sole means of travel.

Quote:

Originally Posted by reiella Until I see something that states to the contrary, going to assume VK is right .

I've been on a MiniBAF, and my only issue with it was that, it's a bit easier to get sequestered.

I play a Brute, which means that on a Normal BAF, aggro hops around a bit between myself and the other brutes and tankers depending on things like Gauntlet, PokeVoking, Taunt... that sort of thing. I don't get it too often, as I don't have taunt, and Willpower doesn't have the most powerful taunt aura. But I do enough damage that I still get blasted in the face at a reasonable clip.

On a MiniBAF, there are fewer high aggro classes, which means that I found myself with two warnings far more often, and people who don't normally -get- warnings were getting them as well.

Which lead to me spending most of the fight hitting adds because I would only get it one or two attack chains before my second warning popped up.

Or, on other occasions, getting sequestered because a scrapper or someone didn't notice that they were getting warnings, or expected someone else to pull the aggro in time.

So keep that in mind. A Smaller League means you -really- need to watch your rings. It's tempting me to snag Taunt, personally.

I've got no huge preference in terms of size, but I also prefer 'better' leagues.

What I have found however is that a 'poor' 24-man BAF is better thsn a 'poor' 16-man. I've never been on a full league BAF that's failed, but I've experienced som 16-mans that have. Those generally seemed to be led by juvenile 'i'm so hard I eat AVs for breakfast raargh!' types who also invariably were less than stellar leaders. One problem with smsller leagues is that there's less buffer to cope with dropouts. If a BAF starts at 16, teo people drop out (or are kicked by some 'CryMoarNoob' type leader, which I've seen happen), then the trial becomes much harder, whereas on a 24-man if a few dropouts occur it's easier to cope with.

Eco

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

I don't think league size is an issue.. It's all about the moron to non-moron ratio.

All of the points stated in this topic makes me like mini BAFs over regular ones. Well, that and mostly because every time I'm on North, I end up soloing the entire northeast side and making my league bored.