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...

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...

Wittylibrarian is the next to get the Respec treatment. Once I had gotten him to level 26 I found his faults more glaring: his travel power SuperJump is ill-suited to a Blaster (you can land inside a group of high-level bads who will shoot you to death as you try to hop away: really, only Tankers and Scrappers should have SJ). His other travel, the one I immediately disliked, Teleport, well Hell that had to go too. I also needed to pick up the Health/Stamina powers from the Fitness Pool (should be required to all characters outside of Scrappers and certain Tankers).

Having survived the Blue Arc respec, I felt more comfortable getting Witty involved in his own Respec Trial run. So I went to the contact point and waited this afternoon. Noone showed, so I sighed, logged off, and worked on my Christmas tree. Then, after dinner, I logged back on.

I immediately teamed with Miss Bubbler, Force Field defender, lvl24. She had already tagged Wargazum, lvl27 Scrapper, for the team. Needing one more player (4 minimum), we kept calling for at least a Tanker or another Defender with heal powers (force fields are great, but still injuries do occur). While waiting, another team showed and were having problems of their own. After some haggling, we invited in Vega, lvl27 Blaster, and Palynne, lvl25 Blaster. Ok, so we were Blaster-heavy. Usually not a good idea for any task force. Suddenly, a stroke of luck: a character I've worked with before, F T Shadow, lvl27 Defender with heals aplenty, logged on. Palynne knew her too and we began negotiations. FT's partner in crime Capt. Burns, lvl28 Blaster, logged in a few minutes later, and that was the team.

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.

Same image as before: once again I forgot to take pictures until well after the mission was underway. This time, since I wasn't team leader, I joined in on the hunt, finding a relatively easy set of Sky Raider captains near the TV gateway. 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 differs 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, just like for Blue Arc's, connected to Independence Port, so it wasn't too hard to get to.

Two of our chars had stealth (War and Burns), but not Recall Friend (the needed teleport power). So once again there was a slog-through. We did get a few moments of death here and there, including one for myself, but we got through it. The biggest problem was preventing a blaster from drawing the aggro of the crowds, as SOME people (no, don't look at me, I waited) didn't wait for the Scrapper and didn't wait for the Force Field protections. Once again, we found Clayton on the second floor, in a corner reading Ayn Rand. Tsk. Same overdue copy from the local library. I can't believe we let him keep it. We beat the snot out of him. As a professional librarian, I recovered the overdue book for return. We traveled back to IP, and we got the last mission:

Fourth Mission: Protect the Reactor.

From left to right: Palynne, Vega, Witty, Miss Bubbler, Capt. Burns, F T Shadow, and Wargazum.

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.

This time we did a naughty trick before jumping into the building: 3 of us logged off by completely quitting the game (BUT NOT THE TRIAL ITSELF). After a few minutes, we logged back on. During that time, the remaining players went in, and the game was (we think) tricked into setting the indoor missions to the 4 players (meaning fewer skiffs) rather than the 7 (more skiffs than the US Air Force has planes over Iraq).

To my mind, it did work: there WERE fewer tough-ass Sky Skiffs shooting missiles at us. Still and all, the missions were still tough because we still had to check every door for the scientists with the key to unlock the main door.

There weren't as many deaths than when Blue Arc ran his missions: we kept close, stayed under the Force Fields provided by Miss Bubbler, and FT kept healing us as quick as she could. There were a few moments, in fact take a close look at the scene here: with some of us shooting at the Captains attacking us, FT is busy using her Ressurect power on Capt. Burns, who had died having accrued the unwanted aggro that sometimes gets one of us Blasters.

And below, well take a look. This is what happens when you don't take good care of your Force Field Defender. And that floor was flithy from when the last trial group was through here...yeech.

But I digress. We revived and moved on. Into the circular hallway, where we did have a flyer with teleport power (Vega) sneak ahead and teleport us past the large group of unfriendlies. We then charged through the second door into the antechamber (I mean that literally, SOMEONE went bulldozing right up to the Sky Skiff waiting inside. I mean...OUCH).

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 is the buffer bubble. Amazingly, Wargazum being a Scrapper didn't suffer too much, his internal regen powers keeping him healthy even after his red shield faded...

Interesting fact: a Force Field Defender can buff the Reactor Core with bubble shielding. Miss Bubbler kept an eye on that while the rest of us worried about the high number of Jump Bots charging at us...

We did okay, it wasn't until Wave 6 that someone died. FT's Ressurect powers kept us from worrying about traveling from the hospital back to the Reactor: we all stayed put, which was a great relief. I died once, during the Seventh wave I think, but all the Blasters died at least once during this round...

I also noticed something else this time around: the Sky Raiders weren't two levels above us. They were exactly the same level as our highest-leveled players (28). That meant we were going to do very well against them: they were within level-range of accuracy and damage, whereas higher bads are harder to hit and harder to kill. If this was an effect of the little 'cheat' we pulled tricking the game to set up for 4 players rather than 7, I dunno.

And here we are. WE SURVIVED!

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I respeced Wittylibrarian right away. It's a prolonged affair: travel to Galaxy City, find Jack Wolfe (in City Hall), and go through

1) Your power choices: I dumped nearly every melee weapon I had, keeping only the Power Thrust punch attack because that was automatic. I dumped all Jumping powers and dumped Teleport, keeping Recall Friend as that is helpful in team situations. I got Flight. It's a personal choice, and besides it's better for Blasters than Jump. I got Hover and full Flight, which is about it from that power pool. I got Fitness, picking up Hurdle, Health and STAMINA (the MUST HAVE power). I also picked up Stealth power pool for the door missions where I don't want to slog through a warehouse full of bads. I dropped Power Bolt as it was too weak a weapon, trading that in for Explosive Blast as a primary shot. I picked up Aim, and am going to see how effective that is (if I can increase my hits, I will love it).

2) Your enhancement slots. You get two new slots each other level. I slotted my blast weapons as high as I could go. Sniper and Power Blast are now fully 6-slot, with Torrent and Power Burst 5-slots. Health and Stamina have 2 slots, and I'll see how far I can go with that.

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. This time it wasn't so bad. I ended up with a few more Endurance Discounts than needed (now with Stamina, I can slot more for Accs and Damages). My jumping enhs, I kept one for the Hurdle power I got, while I needed to shop right away for the Flight enhs at the Talos magic shop. After that...well...

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

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Ok. Returned from the sleep and from a quick run with Witty to see how the powers worked.
Who's next on my list of respec-ing? Vectura's actually okay now, having picked up the Fitness pool: her force fields now work well with Stamina keeping them from chewing up all the endurance. As for Greystone Anom, well...I mentioned earlier I thought about starting over? I did. He's back to lvl 11, but this time he'll be better for it (fewer attacks, more shielding, and I'll get Provoke over the tamer Taunt power).

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