Magisterium Trial Badge Runs, Sat 09/15

Hey, all. Per this thread, we had some success but not the full success I wanted to achieve on Master of Magisterium badges tonight. We did finally pull off Ready to Rumble, and we got Hard Way twice pretty handily, but we need a lot more work to get Really Hard Way.

Basically, we need to front-load the team with Corruptors. Preferably, we want ones that can dish out -DR debuffs and maybe +damage.

Tyrant is immune to -regen debuffs. Only -DR, +damage and -maxHP are likely to be meaningful.

We need everyone who remotely possibly can be to be +3. I don't want to accept anyone on the league who is not at least +2, and I'm only going to accept a few of those at most. I don't like forming leagues that way, but it's too hard to meaningfully DPS or debuff a +6 AV.

For those that don't know, the lower Tyrant's HP are, the higher his regen rate goes. This means that any given net DPS can hit a kind of floor where his HP won't really go down any lower, because his regen eventually balances the incoming DPS. This is why Corruptors are such a big deal - right around the HP levels where that really kicks in for Tyrant, Corrs start dealing more and more damage due to Scourge. Naturally their debuffs are also a huge help.

If you need this badge on something that is not on a Corruptor or primary damage dealer, you may need to help others get if first. Basically, we're extremely unlikely to be able to get this badge for everyone who wants it in one pass - too many folks with lower DPS contribution will mean no one gets it. We need to load up the team with a bunch of Corrs, mix in the badgers (paying attention to how much we dilute DPS if possible) and run multiple times, hopefully swapping people in and out to get the badge.

If you want to contribute but don't have a +3 Corruptor, that's OK. I'd appreciate all the help we can get given the community's current mental state. If things go well, though, we may not need you for every run - just the ones where you're up for the badge.

Given the above plan, I will keep scheduling this until we get peeps the badge. I may accelerate the scheduling to get more times per week in next week if we need to.

Edit: It probably helps if I state a start time, eh? I blame being fried from tonight's trials. Let's say 8 PM Eastern, 7 Central, 6 Mountain, 5 Pacific. We will likely go for a few hours at least, so if you can't get into the first wave, don't sweat it. Please bear with the initial trial being slow to get rolling, as we figure out who can bring what, etc.

Thanks again to everyone who helped tonight, and my apologies to those who couldn't really help out.

I want the badge on Bionic Flea (tank), but have +3 sonic/rad and ice/kin corrs that I am willing to switch to as needed.

Just a reminder, this is still on for tonight. We'll be starting at 8 PM Eastern, 7 Central, 6 Mountain, 5 Pacific, and I plan to run at least three tonight if we have the membership to support it. If more are needed, I will schedule them for next week.

Thanks Justice!

Amazingly good Really Hard Way Run tonight.

FemFury's last badge is done, final count of 1397.

It was a great epic battle. Got Tyrant down around 18 to 20, then the league poured it on just as the league leader asked. We had him down at 11 or 12, the crackle warning hit, but a bunch of us clearly thought the same thing: "so close, just a little more!". We didn't flee the crackle, just kept hitting, got him to 10% and finished him off, dying in the lightning, of course,but then he was in his wimpy form. Easy to rez and finish him off. Wonderful fight!

A) I want to thank everyone who came out for this tonight. After all the hard work and instruction it took on Thursday to get Ready to Rumble, the league that got Really Hard Way tonight also got R2R without trying. We really rocked the trial on that run. We also had 2 successful runs getting Triple Threat. (We missed it once.)

B) There are still folks who need these badges. I am willing to keep running trials this coming week. I am currently planning Tuesday and Thursday, again at 8 Eastern, 7 Central, 6 Mountain and 5 Pacific. I know it can be hard for Pacific folks to hit that time, so I will also tentatively plan another overflow for Saturday.

Thanks again to all assisted!

Click on the image below for a larger version.

This was an amazing run. Thank you, UberGuy! For those that did not participate, I think there were several keys to success:

1. Excellent leadership, and the team members were mostly all skilled players who could move out of the lights quickly but not lose much dps. There were very few deaths.
2. Everyone was using Ultimates, so we were mostly +4 rather than +3. Uber told us that a +4 delivers 30% of his damage onto Tyrant, while a +3 only delivers 15%. I think something similar applies to debuff.
3. All characters were +3, I think. Maybe a couple of +2's but not many.
4. We had 7-8 Corrs, so Scourge was high.
5. I noticed that we had approximately 400% -res (including one powerful sonic/sonic defender -- thank you Electroanagesia).
6. When we repeated the run with the same players, same skills, Ultimates, etc., but only 300% -res, we did not get close to success.

This is an approximate assessment of -res since I don't know how my teammates were playing their characters. but I've done many, many of these runs, and I think very high -res is the unappreciated "secret" of getting this badge, along with the other elements listed above.

I don't mean to suggest that -res wins the battle with Tyrant. I DO mean to suggest that a minimum level of -res is necessary, but not sufficient by itself. And the minimum is very high. I've seen quite a few runs in which the players were excellent (mostly or all +3's), Ultimates were used, and deaths were low, but which just did not succeed. I was on many, many of these runs, usually playing a sonic/sonic defender because the -res power is the thing I thought would contribute the most to the success of the league.

This last run was very ably led by UberGuy, and that was critical. The idea of getting that many Corrs was smart and, most of all, it worked.

But I still think -res is a missing ingredient. It will be interesting to see if this proves to be true in future runs. With regard to -400% as a rough number, I am simply adding up the -res levels my character's powers deliver in a normal fight -- I don't know how much that is reduced in the tyrant fight.

But my sonic/sonic defender puts disruption field on a skilled tank (like Bionic Flea...someone who can jump, fight and survive), and then cycles sonic syphon, shout, and shriek as fast he can...usually I get a stack of 4-6 of these. Usually that's 100% to occasional peaks of 140% of nominal resistance debuff, but the number is fluctuating. "Over 100%" is a good assessment as an average...perhaps 105-115%. But it drops if I have to move too much to avoid the lights... Of course, I've tuned my defender to max recharge and accuracy. By contrast, my NA Corr (which actually got the badge), peaks on -res in the 40-44% range. Even thermal controllers (I have two) can't match a sonic for -res debuff.

As time goes on, we can see how this works out. Maybe -res is not the unappreciated factor that I think it is. We'll know from the next few sets of runs.

But the main point is -- now I have a starting point to see, since UberGuy led such a great Magi run!