Underground Trial pain

I jumped onto a UG about a week ago, just cause I needed the incarnate experience. We ended up with a League of 16-18. I was on a brand new 50, had gotten alpha to tier 3, but nothing else. But it is one of my "serious characters" and has a very set up i/o build, as well as being a dark/invul brute, which is no slacker. So, i did not feel as if I would be bringing nothing to the table.

I will not lie, it was tougher than I thought it would be. I had forgotten the penetrating stun from some of the mobs. Oof. The "You are targeted" + "You are Held" combo got me a couple times as well. Still, I soldiered on.

The League was acting good, and things were going well, until the 1st giant robot. Then it became obvious that quite a few players were not used to the UG, and I mean at all. The league leader quit. I love to bark when stressed, so I started barking what I wanted and trying to lead and stay alive. Miraculously we put down both bots with a couple minutes to spare. I was like, "huh, interesting."

We continued on, going pretty smooth, someone went ahead and cleared the bombs. I started rattling off the wiki patter I had learned, repeating it a few times so everyone heard it.

Brutes and Tanks will go in. Get agro, stay in front. Everybody else pile in bhind. Bring in the zombie NPC we kept alive so she can do the magic she does.

We had 3 clarions and I had verbal confirmations from them on my preferrred drop rate for them, 1, 2, 3, we were almost at the room.

AND the NPC got stuck in a wall right before the last door that has a loading screen (so even if we wanted we could not drag the beast to her) THe whole situation devolved from there. Worse, we got her unstuck, so no Help Request would be valid. Truly Tragic. I have only led 1 UG myself before this (went surprisingly smooth) and I was really hoping this one would be my 2nd (made more sweet for turning it around) but it was not to be.

I guess the only help I am looking for is are they doing anything to correct this kind of "things get stuck so the game just wasted an hour or two from 15 people's lives" situation? Cause it was real frustrating to get that close and have the situation devolve due to a stuck NPC.

I think we had a similiar situation and someone used incan destiny under NPC's feet to force her move out (it does not teleport her but since place is filled with players she is forced moved) and we finished last fight without much problem (save some players getting impatient and attacking to avatar before it was moved in center of room)

Clever, I'll throw that into my bag of tricks and hopefully remember to pull it back out at the right time.

I haven't heard much about it, but I, too, have suffered from a glitch like this. The first time it happened to me was when I was hosting a +4 Barracuda SF. The team managed to soldier on until the end, and then while transporting the AVs to the final chamber, Ghost Widow got stuck in the ground and couldn't move. It took forever but eventually a GM managed to uproot her.

Thankfully it hasn't happened to me on an escort mission yet, but while running through arcs with lots of NPC followers, it isn't uncommon for one to phase half-way into the ground and get completely stuck. So far I have no known tactics to unstick them.

Yes, the league teleport. But I also had a problem in that peeps were starting to engage the last fight due to impatience. THis was "death wish tactics" although the peeps doing it did not realize that.

There is ONE easy way to do that last fight. You can do it sloppy with a ton of power ( I mean a metric TON of I/O'd incarnated+3 tier 4'd godbuilds) , but generally people die, slowly, the league gets worked for long minutes, and nothing is fun. If you follow the simple advice on Wiki, and have 3+ clarions firing in a decent interval the fight lasts 30 secs to a minute. People always seemed stunned how easy it is when done professionally.

TLDR: Never ugt with less than 5 clarions. League size is irrelevant, as long as you have the minimum. Never join any league led by someone you've never heard of, unless you're new to the server or the game.
Always send a petition, even if you think it won't do any good. The problem needs to be documented.

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Long version:

As someone who has led easily over 100 UGTs, I can tell you that there's not much to do when Desdemona gets stuck, other than to send a petition. Although it's been proven that Desdemona is not needed to win against the Avatar of Hamidon, she sure can help. I would suggest you just leave her - but when you do that, she's subject to ambushes - and if she dies, you fail.

Support has been typically very fast to respond. Once, we had a GM join our league and literally push her to the avatar room - where she did nothing - but at least she didn't get ambushed.

However, the thing to realize is that it's not that you "don't bring anything to the table" by bringing an unshifted toon. (and if I read your post correct, you were +1) It is that fewer shifts the league has, the longer it takes to kill stuff. The longer it takes to kill stuff - the greater the chance that folks in the league get clobbered.
UGT is the longest trial of all of them - by far. A weak league makes a 45 minute effort last over an hour, especially with numerous defeats against the AVs.
UGT is also probably done less than any other trial - by far. As a result, you have players who have less experience in that trial, increasing the risk of failure even more.
The best solution to all of the potential pitfalls of UGT is to simpy require folks be +1 or higher -and if you must have unshifted toons, don't have too many of them. Additionally, you are encouraged to have at least 4 tier 4 clarions - this way, all 4 can spam the clarion before the fight, and the protection needed (20 mag) will last until they are recharged. But, if someone dies, unless they use Return to Battle or have an Escape or get some love from a support toon, they're going to be confused - and things can go downhill in a hurry from there.
If you choose to lead UGT, I highly recommend using macros.

/macro 1 "say Hey folks, welcome to the UGT trial. If you thought you were joining a dfb, you're in the wrong place."
/macro 2 "say Please cut and paste this: /monitorattribute Confuse Protection, or go through combat attributes and monitor your confusion protection."

** Be prepared to explain how to cut and paste stuff from the chat box or help a league member go through combat attributes to monitor this.

/macro 3 "say First part is to kill a bunch of IDF until they unlock the doors. Be sure to use your map - we don't want anyone exiting the map by mistake."

/macro 4 "say 2 sets of 2 ambushes - protect Desdemona while she gets her groove on."

/macro 5 "say More idf to clobber - please keep spamming those clarion buffs. The Olympian Guards have a rough stun (reputed to be 60 mag).

etc.
If you send me a pm and ask for all of the macro's I have, I can send them to you. I have them in a notepad file, but there's no sense posting them if you're never going to use them.

Good advice Uskarex thanks. I got 'dumped' into lead position on that one. I was unaware of the exact level of stun prot needed in the final fight. I will study that so I know the numbers in my head.

I had led a successful UG once before using 3, with instructions to Clarion 1 at start, 2 at 15 sec, 3 at 30 sec. No idea if they followed my instruction, and the fight was over in about 40 seconds. I assume at least one or two hit Clarion, possibly when I had instructed. I was bruting that, and we had somewhere between 3-5 brutes/tanks, and we all got to the front (I was quite proud of that) and so the squishies were backstabbing the beast. I assume that helped a lot, and of course, Des was led in. I led this a few months ago and received the attaboys at the end. It did not leave me with a desire to run another.

I went on this with my 50+1 because I finally leveled this 50 after about 4 years and ran him though the alpha unlock and 1 Keyes. I used e-mailed threads to unlock the 50+1. But he is really a back burner guy. I slammed a great I/O build on him from spares in my base, not 'tuned' which is my new favorite toy. I have a crapton of un-tuned I/Os of my favorite types in my base, thought the old guy deserved some. The reason I tell you this is I saw the UG being advertised and new I had a 'decent' build, 50+1 Dark/Invul with a expensive I/O build AND I desperately needed both types of Incarnate experience, that UG gives out like no other trial. I have not run the character since that trial. He only regularly gets played as my weekly CoT redside guy. Someday I will +3 him lol. maybe next year?