FashionSense

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PA drops are inaccurate. I've been on the ground, with PA centered under Hamidon, and watched the mess.


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Maybe your illusionists don't know how to drop PA accurately. I don't have a 45+ illusionist so I don't know how it's done, but our illusionists seem very good at hitting any spot they want.

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Also, air dropped PA was used to grief Illusions a couple of times in the past. Once the fire is redirected from the centered PAs, the agitated mitos are reminded that there are soft lil squishy guys right nearby. Once the air-PA despawn, the Illusions start taking damage/getting held to death etc.

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This doesn't even make sense. Mitos do not get "agitated" or "reminded" of anything - they just shoot at whatever is at the top of their aggro list. Friendly mobs get aggro by attacking, by proximity and threat level, or by transfer to a caster when their own pet despawns. There is no possible way to grief someone by taking the aggro of a stationary enemy that only has single-target attacks.

PA dropping is not a question of cowardice, it's about efficiency. PA dropping illusionists are in no danger, so they require no healing, no support beyond group fly and speed boost if convenient, and they never die. They can keep dropping PAs no matter what else is happening, and the PAs hold a predictable amount of aggro.

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Not bad general advice. You missed the Warshade hold power Gravity Well from your list though.

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Gravity Well is an immobilize not a hold, at least thats what it's tagged as in the power list. Therefore it shouldn't be on the list.

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Gravity Well is definitely a hold, although it comes with a Superior DoT (5.55 BI according to hero builder).
Gravimetric Snare is an immobilize.
Gravitic Emanation is a disorient.

/level 37 warshade

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Your guide is fantastic, but we do things slightly differently on Champion...where you mention putting the raid lead on follow I believe, we mostly get a bubbler and put her on follow, and add the targeter to server friends and click through his targets.


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That would be our normal choice, but a couple weeks ago we got into a situation where all the bubblers at raids were inexperienced and didn't want to be saddled with being the main follow. We compensated by making someone else follow and just having the bubble follow them.

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I don't know what server you are on, but I and some others convinced everyone on Virtue long ago to NOT air drop PA. It is horribly inaccurate, and draws aggro to the caster if things are marginal in illusionist count. This is not an "every raid" tactic.

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PA dropping is not inaccurate - we tell the illusionists where to drop and they do it. Any aggro on the illusionists is irrelevant because they are far out of attack range.

The drawback is that dropped PAs don't attack, so they hold aggro less solidly. But since the phase shift nerf, the difficulty of keeping illusionists alive on the ground when PAs expire and transfer aggro to the casters makes up for the inconvenience.

We have very good results with 4 illusionists (maybe 3 with speed boost) and group fly - they hold Hami aggro until we can get a tank in (after less than 10 mitos), and continue to hold maybe 50% of mito aggro through the whole mito clearing. That's a pretty good return on the investment of 4 controllers and no healing.

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That's a very useful tip! I might suggest to try that at our upcoming raids. Off the top of your head, can you just name some of the powers that debuff regen and resist? (I'm a scrapper at heart and not too keen on controller buffs and debuffs and such ). I will also research the powersets to find out the desired powers. Thanks again- good info!

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Resistance Debuffs: Rad/Enervating Field, 2 sonic powers, Storm/Freezing Rain
Regen Debuffs: Rad/Lingering Radiation, Rad/EM Pulse, Dark/Dark Servant, Dark/Twilight Grasp, Kinetics/Transfusion

It doesn't take many regen debuffs to have a major impact (basically zero regen rate). Freezing Rain and the heals are kind of lag-inducing and there aren't a lot of sonic defenders, so the debuff phase usually comes down to a bunch of rads using EF+LR+EMP and dark servants being allowed.

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What do you mean by this? When everyone comes to Hami for the attack phase, it evidently will cause lots of lag to the point that holders can not only lose sight of Hami but sometimes even lose sight of the pets they're targetting, and thus holds on Hami can be lost. Just want to verify if you're only using ranged attacks at this point. If there is a way to bring Hami's health down to defeat and avoid this lag, that would be very helpful. Please give more detail on this. Thanks!

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The current Pinnacle strategy is known as "attackless" since we have no attack phase as such.

When the raid leader is confident that Hamidon is held, they call for resistance and regen debuffs. With these debuffs, the damage from holds (with containment) and the allowed pets is enough to drop Hamidon's HP at a reasonably fast pace without adding any players (and very few additional powers) to the mosh pit.

This has been extremely effective in avoiding crashes.

See also my summary of the powers, reorganized by AT here.

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a tank shouldnt need a self res

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Reading between the lines you're saying that tankers should never die.

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More like saying that tankers shouldn't expect to die more than other ATs that don't have self-rez powers.

"Here, take this self rez power instead of a power that helps you survive or kill things. You're going to need it."

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The big gremlin comes out when you kill enough of the little guys, and you can do this yourself if you don't believe it. Only takes about 45 minutes of your time.

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So last night my VG wanted to get everyone the Surging badge. We went to Cap, summoned Deathsurge, and killed him. One team didn't do enough damage to get the badge, so we summoned him again and killed him again.

It's a real pain to wait around for gremlin respawns, but Deathsurge shows up right on cue. I don't know how much more evidence anyone wants.

Now Scrapyard...that could use some testing. Does his crowd of followers count towards the next spawn? What's the number? If I get the time I'll go on test and try it out.

Aside from Taser being a dick, if anyone believes that he's just flat-out lying about getting a PM confirming the Deathsurge trigger...then there's no difference between him posting "I got a red-name PM about Deathsurge" and posting "From: CuppaJo, Date: 1/14/2006, Deathsurge is spawned by killing 100 gremlins. PS: are we still on for bowling on Friday? Call me." There's no more or less hard evidence.

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So if you're claiming Ghost of Scrapyard is triggered, what's the trigger?

Do we have details on the Deathsurge trigger? Someone said 100 Gremlins, is there a timeframe for that?

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I haven't tested Scrapyard. Some have claimed it's 100 Scrapyarders anywhere in Sharkhead. He certainly seems to be up most of the time. It doesn't look like multiple copies are possible (unlike Deathsurge, where 2 copies are commonly observed).

Testing on the test server spawned one Deathsurge in an empty zone after about 120 gremlins and a second Deathsurge after about 120 more. There's conflict between the 100 vs. 120 numbers but the second Deathsurge showed up right on schedule. We were going for a third but the server went down for a patch - it's really time-consuming to wait for gremlin respawns at the limited number of sites so I haven't gone back to try again.

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It's also too bad we don't have the original assertion (from Positron, I believe) that no zone events were summoned at all. Since that original post, we've now gotten two exceptions to the rule, apparently from 2 different sources, and no cross-referencing between them. And people claim to be summoning Eochai and Jack, but I've never heard of an official post that would make them exceptions to the initial official posts of nothing summoned. And every monster with an odd spawn rate always raises the question if there's a trigger event people are unaware of.


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It's not clear to me that Positron's statement included CoV - it was made a while ago. I do believe that CoH zone events are not triggered. Jack and Eochai are part of a multi-stage wave battle, which *begins* at random but once it starts it's sort of player triggered in the sense that the leftovers from a wave can be cleared to make the event continue.

At this point it really looks like all 3 CoV zone monsters are triggered by kill counts. That sounds like a design decision to me.

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Actually I think it would be better if it was a temp power that only gave you "X" amount of charges. After all a temp power is restricted by either time or charges.

Then the question is "How should it be acquired?"
If they intergrated the worktables to make temp powers, then they can use that.
OR
IF it was something that you can buy from the base, then have it cost soo much.


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I was thinking a 1-use temp power that is acquired/purchased from the teleport device. When you use the power, you end up standing in the base beside the teleport device so you can immediately click on it and get a new charge.

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Return to Base Transporter
Originally suggested by: JazonZ
Category: other
Customizable? N
Type: crafted
Description: Creates a permanent click power for all SG members so they can TP back to base. Would add more value to having zone TPers.
Limitations: there would have to be at least a 15 second count down before you port so this can't be abused as a way to avoid dying in PvP or PvE.


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I want to expand on this idea a little bit. Being able to teleport from anywhere in an open zone to the base would be a really great feature. Characters below 10 or at the level cap have the option to kill themselves as a very useful means of travel - this is immersion-breaking. If we have the technology to beam me up after I rush Hamidon singing Kumbaya and attempting to give him a hug, we should be able to just beam me up and skip the painful part.

How to implement this? It has to be a temp power. Long interrupt time (10 seconds or so) so it can't get anyone out of combat. Maybe a high endurance cost? The animation could be setting out a ring of little beacons and then some kind of teleport animation.

It seems awfully powerful for this to be an unlimited ability available to all SG members all the time. So...put a little price on it so people have to think before teleporting. 1 first-tier salvage component (arcane for the arcane device, tech for tech) buys a character 10 teleports (or 20, whatever). Everyone gets their own little bank account of teleport charges.

It's amazing how easy it is to annoy stalkers just by using a little strategy.

On my fire/dev blaster, when I'm superspeeding around in PvP zones I change direction erratically, bunny hop for no particular reason, run in circles, and generally make it hard to anticipate where I'm going to end up. If I'm travelling from place to place, every so often I'll stop and throw caltrops with no warning - I've caught a couple of stalkers that didn't realize that I don't have to see them to guess correctly.

I think adding up the number of times I've killed stalkers vs. the number of times I've been killed by stalkers, it's about a 10:1 ratio.

Ordinarily I would not be enthusiastic about farming 333 Redcaps from one mission. But "Cap Buster" would be a pretty awesome villain badge title.

How about allowing villains to get it?

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* Quality of Life: Currently all powers that prevent status effects last between 60 and 90 seconds, making them impractical for team buffing. Is this intended?

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Yes. Things like Clarity and Clear Mind are meant to be used on players as a cure or quick preventative measure for status effects. Maintaining the buff on a full team is not the goal of these powers.

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* Balance: Clear mind's animation (4 seconds) makes prebuffing a large team prohibitive, and using it as a release deadly. (LadyMage)

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See note above.


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Now hang on a second. I may be misinterpreting which note that's referring to, but both of these drawbacks can't fit into the same design.

I have a level 50 empath, and my experience with Clear Mind is quite consistent - using it to cure a mezzed teammate during a hot fight generally gets someone killed because I'm stuck in a 4 second animation. I usually just buff before fights and hope it doesn't run out.

The power should either have a fast animation and short duration for use on demand (increase density) or have a slower animation and be used between fights to provide a lasting buff. The buff duration and recharge should dictate whether the buff is usable in combat - giving it a 4 second animation practically eliminates the option.

Anyway, I appreciate all the hard work you've done.

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Does anyone know for sure what causes mitos to split?


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No, but my personal guess is that when a mito hits 50% HP it has a 50% chance to split unless it is held or disoriented.

It certainly has nothing to do with AoE or cone attacks. I doubt it has anything to do with other nearby mitos.

The bottom line is that holding the mitos is relatively easy and prevents splits 100% of the time.

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Salvage Charts help understanding that it takes multiple Salvage parts to make a Material. (Material may not be a good descriptor since one of the Item parts is, in fact, Material. hrmmm... Parts!! That's generic enough! )
It takes several Parts of different types to create an Item.


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They're called components in the game. Crafting an item requires several components and possibly some special salvage that is used directly rather than being combined into a component.

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Scrolling up to the Tech Material Chart finds a lot of combos. hrmmm... It could be that any of these combos could be used to make a Tech Material. (Haven't messed with it yet, so I dunno. :P)


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Yes, there are a wide variety of ways to make any component. Tech Material, being a lowest-tier component, has a huge number of recipes.

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No personal project is this! A total of thirty-three (33) Salvage pieces are needed and they have to be able to go together to make the needed Parts.


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You're overestimating the difficulty. Any character played in SG mode up to level 20 or so should be able to make that item. By level 40 a single character has typically accumulated enough salvage to make several minor items and a couple of major items.

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Additionally, (and I'm REALLY fuzzy on this part) there could be an added increase to the Base's rent cost when it comes up. Maybe it is based on the 1% of the Group's total Prestige/Infamy. Maybe it's based on the value of BaseType+Items+Rooms+WhoKnowsWhat within the Base. Darned if I know.

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Placing an item has no effect on rent, since rent is calculated on net worth (value of all rooms/items plus prestige in the bank). Moving 50k from the bank into a placed item doesn't change the total.

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I was told at a raid last night that Hamidon and the mitos can not be deceived or confused. What I'm reading is going against that. Can someone else validate that they can be held?

Also I was thinking of killing all the mitos and leaving 3 or 4 blues and confusing them to help hold Hamidon. Problem is getting enough people to try something new (like pulling teeth).


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People frequently say things about Hamidon that are either not true or unknown. For example, I am perfectly confident that mitos cannot be teleported, knocked back, or otherwise moved - but I could be wrong. In this case it's pretty clear that Hamidon and the mitos can be confused if you stack enough confuse effects. The catch is that it might take a lot.

Blue mitos have a pretty standard hold - since it doesn't break through dispersion bubble it can't be an unusually high magnitude. So a confused blue would probably contribute less than the controllers needed to confuse it.

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The reason is as follows: Bubbles stack. and that defense is AoE. I have heard the arguement that Hami dmg is untyped and therefore indefensible, but Positron's explanation of defense indicates that the AoE portion should be kicking in - REGARDLESS OF TYPE. It is AoE all.

I know for a fact that I personally have had PFF up and when Hami started hitting the group and it protected me. Everyone around me went down.


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It is easy to test so I don't want to discourage anyone from trying it, but testing from a long time ago established that all Hamidon/mito attacks hit 95% of the time regardless of defense and acc debuffs. This includes SR scrappers with entire trays of purples, and stacked bugged smoke grenades.

Unless it has changed since then, evading the attacks through defense is not possible.

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Hammi taking heavy damage from confused mobs will prevent many or all of the HOs from going to heroes (big disappointment!)


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The reward system for Hamidon is that anyone who either hit Hamidon once or is teamed with someone who hit Hamidon once gets a drop. The proportion of damage done is not relevant. It does not seem likely that the XP division for confused mobs would change that.

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Also, note, when the confused summoner dies, the summon-ees will no longer be confused, and there probably will be some angry orphan mitochondria left after Hami goes down, which may mean a trip to the hospital or a pitched battle to survive and get the buds.


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As others have said, it has been established through experience that all mitos (original or spawned) die when the nucleus dies.

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Everyone except Mind and Illusion controllers and speed-boosting defenders should start prepping to fight remaining Mitochondria AS SOON as mitos appear to be confused, and to run in to finish Hami off ONLY if all he kills all the Mitos. Probably if there are more than a few remaining mitos, there will be a Hive-wipe following Hammi's defeat (particularly considering the lag), but it doesn't hurt to try.


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Some simple math here is in order. Hamidon has an AoE attack for 935 untyped damage that he fires every 3-4 seconds. Mitos have something like 23k HP. Hamidon would require well over one minute to wipe out the mitos by himself.

It is more complicated to analyze what happens when 50 mitos and Hamidon all start shooting at random targets. Disregarding the second spawn, I think the statistically expected outcome is for Hamidon to survive for more than a minute but die before wiping out the mitos.

Personally, I think confusing the nucleus is a losing battle. If it has confuse mag equal to its hold mag, then the situation is hopeless. Even if not, spawning massive numbers of confused mitos seems like a strategy with unpredictable outcomes. Confusing mitos to get some untyped damage sounds more interesting, since we know mitos can be easily held by a small number of controllers.

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This doesn't work and it never has. If the characters are not on the map, the spawn size is not increased at all. Unless you let all of the add ons come into the mission, then run through the entire mission to spawn every enemy, then have the lowbies leave the mission, you're not having any benefit.


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It absolutely 100% does work, and always has - on outdoor mission maps.

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Supposely (Positron said this in beta) Bosses and Lieutenants are suppose to build more fury then a minion but this was bugged. It was suppose to get fixed in beta but I don't think it even did.

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My subjective experience is that when a boss is beating on me, the fury bar rises significantly faster than if a minion is beating on me. I could be imagining it but I notice it often.

I've also seen the bar at what looks like 95%, never quite full.

SS takes it hard on the damage type getting resisted, but it has Rage and a whole lot of knockdown.

Chain knockdown is broken in PvE. The reason I can solo basically any elite boss has nothing to do with my secondary...it's just SS punch/haymaker/KO with air superiority to round out the chain. Bosses spend most of the fight falling down or getting up.