Rikti Comm Officers, of course, spawn Portals, whence issue a number of Rikti soldiers of an higher level. Portals stay open for 2 minutes before “dying,” during which more soldiers continue to arrive. COs are Minions, as are the spawns, and until now, you’ve gotten XP from the COs and big XP from the Portals — you don’t get XP from the spawned soldiers, so that people don’t “farm” Portals for XP (gakking each soldier as they arrive).
Some people attack COs right away, so that they don’t pull up the Portals — but Margie and I have usually found that the Portals are incredibly good eats, and a few of the higher-level soldiers manageable, So the trick is attack folks around the CO (e.g., the Guardian, or the Lieut on the team), then gang-bang the Portal as soon as it goes up, usually limiting the soldiers to only a couple.
Alas, it appears that with the Rikti War Zone, a new exploit was born. People were going in, triggering the Portals, then doing one dinky attack aon them and scramming. When the Portal collapsed / unspawned / “died” in 2 minutes, they were the only ones to have done damage, so they got all the credit. This would only work in an outdoor zone (to allow running) that didn’t need clearing, and where there are a lot of Rikti. I.e., the RWZ.
So … up on Test today, a new twist. Portals (sob) no longer give XP. Instead, the COs willl, though remaining Minion-level, give Lieut XP. So there’s no point in letting Portals come up (or in taking them down if you can avoid them once up). Just frag the COs first.
Pity. I expect the net XP from Rikti teams will down from this, and the excitement as well.
The funny thing is that Rikti are so easy for my Tank that I really don’t pay much attention to the various kinds of units in a spawn.
Unless it’s one of those Mesmerists. THose guys I LOVE to hit with Total Focus, Energy Transfer . . . chain stunning bosses FTW!
Am I worried about them? Nope . . .it’s just fun!
Ice/EM Tank says: Rikti stay crunchy in Milk! Yum!
Rikti have some particularly strong bosses, but the grunts are, indeed, plenty crunchy. Our mains — scrapper duo, blaster/tank, controller/scrapper — have always plowed through them. That made the portals good eats in the previous setup. Now they’re just less interesting to be fighting.