Feed the Tree
Nov. 14th, 2007 12:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothI *meant* to log off and play some Tabula Rasa after the Black Ravens left last night, but as I was on the way to the black market to pawn some expensive salvage I'd gotten, someone invited me to run the first respec trial. Little Critter hadn't done that yet, so I signed up.
The team was 31 30 29 29 25 24 24 24. A perfect team to use the latest trick, where all the high level folks malefactor down to the low level folks until everything's been spawned in the last mission, then switch. But we were greedy and wanted to get XP, so they were our lackies instead. 31 30 30 29 29 28 29 28 isn't *that* bad of a mix, right? And in the fist mission, where the enemies were level 30, it looked like we'd be fine.
Except... we weren't. We had two team-wipes, and only completed it because I popped a bunch of lucks and personally assassinated the last (elite) boss while everyone else was either dead or running away (it was a 'kill 3 bosses' mission). I mean, the team wasn't a very good mix of archetypes -- 3 stalkers, 2 dominators, 2 corruptors, and one mastermind -- but it wasn't HORRIBLE. We shouldn't have had that much trouble against 30s.
As a side note, Little Critter's hidden power is the Power of Luck. I hoard my purples, because 2 purples on top of super reflexes makes her essentially immune to damage. >:) Anyone can get the same effect with enough purple, but 2 purples is manageable to always keep several doses on hand.
Well, unless you're in the middle of a trial. Like we were.
So, her luck had run out, and the last mission -- the *hard* mission -- was against 32s instead of 30s. Oh, crap. We tried the log-out trick, but kind of flubbed it -- five people were online by the time the designated map-clearing person managed to find the vine room, so we had 52 vines. Still, that was a lot less than the 88 we were supposed to get. And clearing the CoT around the perimeter went okay. A death here and there, but compared to how utterly awfully we'd done in the previous mission, it was a model of competence.
Theeen, we got to the vines. Note that everyone on the team either had or was a lackey. Note that the vine room is large enough that the lackey range doesn't stretch across the whole thing. Oh, and remember the TREE. The TREE can see you for about a third of the vines, and if the TREE can see you, it can kill you. It never misses, and it has an attack chain that does enough damage to kill anyone but the brute we didn't have.
So our rampage was slowed as people started dying when we got to the part the tree could see, and stalled at about 10 vines left, when they started respawning. Respawning alll the way up to 82.
Attempt two: 'Let's damage all the vines to a sliver, then do another rampage. With them nearly dead, it should go fast.'
Complication: Stalkers crit. This kills vines accidentally (although as it turned out this didn't matter, see below). And as previously noted, the tree can see a lot of the vines. People stayed away from that section.
Result: When the command came out to 'rampage!', the rampaging ran into a huge cluster of unwounded vines in full view of the tree, and... um... died.
Attempt three: 'The vines spawn in groups of like sixteen, they don't respawn until *all* the vines in a group are dead. Let's kill most of the vines in each area but leave a few alive.'
Complication: People didn't coordinate very well, so it was hard to agree on which vines to leave alive, and sometimes none were and groups respawned. Also, no one wanted to get the vines in front of the tree... everyone had been killed a few times by showing their face in that area by then. Oh, and the mastermind and corruptors had basically given up and weren't helping, except to sometimes rez people, or teleport them back to the vine room after they got back from the hospital.
Result: But... this was a method where slow and steady could actually work. Eventually we got down to 12 vines remaining, with no sign of a respawn, so we rampaged again, and this time succeeded! I mean, most of the team was dead since we *still* had too many (well, four, but that was three too many) in view of the tree, but the vines were gone and the tree was exposed.
So, all that was left was the easy part, taking out a standard archvillain. It should have been cake for a team of 8. And it would have been, except for the ambushes.
Attempt one: We rush the tree (pets first), and everything's going fine, debuffs and healing and all, until it hits 50% and a bunch of CoT run in and kill us. It was about that abrupt. A hellfrost mezzed all the squishies, and then without the healing bubble or debuff toggles (we had a /rad corr and the MM was /dark) the stalkers went down pretty fast.
Attempt two: As the highest level person on the team, I'm drafted to pull the ambush away from the tree. After the corruptors try it and die. So I do! And live, because I have *just* enough hit points to survive the two shots the tree gets on you if you instantly run for cover as soon as it sees you, and my shields actually work against CoT. So, we run in and seem to be doing fine, until the CoT that were wandering around the far side of the tree wander back. One of them is a Nerva Spectral Daemon Lord. No one notices him as his -tohit toggle aura hits the /kin and /dark, although we notice that suddenly the healing isn't coming very fast anymore. The post-mortem made it obvious what had happened, thuogh.
Attempt three: So, we all come back from the hospital and pull away the NSDL and terminate him with extreme... overkill. Then rush the tree and blast away... and at 25%, another ambush?! "Just keep firing at the tree!" say the people who are already dead, and it works! The tree goes down before the CoT kill everyone! The last person alive clicks the thorn cluster, and the Trial is won!
There is much celebration from the hospital. x.x
Anyway, there's a debt-wipe coming on December 10th. Since Litter Critter is at the debt cap now, I think I'll be playing other characters until then. Really, she's met Sting, she should have known better than to mess with a tree.
The team was 31 30 29 29 25 24 24 24. A perfect team to use the latest trick, where all the high level folks malefactor down to the low level folks until everything's been spawned in the last mission, then switch. But we were greedy and wanted to get XP, so they were our lackies instead. 31 30 30 29 29 28 29 28 isn't *that* bad of a mix, right? And in the fist mission, where the enemies were level 30, it looked like we'd be fine.
Except... we weren't. We had two team-wipes, and only completed it because I popped a bunch of lucks and personally assassinated the last (elite) boss while everyone else was either dead or running away (it was a 'kill 3 bosses' mission). I mean, the team wasn't a very good mix of archetypes -- 3 stalkers, 2 dominators, 2 corruptors, and one mastermind -- but it wasn't HORRIBLE. We shouldn't have had that much trouble against 30s.
As a side note, Little Critter's hidden power is the Power of Luck. I hoard my purples, because 2 purples on top of super reflexes makes her essentially immune to damage. >:) Anyone can get the same effect with enough purple, but 2 purples is manageable to always keep several doses on hand.
Well, unless you're in the middle of a trial. Like we were.
So, her luck had run out, and the last mission -- the *hard* mission -- was against 32s instead of 30s. Oh, crap. We tried the log-out trick, but kind of flubbed it -- five people were online by the time the designated map-clearing person managed to find the vine room, so we had 52 vines. Still, that was a lot less than the 88 we were supposed to get. And clearing the CoT around the perimeter went okay. A death here and there, but compared to how utterly awfully we'd done in the previous mission, it was a model of competence.
Theeen, we got to the vines. Note that everyone on the team either had or was a lackey. Note that the vine room is large enough that the lackey range doesn't stretch across the whole thing. Oh, and remember the TREE. The TREE can see you for about a third of the vines, and if the TREE can see you, it can kill you. It never misses, and it has an attack chain that does enough damage to kill anyone but the brute we didn't have.
So our rampage was slowed as people started dying when we got to the part the tree could see, and stalled at about 10 vines left, when they started respawning. Respawning alll the way up to 82.
Attempt two: 'Let's damage all the vines to a sliver, then do another rampage. With them nearly dead, it should go fast.'
Complication: Stalkers crit. This kills vines accidentally (although as it turned out this didn't matter, see below). And as previously noted, the tree can see a lot of the vines. People stayed away from that section.
Result: When the command came out to 'rampage!', the rampaging ran into a huge cluster of unwounded vines in full view of the tree, and... um... died.
Attempt three: 'The vines spawn in groups of like sixteen, they don't respawn until *all* the vines in a group are dead. Let's kill most of the vines in each area but leave a few alive.'
Complication: People didn't coordinate very well, so it was hard to agree on which vines to leave alive, and sometimes none were and groups respawned. Also, no one wanted to get the vines in front of the tree... everyone had been killed a few times by showing their face in that area by then. Oh, and the mastermind and corruptors had basically given up and weren't helping, except to sometimes rez people, or teleport them back to the vine room after they got back from the hospital.
Result: But... this was a method where slow and steady could actually work. Eventually we got down to 12 vines remaining, with no sign of a respawn, so we rampaged again, and this time succeeded! I mean, most of the team was dead since we *still* had too many (well, four, but that was three too many) in view of the tree, but the vines were gone and the tree was exposed.
So, all that was left was the easy part, taking out a standard archvillain. It should have been cake for a team of 8. And it would have been, except for the ambushes.
Attempt one: We rush the tree (pets first), and everything's going fine, debuffs and healing and all, until it hits 50% and a bunch of CoT run in and kill us. It was about that abrupt. A hellfrost mezzed all the squishies, and then without the healing bubble or debuff toggles (we had a /rad corr and the MM was /dark) the stalkers went down pretty fast.
Attempt two: As the highest level person on the team, I'm drafted to pull the ambush away from the tree. After the corruptors try it and die. So I do! And live, because I have *just* enough hit points to survive the two shots the tree gets on you if you instantly run for cover as soon as it sees you, and my shields actually work against CoT. So, we run in and seem to be doing fine, until the CoT that were wandering around the far side of the tree wander back. One of them is a Nerva Spectral Daemon Lord. No one notices him as his -tohit toggle aura hits the /kin and /dark, although we notice that suddenly the healing isn't coming very fast anymore. The post-mortem made it obvious what had happened, thuogh.
Attempt three: So, we all come back from the hospital and pull away the NSDL and terminate him with extreme... overkill. Then rush the tree and blast away... and at 25%, another ambush?! "Just keep firing at the tree!" say the people who are already dead, and it works! The tree goes down before the CoT kill everyone! The last person alive clicks the thorn cluster, and the Trial is won!
There is much celebration from the hospital. x.x
Anyway, there's a debt-wipe coming on December 10th. Since Litter Critter is at the debt cap now, I think I'll be playing other characters until then. Really, she's met Sting, she should have known better than to mess with a tree.
