LF "The Really Hard Way" advice

[Snarky]

Looking for facts and suggestions on how to do this and be useful on my Dark/Dark Brute.

 

The Magisterium Trial is never exactly easy.  But on a normal run my Brute does okay.  Now, once you start talking about the end battle and not destroying the Lights..... Things go south for my little melee toon lol.

 

1st) I know a very little about Ultimate Inspirations. a) yoiu can buy them off the AH b) they bump you one level.  Questions, how long do they last? How many can you use at once? How many do I need to use at once for this fight?

 

2nd) What are my best tactics to avoid endless faceplants?  Should i just give up on melee and use my limited range powers to plink?  WTF are my tactics in this "cut down a tree with this herring while you are shot with Abombs....????"

 

Lastly, i also bought 6 Immortal recovery to dunp into my mail for the inevitable...  Is that enough lol?  My dark self rez doesnt work if not near enough to Tyrant.

 

Any other tips are appreciated.  Thanks.

 

 

[SuperPlyx]

The fairy lady in Ouroboros named Luna sells the Ultimate inspirations for threads. Only use 1 at a time, and they last 3 minutes.

[Snarky]

1 hour ago, SuperPlyx said:

The fairy lady in Ouroboros named Luna sells the Ultimate inspirations for threads. Only use 1 at a time, and they last 3 minutes.

nice to know for the future, i bought 20 off the AH lol.  (in todays economy it wasnt much truly) In the future it will be a good use for the ...considerable....number of threads on my 105th level main lol

[Li_Sensei]

2 hours ago, SuperPlyx said:

The fairy lady in Ouroboros named Luna sells the Ultimate inspirations for threads. Only use 1 at a time, and they last 3 minutes.

 

3 Minutes, or until you faceplant.

 

This being Magisterium, you are almost guaranteed to plant within the first 20 seconds after summoning your Lore pets...

 

Regarding being useful, -regen is next to worthless against Tyrant, so if you're using an interface other than -resist, -MaxHP or straight up damage proc, then you might want to consider swapping it out.

 

Learn to get good at dodging Crackle.  Personally I keep Sprint toggled on for non-suppressing +run speed, but that advice is on a short half life with the travel power changes upcoming.

 

For Destiny, Barrier, Clarion and Rebirth will all help the league.  Ageless and incandescence less so.

 

Don't use Shadow Maul if you can help it.  Long rooting animations and having to dodge area damage patches are not massively compatible.

 

As well as the Ultimate inspirations, a few Tier 4 Team +damage insps (again from Luna) would buff your teams damage, but they get chewed through really fast.

 

And finally, don't fixate on the badge.  It's not worth stressing over a badge whose sole purpose in the game is epeen waving.

[Snarky]

we did it twice, once for the really hard way (succeeded!) and once for Triple Threat (got that, league couldnt pull off a 2nd really hard way though and used quills)

 

thank you for the tips.  really great league leader and teammates using discord did the trick

[Uun]

A lot of it is dumb luck. I got really hard way on one character when we weren't even going for it. We were going for hard way and nobody bothered to kill any of the lights. Not sure about anyone else, but I wasn't using ultimates. 

[Snarky]

41 minutes ago, Uun said:

A lot of it is dumb luck. I got really hard way on one character when we weren't even going for it. We were going for hard way and nobody bothered to kill any of the lights. Not sure about anyone else, but I wasn't using ultimates. 

Nah, the group I got in with does a few Master runs every weekend, starting with Magi, then random ones.  I only died three times in the two runs.  (and I already see how to mostly avoid that in the future) They have a good simple system.  the real time leadership in discord is truly great (and I have always avoided discord lol) and makes the difference between guessing what is happening and what is happening.  The league moves as a tight unit and therefore buffs/attacks etc are all more effective.

[Ironblade]

On 3/20/2021 at 5:11 PM, Snarky said:

1st) I know a very little about Ultimate Inspirations. a) yoiu can buy them off the AH b) they bump you one level.  Questions, how long do they last? How many can you use at once? How many do I need to use at once for this fight?

The game will only allow you to use one at a time.  You used to need just two.  Then the devs fixed the BP Lore pets so now the leaders ask you to bring three.  The Banished Pantheon are still the highest DPS Lore pets but they're not broken any more.

 

On 3/20/2021 at 5:11 PM, Snarky said:

2nd) What are my best tactics to avoid endless faceplants?  Should i just give up on melee and use my limited range powers to plink?  WTF are my tactics in this "cut down a tree with this herring while you are shot with Abombs....????"

1.  Run when the game announces the 'crackle'.  And don't run back too soon.

2.  Stay behind him.  His 'beams sweep the area in front of him', or whatever it says, is pretty nasty also.

 

Being melee is not necessarily a problem.  I got the badge on my scrapper easily enough.  Also, HOPEFULLY the league has multiple people with Kinetics so you need to be close enough for Fulcrum Shift.

 

Standard instructions on Everlasting for Really Hard Way runs (which my girlfriend runs every Saturday):

Be at least tier 3 in every incarnate power, tier 4 preferred.  For sure, if you're not level 53 GTFO.

Bring 3 ultimates.  Bring a similar number of tier 4 team reds (don't recall the inspiration name).  Bring 3 Impenetrable Imbuement (team orange/purple insp).  Some of the team acc/dmg insps would also be nice.  Go to the Pay to Win vendor and get at least the one hour damage buff (the other two are nice, but not required).

 

I won't go into the tactics since you said there is already good leadership for the runs.

 

Back in the day, when the game was live, it was REALLY hard.  Our standard tactic on Infinity was to start with TWO ENTIRE TEAMS OF CORRUPTERS.  This was becuase Tyrant's damage resistance goes up as his HP go down.  This was countered by Scourge doing more and more damage as his HP go down.  Nowadays, we can do it with no AT requirements.  Having said that, if you want to be super helpful for the attempts, make a character specifically for that trial (like I did).  I made a beam rifle/kinetics corr and selected every power and every incarnate power with an eye toward that one iTrial.

 

[Snarky]

On 3/24/2021 at 7:41 PM, Ironblade said:

The game will only allow you to use one at a time.  You used to need just two.  Then the devs fixed the BP Lore pets so now the leaders ask you to bring three.  The Banished Pantheon are still the highest DPS Lore pets but they're not broken any more.

 

1.  Run when the game announces the 'crackle'.  And don't run back too soon.

2.  Stay behind him.  His 'beams sweep the area in front of him', or whatever it says, is pretty nasty also.

 

Being melee is not necessarily a problem.  I got the badge on my scrapper easily enough.  Also, HOPEFULLY the league has multiple people with Kinetics so you need to be close enough for Fulcrum Shift.

 

Standard instructions on Everlasting for Really Hard Way runs (which my girlfriend runs every Saturday):

Be at least tier 3 in every incarnate power, tier 4 preferred.  For sure, if you're not level 53 GTFO.

Bring 3 ultimates.  Bring a similar number of tier 4 team reds (don't recall the inspiration name).  Bring 3 Impenetrable Imbuement (team orange/purple insp).  Some of the team acc/dmg insps would also be nice.  Go to the Pay to Win vendor and get at least the one hour damage buff (the other two are nice, but not required).

 

I won't go into the tactics since you said there is already good leadership for the runs.

 

Back in the day, when the game was live, it was REALLY hard.  Our standard tactic on Infinity was to start with TWO ENTIRE TEAMS OF CORRUPTERS.  This was becuase Tyrant's damage resistance goes up as his HP go down.  This was countered by Scourge doing more and more damage as his HP go down.  Nowadays, we can do it with no AT requirements.  Having said that, if you want to be super helpful for the attempts, make a character specifically for that trial (like I did).  I made a beam rifle/kinetics corr and selected every power and every incarnate power with an eye toward that one iTrial.

 

this is really good advice thank you.  This gives someone the ability out of game to absorb the info and prepare.  The true difference is leadership that actually rocks the socks off the Trial. (Which I found) But i for one am a slow learner and need to be able to see and think about things in advance of a list of instructions.  I will review this before the Trial this weekend as I am still learning about the prep work and tactics.

 

Thanks.

Edited March 26, 2021 by Snarky

[Ironblade]

Necroing this post to get some feedback:  What overall tactic is used on each shard and/or by each group that runs this?

 

1) Take Tyrant down to a specific HP percentage, then fire off everything (Ultimates, Lore pets, Destiny buffs, other inspirations, etc).

2) Fire off everything just before first engaging Tyrant.

 

On Everlasting, we used to use method 1 and take him down to 40% HP before powering up.  We now use method 2 and it seems preferable because having massive buffs before engaging results in less deaths, compared to buffing in combat.

[DreadShinobi]

Ideally you summon your lore pets and then cast pbaoe team buffs and team red insps immediately after lore spawn so that your lore lets are thoroughly buffed up as well.

 

Method 2 is for sure better but can also backfire if someone dies early and loses their lore pets, buffs, Insp load, has to retoggle, etc or can backfire is for whatever reason tyrant doesn't die before lore despawns - unlikely as it may be.

 

Replying to your earlier comment on kinetics, I find them to be highly overvalued for this task. Effective usage of team reds, personal red insps, amplifier, leadership-assault buffs, or even nature affinity overgrowth will more consistently keep league damage at its cap than kinetics will. For AVs in general without mob saturation and tyrant in particular where only a fraction of your league will be getting kinetics damage buffs. Overgrowth on the other hand will buff everyone (82.5% dmg buff for 60s defender modifiers)

 

Even if you are summoning lore at the start you can still incan in the middle of the fight to pop a stack of team red insps for everyone. 

[Shred Monkey]

On 3/20/2021 at 4:11 PM, Snarky said:

Any other tips are appreciated.  Thanks.

The most important thing is to not die.  As I understand it, if you die, Tyrant's (regen or resists?) increases.  This is how attempts fail.  Too many deaths so that the DPS is no longer able overcome the regen.  Thus, not dying is more important than doing damage.   The thing that most people die from is the "crackles."  When the warning comes, back away, stop attacking and keep moving until you see where the crackles of lighting are are, and you can see you're not in one.  Don't rejoin the fight until they're gone.   As you become better at identifying the crackles, you might be able to position strategically to sneak in some shots, but really it's best not to risk death.

 

1 hour ago, DreadShinobi said:

Ideally you summon your lore pets and then cast pbaoe team buffs and team red insps immediately after lore spawn so that your lore lets are thoroughly buffed up as well.

 

One additional point.  Pop the ultimates first, so that when you cast lores, etc, buffs, they're cast as level 54 and not level 53.

[Uun]

2 hours ago, Shred Monkey said:

When the warning comes, back away, stop attacking and keep moving until you see where the crackles of lighting are are, and you can see you're not in one.  Don't rejoin the fight until they're gone. 

I find jumping backward using Ninja Run works really well for this.

[Snarky]

11 minutes ago, Uun said:

I find jumping backward using Ninja Run works really well for this.

I have run this A LOT more since that post.  Getting comfortable being near the crackles and keeping up DPS is major important. We use a incarnate inspirations strategy. I burn two team reds and a team acc/dam when we summon lores. These are the big ones from luna.  After a couple crackled i do it again.  The whole league is similarly equipped and doing same/similar.  Avoid the crackle, keep DPS up.  I have also switched to an ice/cold Corruptor for most incarnate trials.  Pure DPS with a single target and AoE -res along with DoT Blizzard and Ice Storm work so well with Scourge.  Fully ranged and adding tovthe league’s ability to burn fast fast fast

[Ironblade]

4 hours ago, DreadShinobi said:

Ideally you summon your lore pets and then cast pbaoe team buffs and team red insps immediately after lore spawn so that your lore lets are thoroughly buffed up as well.

 

Method 2 is for sure better but can also backfire if someone dies early and loses their lore pets, buffs, Insp load, has to retoggle, etc or can backfire is for whatever reason tyrant doesn't die before lore despawns - unlikely as it may be.

Right.  I didn't go into detail when I typed "Fire everything off", but we use Ultimates, Hybrid, Lore pets, Destiny, other inspirations (in that order).

This way, everyone is buffed to the max when we charge in and it makes it MUCH less likely that people will die - compared to doing all your summoning/buffing in the middle of a battle.

[Glacier Peak]

42 minutes ago, Snarky said:

I have run this A LOT more since that post.  Getting comfortable being near the crackles and keeping up DPS is major important. We use a incarnate inspirations strategy. I burn two team reds and a team acc/dam when we summon lores. These are the big ones from luna.  After a couple crackled i do it again.  The whole league is similarly equipped and doing same/similar.  Avoid the crackle, keep DPS up.  I have also switched to an ice/cold Corruptor for most incarnate trials.  Pure DPS with a single target and AoE -res along with DoT Blizzard and Ice Storm work so well with Scourge.  Fully ranged and adding tovthe league’s ability to burn fast fast fast

Ice/Cold Corruptors are awesome! They've got it all and can be built to solo AVs/GMs or make a lackluster team better with added def shields and glorious debuffs. The three targeted AOE powers are awesome too and recharge really fast. 

[Li_Sensei]

Tyrant's big killer move is the ground punch (I *think* it's this one).  It's a PBAoE with (relatively) absurd radius (60ft).  If you're not running a lot of resist, or a sturdy AT, then it'll hurt, lots.  If you are one or both of those, then it'll just hurt.

 

And if you're a ranged type AT, then to reliably avoid being put down by it, you'll need to skirt the edge of your blast range.

 

For melee, you need to suck it up, and survive as best you can.

 

I hate that damn attack when I'm playing a squishier one of my alts.

 

The other alternative is the 'healing blanket cluster' approach I've seen used, where you stay in a tight group on Tyrant with the spamming of buffs, AoE heals and so forth, to survive by sheer cockroach resilience.  You'll still need to scatter like roaches on crackle though 😛

[Snarky]

We use a Hybrid  at Cosmic Council that relies on the incarnate inspiration and league buffs. Honestly if the fight goes over a minute you either need to burn nearly everything in the trays and hope for the best or prepare to get your head handed to you.  We run barrier and rebirth on most of the league with a couple incan for reposition of the entire fight when things get weird.  One tank and everybody on burn mode. Dodge lightning and burn.  Most effective when you see a league fat with blasters and Corruptors but we do it every weekend with whatever shows up.  Almost always 20-24 really good players.  I have learned a lot from those folks

 

i can count the number of times i have seen them fail on one hand.  I’m literally missing two fingers on that hand

Edited December 31, 2021 by Snarky

[Ukase]

On 12/30/2021 at 8:18 PM, Ironblade said:

Necroing this post to get some feedback:  What overall tactic is used on each shard and/or by each group that runs this?

 

1) Take Tyrant down to a specific HP percentage, then fire off everything (Ultimates, Lore pets, Destiny buffs, other inspirations, etc).

2) Fire off everything just before first engaging Tyrant.

 

On Everlasting, we used to use method 1 and take him down to 40% HP before powering up.  We now use method 2 and it seems preferable because having massive buffs before engaging results in less deaths, compared to buffing in combat.

The way we do it on Excelsior with Cosmic Council (and different leaders may use different strategies, of course) is method 2. Specifically: 
1. Heal up
2. Toggle Hybrid, take ultimate, then lore pets, in that order. 
3. AoE buffs - Destinies, etc. 
4. Pull Tyrant out of the bowl to hopefully avoid errant players accidentally using a quill/temp on the lights of the well. 
5. Set pets to aggressive/attack my target. Hop around to make sure you're not stuck in the mass of lore pets. 
6. It helps to have ONE person to remind folks verbally - and in chat - to refresh ultimates, hybrid, and to announce "Crackle" warnings. 

It's just my own anecdotal experience that the larger leagues will fare better. It is true that Tyrant scales down with the size of the league, but more leaguemates will give more buffs, increasing the odds of players surviving. But, a smaller league can accomplish it - it's just each defeat seems to be more critical. That's just anecdotal, though. 

 

Notes: I'm sure you're aware of the bug that can cause the trial to glitch out when you take Tyrant's HP down too fast. This is why some league leaders will ask that team reds not be used until called for, because there's no joy in taking him down too quickly and glitching the trial. Somewhere within these forums is a comment by one of the devs as to why this happens and how to avoid it. 

It's why when we do Triple Threat, we often forgo using quills to limit the odds of Tyrant glitching. 

The benefit to attacking Tyrant with Lore pets at the start, instead of 40%, is it limits the amount of time players have to dodge the crackle. I've teamed with some pretty ...well...not so agile groups on different servers, and some folks have no idea how to move out of the way. I don't know if they don't see the crackle message, or if they're afk, or if they just don't move fast enough...whatever it is - when they die, their pets die with them, and if you have to many deaths, you lose too much DPS. 
 

On the other hand, waiting until 40% lets newer players figure out the rhythm of dodging crackle and closing in for more attacks. So, it can go either way. 
 

[brasilgringo]

The biggest problem I've seen on our TFJ runs is that when people move to avoid the "crackle", the DPS stops and he regens.  Well that and dying a lot, but that's different.  Ranged toons thankfully can keep attacking when they dodge, so that's helpful.

[Snarky]

18 minutes ago, brasilgringo said:

The biggest problem I've seen on our TFJ runs is that when people move to avoid the "crackle", the DPS stops and he regens.  Well that and dying a lot, but that's different.  Ranged toons thankfully can keep attacking when they dodge, so that's helpful.

This used to be me.  Especially on my Brute. But even when I switched to Dark/Dark Blaster I would fly for the corners of the map at the word “crackle”.  Now….. not so much.  I step out to around where I guess 80 is?   Look for crackles.  See if my health bar is plummeting (invisible). Even comfortable cozying up to a crackle (not too close) but I am concentrating on keeping damage up.  Period.  After crackles over I like to zoom into middle of league and use Destiny Rebirth and pop a couple team incarnate damage inspirations.  Seriously that first minute means so much. You get through two crackles with most of league grinding him down and you are almost done.  The alternative strategies are, no disrespect, inferior 

[Ukase]

9 hours ago, brasilgringo said:

The biggest problem I've seen on our TFJ runs is that when people move to avoid the "crackle", the DPS stops and he regens.  Well that and dying a lot, but that's different.  Ranged toons thankfully can keep attacking when they dodge, so that's helpful.

I presume you mean Task Force Junkies public chat channel. Created by @STiTcH, arguably one of the more knowledgeable folks in game. 

[Lorraine of Pinnacle]

I know this is a bit late to this, sorry.  Ive done both methods.  With knowledgeable high dps characters, Method 1 is better.  Otherwise Method 2 is more likely to be a win. 

[Snarky]

Well…… I do this every Saturday night still with Cosmic Council on Excelsior.   On a Beam Rifle/Temporal Blaster.  I stay ranged and flying and just keep the fire hose of damage up.   Rarely do I have to stop DPS for more than a few seconds.   
 

Then we do super inspirations for team buffs and Rebirth And Barrier.  
 

Goes real smooth

[Ironblade]

3 hours ago, Snarky said:

Well…… I do this every Saturday night still with Cosmic Council on Excelsior.   On a Beam Rifle/Temporal Blaster.  I stay ranged and flying and just keep the fire hose of damage up.   Rarely do I have to stop DPS for more than a few seconds.

Yep.  My badge hunter is melee, but for the RHW runs I use a beam rifle/kinetics corruptor.  I can keep DPS'ing at range and fire off Fulcrum Shift when we all run back in.  We run this every Sunday on Everlasting.