guide Running the Behavioral Adjustment Facility Incarnate Trial

[Robotech_Master]

RUNNING THE BEHAVIORAL ADJUSTMENT FACILITY INCARNATE TRIAL

 

or

 

ROCK 'EM SOCK 'EM PRAETORIAN ROBOTS!

 

The Behavioral Adjustment Facility Trial, or BAF, is one of the dead simplest Incarnate Trials to do. For that reason, it's probably the single-most run Incarnate Trial in the game, simply because it's so easy.

 

That being said, even the simplest Incarnate Trial can be hard to understand if nobody bothers explaining it to you. And the way many of these trials are run, most of the people doing them have long experience and know exactly where to be at any given time, so nobody really bothers to give clear orders—they just assume everyone already knows what to do. This can leave newcomers confused, with no idea at all about what is even going on. Reading the Homecoming Wiki article about it can help, but the wiki tends to be more informative than instructional. So, I'm writing this guide to let the newly-Incarnate know what to do, as well as go over my own advice for people running the trial for the first time.

 

To note, this guide is informed by my own experience and opinions. Other experienced trial leaders will have their own way of doing things, so if you get on a trial with leaders who run it differently, don't assume they're doing it wrong. Learn from what they're doing, just as I learned from others before I got comfortable running the trial for myself. And if you're an experienced leader and disagree with any of my advice (or think I got something factually wrong), please comment below the guide.

 

I hope you've already read my Comprehensive Guide to the Incarnate System, so you'll have a basic idea of how Incarnates work. If not, or if it's been a while, you might want to run through it to refresh your memory.

 

MAP OF THE BEHAVIORAL ADJUSTMENT FACILITY

In the rest of the guide, I'll be referring to this map, and the numbers I've marked on it. Keep it handy.

 

PREPARATION STAGE

FORMING UP THE BAF TRIAL

If you're going to be leading the Trial, begin by deciding where you're going to meet up for it. There are two main spots people usually use: Pocket D and Ouroboros. Both of them are accessible to both heroes and villains; both can hold a lot of people. Ouroboros is a bit easier to get to, given that everyone almost certainly has an Ouroboros porter by the time they're an Incarnate, plus has Luna the Incarnate vendor to convert Astral Merits into Empyreans while people wait between Trials. Pocket D has a lot of nice amenities and can be reached by SG base porter or that teleport power from the P2W store. In the end, it's largely a matter of personal preference.

 

Whichever zone you pick, once you're there you should broadcast periodically on the LFG channel and be ready to invite people to the League as they zone in. Note that you can't invite "enemies" into the league unless they're within the same zone as you. If you're a blue-sider (Hero or Vigilante), then any red-sider (Villain or Rogue) must be in the same zone with you before you can invite them on the league—and vice versa. So if you get the message that you can't add an enemy to the league, ask them to let you know when they're in the zone so you can add them.

 

At  this stage, don't worry too much about balancing out the composition of the teams—due to the way the LFG teleport works, your teams will probably look completely different when you zone into the trial, and you'll just have to do it all over again. For now, just worry about getting 24 people. (If you like. You can start with as few as 12, but the more, the merrier!)

 

In Homecoming, all that is necessary to be eligible for the BAF Trial is to have trained up to level 50. You don't even need your Alpha Slot unlocked yet; it's enough that you be 50 and earning Incarnate XP.

 

CHOOSE YOUR LEAGUE: OPEN OR CLOSED?

When you're forming a league for this or any other Trial, you have the choice of leaving the league Open or setting it Closed. Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages. Open Leagues will allow anyone to join the league uninvited through the LFG panel if the league has room available. Running the Trial from an Open League will grant an additional Astral Merit on completing the Trial, as well as apply the "Warmth of Prometheus," a 7.5% buff to damage, healing, and recharge rate for all participants. It will also allow league members to vote to kick members, but will prevent you as league leader from kicking anyone from the Trial yourself. Also, if your league is not completely full with 24 members at the time you queue up, you may have to wait a few minutes before the game will allow it to start.

 

To launch a Closed League, you would make sure that the "Lock the event for your group" option at the lower right of the LFG screen is checked before you queue. This will prevent outsiders from joining without an invitation from you, and will allow you to kick troublemakers yourself without need of a vote. Of course, you won't get the extra Astral Merit or the "Warmth of Prometheus" buff from running Closed. Also, there is a bug inherent in Closed Leagues that will make zoning into the Trial a bit of a trial itself, which I'll explain in a future section.

 

PREPPING FOR LAUNCH: THE THREE REQUESTS

Once you've filled to 24 people, issue the Three Requests. (I'd say "Three Commandments," but really, that sounds a bit too bossy, even for leading a Trial. And you don't have the power to comply obedience anyway, so might as well try to catch more flies with honey.)

1. Once we zone into the trial, please stand perfectly still, so you don't move and trigger the cut scene. The very start of the trial can be a bit confusing, due to a nasty bug with Closed Leagues that I'll go over in the next section, and there's an obnoxiously long cut scene that triggers just from someone walking a few yards forward from where you zone in, right in the middle of it. If you can get people to hold off on triggering that cut scene, you'll have time to repair the teams from the issues caused by that bug.
2. Once we zone into the trial, please check to see if you have the league star. If you do, please pass it back to me immediately. One of the more annoying things about the LFG teleporter is that it will invariably assign the league star to the first person who zones into the trial zone—which is nearly never the person actually running the trial. If you don't say anything about that now, when people zone in their minds will be on charging headlong into the trial, and they may not even pay any attention to their chat or messages if you ask them to give the star back. So prompt them now so they'll be thinking about it when they zone in.
3. If you get dropped from the league, send me a /tell so I can invite you back in. Due to the bug I'll explain in the next section, a handful of people will probably be booted from the league if you launch Closed. However, you can invite them back in again just by issuing the command /li [name]. So ask that they tell you who they are, so you can get that taken care of.

Once you've made those things clear to everyone go ahead and hit LFG, choose the BAF trial from the Incarnate Trials tab, lock the event to your group, and queue up.

 

Note that if you're taking part in the trial and get disconnected at any time other than when you first zone in, you should always check your LFG window for a "rejoin" button that will let you hop right back into the trial. For whatever reason, getting a /li reinvitation when you have a "rejoin" button available will actually lock you out of the trial.

 

PART ONE: RUNNING THE TRIAL

For the first part of this guide, I'm going to go over the Trial the way it is usually run—just the basic tasks required to beat the Trial and get your Incarnate materials. Afterward, I'll discuss the badges and what you need to do differently if you want to get them. Then I'll discuss each badge in turn.

 

Note that, as with all Incarnate Trials, the hospital is within the trial map—but the hospital's exit doors will only open for ten seconds out of every thirty. So, be quick about getting to the exit door; if you miss the 10-second window, you'll have to wait 20 more seconds for another one.

 

ZONING IN

You'll appear on a small platform with stairs to a door at one end (which you can barely see at the very southwest part of the map, above). Moving forward toward the stairs will trigger a two-minute cut scene as Mother Mayhem gets an update on the current situation from Siege and Nightstar. Hopefully, everyone is well-behaved and doesn't move for at least a minute or two.

 

Now, that bug I was talking about. For whatever reason, when you zone into an Incarnate Trial on a Closed League, the game likes to fill two teams, then split the third team into four people scattered across the other four possible league teams, and drop the rest. So, those people will need to send you a /tell so you can invite them back in with /li [name], and you'll need to consolidate those scattered people onto just one team. Of course, a complicating factor is that you probably won't even have the league star until whoever has it now notices and gives it back to you, and you can't consolidate the team or reinvite the dropped players until that happens. And if someone doesn't heed your advice and goes ahead and charges forward, you'll be into that cut scene for two minutes before you can do anything further about fixing things.

 

(Note that if you do happen to have the star as you're zoning in, you can try immediately moving people from teams 1 and 2 over to team 3 as they zone in one by one. This could prevent those people who are last to zone in from getting booted by this bug.)

 

In any case, you should try not to keep the players waiting too long. It may take a couple of minutes before everyone is able to send you a /tell. Once you've merged the remains of team 3 back into one team, you should go ahead and move forward, through the cut scene, and get started on things.

 

BALANCING THE TEAMS

After the cut scene, and while peforming the first couple tasks of the Trial, you should check the composition of the teams and try to balance them as best you can by shuffling people from one team to another. Ideally, you should have at least one Tanker or Brute and at least one Controller or Dominator on every team. Try to split support and damage types evenly across the teams, because there may come times each team needs to act on its own.

 

Ideally, you should have teams well balanced by the time Siege is defeated.

 

PHASE ONE: DEFEAT FOES

As soon as the cut scene ends, and you enter the door at the top of the stairs, you'll be inside the Behavioral Adjustment Facility—and so will a bunch of Warworks. You need to take out 40 of them in order to move on to the next phase. That shouldn't take you long. When you finish, the turret guns positioned around the walls will start firing, and they have nasty auto-hit attacks that will quickly clobber anyone still standing in the open. To get out of their line of fire, make for the point marked 1 on the map, above. Due to the way the north building is positioned, it's a blind spot from the nearest turrets, and out of the range of the turrets farther away.

 

By the way, do not click on any of the glowy consoles by the outer wall beneath the turrets. I'll explain why later. 

 

PHASE TWO: DEFEAT NIGHTSTAR

When the Warworks are cleared out and the turrets open up, Nightstar will appear at the point marked 2, between the two smaller buildings to the east. Some Tanker or Brute needs to go taunt her back to point 1. (The best candidate would be a Resistance-based type, like Fire, Dark, or Stone, because the turrets are auto-hit so Defense won't do any good; someone Defense-based like Super Reflexes won't have the capped Resistances of a Resistance Tanker and will go down a lot quicker.) Try to get her as close to 1 as you possibly can—dead-center of the building. It may be necessary to ask the league to hold off on attacking her until the taunter has her properly positioned.

 

Once she's there, take her down. She's generally easy to defeat, save for one special trick that both she and Siege have for this trial, which is sequestration. As you gain her attention, you will receive two warnings, and with each warning you'll have a glowing ring that appears around you. If you disregard the warnings, what happens next is that you get sequestered—irresistibly held for thirty seconds. What's more, it's an AoE hold—so anyone within those rings around you will be held as well. Pay close attention to these warnings. If you notice the second warning message, or see you have a second ring, back away from everyone else, and either attack the AV from range or fight their adds (that is, the additional enemies that spawn with them) until the rings fade away.

 

If you lose track of Nightstar amid all her adds and the other players, you can instantly target her by clicking on her health bar in the pop-up trial window that displays it.

 

Once Nightstar goes down, you'll have about a minute to prepare for the next part: the running of the prisoners.

 

PHASE THREE: PRISONERS ESCAPING

When the countdown timer hits 5:00, the doors on the four large buildings and the two smaller ones will open, and mindwashed Resistance prisoners will start running for freedom. For whatever reason, they will run up and down the walkways toward the exit doors at the opposite side of the complex from where they start. (You would think that if they really wanted to get loose, they'd head for the doors closest to them, but who can say what goes through the minds of the mindwashed?) To stop the Praetorians' evil plans, you have to stop the prisoners. Position your teams, and be sure to summon Lore Pets and set them to "Aggressive" when the timer reaches 5:05, so they'll be effective all the way through the prisoner run.

 

There are two kinds of prisoners: Commandos and Fighters. Commandos are the tougher ones, and they're immune to pretty much every form of mez or taunt; the only way to stop them at all is to drop them. Fighters can be mezzed, however. Classes with high single-target damage should probably concentrate their fire on Commandos, since they're the toughest ones to stop. The macro /macro Cmdo targetcustomnear Commando could come in handy for quickly targeting them.

 

Prisoners won't attack you, so you can generally drop defensive toggles for this phase if you could better use the End for other things. However, they can cast Confuse on characters and their pets. Kinetics should be careful when and how they cast Speed Boost, lest they accidentally grant a group of prisoners super speed and send them zipping quickly away.

 

DOORS VS. CHOKES

There are two possible ways to distribute your forces here. The way I saw most leaders run it for the first few months of Homecoming was that they'd assign two or three people to each set of doors, and clobber the prisoners from each door before they could get loose, with a couple people held in reserve to go after runners. There is some argument that this might still be the way to go if your league has a lot of AoE damage but not so many buffers. However, I feel the other method is a vast improvement in almost every possible circumstance.

 

More recent teams have largely switched over to the "chokepoint" strategy, or "chokes" for short. In this strategy, you will position one of your teams at the point marked 1, and the other two teams at the point marked 3. Due to the way their pathing system works, all prisoners will pass through either point 1 (about 1/3 of the prisoners) or point 3 (about 2/3 of the prisoners) on their way to freedom. Setting up a pair of gauntlets at these chokepoints will let you clobber each of them with all your might as they pass. Group your teams up fairly closely together, with the center of the group about where the red number is; this lets AoE buffs hit more people, and allows you to concentrate AoE damage. It also doesn't leave room for prisoners to slip between buildings and escape, which is the most likely cause of leaks in this strategy. (Prisoners exiting the middle south building will try to head south between it and the building immediately to its left, to make for an exit at the lower left corner of the left building, which is why point 3 is positioned right there.) If anyone tries to spread out, or take up position at one of the doors, ask them to get back with the rest of the group.

 

People at each end of the choke should be facing outward, because enemies will run in from both directions. Clobber the enemies coming toward you—but if you see any enemies running past you from behind, definitely clobber them before they get far, because if they get past you they'll be able to escape to freedom. Try not to let any prisoners at all get away.

 

The chokepoint system is remarkably efficient; with a league that knows what they're doing, chances are good that not a single prisoner will get past you. Even if a few do, it's not likely that all 30 will.

 

PHASE FOUR: DEFEAT SIEGE

This phase is essentially a repeat of Phase Two. Gather everyone back at 1, where Nightstar is still lying. Siege will appear at point 4 on the map, and that tough taunter needs to grab him and bring him back. You should position him as close as possible to Nightstar, because it will be important for Phase Five that those two be as close together as possible. This is also why it's a good idea to get Nightstar to the middle of the building before dropping her during Phase Two, so you won't have as far to drag Siege. It may be necessary to ask the rest of the league to hold off attacking until Siege is where you want him.

 

As with Nightstar, Siege will warn and then sequester people who attack him. Again, pay attention to the warnings, move away from other people when you get the second ring, and don't get your leaguemates mezzed. And as with Nightstar, you can instantly select him at any time by clicking on his health bar in the trial goal display.

 

Once Siege drops, Phase Five will begin immediately.

 

PHASE FIVE: DEFEAT SIEGE AND NIGHTSTAR (AGAIN)

The instant Siege falls, both he and Nightstar will self-rez, and you have to clobber them both again—with the addition that the two archvillains must be defeated within 10 seconds of each other. You need to take them down at more or less exactly the same time. Positioning them close together during the earlier phases helps with this, since you'll be able to hit both of them with the same AoE attacks, making it easier to balance the damage. Everyone should keep a close eye on the health bars, and try to keep the two within 5% health of each other at all times. If one goes down faster than the other, switch your target over and pound on the other until they're more even. Again, you can quickly select either one by clicking on their health bar in the trial goal display. As with Phases Two and Four, mind your warnings and beware sequestration.

 

And that's that. When the two go down, you win the trial, and will get a pop-up window offering your choice of Incarnate component. Make your pick, then exit the trial, and get ready to run another one!

 

PART TWO: BAF BADGES

 

There are four possible badges you can earn from the Behavioral Adjustment Facility Trial. Earning each badge brings with it a random Uncommon Incarnate Thread salvage material, which means that earning badges is a good way for beginning Incarnates to get some of the pieces they need to let them build up powers quickly. Earning all four badges confers the Master of the B.A.F. badge, and a random Rare salvage. If you already have a badge, qualifying for it again awards an extra Astral Merit.

 

The first two of these badges are really simple, but the other two are considerably more complicated.

 

ALARM RAISER

This is the very easiest badge to get. All you have to do is not click on any of the glowing consoles around the wall beneath the turrets. Clicking the console deactivates the turret—but the way most trials are run, you're almost never going to be exposed to turret fire anyway, so why bother? That means you'll automatically get the badge the first time you do the BAF on a character, and get an extra Astral Merit each time you run the trial thereafter.

 

NOT ON MY WATCH

This is another very easy one to get, if you're any good at Phase Three. Simply don't let any prisoners escape, and you'll get that badge the first time and an extra Astral every time afterward. In my experience, a properly executed chokepoint strategy will do this nearly every time.

 

GOTTA KEEP 'EM SEPARATED

This one can be trickier. To earn this badge, you have to defeat Siege and Nightstar where they spawn, rather than pulling them away to point 1. To do this, follow these steps.

1. For Phase Two, the entire league heads to point 2 and engages Nightstar where she spawns. If you move between the two small buildings, you can avoid most of the turret fire. 
2. During Phase Three, after the teams have arranged themselves at chokes, divide one of the teams of 8 into two teams of 4 each, so you now have four teams of 8, 8, 4, and 4 people each.
3. In Phase Four, the whole league heads to defeat Siege at point 4. Moving under the awning behind where he spawns will shield you from fire from the turrets.
4. When Siege is down to about 25% health, direct one of the teams of 8 and one of the teams of 4 to head over to point 2 and get ready.
5. During Phase Five, keep a sharp eye on the AVs' relative healths. Remember that you can't switch targets from one AV to the other, so the only way to control defeat speed is to ask the people fighting one AV or the other to hold their attacks for a few moments. You may need to remind them ahead of time to watch the chat so they will see those instructions when you give them.
6. When you defeat the AVs at the same time, you should get the badge.

STRONG AND PRETTY

For this badge, during Phase Five, you have to make sure that no reinforcement adds are alive when you defeat Nightstar and Siege. This can be a little tricky, and may take more than one try to get right.

 

During Phase Five, assign from 4 to 8 people to an "Adds Team" to move to where the adds spawn during this phase—the set of doors at point 5 on the map. Meanwhile, work on getting the AVs' health down to about 5%. Make sure that everyone understands the importance of watching their health and stopping their attacks at that point, so as not to kill the AVs prematurely.

 

Hold the AVs at 5% health until the next bunch of adds spawn. At that point, the adds team defeats them as quickly as possible with Judgement and other huge AoE attacks, and gives the go signal—at which point the AV teams clobber the AVs as fast as they can and hope they can do it before another wave of reinforcements comes out.

 

Note that it is possible to try for both Gotta Keep 'em Separated and Strong and Pretty at the same time—simply arrange your teams so that you have a 4-to-6 person Adds Team in addition to four other teams to split evenly between the two AVs, send the Adds Team to do their job at the same time you send the Nightstar teams on their way, and follow the same hold-at-5% strategy. But my own preference is just to go for one badge at a time, because there are fewer things that could go wrong that way. And it's not as if you're not going to want to run this trial again.

 

CONCLUSION

I hope this guide has given new Incarnates a better idea of what goes on during the BAF trial, as well as given players thinking about leading it some insight into how the thing should be run. If I left anything out or made any mistakes, I'm open to suggestions and corrections, and will happily edit the guide to fix any errors.

 

For other suggestions on how to run the Trial, you might also want to have a look at the several guides on offer linked from the BAF Trial Homecoming Wiki page. In particular, the Visual Guide has a very nice diagram of the facility with the prisoner pathing and all exits marked out, which demonstrates exactly why those two particular chokepoints are so effective (and where to watch for leaks).

Edited May 29, 2020 by Robotech_Master

[Giocondi]

Great guide as always. I never ran BAF on live but have run it maybe 10 times on HC. However, I was 100% just following the masses and never really understood the mechanics. Much appreciated!

[SuperPlyx]

Hopefully more people will read this, saw last night someone pretty adamant that you can run the trial before level 50. 

Also did a BAF recently where people asking why their temp powers didn't work.