The Church of Alvis

6 Guardians: Speedbump, Staris, NewFoundTerror, Petmidget, Furiel and Dashl

What can I say... I'm impressed..

Amazingly and by complete coincidence we had all 6 subclasses present. Beyond the helpfulness of Terror's self-rez capability, I would say the mix was neither an advantage nor a hindrance.

Part 1: We began with the door opening sequence. This is a matter of defending 3 "rings" from an onslaught of Vex waves. These waves vary, generally alternating a wave of normal mobs with a wave of 1 or 2 Praetorian's. The Praetorian's are essentially just named Minotaur's, and are the only mobs in this encounter that can 'reset' a ring. Otherwise this is a very straightforward fight. It took us a bit longer than it could have due to some losses and recovery, but we never completely wiped. This is good, but this fight is just to open the door to begin the raid itself.

Part 2: The Templar..... this fight is fun, frantic, frustrating, and full of mobs. There are Vex everywhere it seems. First phase isn't terrible, much like opening the door, this part is to first defend one central conflux, and then 2 outlying confluxes. If any (or enough) vex are able to sacrifice themselves to it, we all die. This was the easy part.... 2nd phase is to kill the oracles. These are just 4000 watt lightbulbs that kill us with a musical curse of some sort... not sure what's up with that really. Kill the oracles before they kill us, while the entire room pop's with Snipers, Minotaurs, and Goblins. Easy right? Took us a few tries, but naturally we overcame and conquered!...... Phase 3 is the Templar himself. Bottom Line - this dude sucks. Impenetrable shield, Hits like a 18 wheeler @ 100mph, and the Harpy adds are annoying as crap. The extra mechanic of the Oracles is more of a nuisance but pretty manageable, though if you don't kill one, it marks the raid with a 'death mark' that will kill you in about 10-15 seconds unless cleansed by the Relic Holder. Unfortunately (and uknowingly) I placed Furiel and Dashl in a couple fairly deadly spots to begin with, but after a couple adjustments (read as failed attempts) we changed positioning and moved along. Terror was dong a fantastic job managing the Relic, which is the only way to get the Templar's shields down as well. Staris was rocking that side of the room clearing his Oracles and supporting Terror. Not sure how many times we tried this, but I'd say we were in that room a good 2 hours. Victorious Again! We get to move on to the Gorgon's Labyrinth.

Part 3: Gorgon's Labyrinth.... it's a dark spelunking maze with fluorescent Sonar-laden floaties that kill you with a stare. Not much here beyond staying low, slow, and quiet. We got it after a number of losses at the staring contest. The end of the labyrinth is more of a jumping puzzle to get across a chasm that probably goes to the core of Venus itself. We were all tired and a bit punchy at this point, but still determined. Dashl did his best impression of a Saturn V rocket heading straight down into the chasm by using his Fist of Havoc, which I found riotously hilarious. After many deaths to gravity, and the loss of Dashl to sleepytime, we all eventually managed to get across and into the final Room..... dun dun dunnnnnnnn

Parts 4: Atheon..... We didn't really do much here. We initiated the first phase of the fight, which is nearly identical to opening the door at the very beginning of the evening. "ring's" that must be controlled, which in turn activate portals. We didn't really go any further than activating these, and then we decided to call it a night. As a forwarning: Once we do seriously do this battle, it is a combination of EVERYTHING that we completed previously, with exceptions to the Gorgons. Also add in a desert, a jungle, and a pissed off time-bending robot.

Among all of this, one of my biggest observations: We all need to make sure we have a decent mix of damage types with our Secondary and Heavy Weapons. Most everything in this raid is susceptible to Solar and Void Damage. Some of it is far (Hobgoblins- Solar), some is in our face (Minotaurs- Void) . We need to make sure we have a mix of close and ranged weapons at our disposal. Even a non-upgraded weapon of the right damage type is probably going to outperform an upgraded weapon of the wrong type. Get a green weapon from a strike or something, and upgrade that. 2 bounties will usually upgrade a green pretty well.

All I have for now and I must say I had a genuine blast of a time. We made it to the last room in about 3.5 hours which I find very encouraging considering this was out first run ever. Let's keep it rolling, now that the 6 of us know what to look for. We will mix up the positions and get other folks on Relic duty, and nail this thing down to a science.

Please anyone that was there share any observations, ideas, or humor about this run!

The one observation I would add is on opening the door I wouldn't force different elements at each spot and don't know that it really helped and would suggest more towards making sure we try and balance gear more, may have switched Pet and myself simply because it seemed like Terror and Pet had the the hardest keeping the pad clear, which I do recognize will become less of an issue as we get better gear across the board.

All in all it was great. I think we could easily get back to that same point in 2.5 hours based on getting through the door faster, and what we learned of Part 2, and knowing where the chests and exit is in the maze.

Staris wrote:The one observation I would add is on opening the door I wouldn't force different elements at each spot and don't know that it really helped and would suggest more towards making sure we try and balance gear more, may have switched Pet and myself simply because it seemed like Terror and Pet had the the hardest keeping the pad clear, which I do recognize will become less of an issue as we get better gear across the board.

I agree with this. My only thought at the time was that the Praetorian's are susceptible to void damage, so having that mix might help. In hindsight I would certainly say it was moot. Gear/Level balancing probably is the way to go and let the weapons do the work. Definitely need to have that weapon damage mix though, at least IMO. I am carrying a Legendary Void Fusion Rifle, which eliminated the Praet's shields in 1-2 hits and sometimes staggers them. It was very helpful along with the void grenades.

Would definitely like to have impressions of this phase from folks on the those other pads...

On the first phase in the middle the praetorians can be tricky to deal with because they come from each side and for the person actually standing in the circle when they come from the left if you are facing the door that person is screened from that praetorian until it's almost right in the circle. On a couple occasions I punched the praetorian to push him out of the circle and pull down his shield with my void punch.

Two thoughts I had, one is that before we go on the raid people get on a little early and go on patrol or some other way to have full ammo at the start. The other would be that especially for the opening of the door portion people should pick up "The Swarm" heavy machine gun. It's void damage the rips those praetorians up and the vanguard vendor sells it iirc.

For the jumping puzzle I figured a way at the end where you can get across in 3 total jumps. I want to experiment with it a bit more to be sure but when I got across successfully that's how I did it and I don't think it was a fluke.

Furiel wrote:The other would be that especially for the opening of the door portion people should pick up "The Swarm" heavy machine gun. It's void damage the rips those praetorians up and the vanguard vendor sells it iirc.

Yes yes yes... Void damage stuff for this first phase!

Furiel wrote:For the jumping puzzle I figured a way at the end where you can get across in 3 total jumps. I want to experiment with it a bit more to be sure but when I got across successfully that's how I did it and I don't think it was a fluke.

Nice find, hopefully you can flesh it out and fill us in

Also, as far as peeps jumping on early to ensure you have full ammo... it's a good idea as long as its possible. We all know that RL has its way with us and we cannot always do things the way we want. My suggestion to this is to ensure you always have ammo synthesizers, as there should not be any reason to use one during this phase except bad luck.

The jumping part is pretty easy, skip the first platform. It just takes some anticipation. Watch a couple rounds yo get you spot the when the first platform appears you jump to where the second platform will be. It will spawn while you're in the air. Then mjump to the third and go from the third to the wall. You take a buttload of falling damage on the last jump but I survived it so that should work and is much easier. Not sure if it was a fluke or not we'll find out in future trips.

Make sure someone hits the share button the next time I do anything crazy. I would love to see another view of that rocket jump.

haha, I wasn't in a prime spot to share it really... but I suppose I should get my ShareFactory options all set up....

Honestly all I saw was a hypersonic nametag go up, then DOOOOOOOWWWWWWNNNNN. I was dead @ the checkpoint when it happened

I thought I was going to make it, but I bounced off the wall just above that ledge.