It finally happened! Bianca and I got flagged for the Planes of Storms and Valor last night. That is huge accomplishment and a huge relief for us. We were coming up against the wall where most of the people we want to play with are flagged and we were not. It is tough to ask people to give up the accelerated exp of Tier 2 just to hang with us and we are really happy to not have to do that any longer.

The Plane of Justice is a pretty cool zone, maybe the coolest Tier 1 zone. I had only been there once to group with some high level friends and I had to be DotH (drag of the helpless) to the camp in Death Row. So I hadn't seen anything except the GY and DR. The trials 'room' is just amazing. No other way to describe the rotating star field with the Tribunal standing in frequent judgement.

The guild turned out big time to help 4 or 5 of us get flagged. Many to buff and many just to cheer everyone one. After each run, which takes about 10 minutes, there is a 30 minute reset time. During the break in the action the monks keep us amused by screwing with the Tribunal or warping in guards and kiting them around. I think they had rezzed Inyiin about 4 or 5 times when we left. Rokken only once, I think, hard to say, he never stands still.

Anyway, the trial, this cool. I sort of cheated a bit. Not much, but some. I was second in line to go, so I targeted our Guild Leader and trial cleric Seyah before she went in with group one and then cast Bind Sight to her. Now I could see the trial room. From her, I targeted the prisoner and bound sight to him and watched the show. Kind of exciting to see the executioner coming to kill 'me'.

Four waves of four spawns. When a wave spawns the executioner begins walking to the platform. If you kill one of the mobs, he warps back to the back of the room and begins again. Once the fourth mob is dead, he despawns. You get maybe 2 minutes between waves. After the last mob of wave four dies, the Prime Execution spawns and AoEs your ass with a 250 pt AC debuff. He is supposed to hit pretty hard, but our tank didn't lose agro during my fight, so I can't say.

I used the same Bind Sight trick to watch Bianca's fight too and help her with targeting. Not that she really needed it, but she was nervous and it gave me something to do besides chewing my nails.

Our buff team gave me full raid buffs plus Primal Avatar, usually reserved only for the MA/SA due to mana costs. All I can say is that I want more of that. It doesn't stack with Force of Nature (20 ATK ranger buff) and Wolf Form is not recommended in PoJ, even still I had an ATK of 1631! Parsed the logs from those 13 fights and I did an overall DPS of just over 60, with a range of 40 to 114. I was mashing the assist key the whole time to be sure I was always on the right target and hitting at the earliest possible, so that probably accounts for the low side results since the 'fight' as far as the parser is concerned starts with the attack command and I started many OOR for a bit.

Even with a team that was all 63+ other than me, it was still touch and go there at the fourth wave. This is not an event to take lightly. However, if you want fun, I would suggest that it's possible to do the trial for practice and exp. I would like to see the other trials at some point too.