FashionSense

FashionSense's Issue 9 Hamidon guide v2

Table of Contents:
1. Details of the Hamidon encounter
2. History, credits, and stuff
3. Hero strategy overview
4. Individual role details
a) Hamidon aggro team
b) Yellow mito aggro team
c) Yellow mito killers
d) Ranged teams

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1. Details of the Hamidon encounter

Hamidon is a level 45-50 raid encounter available separately to heroes and villains in the Hive and the Abyss zones, respectively. Hamidon only spawns when triggered by players. Hamidon spawns when a certain random number of DE monsters are defeated in the Hive/Abyss - the number is between about 8 and 50. After spawning, Hamidon stays up until defeated or server reset. While Hamidon is up, all DE monsters flee to large doors in the zone and disappear - they return immediately upon Hamidon's defeat.

The Hive and Abyss zones have a 50-player limit. They will spawn a second instance for the 51st player. Players can be locked out if they leave zone and someone else enters, so leaving the zone during a raid is not advised.

Since everything in the Hamidon encounter is level 50, players below 50 should be sidekicked up if possible. Level 50s are the most useful, not least of all because they don't care about debt.

The actual Hamidon monster consists of several parts:
- A large purple nucleus (Hamidon)
- 6 yellow mitos (Mitochondria Antibodies)
- 6 blue mitos (Mitochondria Electrolytes)
- 6 green mitos (Mending Mitochondria)
The mitos are arranged in 3 hexagonal rings around the nucleus, with greens on the inside, blues in the middle, and yellows on the outside. All mitos appear to be flying, but are actually perched on small invisible platforms. Mitos do not move and cannot be moved.

All mitos are believed to have mag 100 protection from hold and stun. Effects like sleep, fear, and caging have not been well tested because they are harder to stack in large amounts. Mitos are permanently immobilized, so controllers should always get containment damage. All mitos have extraordinarily high perception, 7845 HP, no damage resistance beyond the scaling they get for being purple con, and not much regen. They do not appear to require endurance for any powers.

The yellows, blues, and the nucleus all have attacks using "electrolytic damage", a special damage type not resisted by any normal powers. These attacks can hit entities under the intangible state, so illusion decoys, phase shift, and hibernate provide no protection. The only source of protection is a special inspiration called "Essence of the Earth" (EoE) that gives a character their archetype resistance max for 60 seconds against this damage (but not any secondary mez effects). There is a very rare bug where an EoE activates but seems to provide no resistance. No steps to reproduce this bug have been found; it appears to be random.

Essence of the Earth can be collected by defeating DE monsters in the Hive, the Abyss, Monster Island, or the north islands of Peregrine. When a monster dies, every player on a team that did damage gets a % chance of getting an EoE drop. Since the monsters always drop one regular inspiration, players must have 2 insp slots open to receive an EoE. EoEs can be traded, stored in SG bases, or bought/sold on the consignment house like any inspiration.

Powers of the individual pieces:

Yellow mitos

A ranged AoE with a massive range and very large area firing every 4 seconds for 522 + 5 ticks of 32 electrolytic damage, a knockback of greater than mag 12 (knockback IOs are generally not useful, but all knockback protection powers are enough), and a mag 6 stun. This attack is not autohit but has a chance to hit of 95% even against a character at the +def cap to all positional types. The yellows also have a PBAoE damage aura that ticks for 32 damage about twice a second and inflicts a mag 3 stun. In many cases, scrappers or brutes with the basic level of stun protection (mag -10.38) have reported sometimes being stunned by the AoE + PBAoE of a single yellow. There may be random duration variations that cause the stuns to stack beyond this level. Tanks, regen scrappers with resilience, or anyone with a clear mind-level buff (mag -12.975) is generally protected, although multiple yellow mitos can add up quickly.

Yellow mitos have very high defense against ranged and AoE. It appears that being at the to-hit cap gives a 95% chance to hit, but anything less will be floored at 5% * accuracy. Geas of the Kind Ones, blaster aim + build up, or other suitably high to-hit buffs can allow ranged attackers to hit.

Blue mitos

A single target attack firing every 8 seconds for 159 electrolytic damage, -20 endurance, -7.16mph movement speed, -50% recharge, and a chance of approximately 25-33% for a mag 7 fear lasting 4 seconds. The attack randomly bounces between targets like chain lightning. The combat log hit/miss rolls suggest that it has a 33% chance to bounce. The blues also have a heavy PBAoE endurance drain aura, possibly with an additional slow or chance to fear component.

Blue mitos have very high defense against melee and AoE, on the same level as the yellow mito defense.

Green mitos

A ranged single-target heal for 1205 that fires about every 5 seconds, and a PBAoE heal for 321 every 7 seconds. The single-target heal range is enough to hit any other mito.

A single-target attack firing every 6 seconds for 102 + 5 ticks of 16 toxic damage, plus a stacking -0.83% regen debuff and an estimated -75% heal debuff. This attack does not generate a hit/miss text in the combat log. It may respect some form of positional defense, because tanks with heavily stacked +def from Fortitude have reported a large number of "deflected" messages that must be coming from blue mito bounces, green mito attacks, or both.

Green mitos have a toggle shield that grants very high damage resistance and regen until the mito is held. This shield is visible as a transparent forcefield around the mito. Endurance drain does not turn the shield off.

Nucleus

A ranged AoE blast for 522 electrolytic damage, plus a knockback similar to the yellows, alternated with a single target attack for 522 plus a DoT of 10 ticks of 80 electrolytic damage. The single-target attack has a long lasting and stacking -0.21% regen debuff and -10% heal debuff. Both attacks are autohit.

The nucleus has 47,120 HP, very high damage resistance to all attacks, and very high regen.

The bubble of protoplasm encompassing the nucleus and the mitos grants a -7.16mph movement speed debuff and a +159.68ft jump height buff to anyone inside it.

The primary defensive power of the nucleus is its ability to respawn new sets of mitos. This ability is triggered when the nucleus reaches 75%, 50%, and 25% HP. When triggered, this power spawns an additional 6 yellows, 6 blues, and 6 greens in the same basic layout - with the rings rotated a bit so the new mitos are separated from any remaining old mitos. Fortunately, the respawn power does not recharge, so when the nucleus is brought down to 75% a second time, nothing happens. The devs have stated that this mechanism is intended to force the raid to take a certain amount of time, and there is no way to prevent the respawn. Therefore, the basic raid process involves defeating 4 sets of mitos in total.

When Hamidon is defeated, every player in the zone who did damage to the nucleus gets a reward screen allowing them to choose a random Hami-O, random pool D recipe, or an SO. The Hami-O and recipe rewards are on separate 24 hour per-character lockout timers. The Hamidon buds that used to spawn after Hamidon's defeat have been removed. Hamidon can be respawned immediately by defeating more monsters.

2. History, credits, and stuff

Issue 9 Hamidon is an enormous change from the old raid encounter, requiring radically new strategy. Many people have been involved in coming up with ideas and testing them, publicly or otherwise. My primary contribution, while I9 was on test, was advocating the idea that all 6 yellows and the nucleus had to be attacked simultaneously. Most of the strategy follows directly from that concept.

Most of the advancements since then, particularly the use of stacked Regeneration Auras and the idea of attacking all 6 blue mitos to divert healing away from the yellows, came from Virtue's raid community.

3. Hero strategy overview

1. Tank Hamidon and each of the 6 yellow mitos separately.
2. Kill the yellow and green mitos. Then kill the blue mitos.
3. Beat Hamidon down to the next spawn point, run away, regroup, and repeat.

Step 1 is the core of the entire strategy. If you cannot accomplish step 1, do not attempt step 2. Multiple yellow mitos shooting at your raid will wipe you, 100% of the time.

Step 2 can be done either yellows-first, greens-first, or just a mix depending on the AT balance. If you have lots of melees, do yellows-first. If you have lots of controllers and ranged damage, do greens-first.

The staging point should be everyone on south rock to maximize the AoE buffs. Some tanks or scrappers may have to travel a long way to reach their targets, but the buffs are more important.

The classic countdown is as follows:
1 minute to go - begin single-target buffs (CM, SB, etc.)
30 seconds to go - oil slick + kinetic buffs if available
20 seconds to go - all AoE aura buffs (RA, AM)
15 seconds to go - Hami tank(s) pop EoE and go
10 seconds to go - yellow mito tanks/scrappers go
0 seconds - main force go

4a) Hamidon aggro team

At least one tank and one empath. Typical public raids will want at least 3 tanks, 2 empaths, and a speed booster.

The following buffs are mandatory:
- EoE at a rate of one per minute. (It would be possible, but not easy, to use a rapid tank rotation and other buffs to do without EoE.)
- Clear mind or equivalent. As the first person into the goo, a hami tank will take a minimum of mag 36 stun from the yellows' alpha strike, and probably mag 14 or 21 fear from the blues.
- Real knockback protection.

The following buffs are recommended:
- Endurance drain protection. 6 blues doing -20 endurance each is 120 endurance lost. If you don't care about your toggles for mez protection, this may not be an issue.
- Slow protection, e.g. speed boost.
- Toxic resistance.
- Very high +def vs. all positional types.
- As much +regen as possible, even beyond the cap.
- A +HP power.

In general, a tank with EoE, 2 power-boosted Fortitudes and Adrenaline Boosts, Clear Mind, and stacked Regen Aura can survive against Hamidon and the green and blue mitos more or less indefinitely as long as most of the yellow mitos are being tanked by someone else and the buffs get refreshed from time to time. The tank will quickly be under a -100% heal debuff, but stacked regen buffs can outweigh the regen debuffs and keep the tank alive. Once the green mitos are down, two Adrenaline Boosts and no EoE is usually enough to keep up with all of Hamidon's damage by simple regen.

Stone tanks with Rooted, Granite, and Earth's Embrace have the most advantages, but Invuln and Ice are fine. Fire suffers because of its lack of +HP and reliance on a self heal that won't work. Ice can use Hibernate to get better +regen at the cost of not being able to refresh any outside buffs.

For less ideal setups, a tank with EoE and enough mez protection to stay upright can usually tank for a minute or two before needing replacement. If the yellow mitos are allowed to shoot at a single tank for more than a few seconds, this life expectancy goes down rapidly.

Punching Hamidon will hold aggro just fine until the raid reaches the point of actually attacking him. Taunt is, as always, the gold standard. Be aware of the position of the other raid teams and keep the AoE away from them. Most of the time a ranged team will start on the south side and circle around.

4b) Yellow mito aggro team

There are many possible configurations of yellow aggro control, ranging from integrating it with scrapper teams who are killing yellow mitos to having a separate team of tanks and support whose only job is to hold aggro.

Anyone trying to hold aggro needs to realize that yellow mitos have very high ranged and AoE defense. Anything other than taunt (autohit) or melee attacks will hold practically NO aggro. Even taunt by itself is often insufficient, because the duration is scaled down against the purple con mitos. When in doubt, punch the mito.

It is possible, by using EoE and very carefully refreshed clear mind buffs to have one tank hold aggro on two or even three yellow mitos. Aside from the increased drain on EoEs, it requires constant running back and forth to keep up enough aggro. Stone tanks generally can't do this because they can't melee the mitos and can't move around fast enough.

In most cases, one scrapper or tank per one yellow mito is a better idea. A scrapper (unless they are /regen with Resilience) will need a bit of extra stun protection from clear mind or O2 boost to ensure they don't get stunned. Clear mind will also protect from fear, which can be a big hassle. After a few minutes, endurance drain will often become an issue as well. Roving empaths and kins handing out buffs can make a big difference.

Ways to survive against one yellow mito:
- Stacked regen aura. For the first 90 seconds, having at least 2 (slotting dependent, so preferably 3 minimum to be safe) Regen Auras on everyone is enough to survive.
- One Adrenaline Boost is borderline. On a tank it may keep up; on a scrapper it usually won't.
- Instant Healing, with Dull Pain up and suitable slotting, can just barely keep up.
- With an EoE, the rate of incoming damage can be overcome by any regen buff or the occasional heal.
- Direct healing. One empath spamming heal other will usually fall behind, but there are lots of tricks like using Absorb Pain to catch up (much easier on a tank, with more spare HP) or even using Geas to just heal faster. Empaths trying to do this need to clear mind each other to avoid blue mito fear or accidental yellow splash shutting them down.

The most common ways used in practice are:
Lone Regen scrapper: 90 seconds of regen aura, then 90 seconds of IH, then EoEs
Other scrapper with empath: 90 seconds of regen aura, then 90 seconds of AB, then EoEs
Tank with empath: 90 seconds of regen aura, then 90 seconds of AB, then healing

4c) Yellow mito killers

Ideally, flying scrappers. Non-flying scrappers can jump to attack at a cost of lower DPS. Spines and claws scrappers need to realize that their ranged and AoE attacks are not effective (this hits spines really hard). Non-stone tanks also work. In more elaborate raid strategies, using ranged attackers with suitably large tohit buffs is also an option.

Any team of yellow mito killers should have 1-2 empaths or storms for stun protection, healing, and maybe a rez. If the raid has tanks taunting the yellow mitos from a distance, the yellow killers only have to endure the PBAoE damage; otherwise they have to look at the above section and figure out how to stay alive against the full damage output of a yellow.

After the yellows are down, this team or teams can help with the greens and blues.

A common setup is 2 yellow teams of 5-7 scrappers + 1-3 support each, dividing the yellows between them. On each team, 2 scrappers (usually regen) are sent to tank one yellow each while the rest of the team focuses on killing the third.

Another setup is a separate aggro team of 4 tanks or regen scrappers with up to 4 support that tank the 4 yellows farthest from south rock, and then 1 or 2 scrapper teams that start by killing the front 2 mitos and circling around.

Any yellow team support characters need to keep a safe distance from any yellow mito AoE blasts, and buff each other to avoid stuns and fears. After the yellows are down they should support the Hami tanks.

If the ranged teams can prevent the green mitos from healing the yellows, a dozen melees can clear the yellows within 2 minutes. If the yellows are being healed, this can quickly stretch out to "forever".

4d) Ranged teams

All remaining controllers, blasters, defenders, kheldians, etc. form the rest of the raid. Pets (except Phantom Army, which can steal aggro and contributes very little in the way of damage), debuffs, and AoEs are all fine, since aggro is being controlled. Spamming AoE heals is not a high priority. If the ranged teams are taking fire from Hami or a yellow mito, the solution is to fix the aggro teams.

The objectives of the ranged teams are to kill the green mitos and prevent them from healing the yellows. These objectives can be separated.

If you have 8+ controllers and 8+ blasters you can kill greens one by one relatively quickly. In this case the constant attacks being directed at greens and the steady decrease in the number of greens alive is enough to stop them from healing the yellows, although a few heals usually get through when the ranged teams go from one target to the next. If the ranged team is not getting the greens down FAST, fall back on the next paragraph.

If you don't have that many controllers or blasters a better tactic is to forget about attacking the greens for the moment and spread out the ranged team to attack ALL of the blue mitos simultaneously. Since greens heal the nearest target that needs healing, a constant barrage on all 6 blues will keep them busy. Actually killing blues is a bonus if it happens, but it is more important to keep all 6 under fire. Once all the yellows are down, regroup and re-focus all of the ranged power on killing the greens.

Or go for a hybrid approach where controllers hold one green (and maybe hammer it with pets or attacks) while blasters spread out to put pressure on all 6 blues.

During the attack on Hamidon, anyone with recall friend should move to a safe distance. Ideally, every team should have a recaller to speed up the regroup.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

We have a "life at level" stat in seconds. This is how long a character spent at a particular level, logged in. While not a perfect indicator of levelling speed, it's an excellent starting point.

[/ QUOTE ]

Now I'm really curious what this stat looks like for level 50.

[/ QUOTE ]

You mean how long it took you to level to 50? When you level to fifty, go find a NPC whose name begins with the letter "M". They give you the total logged in time for that character since creation.

[/ QUOTE ]

I mean how many hours my character (and all characters on average) have been logged in since hitting 50. I can figure it out for my own characters if I remember how many hours they had upon hitting 50, but the global average would be interesting.

[ QUOTE ]

We have a "life at level" stat in seconds. This is how long a character spent at a particular level, logged in. While not a perfect indicator of levelling speed, it's an excellent starting point.

[/ QUOTE ]

Now I'm really curious what this stat looks like for level 50.

Who am I?

TWO FOUR SIX OH ONE!!!

3. Hero strategy overview

A team of tanks with empath and kin buffs use EoE to tank Hamidon until most of the mitos are down, when they can switch to tanking with normal healing.

Two teams of flying scrappers with emp or storm backup and heavily stacked regen auras split up and attack all of the yellows at once. These teams are responsible for eventually clearing the yellows.

A main assault team of blasters, defenders, and controllers holds and kills the green mitos one by one, and then the blue mitos one by one.

Anyone with recall friend leaves the goo to a safe distance while everyone else attacks Hamidon and triggers the next mito respawn. Since there is no need for holds, this is an all-out all-debuffs all-pets (except Phantom Army) all-attacks zergfest. When the mitos spawn all raiders run for their lives, or get teleported if they don't make it.

Repeat until victory.

The staging point should be everyone on south rock to maximize the AoE buffs. Some scrappers will have to travel a long way to reach their targets, but the buffs are more important. The leader will call a 1 minute countdown:
1 minute to go - begin single-target buffs (CM, SB, etc.)
30 seconds to go - oil slick + kinetic buffs if available
20 seconds to go - all AoE aura buffs, Hamidon tanks pop EoE and go
10 seconds to go - scrappers go
0 seconds - main force go

4a) Hamidon tanks

4 tanks is the minimum. Taunt is almost essential, although just punching Hamidon will work most of the time. Tanks with +hp buffs are preferable, and they should pop them before going in. Self-heals are not useful. A good stock of EoE is required, and everyone in the raid should be supplying them. The other key piece is toxic resistance - the attacks of 6 greens add up quickly. Tanks should ask for toxic resist buffs any way they can get them - FF or sonic bubbles are good. Hibernate and Rise of the Phoenix are not useful, but Unstoppable can be very useful since surviving for 3 minutes is difficult.

The tanks should operate in pairs. The pair waiting outside the goo should be buffed and ready to go at a moment's notice. Since the aggro team has dedicated empaths and a kin, they should have SB and heavily stacked CM. Dead tanks will be extracted by recall friend and rezzed. Expect to survive about 2 minutes or less each time.

Be aware of the position of the main ranged team and keep the AoE away from them. Usually the ranged team starts at the south side and moves around in a circle.

Once the greens and yellows are down, the tanks should switch to being healed by the aggro team empaths to conserve EoE. With a bit of healing, rezzes will come up fast enough to keep at least one tank going at all times.

The list of things to defend against: electrolytic damage, stun, knockback, fear, slow, end drain, toxic damage.

4b) Tank support

2 empaths and 1 kin with all the usual buffs, at least 2 of them with recall friend. Their initial job is to buff the tanks with RA, CM, SB, ID, and AB, and tp+rez tanks that are getting low. Always keep the backup pair of tanks buffed and ready to replace the pair in the goo. Once the yellows and greens are down, move down into the goo to heal the tanks directly.

At least one recaller must leave the goo when the attack on Hamidon starts, to tp anyone who doesn't escape the respawn.

4c) Scrappers

8-12 flying melee scrappers. For the purposes of the Hamidon encounter, spines scrappers are not melee - they are ranged. Attacking yellows with a spiner is almost pointless. Regen with IH and resilience is the best secondary, but others are fine too. SR is the worst off because if they drop once they may have to wait for Practiced Brawler to come back.

The number one factor in the success of the raid is this: ALL OF THE SCRAPPERS MUST FLY. It doesn't matter how they do it - Atlas Park safeguard jetpacks, Siren's Call jetpacks, or the actual power (Hover is fine) - but if they are jumping their DPS will be far too low. Group Fly is of limited use, since the scrappers are working in pairs far from each other - one group flying scrapper could carry one other.

Scrappers will be divided into two teams, each with 4-5 scrappers and 3 support. If there are more than 10 scrappers, the remainder should form a roving third team. The two teams divide up the yellows in half, and then each team lead assigns their most reliable 3 scrappers to individual mitos, and gives the support and extra scrappers one of the main 3 to follow. Ideally, the fastest travellers should get the north side mitos.

At 10 seconds on the countdown, all scrappers should have several regen auras stacked up and rush to their assigned mito. Do not go straight through the goo to the farther mitos - go around the edge or up high. Fly up to the target and start pounding on it. If the target is being healed, in all likelihood someone else's target is not being healed, so keep pounding. When one mito drops, the scrappers on it cycle around to the next one.

When the regen auras start wearing off, regen scrappers should pop IH. Non-regens may want to pop EoE or rely on healing at this point, depending on how close the yellows are to being done.

Things to defend against: electrolytic damage, stun, knockback, fear, slow, end drain.
Insps to carry: a couple of EoEs for backup, breakfrees, blues
Buffs needed: RAs, mez protection, damage buffs

Really enthusiastic scrappers could bring bio nukes.

Once the yellows are down, help with the greens if they are still up, and then use ranged attacks (if any) on the blues.

4d) Scrapper support

6 emps or storms, preferably with fly, at least 2 with recall friend. The primary focus of this team is keeping clear mind or O2 boost on the scrappers to protect from the yellow mito stuns. Add in heals and rezzes where possible.

Each support character will be assigned a scrapper to follow. Before the attack begins, cast buffs during the countdown - single target at 1 minute, auras at 20 seconds. Support should wait until the scrappers have a chance to attract mito aggro before going anywhere near the goo, and then *cautiously* move down to refresh buffs. The yellow AoE is enormous, so everything has to be done from max range. Support can also buff each other so they can take a hit and not get stunned all over the place.

Once the yellows are down, the empaths can contribute to healing the Hamidon tanks. During the attack on Hamidon, anyone with recall friend should move to a safe distance to tp anyone who doesn't escape the mito respawn.

4e) Ranged team

At least 6 controllers, 6 blasters, and various defenders. This team needs some holds, some ranged damage, and some buffs/debuffs/heals - the exact composition is not critical. Group flying teams would be ideal.

This team (actually several teams) will have a designated main targetter who directs the attack. The group will move right up close to a green mito, avoiding the PBAoE auras of the yellows and blues, and then circle around through the greens and then the blues. Stay at a distance from the blues to avoid the PBAoE when attacking them.

Controllers: Focus on holds. All pets are welcome, except Phantom Army which tends to get unwanted aggro.
Blasters: Focus on damage.
Defenders: All defender primaries have something to contribute.
Empathy - all buffs and heals, especially regen aura on the scrappers before the attack
Dark - shadowfall, heals, howling twilight, tar patch
FF - bubbles on the Hamidon tanks, dispersion
Sonic - bubbles on the Hamidon tanks, dispersion, resist debuffs
Kin - SP+FS before the attack if an oil slick is available, SP+FS during the attack, SB+ID on teammates
TA - oil slick before the attack, resist debuffs
Storm - resist debuffs
Rad - heals, AM before the attack, EF+LR on a mito

During the attack on Hamidon, anyone with recall friend should move to a safe distance. Ideally, every team should have a recaller to speed up the regroup.

FashionSense's Issue 9 Hamidon guide v1

Table of Contents:
1. Details of the Hamidon encounter
2. History, credits, and stuff
3. Hero strategy overview
4. Individual role details
a) Hamidon tanks
b) Tank support
c) Scrappers
d) Scrapper support
e) Ranged team

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1. Details of the Hamidon encounter

Hamidon is a level 45-50 raid encounter available separately to heroes and villains in the Hive and the Abyss zones, respectively. Hamidon only spawns when triggered by players. Hamidon spawns when a certain random number of DE monsters are defeated in the Hive/Abyss - the number is between about 8 and 50. After spawning, Hamidon stays up until defeated or server reset. While Hamidon is up, all DE monsters flee to large doors in the zone and disappear - they return immediately upon Hamidon's defeat.

The Hive and Abyss zones have a 50-player limit. They will spawn a second instance for the 51st player. Players can be locked out if they leave zone and someone else enters, so leaving the zone during a raid is not advised.

Since everything in the Hamidon encounter is level 50, players below 50 should be sidekicked up if possible. Level 50s are the most useful, not least of all because they don't care about debt.

The actual Hamidon monster consists of several parts:
- A large purple nucleus (Hamidon)
- 6 yellow mitos (Mitochondria Antibodies)
- 6 blue mitos (Mitochondria Electrolytes)
- 6 green mitos (Mending Mitochondria)
The mitos are arranged in 3 hexagonal rings around the nucleus, with greens on the inside, blues in the middle, and yellows on the outside. All mitos appear to be flying, but are actually perched on small invisible platforms. Mitos do not move and cannot be moved.

All mitos are believed to have mag 100 protection from most mez effects (hold, stun). Effects like sleep, fear, and caging have not been well tested because they are harder to stack in large amounts. Mitos are permanently immobilized, so controllers should always get containment damage. All mitos have extraordinarily high perception.

The yellows, blues, and the nucleus all have attacks using "electrolytic damage", a special damage type not resisted by any normal powers. These attacks can hit entities under the intangible state, so illusion decoys, phase shift, and hibernate are not useful. The only source of protection is a special inspiration called "Essence of the Earth" that gives a character their archetype resistance max for 60 seconds against this damage (but not any secondary mez effects). These attacks are believed to ignore defense and always hit.

Essence of the Earth can be collected by defeating DE monsters in the Hive, the Abyss, Monster Island, or the north islands of Peregrine. When a monster dies, every player on a team that did (enough?) damage gets a % chance of getting an EoE drop. Since the monsters always drop one regular inspiration, players must have 2 insp slots open to receive an EoE. EoEs can be traded, stored in SG bases, or bought/sold on the consignment house like any inspiration.

Powers of the individual pieces:
Yellow mitos - A ranged AoE with a huge range and very large area firing every 4 seconds for over 600 electrolytic damage (including the DoT), a high mag stun and knockback. The stun will overcome scrapper mez protection unless the scrapper has 1 clear mind, breakfree, or equivalent. The knockback will overcome 2 knockback protection IOs (mag 8), but will not overcome acrobatics or other knockback protection powers. The yellows have a PBAoE damage aura + stun that ticks for about 35 electrolytic damage very quickly. Yellow mitos have about 7800 HP, no damage resistance, and very high defense against ranged and AoE. Their regen rate is not particularly huge.
Blue mitos - A single-target fear + end drain + electrolytic damage + slow attack that jumps from target to target like chain lightning. The damage is less than 200. It appears that the "bounces" on this attack may be subject to defense and not auto-hit. The blues have a heavy PBAoE end drain + fear aura and very high melee defense. They also have about 7800 HP and no damage resistance.
Green mitos - A ranged single-target heal for 1205 that fires about every 5 seconds, and a PBAoE heal for 321 every 7 seconds. The single-target heal range is enough to hit any other mito. The greens have an unusual PBAoE that only hits 1 target every 6 seconds for about 100 toxic damage (total of the DoT) and a stackable 75% -heal debuff and very high -regen debuff. Green mitos have about 7800 HP, no damage resistance, and no defense, but have a toggle PFF-like power that grants very high resistance and regen until the mito is held.
Nucleus - A ranged AoE blast for 500+ electrolytic damage, plus a stun and knockback similar to the yellows, alternated with a single target DoT for about 800 total. The single-target attack has a long lasting and stacking 10% -heal debuff and a comparable regen debuff. Anyone being hit by these attacks will eventually be unable to regain HP. The nucleus has about 47,000 HP, very high damage resistance to all attacks, and very high regen.

The primary defensive power of the nucleus is its ability to respawn new sets of mitos. This ability is triggered when the nucleus reaches 75%, 50%, and 25% HP. When triggered, this power spawns an additional 6 yellows, 6 blues, and 6 greens in the same basic layout - with the rings rotated a bit so the new mitos are separated from any remaining old mitos. Fortunately, the respawn power does not recharge, so when the nucleus is brought down to 75% a second time, nothing happens. The devs have stated that this mechanism is intended to force the raid to take a certain amount of time, and there is no way to prevent the respawn. Therefore, the basic raid process involves defeating 4 sets of mitos in total.

When Hamidon is defeated, every player who either did damage to the nucleus or is teamed with someone who did damage to the nucleus gets a reward screen allowing them to choose a random Hami-O, random pool D recipe, or an SO. The Hami-O and recipe rewards are on separate 24 hour per-character lockout timers. The Hamidon buds that used to spawn after Hamidon's defeat have been removed. Hamidon can be respawned immediately by defeating more monsters.

2. History, credits, and stuff

Issue 9 Hamidon is an enormous change from the old raid encounter, requiring radically new strategy. Many people have been involved in coming up with ideas and testing them, publicly or otherwise. My primary contribution, while I9 was on test, was advocating the idea that all 6 yellows and the nucleus had to be attacked simultaneously. Most of the strategy follows directly from that concept. The biggest advancement since then comes from Virtue, with the addition of stacked Regeneration Aura to cut down the need for EoEs. In particular, the ideas in these two guides:
Virtue guide
Tanker tactics

So far, I have led successful raids both hero and villain side on test, a successful villain raid on Pinnacle, and participated in successful raids hero-side on Pinnacle and Virtue. This strategy can be executed in less than an hour once people are organized.

Some points about this strategy:
- Because of the heavy use of Regen Aura, this does not translate easily to villain side. It can be done with more EoEs on the brutes attacking yellows.
- It is possible to abuse some aspects of the encounter, for example by stacking tohit buffs to allow ranged attackers to hit yellows. I don't think this is practical or necessary for a public raid strat, so I don't bother.
- The recipe below is fairly flexible and can make some use of just about any powerset. In the interest of being clear and specific, I give a cookie-cutter formula - but the specific composition is not the only one that works. Some parts, like controllers and blasters, are very important but don't have any complicated requirements beyond "bring holds and damage", so I don't spend a lot of time on them.
- This strategy does not require extensive EoE farming. The EoEs acquired from spawning Hamidon with 3 or more full teams should be enough, although a stockpile of extras is always a good backup.

I know I've suggested it before, but Summon Teammates should really be craftable. With limited charges, it wouldn't make recall friend obsolete.

In addition, we need a craftable temp power that allows you to teleport yourself but only while dead. When I'm solo, carrying awakens is almost pointless because I can't get to a safe spot. So...emergency evac!

I have a couple of teleporting characters. None of them have Hover. Teleport is incredibly fast and I have never had a problem with falling out of the sky. Health and Aid Self are almost completely worthless for their status resist, so I'm not missing out on much.

I think teleport is a lot better than you seem to think.

Also, as far as team teleport (and group fly) for Hamidon go - I have 7 level 50s. Most of them have 3 or more banked respecs. I have no problem picking up those powers, and I think there are quite a few players in similar situations.

The bloom mitos are not in exactly the same positions as the original ones. The general 3-hexagon layout is the same but they are rotated around a bit.

I'm not really seeing this as an improvement on the griefing or leeching issues. Although griefers are more limited in how much damage they can cause (no yellow dawn), there can still be issues. Leeching is still easy, and potentially locks a useful raid member out of the zone. Relocating the raid to another zone instance is not necessarily easy.

Suggestion: The Hive always has at least (say) 5 instances open. That way a group can choose an instance without having to muck around trying to open a new one.

I'm amazed that I was wrong all this time to think that holds were the devs' "secret strategy". Even with the original mito attack range, Geko's strategy sounds quite impractical (people were considering exactly that approach, but the execution never came together to my knowledge) and completely excludes tanks, scrappers, and controllers. I don't entirely understand how making Hamidon immune to holds was not possible - if he can have a hold mag of 100 (now increased to 500), why not just make it mag 1,000,000?

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Properly done ambushes can be very dangerous. And a proper -travel penalty WILL suppress ALL travel enahncement, even the speed in swift.

Also its not the same to have ambushes that spawn on top of you and are locked down on you, than to have shivans jump for a boo, as these show up before they actually aggro and will forget you if you run away. An ambush will follow you until you stop, and if you didn't deal with 3 ambushes, once you get to the next metheorite they will catch up.


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I'm going to disagree with this suggestion (suppress travel, add ambushes).

You're trying to inconvenience the guy who solos AVs with Shivans. If the process of getting Shivans is made hard enough to actually inconvenience that level of player, getting Shivans will be very very hard for average players.

Wouldn't it be a heck of a lot more straightforward just to reduce the Shivan pet's actual abilities?

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The Shivan Temp Power is AS blatantly overpowered as the Original Nemesis Staff before it was adjusted. Therefore, its introduction into the game as it is now was a MISTAKE in the same way that a hole in the geometry is a MISTAKE.

Using a MISTAKE in the code is the same no matter how you attempt to rationalize it. It's an exploit.

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That's a very narrow definition of "exploit." By that strict definition, using Instant Healing or perma-Elude in I3 was an exploit.


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I, FashionSense, hereby confess that on various occasions in the year 2004 I did willfully and knowingly use the power "Smoke Grenade" on a wide variety of enemies, causing their chance to hit to drop to 5%. I throw myself on the mercy of the court.

Anyway, I think arguing over soloing TFs is kind of missing the point. Let's suppose I can duo TFs or trials in less than 30 minutes - hardly unreasonable for the shorter ones. Does anyone actually have a problem with accumulating rare recipes at 2 per hour? Seems like a lot of work. Comparable to taking multiple 50s and farming the LRSF multiple times per day...in theory you can get drops, but unless a major ebay economy develops, will anyone really keep up that pace? Anyone other than people twinking for pvp?

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Communication like this leads to honest evaluation of our tactics by both the devs and players.

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Communication like this discourages teaming and encourages a playstyle contrary to the game's design philosophy.


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The question is, do you want a game where the powergamers and the gold farmers have a code of silence about their clever tactics and try to fly beneath the radar? I'd rather have it out in the open. Not talking about it doesn't change what's possible.

This is not a very hard game, especially on heroic. The spawn size system is absurdly exploitable and most good solo builds can handle a mid-size team's spawns anyway. Thanks to inspirations, the only real roadblock is AV regen rate. Most players never go anywhere near the limit of what the archetypes are capable of except for powerleveling - and now potentially farming loot. Compare this to the elaborate tweaking of solo or duo builds in Guildwars for instances like UW and FoW...

Personally, I think farming rare recipes solo is not a big issue. I'd be more concerned about having 7 people log out on a TF until the last mission, and then finish it off and get 8 rare recipes.

Or just look at finding the easiest possible TF/trial to quickly farm:
- Cavern of Transcendence (invis+tp, very very short)
- Eden (zerging the titan, can be very short)
- Villain respec
- Sewers (exploiting with lv50s)
- Katie, Hess, anything short

<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>Unyielding Relentless Same as Tenacious, but spawns are one level higher than base
Invincible Ruthless Same as Unyielding but all spawns are TWO levels higher than base.
</pre><hr />

Hang on a second, Invincible is not double mob sizes. Without more testing I can only speak for soloing, but when solo the spawn sizes are the same as heroic.

Also, Tenacious/Unyielding isn't really "double" the number of critters. My personal theory is that it uses the spawn size for a team with +1 members.

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Generally missions are at a set level, the MAX level for the TF, so for Positron thats L15, for Synapse it's L20, for Sister Psyche it's L25. This can be bumped up by having more people in the TF, so a 7 or 8 person team will probably run into L16's or even L17's on Positron.


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I have seen enough blue minions on TFs to make me question whether the base is actually -1 to the max level. Since a team size &gt;= 6 bumps the mob levels by 1 and most TFs are large teams, the "usual case" may be equal to the max level.

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note well The calculation for RESPEC TRIALS is based on the HIGHEST PERSON in the team PLUS 2, up to and including max-level for the respec trial.


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There's no way it's that high anymore on heroic. I think it's +0 to the highest, and note additionally that the reactor waves can drop up to 2 levels below that. There can be green minions.

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This was my first attempt at a guide. Please be gentle.


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That's a good guide, there's a lot of superstition out there about these things.

This thread is getting off track. There are no snipers in the PI safeguard mission - I've cleared the map. I've only done a couple of lower level safeguards, but they had no snipers either.

The point is that in safeguard missions, the ordinary street mobs (not mobs in side missions, not the groups with keys) have increased perception, or bugged AI, or something.

Logically, there is something different about those mobs. Notice that they can and do attack destructible objects within their aggro radius, but they don't do it until they get "woken up". Maybe that non-standard AI scripting is causing them to "wake up" when a player comes near regardless of stealth so they will start smashing things, but then they aggro on a player because the stealth check has been bypassed.

I noticed today that all Malta minions have enough perception to see through cloak+SS. They can't see through cloak+SS+smoke grenade.

I haven't played high level heroes lately so I'm not sure if that's new.

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Don't believe us? Do some data mining after 2 weeks and see how many people are ACTUALLY using the buffs, then do post your enlightening results to show us whether we are wrong or you are.

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I am very curious about what the actual numbers on use of these buffs are. I can't justify the expenditure of salvage for a marginal buff (I would barely even consider making a side trip to the base for a small 15 minute buff if it was free), and although I haven't followed this thread in detail, I don't know of anyone actually using empowerment buffs regularly.

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i'm not sure if anyone has tried it, who knows the out come if they were set for the level but i quess worth a try. I'm sure you would find out right away since there are only 5 missions... if anyone trys it pls fill us in...


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The test team tried to scale the level down by exemplaring everyone to 45 or 46. The minions scaled down, Crimson scaled down, the Future Phalanx scaled down...but the Vindicators stayed at their fixed level (54 at the time). Obviously we didn't get past the Vindicators at +8.

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This is per character. So to crack one villain in a timely manner you new about 3 SF raid ready toons per 5-8 SG members to get off 3 enhancements in one day.


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Indeed, I'm suddenly more motivated to find a role for my stalker on a Recluse team.

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NOTE: You can only earn the The Lord Recluse Strike Force reward once every *24 hours* This is by design to help prevent farming.

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Per account or per character?

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Brutes have a single target taunt effect in their Primary.

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Brutes have a 5-target AoE taunt in their primary.

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Is this confirmed by a redname anywhere?

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It's confirmed by my combat log every time I use Taunt.

However, the person I was replying to was actually talking about Brute punch-voke, which is indeed single-target. I misinterpreted their original post.

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We have one reported case where Statesman called down giant monsters on a group (and got a slap on the wrist for it).

So they probably grief regularly (which is why they don't post quality that they used to...) and want to make it easier to cause mass suffering.

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Wow... way to take something out of context and create one helluva conspiracy theory out of it.

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That is one awesome conspiracy theory. Cryptic Studios is actually not a game-development company trying to make money - they're a club of MMO griefers who cleverly designed an award-winning MMO to lure players in so they can be viciously griefed by shadowy dev figures who are immune from all authority MWA HA HA HA!

Zeb Cook left because he uncovered the truth, and the truth was too evil even for Lord Recluse.

The guy spamming racist epithets on AP broadcast? That's actually Cuppa.

Slow GM response time? The GMs are actually hanging out in your timed mission, watching you sweat and listening to you swear on team chat.

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I predict a server will accomplish this soon. I also predict that after it is accomplished, interest in it will significantly drop off. Servers that raided daily will cut back to 1-2 times a week.

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What do you mean, accomplish this soon? Multiple servers have had successful raids since these changes. Pinnacle has had two successful raids and no failures - the rush of people playing 40+ villains has cut our daily raids to a couple a week, but we're still kicking.

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Because, if a critter is Held, Slept, or Stunned, by definition, it can not attack. If it still attacks, then it's not Held, Slept, or Stunned.


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I direct your attention to Carnival Illusionist Phase Shift, and Longbow Spines Warden Quills. There are very few enemy powers that can be used while mezzed, but it is not unprecedented.

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What other attacks?

Hamidon has one attack.

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They're probably counting the 2 mito spawn powers and the cytoplasm slow effect as attacks.