TwoHeadedBoy

Stale, for your thing-

Totally with you on this. For me the worst thing is when I am doing tip missions on my Villain Warshade, I spawn a Policebringer map, and the Voids totally ignore all of those Kheldians and focus exclusively on attacking me- It's particularly frustrating since we know devs have the tech to make NPC enemy groups hostile toward one another.

The second biggest thing which goes back to one of your points is that according to lore, Kheldians don't exist in Praetoria. If they don't have Khelds, why do they have Voids?

Tin Mage this week?

You know the rule about lore pets.

Make an SS/Fire Brute and let her Fulcrum Shift your Foot Stomps? The greedy approach, you know.

The disadvantage to using the forms is that they're largely unnecessary. That's not to say that if you enjoy them you shouldn't use them, just that human form only gives you better or at the very least comparable AoE damage to Nova, and is more survivable than Dwarf- Essence Boost is pretty easy to perma so you'll have the same HP as Dwarf in human form on top of being able to add a very substantial amount of defense. Light Form offers status protection, and there's also the possibility of clarion and the handiness of a break free macro.

That being said, Tri Form isn't completely bad by any stretch... Especially in the pre 50 no IO's game, it is actually probably the way to go. Nova gives you 4 attacks early when most people still have brawl in their attack chain. Dwarf gives you a "get out of jail free" card against mezzers and some nice resists and HP before you have LF and before E Boost can be made perma.

In terms of a finalized level 50 build, if you get to that point and decide you still want to use forms it is actually still possible to build up some s/l defense through set bonuses and that helps quite a bit. Your best single target damage is going to be in human form no matter what, so you should still slot those attacks well.

Since defensive powers are needed to slot LOTG +recharge bonuses (very helpful for perma LF) there's no harm in trying to allocate some extra defense/endurance values to those powers too. A lot of the end game involves team VS. AV fights, so you can leverage that extra survivability from defense while using your ST attacks.

Updated the second post with B.A.F. strategy- Will type up LAMBDA in a little while.

Ah well I'm ok with excluding people who need to rely on Judgement or Lore for their single target DPS. Nothing personal.

You want to make "Figer Prefur" or alternatively, "Spell Check Man." This next part is very important, though: He must be a WM/EA Brute. He will be very strong. Finally, he must absolutely not, under any circumstances, be made on Protector.

<<Reserved>>

Master of Underground Strategy

Alright, so doing this trial as a master run pretty much comes down to just knowing how to do the trial, period. The badges are extremely straightforward .

Regenerate This: Defeat the Self-Repairing and Lichen Infested War Walkers within 8 minutes of starting the fight.

So, collect temporary powers and make sure you put them in your tray. Don't everyone spam them at the same time, try to space it out- I'm going to play this by ear from run to run and see how each league is comfortable, but I've considered having just a couple of people in charge of getting temps and coordinating their use so that they aren't wasted. Basically if we get that right, the Self Repairing Warwalker will go down smoothly.

For the Lichen Warwalker I'll be dedicating a few people to destroying glowies and one person with taunt to proactively pull the AV away from any glowies that might be regenerating it. These guys have some pretty outrageous attacks, but with preparation they really go down quite easily.

Tour Guide: Don't let Desdemona's health go below 50%

This is really quite easy too- Once again, usually happens by accident. If she sticks to someone who isn't support, I will be asking the person in question to play conservatively and be mindful of not leading her into excessive danger. You won't need to sit out or anything like some people seem to think... Regardless, I'd like to assign a second person with healing abilities to be mindful of her health and proactively mitigate/heal/etc. to ensure that we get the badge.

The only really tricky part for this badge is the trap room phase. We can't heal Desdemona until after we destroy all 4 crystals, and the crystals can't be destroyed with Devouring Earth near them. For this I'll probably once again assign a couple of people to proactively taunt/kill any Devouring Earth spawns near crystals.

Preservation Specialist: Don't let any of the IDF bombs detonate.

This badge is really not hard. I've seen leagues struggle clumsily through the bomb phase, but it should honestly be something you have to put effort into to mess up. We get a 10 second warning to destroy each bomb, and they go down very quickly. As long as no one goes into scrapperlock during this phase and starts running around on their own, there's no reason we should have trouble with this.

Avatar Assassin: Defeat the Avatar of Hamidon at the same time as a Seedling.

I think this is the only badge I don't have from Underground, but it only takes a little coordination. Pretty straightforward, so I don't know how to explain it further... Just mind the health bar, and we'll communicate in league chat.

Master of the B.A.F. Strategy

Alright, so this is pretty simple if you know what you're doing but not everyone does. I know there are different ways to do this but this is the way that I'm most comfortable with and that I feel has the highest rate of success.

First I'm going to talk about team assignments and makeup: I like to have debuffers and single target DPS characters on teams 1 and 2, and AoE heavy characters on team 3. I'll go more into detail for this reasoning later on. I also prefer to have everyone in the league at +2 or +3 as it does help things go much more smoothly.

The first part is a no-brainer: You kill stuff until Nightstar spawns- That's 40 Warwalkers to be precise.

The second part is where you'll start noticing a difference from the run of the mill BAF runs, but it's not at all more difficult. Nightstar will spawn at the bivouacs and we'll fight her at her spawn point: No pulling. This is necessary for the Keep Them Separated badge. I like to leave team 3 on the Helipad for this phase fighting off add spawns. Killing these before she drops does not affect the Strong and Pretty badge, but it's a nice way to gauge team makeup, ie: If team 3 feels they'll need additional support to handle the adds at the end this is a good way to feel that out. It's also a safety measure for the debuffers and DPS characters, allowing them to focus more on killing Nightstar.

Now for the third part, this is where things start to come down a little more to personal approach. There is a very certain way I like to run the Escaped Prisoners phase and that is by not deviating from the choke points. Team 3 North and team 1 and 2 South.(edit: I got dyslexic and remembered my directions backwards for a second- It's been a long afternoon.) This works out well as the largely AoE makeup plus the lighter amount of escapees at the North point tends to leave things balanced. Lore pets deploy at the 5, and I like everyone to stay very close at the designated points.

There's nothing that I hate more than a bunch of melee characters chasing down runners when if they concentrated their damage in a consolidated area the amount of runners is cut down so drastically that ranged attackers can pick off any who get through from the choke point: Keep this in mind if you are playing a ranged set. It is your responsibility to keep your eye out for prisoners who get through. Successfully completing this phase with no escapes awards the Not on My Watch badge.

Next up, Siege will spawn at the Administration building. This will work just like Nightstar did: Teams 1 and 2 fight him at his spawn point while team 3 sits tight on the helipad. Last time I ran this, it was successful with team 3 helping on the AV's but in the future I'd like to do it this way for reasons I mentioned earlier.

Final phase: Once Siege is at 5 health, team 1 will head back over to Nightstar and wait for her to revive while team 3 continues focusing on the adds on the Helipad. If one AV's health is dropping significantly faster than the others, I will send one person from whichever team is ahead to balance them out. When they approach the ~30 health mark I'll start conversing with team 3 on how they're handling the adds. At 5 health it is very important that we wait for team 3 to give us the "all clear" before finishing the AV's off, as if they die while there are adds alive we won't get the Strong and Pretty badge.

If all of these instructions are followed clearly we should have no trouble completing successful "Master of the B.A.F" runs. Master of LAMBDA is a little more tricky and requires some more specific team makeup, but really is not very difficult. I will be updating my next post later on with the approach I plan to use.

Master of LAMBDA Strategy

Okay so like I said in the B.A.F. section, this one is a little trickier. Technically it requires three different runs, one for each of these badges:

-Antacid
-Well-Stocked
-Lambda Looter

Synchronized can be picked up with Lambda Looter.

For all three runs, we will be starting off the same: We'll hop the wall into the courtyard and "arrest" IDF until we spawn the security guard. After that, we'll head straight into the building with the elevators to fight him. No destroying guns... We're already going to be doing three runs so I'd like to get through them as quickly as possible. After the Security Guard is defeated is where things will differ from run to run.

Run #1, Antacid: "Complete the Lambda Sector Trial having acquired 10 Molecular Acids but using none of them."

The thing this badge description doesn't mention is that we also must not collect any Grenades in order for it to award. This means that both teams will head up to the lab to collect Acids. After we have all 10, there will be extra time before Marauder spawns. During this time, we'll continue to clear the lab of adds so that our participation ratings don't drop.

Run #2, Well-Stocked: "Complete the Lambda Sector Trial having acquired 10 Pacification Grenades but using none of them."

Once again, this means we can't get any acids either. Same deal as the run before except we'll be going to the warehouse instead of the labs for Grenades.

Run #3, Lambda Looter/Synchronized: "Complete the Lambda Sector Trial having acquired 10 Pacification Grenades and 10 Molecular Acids but using none of them. "

"Destroy a Weapons Cache and an Incubation Pod within 2 seconds of each other during the Lambda Sector Incarnate Trial. "

For this one we'll need to split into 2 teams during the Sabotage phase, one each on Acids and grenades.Synchronized usually happens naturally, but if we still haven't picked it up and one of the teams is on their last object, we will coordinate its' destruction in league chat.

For all three runs

Once Marauder spawns, it's pretty straightforward: We have to kill him without using any temps. If you have Barrier, bring it along for this- The adds will accumulate quite a bit so we need all the help we can get. Weapons deliveries will be made, but the containers cannot be destroyed.

Team makeup

Master of LAMBDA requires a bit more specific of a team makeup than B.A.F. Marauder has very high resists and is therefore hard to kill without the temps. This can be countered a few ways:

1. A fully level shifted league. I would like for everyone participating in these runs to be 50+3 if possible.

2. Resistance debuffs. If you have a Cold, Radiation, Time, Sonic, or Trick Arrow character or a character with Fury of the Gladiator/Achilles' Heel procs it is a plus. Unfortunately, Traps and Dark aren't on the list as both of their resistance debuff powers are at fixed locations and Marauder likes to hop around a lot.

3. Bringing Psionic damage and minimizing Smashing or Lethal damage. Marauder is less resistant to Psi than any other damage type, and extremely resistant to Smashing and Lethal.

In this situation, for example, Seer Lore pets will be most effective although they have the lowest DPS numbers, and Cimerorans will be least effective although they have the highest DPS numbers.

The same philosophy will apply to player characters: Your Dual Blades scrapper might be achieving high end Pylon numbers, but you'd actually get better damage out of a Psionic Blaster in this situation.

4. Communication. If we remain organized and everyone in the league knows what they're doing, we should have no trouble completing any of these objectives.

If anyone has anything to add, please let me know. I'll be writing up strategies for Underground and Keyes soon.