Thoughts/Suggestions on Underground Trial

I enjoy the Underground trial, it's challenging and fairly epic without being too annoying, and I want to give a thumbs up to the people behind its creation. That being said, there are a few things that bear mentioning in case they can be fixed, or at the very least learned from for future trial design.

1. Level Shifted AVs
For the most part, the level shift on AVs puts them at a reasonable challenge for the +2/+3s among us, which I'm guessing was the idea. This runs into problems when you consider that you can unlock Alpha inside the trial, and that it's generally an excellent source of incarnate exp for people without all slots unlocked. The problem is that plain 50s are really hamstrung by this and rendered just about useles in all the parts of the trial that actually count. See purple patch vs +5s, never mind the regen/self healing that these AVs have.

So on the one hand, you have a trial which encourages bringing your fresh 50s and newbie Incarnates, while at the same time actively punishing your league for including too many of them. I'm not really sure which direction you were going for in terms of design, but it would make more sense to either abolish the level shift for AVs (ie. cater to the 50s) or refuse entry to people who aren't at the very least 50+1.

My instinct says to go with the former, but I feel it's important to pick one or the other. At the moment, 50s are genuine leeches (and I'm saying this from the perspective of someone who has taken a 50 on the trial) and I don't think it would even be possible to complete with a league made entirely of non-level shifted characters.

2. Confuse in the Avatar fight
Confuse is a debuff that you really need to be careful with as designers, in my opinion. Status effects will all make fights harder and take longer, but Confuse is the only one that can actually push it in the other direction and help players speed along their own demise. Furthermore, the fact that the game switches to a suitable target automatically makes it difficult for the average player to keep track of who they're actually attacking while they're also trying to keep track of everything else going on.

It also creates a huge disparity in PUG team creation, since some powersets will simply not have the tools to deal with it in a large scale. For instance, I've taken my Fortunata (my main) on the trial, who I think has mag 22 Confuse protection due to toggles, and half of that is team-wide from Leadership. This is on top of a fair amount of Confuse resistance, and a /Storm controller running Steamy Mist, so for my team the Confuse became pretty much a minimal nuisance. On the other hand when running with my Stone/Fire tanker, with a melee heavy team, the league spent well over 90% of the time either Confused or KOed/running back from hospital, and overall it was just a genuinely unpleasant experience.

The general solution to this is stacked Clarion, but that leads us back to the first issue above, and also ties somewhat into the next issue below, so it's not always an option. In short, I think Confuse is just a little TOO punishing for a persistent aoe effect, and maybe it should be something like Fear instead, which is also a hugely frustrating debuff but at the very least doesn't mess with your targeting and doesn't enable you to actively grief your team.

3. Rewards
We all know the trial awards about twice the Empyrean/Astral merits of BAF or Lambda, which is necessary when considering the length of the trial. The problem is that the reward table at the end is still singular, and people who are in trials for the long haul are probably more interested in the reward table than the merits.

Maybe this will seem greedy or overly entitled, but I believe it needs to give two rolls on the reward table as well in order to be genuinely comparable to the faster trials. Simply speaking, everyone will always go for the most efficient time vs rewards when working on incarnate trials, and if the new stuff isn't competitive with the old stuff it won't get run, except maybe by badgers and extremely persuasive bored people. I think that's kind of a shame considering how much effort clearly went into the creation of the trial.

I think that covers most of the suggestions on my end, but maybe others have a few insights that I missed. Either way, once again I want to say good job on the trial to the designers and developers, and keep up the good work.

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A circle forms, everybody comes round
Just to hear the incredible sound
Of a genius smashing expectations
- Jonathan Coulton

Seeing as the developers are apparently receptive to a few tweaks for the UGT I thought I might bump this old thread in the hopes that it can get some attention. It seems that #3 has already been covered in the last patch, giving a reward table after the Lichen Infested War Walker, but #1 and #2 are still IMHO very legitimate concerns.

I really want to stress #2, the Confuse makes for an incredibly frustrating fight. Every league I've been on with UGT has either been able to stack enough Clarion/Tactics to render it basically meaningless, or they've been completely destroyed by the confusion and haven't even come close to finishing the trial.

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A circle forms, everybody comes round
Just to hear the incredible sound
Of a genius smashing expectations
- Jonathan Coulton