As one plays City of Heroes, the character gets to add more powers at every other level. Sometimes, the choices made for that character don't really work out...

For starters, Blue Arc Anom is a Blaster type, best at shooting bad guys from a long ways away. We don't have the hit points to survive close combat. Foolishly, I had gotten melee powers, those for close range attacks, such as punching attacks. I had also gotten some poor power pools, such as Assault from the Leadership pool, which is best suited for Defenders.

The game developers realized people were having problems wanting to change their weapon options, so they added a Respec Trial, similar to Task Forces, in which a team of four to eight heroes undertake a quest: Protect the Nuclear Reactor in Terra Volta.

Sounds simple, right? Problem is, the bad guys spawned for the missions are at least one level above the highest-level player on the team. Usually it goes up to 2 levels above. Making it harder to hit them and easier for them to hit you (word is the bads are relatively weak compared to normal enemies at those levels, but still it's not good). Also hard is that people drop out, much like they do for Task Forces. The emotional stakes are higher here, however: people DO need the Respec option...

Blue Arc Anom is my highest character, now at level 30. As soon as he made the basic level needed (24), it was right about the time the Respec Trial was offered. So, eager to make changes, I hurried over to Independence Port and...

...Failed four times to get a successful Respec done. Twice the mission clunked out at the third mission. I'll explain the four missions of the Trial in a minute. Once we actually got as far as the Reactor itself, but sloppy play (especially by me) led to too many people dying and we failed to protect the Reactor, so...

I swore off doing a Respec forever. I said, to Hell with it, I'll stick with my powers and not worry a damn thing about them.

Then I got to level 30 and got a power I shouldn't have: another melee close-range attack. I thought it was a long range attack (Thunder Strike) but it's not, it's a super stun punch. With the snickering of my online friends echoing in my ears, I broke my word and decided to try...one more time...at a Respec.

Mookie, one of the best online friends I've got, agreed to help, and was level 31, well within range to do so. She'd already done a successful Respec, actually I think she'd done two, so I figured it would finally work. 'Course, the damn game crashed: mapserver errors froze us out. I grumbled a bit and Mookie went on to get about 4 levels above me within a week.

For myself, I tried another go at the Respec...and died once during the Third Mission. Which wasn't the problem: everyone else on the team was dying too and not enjoying it. We decided to try to skip the early floors of the third mish, try to skip past the cannon fodder to the Main Boss Man. The mission only requires you kill the Boss and his guards. Anyone with Teleport (Recall Friend) and Stealth (Invisibility) could sneak up solo then bring everyone else up to complete the mission. Problem was, noone on our team had both. The closest we had was Fuzzy-Elf, who had Recall Friend and as a Scrapper had quick healing powers. He volunteered, buffed up his Heals ran through about 300 Raiders...and it worked! Until he tried to find a safe spot near the Boss to try and teleport us, at which point he died. Still, I recommended him to a supergroup 'cause the guy was fearless and good in a fight... anyway...

Mookie levels quick because we've got other friends, two Tankers Sophie and Terror Goddess, who have designed themselves to be unstoppable killing machines. All you do is sit back in safe distance and let them do all the work (called Power Leveling). They can take on guys 2 levels above them, entire groups of them, that's how good they are (Blasters are lousy for Power Leveling, compared to a well-built Tanker). Sophie has other characters as well, a Defender known as Weather Wench (she's made the covers), and Wench was stuck at 29 because Sophie was focused on getting that char leveled first. So I whined wheedled and complained well enough to get Sophie to switch over to Weather Wench to help out.

For the rest of the group I invited in Heart Breaker (29), a Scrapper with good durability, Inv. Iron Man, a Blaster who really is invisible, and Red1, a Tanker who wasn't as tough as Sophie is but Hell he lasts longer in a fight than I do. Wench showed up, our Defender with healing ability (a much needed trait on any TF or trial), and we started up.

The First Mission is easy: Contact Jason Serano. One character goes do that, usually a Speedster or Flyer. Terra Volta is tricky to travel, flight is best to get over the high walls, but that's me. Once Jason tells his sad story (about a man who meets a woman during the war...wait...)...

Second Mission: Kill 25 Sky Raiders. Sky Raiders are the main bad guys in Terra Volta (you rarely see them anywhere else). The guy in the image on the right, the one shooting right at ya? Sky Raider. They can hover, use sniper rifle, teleport, and fly skiffs (rocket -shooting minicopters). They're not fun to be with. Do not taunt Sky Raiders.

The image on the right is not from this hunt but from an earlier one: As team leader, I was the contact person who needed to stand by and get the Second Mission as soon as the First was completed. By the time I can fly into Terra Volta, a good team can wipe out 25 Sky Raiders on the main map area. At our level (29-30), against the 25-27 Sky Raiders populating TV, it can go quick and painless (anyone Respecing in the 24-25 range will need heals and hours of counseling). Once 25 Sky Raiders are pining for the fijords...

Third Mission: Find Sgt. Clayton and his men. Give them what for regarding unpaid parking tickets. The mission differ in location: sometimes in Kings Row, sometimes in Steel Canyon, once in Skyway City. Everyone travels on this one: Everyone is needed to get the job finished. This was in Steel, connected to Independence Port, so it wasn't too hard to get to.

This is the mission that separates the Archivists from the Part-Time shelvers. This is where the bad guys get to be 2 levels higher and more vicious than Karl Rove during an election year. You heard me mention the failed attempt with Fuzzy-Elf. Well, again we had a team with Stealth powers but no teleport. An attempt was made to escort me, the only teleporter, to the elevators to get to Clayton: It failed, killing me and making life miserable for everyone else (who died during the cleanup). So we decided to slog through it.

The slog-through wasn't so bad: As a group of five, the spawns were smaller in number than they would be for groups of 6 to 8. We knew where to go, so we avoided the passages of extra Sky Raiders as we didn't need them. We found Clayton on the second floor, in a corner reading Ayn Rand. Tsk. Overdue copy from the local library too. We beat the snot out of him. We traveled back to IP, and I got the last mission:

Fourth Mission: Protect the Reactor.

This is actually in two parts. The first part is to clear the control room and rescue the scientists who have the Key. Easy. Very easy. Except for the montrous count of Sky Skiffs shooting long range missiles up your ass.

You'll notice I don't have any pictures from that part, or from the Third Mission. This is because you're so busy trying not to die you don't have time to pose for a Polaroid.

And die we did. I died twice at this point. Not a good thing. Very painful, very debt-ridden. It took some time, but we did the smart thing:

1) You have to open the doors on each side of the room to find the scientists, but our stealth people did the door opening, and checked before we attacked. We found the right rooms and avoided getting ambushed.

However, with the Skiffs and Jump Bot bosses covering the main floor, we screwed up:

2) Never allow your attacks to aggro (bother/wake up) the other groups you are not yet attacking. If you do so they will wake up and attack you. And then you die. Like I did.

Weather Wench came up with a good idea at one point:

3) Disorient or knockback the opponents with a whirlwind attack of sorts, and jump back to the safety of the hallway. Let the bads come at you one by one (as each shakes loose of the disorient) rather than as a group.

We also knew not to get too close to the glowing barrels. Those blow up on you. I didn't know that the one earlier time we had gotten this far.

Once you get the room cleared and the Key secured, blow the barrel-bomb at the reactor hallway door and BE CAREFUL. There's another bomb behind that door. Hover in with a flyer who can teleport (me). Now, this circular hallway has a large group of Raiders waiting. The smart thing we did was:

4) Fly over the group of Raiders waiting in the hallway: don't need to fight them. Fly between the rafters, well above the floor, and then teleport the group to safety at the main door to Part Two.

5) Red1, the one non-flyer, forgot to wait and got blowed up at the door by the second barrel-bomb. Lesson learned. We waited and got him back in.

Part Two is the Reactor itself: the antechamber that needs clearing of minion types and Jump Bots, and then the Reactor Room. In the antechamber you get belts of coolant, needed to repair the Reactor during/after the attacks (the Reactor is relatively durable. You really don't need to heal it until the last two waves). There's also a Reactor Buffer you need to successfully exist so close to the core: the red glow bubble you see in the photos following is the buffer bubble.

The attacks on the Reactor come in waves. Nasty waves. At least two Skiffs on each wave. By Wave 4, the waves have two groups of Raiders coming in opposite directions. The stress level is ridiculously high, no matter how we dealt with it.

6) Weather Wench ordered Inv. Iron Man to use his Trip mines, placing them about the Reactor. Minions and Portals come at the Reactor to destroy it, so the explosives blew them back from there with significant damage. Smart move.

7) The original plan was to charge up to the high level doors (eight of them) above the Reactor at each incoming Wave. We soon ran into a problem: the ones charging up there got killed awful quick: Heart Breaker and myself. This is the worst part of the Trial: without Rezzes or Awaken inspirations, we could not regenerate back within the Reactor: we had to go to the Hospital. Back in Independence Port, two maps away. With a travel distance that took us 4 minutes to make it back to the reactor, during which the surviving teammates had to deal with that Wave, as well as an incoming Wave. We also lost our coolant belts. I'm sorry, but given the severity of the mission, its difficulty level, the game designers ought to be nice about it and add a Hospital to the Terra Volta map to reduce the amount of travel time. Anyway...

We made it back in time (Wench, I should mention, is the best healer with whom I've teamed). We then settled on a new plan: wait for the bads to show, stay near the Reactor, and let them come to us. Not the smartest plan, and still prone to risks, but we didn't die on the next few Waves.

8) There are about 8 Waves. You know you are at the last Wave when there is a long break in the battle: if you are sitting there, asking where the Sky Raiders are, trust me it's the last Wave. About 3 minutes of waiting before they charge in one last time in both directions.

You will know the mission is complete when you get your screen message saying three things: Badge Earned, Mission Complete, and then a full-screen message offering a) RESPEC b) any number of Single-Origin (high priced) enhancements. The choice is for those who have already Respeced their character. I chose RESPEC, got the last badge of the mission, and we headed out the door: Survivors. Warriors. Winners.

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I respeced Blue Arc Anom soon after. It's a prolonged affair: travel to Galaxy City, find Jack Wolfe (in City Hall), and go through

1) Your power choices: You cannot change your original type (for Blue Arc, Electric Blaster/Electric Manipulation), just the powers. I dumped nearly every melee weapon I had, keeping only Electric Fence (no choice, you are stuck with it) and Thunder Clap (some range, good stunner). I picked up Charged Bolts (weak attack but quick to recharge), Short Circuit (some range and great Endurance Drainage) and Voltaic Sentinel (a pet drone that shoots at nearby bads for you). I kept Flight powers Hover and Fly, I kept Recall Friend (it's good for teammates), and I got Fitness powers earlier (Health and Stamina are must-haves). With a leftover spot, I started getting Concealment powers starting with Stealth (for those pesky door missions with millions of minions).

2) Your enhancement slots. You get two new slots each other level. I re-slotted my range attacks for more slots to include Damage enhancements, as well as Endurance Drains (electric weapons are specially designed to drain the power from bad guys, preventing them from attacking you). I tripled slotted Health and Stamina, although I'm not sure how many slots I do need to put there...

3) Place your Enhancements to the proper slots. When you re-slot, some Enhancements may no longer fit. Do be prepared to have leftover enhancements to re-sell once you're Respeced.

And that...was that. I go to sleep now. Night.

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Woke back up now. So the question is, will I do a Respec again?

Well...

Wittylibrarian has trouble: I got him Teleport as a travel power but it sucks, so I switched over to Superjump. Unfortunately I've now got two powers I don't use much on him, so he does need a Respec so he can get into a better power pool (as a Blaster he needs Health and Stamina too).

Vectura, well she's gotten defense powers that aren't slotted well, and I got one power (Repel) that's not really helpful (burns up too much endurance)...actually I got two powers that aren't really helpful. She's about 1 Level away from getting a shot at a Respec...and as a Defender with some healing ability shouldn't have a problem getting involved...

And Greystone...Oh man... I screwed him up royally as a Tanker. Not enough defense and damage resistance as he needs, didn't get the proper close-range melee protections because I wanted weapons rather than shielding. Either I start over entirely on him (tempting) or I work up to a Respec level and fix him then. It might be easier to start over...

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