Everything you want to know about the Magisterium Trial (maybe, I don't know, I'm not psychic)

It seems every time I run a Magisterium trial, more theories are thrown around as fact regarding every Archvillain that shows up. Well, hopefully this stops some of them.

Real quick thing before I get to the AVs, but when you first enter Nova Praetoria and see the Carnival of Light fleeing there is a 30 second timer before any defeats are counted towards the 250 IDF you need to continue on to the next part. Some leaders want you to wait, others don't care. Just be clear about how your leader feels before you jump in and start killing things.

On to the AVs!

Nega-Pendragon:

Try not to stand in front of him and don't be within melee-range of him unless you are a melee character. Nega-Pendragon has several PBAoEs and Cones, but nearly all are limited to 5 targets and only 1 is Ranged.

When he is below 50% health, his attacks will begin dropping pseudopets (if you're unfamiliar with the term, a psuedopet is typically the source of Location based AoEs like Tar Patch, Glue Arrow, or Rain of Fire) that tick some smashing damage every 1 second for 10 seconds.

Each of his attacks build his Fury. When he's at full Fury, he can activate his Power of the Fae which grants him the new Absorb mechanic. This appears as a white bar over his health bar (not in the Trial UI) that will absorb the damage he takes, and his health won't suffer any damage until his Absorb is depleted. Power of the Fae also grants him an incredibly powerful, non-resistable 50 foot radius Damage PBAoE (also does some KU and a stun), but he can only use this power while he has Absorb so... beat him down and save yourself the hassle.

When Nega-Pendragon dies, his sword will summon some damage patches (think Valkyrie fight in the Apex TF)



Shadowhunter:

For about half the fight with Shadowhunter, things are pretty straight-forward. He has several Staff Fighting powers, with 2 cones limited to 5 targets each (so don't stand in front of him if you don't want to be hit with an AoE), and then Twilight Grasp to heal himself and his allies.

If he's not being hit with attacks, he will alternate between summoning 1 or 2 Wodans (those Egyptian Hounds) every 8 seconds, each with several Negative Energy attacks and a cone Fear.

Once he is below 50% health, he will gain a 300 foot radius PBAoE that makes healing less effective on people within the radius. The lower his health gets, the less effective healing becomes.

He will also transform in to a giant Wodan himself. He gains some Absorb, loses all his Staff Fighting powers, and gains several Negative Energy or Lethal damage attacks as well as a cone Fear (and a meh buff for his allies).

When he is defeated, he grants Nega-Pendragon and Chimera the ability to "Banish" players (which is effectively like the sequestering found in the BAF Trial).



Chimera::

Chimera has fairly standard Archery powers which aren't very impressive minus their 5000 foot range. He will teleport around and generally be annoying. He will use Surveillance every 15 seconds and tag up to 3 people with MarkedForDeath for 60 seconds (think TPN... seeing a theme, here?). Every 20 seconds, he summons a Rain of Arrows patch for each person tagged MarkedForDeath, which means he could potentially summon up to 9 patches at once.

Each Rain of Arrows on it's own is not too impressive, but each patch is a 25 foot radius, so when multiple people tagged MarkedForDeath are all standing right next to each other... the AoE carnage becomes much more impressive. Melee ATs can probably do just fine hanging out next to each other. Squishes should avoid standing next to people MarkedForDeath, especially if they're tagged as well.

Once he is below 50% health, he will start teleporting more often and start teleporting players around as well. He loses his Rain of Arrows at this point.

When he is defeated, mines get spread around (think Tin Mage TF... seriously, you've gotta see what's happening by now).

It's easiest to defeat Chimera last since the fight with him is the most inconvenient (since he TPs around) and the mines don't carry over in to the next fight.



Black Swan:

Black Swan has several Darkness Control and Dark Assault powers.

In addition to that, she has two Quill powers: Throw Quills and Quills of Jocas.

Throw Quills is a cone and can hit up to 5 people. Anyone hit by Throw Quills will take some damage, but will also have their Incarnate and APP/PPP powers greyed out, sort of like when you turn on Walk, but only for those powers. That will last 20 seconds.

Quills of Jocas is the one that will hit everyone and remove level shifts, but not Incarnate and APP/PPP powers.

Before she uses Quills of Jocas, she will teleport most people in to melee range of her. She will follow this up with Quills of Jocas, which will hit everyone and bring them down to level 50 for 20 seconds.

After using Quills of Jocas, she gets three Incarnate powers to use: Void Radial Final Judgement (so a big Negative Energy PBAoE with -50% Damage debuff), Barrier Invocation (so A LOT of Defense and Resistance that slowly scales down), and Polar Lights Core Superior Ally (so 2 hard-hitting Polar Lights Lore Pets). She only gets one use of each power.

Then she will summon 3 portals that will summon level 54 Minor Shadows every 10 seconds. The portals and pets do not buff her, but she can heal back some of her HP every 12 seconds for each portal still out (possibly also the Shadows, but not 100% sure).

She is not made untouchable by the portals presense, and them being out does not effect when you will get your level shifts back. They just summon pets and provide her a pet-target for her to heal off of. The reason she seems so tough at this point is that she's +7 to players for 20 seconds, uses Barrier Invocation, and can heal herself.

If she is completely ignored for 30 seconds and takes no damage (i.e. if everyone ignores her and starts fighting Portals and Minor Shadows), she will start pulsing Negative Damage to people withing 5000 feet of her. She doesn't like to be ignored (dramaaaaaa).



Tyrant:

What you've all been waiting for!

Tyrant fights at 54+5, which means that for most of the fight he is +6 to 50+3 players. So in addition to typical Archvillain resistances (which he may or may not have) which puts most debuffs at being resisted by at least 87%, powers used on him will be subject to a level mod. On a +6 enemy, damage, debuff strength, and mez duration are all reduced to 15% of their typical values. And your base hit chance is around 20% (down from 75%).

He has several Invulnerability powers which give him Damage Resistance, as well as several more Debuff Resistance sources. What does this mean to players?

Of course, his Damage Resistances will further lower the damage players do to him (most especially to Smashing/Lethal). Additionally, they will lower the effectiveness of Damage Resistance Debuffs and Damage Debuffs (I don't have time to explain, but Damage Resistance Resists Damage Resistance Debuffs and Damage Debuffs).

His Debuff Resistance, well... Debuff Resistance works like Damage Resistance, not Mez Resistance. In other words, 100% or more resistances to a debuff makes someone completely immune to it (and it's entirely possible to get to 100% on most debuffs, save for Resist(+/-Defense) and Resist(+/-ToHit)).

Unless Tyrant is exempt from typical debuff resistances given to Archvillains (which is entirely possible), he will be functionally immune to the following debuffs:

EndDrain
-Recovery
-Speed
-Recharge
-Regen

Once more, it's entirely possible that he isn't immune. It all depends on what debuff resistances the devs chose to give him in addition to what he has in his version of Invulnerability powers. I'm waiting to hear back from Arbiter Hawk on this.

In addition to his melee attacks and lightning powers, his Zeus Lightning bolt power will do several things: First, it will do some damage to players within 100 feet, significanlty less damage to pets, but then will summon a Flow Lightning at each person hit and do some more damage, as well as summoning another Flow Lightning. This final Flow Lightning is the one that ticks significant damage every 1 second if you stay in the AoE.

He also has two eye beam attacks, one of which, his Beam Sweep, not only does damage but also debuffs players depending on AT.

Blasters, Kheldians, Arachnos, Brutes, Scrappers, and Stalkers will suffer from a damage debuff.

Defenders, Controllers, Tankers, Dominators, Masterminds, and Corruptors will suffer from reduced healing and reduced defenses (not a defense debuff, a debuff to defense strength).

Tyrant will periodically summon Olympian Guards. Their damage is not negligable. They do about as much damage as Lore pets. Please defeat them, they will two and three shot squishes easily.

He will also periodically sacrifice his Olympian Guards himself in order to gain buffs to his smashing damage, knockback strength, and ToHit. Defeat them so he doesn't get the buff. Or if you don't want to kill them for some reason, at least keep them 60 feet away from Tyrant.

THE LIGHTS. The Lights of the Well do not buff Tyrant. So please stop freaking out over them. The Lights of the Well serve one purpose: For each Light that is defeated, players will gain a level shift, up to +6 total which would put you at 50+9 to Tyrant's 54+5. In other words, defeating all the lights puts you at Tyrant's level for a few seconds. This is the time to spam him with sticky debuffs. Yes, they are important to the fight, but things don't get worse if they're not immediately defeated. They are big and bright and every player has the ability to see. We know when they show up, so go easy on the caps lock (LIGHTS. LIGHTS ARE UP. DEFEAT THE LIGHTS. COME ON GUYS, GET THE LIGHTS.) Currently they are bugged and only affect 16 targets each, which is why you might run in to people who don't want to use pets.

Once Tyrant is below 50% health, he will start gaining a scaling Regeneration boost. The lower his health, the stronger the +regeneration. As his health recovers, though, his regeneration levels will lower back down, reaching their normal level once he is back to 50% health. Again, his regeneration is in no way directly tied to the Lights of the Well.

Once Tyrant is below 40% health, he will no longer summon Olympian Guards or sacrifice them for buffs.

Once Tyrant is at 10% health, he becomes effectively level 46 and loses all his powers except Brawl. Congrats!

Trickshooter's Characters | @Trickshooter @Brightside

I observed that each time I saw the icon over my head, I was also affected by Surveillance. When the icon disappeared, Surveillance dropped.

Do MarkedForDeath and Surveillance have the same duration? And do you know of a correlation between being MarkedForDeath and affected by Surveillance?

Surveillance is the name of his power that gives out MarkedForDeath, so they would last together. You're tagged for 60 seconds.

Surveillance also has a -20% Defense debuff attached to it that lasts for 20 seconds (because of level differences, though, it probably hits most people for -28.8%).

Edit: Surveillance and Rain of Arrows are both autohit, by the way.

Trickshooter's Characters | @Trickshooter @Brightside

"I see!" said the blind man.

I misread your initial post. Let me rephrase it and you let me know if I got it right or wrong.

So the power Chimera uses is Surveillance. It recharges in 15 seconds, hits 3 people, and has a duration of 60 seconds. Surveilance also tags you as MarkedForDeath.

Additionally, every 20 seconds Chimera can use Rain of Arrows. It is an autohit 25 foot radius AoE attack. It hits every meta that is MarkedForDeath and every target within the radius... and it can stack.

Is the above right?

One more thing, it's about Shadowhunter's banishing (I'm pretty sure it's single target, but I'm looking for confirmation): Is it single target or is it an AoE like the Sequester field of Siege and Nightstar?

Tricky, thanks so much for putting this information together.

It was very thoughtful of you to not just put out the effort to find it, but then present it so clearly here for everyone to learn from.

It is very appreciated.

Read my stories!

Is it still too early on in the running of this trial to have an 'established' strategy for it yet? Is there a preferred way of running it that seems to work better than others? An AT set (or power) that tends to be a little more useful than another?

This is awesome information by the way, Trickshooter. Thanks for stepping up and taking time out of your day to compile and compose all this! Mad props, sir.