Botched ritual.

I got the ritual right on the first try.

Reminds me of the Honoree mission with Ramiel. Solution, autocomplete it. In this case, figure out the correct order, write it down, then never have a botch again.

I hope this permanently puts to peace the proposition that TonyV is the polarizing poster in these prolific powwows.

Well, I would find it hard to defend the debuff or the ritual itself as "good design" and I can understand why some players might be upset by it. That said, I would hardly call it "crippling." Far and away the biggest issue for my characters was the -end, and even at that, my Fire/Rad corruptor still finished the arc with her only significant difficulty being the EB [1].

I then botched it again on my Fire/Ice tank "on purpose" in the sense that I was RPing with somebody and my guy just wouldn't have made the "right" choice first. He had more trouble with the -end than my corr had, but he got through well enough that my enjoyment was in no way dampened.

I might botch it a 3rd time just to figure out if there's anything to the "must have been another way" line. (Please don't tell me if there is. I've specifically only skimmed the thread to avoid that knowledge. ). Believe me, there's a lot of stuff in the game I complain about, but I really think this particular issue is not all that. I thought it was a silly, fun little arc, despite the debuff. Of course, YMMV.

[1] Full Disclosure: Okay, I actually was frothing at the mouth during the EB fight, because even with three of my /rad toggles on her, and multiple break frees and lucks, she was still able to mez me. But my reaction had less to do with the debuff than with my loathing mez with the burning passion of a thousand dying suns. And yet half or more of my characters are squishies. Go figure.

The thing is, some people are talking about it (and avoiding the mission and arc entirely) as if the Botched Ritual debuff were inevitable. It's not.

The effect isn't called "Made A Slight Mistake On The Ritual", after all. The game guides you to get it right, and failing it doesn't automatically mean botching it. You have to REALLY screw it up to botch it.

I agree that the duration of this debuff is silly. I am just getting back into leveling my dominator and I have tonight off but have to go back to work tomorrow. I thought it might be fun to check out the new holiday content but I ended up botching the ritual. I don't know who the people are whose endurance management is so awesome that -20% end and -20% recovery doesn't hurt them but I am not one of them.

This debuff sort of spoiled my COH fun for the weekend as by the time it wears off I will be at work. I read all the text for the mission and was careful not to release the last breath until the end but I still ended up botching it. It's just kind of lame.

/End whining.

I am truly and completely amazed that ANYONE had issue figuring this out.

My first time through I gleaned all I needed to know from the clues. the step your meant to improvise is clearly mentioned. The option for that step is blatantly obvious if you accept lore as valid, and dont be making ASSumptions that your little character concept tidbits are supposed to be recognized by the game. Despite what YOU want to call yourself, in the end the game only recognizes us as all humans, with the exception of the kheldians and thier contacts.

So the step to improvise and the logical conclusion to use your blood should be blatantly obvious to ALL! Why? because its well documented in game lore that all magic in the current generation comes from the blood, specifically Mu Bloodlines of the survivors spared by the ancient Circle of Thorns who showed mercy at the end of the war to those who had attacked them for not worshipping thier goddess Tielekku.

Sorry if that offends anyone that the story writers created a perfectly reasonable origin concept no worse then Stan Lee's mutants.

Even if your character isnt magical, its perfectly logical to assume its blood( an extremely commonly depicted ingrediant in occult ritual in fiction and real life occult practices) and NO MATTER WHAT YOU WANT TO CALL YOURSELF in the end in the eyes of the game your just another human, you know this, its not news, they are not any time soon going to add a special extra layer of origin to let you pick race, because it shouldnt matter to even the hard core RPer if the occasional bit of content in an MMO is designed to be rather generic and geared towards the general mainstream standard they clearly set with the icon characters.

And dont give me that crap about the icons being droids and ghosts among other things. For all we know Cit or Lum do have a form of blood that would be recognized as a valid offering by infernal sources. Numina could be able to bleed ecto for all we know.

Instead of saying my bot cant bleed, maybe you should be trying to accept he can and figure out what it is he does bleed.

Me: *botch the ritual for the sake of my character wouldn't cut unless nothing else was working*

Me: *Beat up Carnies and Julianne*

Me: 'Wow, these Arachnos are kinda kicking my *** today. I'm having to use a lot more purples. I must be playing at +0 too much.'

Forums: 'WHARLGARGLBLE 20 HOUR DEBUF OMGQUITTINGSOHARDPOSIWONTEATDONUTSANYMORE.'

Me: 'Oh... I did get a bit of a debuff there. Neat!'

OK.. this just killed the entire event for me. Apparently there's a bug.. if you log off.. the damn debuff stacks. I logged off 3 times on my 1 character.. my endurance is now NEGATIVE 20!!!!!!!!!! Who was stupid enough to design this? Seriously.. Major fail.. and yet no patch to fix it.. typical.

Yeah.. I'm angry and raging but this is another example of them pushing verything live before it's tested.