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In City of Heroes, players develop their superhero characters by adding powers and boosting their enhancements. Sometimes, a player chooses poorly, getting a power that down the road no longer works, loses effectiveness, or wasn't properly enhanced. In such times, the hero has a choice: He can work a Respec Trial with a team of heroes, and with the Respec change his/her powers for the betterment of all humanity.
Of
the three Respec trials, the Rikti trial comes at the tail end of the hero's
career (until, that is, the game devs open up higher game content to Level 75
like they're supposed to), and can be the least-needed Respec run in-game. Players
do need that first Respec trial at Level 24 because, let's admit, we make mistakes
on our AT builds that need purging and reslotting. That second Respec trial,
coming in the mid-30s range, is at a point in your leveling where you need ANYTHING
to get XP, and that trial is entertaining enough to run more than once (oh,
and some people need to tweak their slotting on certain powers). But the third
trial, that comes at a point most people are busy hunting AV-class villains
in Peregrine Island, or taking a whole day running a Shard TF.
Still, as a game experience it shouldn't be missed. And as the constant nerfing from Game Devs can demonstrate, people need all the Respec gifts they can get. And so...
The
Rikti Respec trial for Levels 44 and up begins, appropriately, in the Rikti
Crash Site (RCS), a special hazard zone reached through Crey's Folly. The RCS
is one of the most criminally underused zone maps in the history of online gaming.
You get this problem in CoH where the hazard zones have few heroes in them:
Perez Park; Boomtown; Faultline; Dark Astoria; Terra Volta, Crey's Folly; Eden;
Rikti Crash Site; all of them vastly underpopulated even though these zones
were built, and used early on, for street hunting.
The crime over the Crash Site is that it's got one hell of a premise: this is where a Rikti mothership crash-landed. You can see the ship's protective shield glowing from a mile out, and it dominates the landscape like no other structure in the game. Surrounding the crash site itself is Boomtown-like debris and a set of nasty high-level villains, but the rest of the map is a cool military-themed zone, with the military running a massive presence to secure the ship for reverse engineering purposes. There is SO MUCH you can do with this map, in this zone, such as:
For the Game Devs to not do anything with this zone is a massive crime. Outside of the Respec trial there's no Plus-40 door missions or storyarcs set into this zone. They're not even doing much in encouraging players above Level 40 to visit and engage in street hunting, it's practically the best possible street-hunt zone in the game. I highly encourage all Level 42 to Level 49 Tankers and Scrappers to work out their melee urges in this zone. There, I've done my opinion piece for the day. Now, back to the Respec trial.
The
Rikti Respec requires you start with a minimum of four players. I got two interested
right away: Yimmer and Death
Bull, both Tankers from the Angels of the Night SG. And then the
fun began: the trickiest, saddest part of getting any TF or Trial going is making
the minimum roster count and inviting enough people to join in. Unless you've
already gotten people agreeing to it well ahead of time (and this had been planned
during the day, rather than a week ahead), you're gonna be stuck for 20 to 30
minutes finding enough people. Adding to the difficulties was the need for balance
to the line-up: while I once wrote an all-Tanker team could survive anything,
in this post-Issue 5 and Issue 6 age of nerfed and weakened armor sets, we now
needed Defenders and Controllers to 1) keep us healthy and buffed and 2) keep
the mobs at bay while we mopped the floor with them. So we begged, bribed and
plotted any we could find. We finally located a Defender with Pandora's Wrath,
and then received word that a few people busy in CoV (argh, Villains) needed
to finish up and then log in with level-worthy ATs. After waiting for 20 more
minutes we signed up BigMoneyHustla, another
Blaster, and controller Miss Hancock. With
six players, and a good balance of aggro control, damage dealing, and buffage,
we started the Respec Trial.
First
mission: Defeat 25 Rikti in the zone. Gee, do you think it's easy to
find at least 25 Rikti standing around in the RIKTI CRASH SITE?! Um, yes it
is. In fact they're right over the high wall just north of the contact, just
jump over and engage. With a good-sized team you can get this done within 2
minutes.
This
automatically starts up the second mission: Defeat all Rikti in the Lab.
The lab in question usually ends up being in Peregrine Island. And this respec
was first set up well before Issue 5. Having the lab located in PI meant a horrific
long trip from RCS to Creys to Brickstown to Talos to PI. Serious accidents
occurred due to people yawning and nodding off and plowing into hostile mobs
en route. Thank Faathim the Game Devs added a portal jump between PI and RCS.
Cuts down on travel time, and who knows? Bonus: It can make it easier for the
high levels to go in and enjoy the Crash Site more often.
Anyway,
the door mission is straightforward: go hunt kill Rikti. The true objective
of the mission is to find a scientist that will provide a clue you can use to
find out who killed Mr. Body in… oh wrong game. The team had little trouble
fighting in the lab: our greatest problem was that we had all these Rikti Monkeys
to keel and we sadly already had our Zookeeper badges. Sigh.
Once
done, we had to travel back to the Crash Site for Mission Three: Place transmission
sensors at key spots in the Crash Site. This is a scouting mission, relying
on whoever can travel fastest across the zone. There's three spots to travel
to, creating a triangulation pattern. Once the sensors can triangulate, BOOM
you get:
Mission
Four: Defeat All Rikti at Base. This is usually in the far SW corner
of the map. The base is an abandoned office building in the zone, and what you'll
notice is how many floors there are. The team usually found ourselves fighting
a mob, walked through a hallway to an elevator, headed upstairs, and repeat.
We finally got to the last room about, what, six floors up? Seven floors?! Just
how much rent does the Rikti pay for a place like this? (Chief Soldier: "Rent
cheap. Low millage on property tax. Business district. Urban renewal via City
Council.")
We
also ran into the usual hassles of any team endeavor taking longer than an hour:
our teammates started getting phone calls from girlfriends (Wait. People have
social lives???). The key to this mission after the mobs are defeated is a glowy
bomb: with that, Mission Complete and out the door.
We
can call in earlier now, and from here we head to Mission Five: Protect the
Reactor! Oh NO! NOT AGAIN! Haven't they fixed that yet? (This is, in fact,
another gripe about the Respec trials: if you'd done one you've done 'em all.
There's been requests for a little more variety, especially at this level: Cough,
reactor in the Crashed UFO, cough.)
Anyway, now for the long travel time to Creys then to Brix then to Indy Port (IP) then to Terra Volta. One thing I like to do is ask if people have gotten that Meltdown badge atop the reactor dome, sometimes people just miss getting their Exploration badges. Don't think I asked this time, considering most of my teammates were Level 50. (insert grin)
Each
visit to the reactor follows the same pattern. Enter the foyer and beat the
small mob there to greet you. 
Then
enter the main control room floor and beat up all the bad guys there. Rescue
some scientists who tell you to find even more scientists who have the key to
get into the core itself. That means checking each door along the side walls
until you find the hostages who do have it. Then you deal with the proximity
bomb blocking the doorway: gotta sniper it, as even Tankers are vulnerable to
that thing (they could survive but the damage isn't worth it: a simple Blaster
snipe shot takes care of it, no problem).
From there you can either walk calmly and quietly down the hallway, that is as long as you avoid more proximity bombs and the mobs of bad guys waiting there for you. The usual approach is to have someone with Stealth, Fly and Recall Friend fly overhead to the other side and then teleport people past the hazards.
The next step is to enter the antechamber, defeat the mob there, enter the red bubblator (to protect against the the minor damage issued by the reactor), grab a coolant belt (needed to heal up the reactor if it gets damaged), and then charge into the reactor room and defend the core.
You get eight to nine waves, starting with two mobs, finishing up with three mobs worth of minions, lieutenants and bosses on that last wave. Survive all that, and you win. The trick is how you do it, and how quickly you get it done.
Surviving
the waves can be done one of two ways: You can wait for the mobs to enter and
charge the Reactor, using the core as an aggro source; or you can send your
Tanker(s) to face the mobs as they jump into the room at any of the 8 upper
floor doorways circling the room (sometimes the mobs will spawn right above
the core, but mostly they're at the doors). If you've got multiple Tankers,
you can take the more aggressive approach and charge the doorways. With Yim
and DB, that's exactly what we did.
The
advantages of charging the mobs as they come in is that the reactor itself will
rarely get touched. Interestingly enough, the reactor is rather sturdy, if only
a few bad guys shoot at it, it barely gets dented. Of course, the more mobs
attacking it, the more damage it gets until it can be destroyed, so you gotta
get rid of the mobs ASAP, before the next wave arrives. The waves do not wait
for you to clear the previous assault: fail to clear, and you'll get swamped
awful quick.
The difficulty of the trial comes from the sheer number of Bosses you get with each wave. Whereas most door missions and even Task Forces don't spawn as many high level bad guys, the Respec Trials do. Each villain set you face in the reactors (Sky Raiders at 24, Freakshow at 34, Rikti at 44) brings with them different and difficult bosses. Sky Raiders come with both Jump Bots (standard issue melee-tough Boss) and Sky Skiffs (maddeningly destructive range attack Boss that can ruin your lives forever). Freakshow essential comes with Freak Tanks (very tough melee Boss), which unusually makes their Respec Trial easier to handle than the first. Rikti come at you with Chief Soldiers (standard melee Boss) with Mentalists (psi and sleep-mezz Boss), and while the Mentalists aren't as brutal as Sky Skiffs those sleep holds don't do squishies like Blasters, Defenders and Controllers any favors.
Tankers,
with their mezz protection armors, have no problems against Mentalists. Yim
and DB had few problems dealing with the mobs, other than the constant need
for Heal buffs. Pandora and Hancock did as best they could, while making sure
the Blasters Witty and BigMoney stayed alive. We had a few deaths, BigMoney
and Hancock each dropping once, but we cleared out the mobs, all eight waves
of them. And so...
We win! You can win a Respec to redesign your build, or if you're not interested
you win a ritzy SO enh. The Respec offer is only if you hadn't already taken
that choice from a previous trial run at that particular levelset. You can earn
up to three Respecs, one for each Trial. And that's it.
The reason Witty had run this Trial, by the way, was a need to reach Level 50. He was 1 and more than a half bars from leveling. Amazing, even with 5 door missions and massive waves of Rikti in the reactor, Witty didn't make it. All that XP of the Trial, it went one total bar's worth. So, just as a reminder, people, the Trial is good for getting the Respec: if you want XP, try the Shard TFs. (insert grin)
With regards to Witty's respec needs, he's reconsidering Aim and thinking about re-gaining Phase Shift, although it would mean shifting around powers and enh slots if he tries to get Phase Shift early enough to make it worthwhile.
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back | email me to tell me I should ignore Phase Shift and go with Leadership power pool... Oh Faathim no...
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