Marut

I have a few important questions for you, sir.

Who will be your snivelling, stupidly loyal to the death sidekick?

Will he/she be physically deformed, mentally unstable, or both?

Will these princess-related activities be geared towards death or marriage (If an evil necromancer as well, please check both boxes)

Do you, or do you not monologue?

What's your position on minions? Reward excellent service with one or more princess related activities, or grind under your bootheel regardless of results just to remind them who wears the robes in this joint?

Welcome home Shotty

A man, the victim of a horrible, awful crime, once famously and very publically asked "Can't we all just get along?". The short answer is: No. And maybe that's a good thing.

Don't take that as a ******** remark, please. It's just the truth of the species. That same guy was also a habitual offender, and all around not a great role model. The context of the specific situation in which anything happens tends to get completely blown away once it's elevated to a large enough scale. And when it hits a level where one or two people have control over something important or desireable, then personality conflicts get dramatic.

I like Cobalt, a lot. I respect his efforts in helping everyone around him, and I think he does a great service to the community here at large. Would I run BMT the way he does? Lord no. But then, it's not my channel, not my rules, nor would it exist and work as well as it does if those things didn't come into play. Never forget, that channel exists because some people took over the public channel predecessor to it and made it impossible to function. BMT is Cobalt's channel - he made it for the rest of us. It's not something we're entitled to, it's something we're priviledged to belong to. Getting angry with him for not bending his rules is petulant and foolish. It might be different if he were trying to control something public, but he's not - just because we like BMT and use it extensively doesn't make it ours.

That said, I will say that while Bud and I don't frequently see eye to eye, and I can find the outbursts and blind knee-jerk reactions that sometimes come from that corner to be... distasteful, I can't lose sight of the fact that not only is my viewpoint not shared by everyone, but that in more than one case, that same ranting blowhard has committed his time and effort, and that of his SG (which means his *** is accountable to them for whatever issues may have come of it) to taking it on the chin for server efforts and events. And while whomever you want can jump up and down and claim that this motivation or that is the real reason for doing it, in the end, it really doesn't matter. It's helped, and considering that this game is supposed to be leisure time for us, isn't that what counts? Bud saved the day in a few situations where by neccessity no single contributor got credit for it. Lack of public acknowledgement makes those situations no less important, nor makes him no less a hell of a guy for coming through.

Both of these people have contributed more than enough for any number of others to spring to their defense, but the forums shouldn't be a place to lobby back and forth for one person or another to change their mind. If we were addressing the community at large, that would be one thing, or trying to organize something big, fine. This isn't that though - this is a small scale thing, grown huge because of the personal influence of the people involved. It's an understandable side-effect, but still not appropriate. Speaking as someone who's been accused of megalomania on this server on more than one occasion, and who has screwed up in similar fashion before, trust me - this is probably best worked out by the two specific people most directly affected, and no one else. If they just can't work it out, pushing for one side or the other to cave will probably just allow it to happen again later.

Fact is, if everyone "just got along" around here, no one would ever learn anything from anyone else. And there's a LOT to learn from the players on this server. Oh yes.

The drama on this server might not be understandable to people outside it, but keep in mind that dramatics aren't always the result of cries for attention - it's frequently the result of people who actually care about something they see as valuable. I'd prefer to play in a place like that personally - makes me feel like playing and having a good experience isn't just for me, it helps promote the same on a visceral level for others too. It's a good feeling, IMO.

I should be done with work by then. Count me in.

Not a lot that annoys me at this point, but there HAVE been a ton...

Removal of base raids

Level 50 Peacebringers fleeing in terror from level 45 Devouring Earth Thorns, screaming "OMG what is that?!? Help!!" in broadcast....

Lowbies asking an FF/Rad defender for a PL...

Dirty Fire/Mace tankers herding up all the Nemesis on the docks and then annihilating them for gobs of xp between 41 and 45 while my poor fender gimps his way through the scraps for a "Defeat 10" mission ::Shakes fist at Ace::

Hordes of heroes whose declared purpose in their background is something akin to killing God and taking his wallet.

Prestige quotas

Considering that we're looking at attempting a raid with all just one AT, and Tanks at that, this might be a square peg/round hole problem in regards to adapting common method to utilizing just the tankers. There might be a couple other options. Anyone got anything crazy on their minds?

Fan Mail!

Pokeball, Goooooooo!!!!

Rest also puts a toon into "Only Affecting Self" Status, which as I recall makes the damage/taunt aura ineffective. It won't turn it off, just suppresses it. The resistance debuff from Rest doesn't seem to be indicated on Paragonwiki or the like, but it's definitely there, and it's fairly huge.

Problem with just looking at the regen rate as "capped" is that that number is a percentage of an individual tanks hp. Unless we assumed that any given tank is at permacapped hp, the numbers can actually vary by a decent amount - that's why I wanted to check on the actual hp/sec rate, because that's a target that can be aimed for regardless of hp total.

Which oddly makes Stone armor potentially valuable for this purpose if you have someone willing to alternate build for it. Earth's Embrace provides resist to toxic, and should therefore still work, as well as jacking max hp, which raises regeneration rate by neccessity. Rooted provides a fairly decent regen boost on it's own as well. I would like to see just how high one's regen bonus can get with Rooted slotted to the gills and a lot of recharge for EE. I'm sure it's not high enough, but might make a solid difference in how many people are needed for the job.

Any of the tanks out there that have volunteered for the Hamidon aggro job:

Have any of you tracked your regen rate after being hit with all those AB's? Is it usually capped? Anyone got some average numbers they could share with me? Would be appreciated

-M

I'm not going to wade into this, but I will try to make a couple salient points, and a little foreshadowing that might remind people why just putting raids together and doing them might be a good idea.


Point One: Hamidon always was, and currently is, intended to be the most difficult encounter in the game. His first incarnation was effectively just a big bully - a large group of entities, one stronger than the others, with loads of hp, lots of resistance, and massive untyped damage that made use of the best tech the mechanics of the game had to offer. It was that same philosophy that allowed him to be beaten - Once baked that way, it was a matter of playing by the rules and overcoming the numbers he had in each area of difficulty. Rinse, repeat. No one ever actually did it the way Emmert idealized, which was a massive, casualty-ridden struggle that could be barely overcome after much time and effort. We stopped seeing the Matrix, and broke the puzzle.

The second and current incarnation was intended to be both more difficult and less dependent on specific ATs. However, all that meant was that rather than making Hami a big, tough nut to crack however you try, they effectively made him a layered shell. Each layer needed a specific type of assault, each one available to all ATs in some form. The introduction of EoEs made it even more flexible. However, the raid retained the previous philosophy of “toughest encounter in the game”, and therefore took advantage of all the new tech it could.

The first incarnation of Hamidon took months for players to crack… in 2004-2005. The second incarnation took THREE DAYS from the time a raid-oriented tester started attempts to the first takedown. The first strategy wasn’t anything resembling what’s currently used, or what the Devs considered. It was completely crazy, utterly impractical, and used at least three totally unorthodox power combinations at the time that would have rendered it almost impossible to pull off publically (One of them leading to the famous “Oil Slick? WTH??” comment). How it worked isn’t important, but what is, is the comment that BAB had to say about it, which was that they had designed the raid to be zerg-proof, and this had proven them wrong. The first strat that ever worked on Hami 2.0 took all of three days to formulate and execute, on Test where raid groups are FAR from used to working together, and didn’t go at ALL as the raid was designed. I know this, because I ran it, and BAB said it to me afterwards – that and lots of laughing about the absurdity of how we went about some things

It also became clear, literally right after the defeat, that at some point in the future when the mechanics of the new entites became more clear to the players, that raids would be able to be done without regrouping, and probably in about 20 mins, through multiple teams adopting different tasks and consistently and autonomously performing them simultaneously. It also became clear that that would take quite a while for people to learn it by rote, and therefore, it was likely to stay as designed for a while.

In short, Hamidon has always been intended to work a certain way, and that way has pretty much always been blown out the door by the collective playerbase. I very much doubt that the Devs have a golden key strategy in mind – I have a hard time believing that the Dev team, smart as they are, can possibly come up with all the permutations that the players of this game can. We are the infinite monkeys on typewriters to their Shakespeare; no matter how hard they try, eventually we’re gonna find a way through what they give us through brute force, to the point where it’s too easy, and they’ll change it again. And when they do, they’ll adopt whatever new tech they’ve come up with to make him that much badder than before, and we’ll start all over again.

So arguing about methods here is actually pretty pointless… Not only are there very clearly a whole bunch of ways to do it, and do it well, but there always has been. Furthermore, the method matters little compared to the ease by which it’s done. The faster and easier it is, intended that way or otherwise, the more likely it is to change anyway.

And that’s the somewhat foreboding part of this epic-length post, something I already told Amy I was afraid of a couple months ago: They changed Hamidon the first time shortly after every server began consistently running raids in about 30 mins or less with around zero casualties and no gimmicks. We’ve managed to hit that mark, and, oddly enough, we have an entire issue (Issue 19) coming up that’s supposedly focused on end-game content. I sincerely believe that we’re going to see a new incarnation of Hamidon fairly soon, and if that’s the case, we as a server need to drop any and all bickering over raid times, methods, etc. and get ready to work together again from the ground up. Otherwise, we’ll just end up squabbling while other servers beat down the new baddy.

Just raid, people Have fun, get it done. Support anyone that steps up, trained or not, and just make them happen if you want the toys. But don’t get stuck on how. It’s not all that important, and I doubt it will matter at all in a bit. You might want to collect on the rewards while they’re still easy though

-M

I'm made to understand that Tom Selleck was too drunk to act for most of Season 7 of Magnum, P.I., and the 'Stache was called upon to do all the work alone. It was also known for kicking the crap out of Higgens on a regular basis, and at least one lost weekend that Michelle will never forget...

As usual, I'm in unless life throws me a curveball

"You might as well take it off already; I can see right through them anyway"

"They call me Delivery Man... Have I ever got a package for you..."

and

"If you think the utility belt is cool, wait til you see my <censored>"

LS did EXTENSIVE research on Hamidon. Way more than the couple years of previous data collection. And because of all the effort put into it, it was too valuable itself to be shared with the populace, only the result of it. And thank god for that, because immobs turned out to be more important than holds, and while holding him worked occasionally, as long as he was immobilized, success was assured.

I hate to say it, but LS was also responsible for one of my favorite experiences in game. After much huffing and puffing about Daytime raiders and how evening raids not on his schedule were bad for the community, he swore that he’d grief every one of them. To the point where he vowed to cause a yellow dawn at one. However, when the time came to gather for the raid, there was less than a full team with him in the Hive… Not really a real threat, as far as griefing goes.

A couple mins into gathering, though, I got a tell from one of my SG members that there were a LOT of SFers in Warburg, gathering nukes it looked like. Odd, but considering how handy those could be, it wasn’t really concerning. Until, that is, I got two tells out of the blue from SF members, or more specifically, former SF members. Apparantly, LS had called out the SG to gather nukes for the purposes of nuking Hami during the hold phase, specifically to lag the raid out and cause a yellow dawn. They’d never liked the griefing behavior, but they liked the SF group, so they’d tolerated it. Having the SG turn out like that for the purposes of sabotaging a raid that wasn’t his was too much for them – they were out of there, and just wanted to give a heads up.

This was a problem – Bud and PON had turned out in force to provide manpower for the raid, and we had a strong veteran presence as well, but it’s hard to prevent a mechanical lagging of the zone. What do you do about that? Then I got a tell from the same SG member that told me about them being in Warburg, saying that he was taking out as many as he could with his Stalker, but there were just too many of them to stop them getting keys. Light bulb! Looking at who was online, I found Ping, and asked if he could help said Stalker out. Ping replied with something akin to “We’ll see what we can do”, grabbed a few others, departed Eden, and started whacking SF in Warburg.

Unfortunately, a little later, I was informed that it was just slowing them down, not stopping them. There were a LOT of SF in Warburg, and numbers added up; they were killing em left and right, but it actually looked like all that had done was call more SF into the zone to help. So, with about 10 mins to raid time, I put up a Hail Mary, and sent another SGmate to Test. Why Test? Because that was where our at the time almost universally hated coalitionmates were spending all their time.

A few minutes later, I remember seeing “PVP?” pop into Arena chat as a team of HVND loaded into Warburg and began swatting bumblebees with extreme prejudice. And of course, when they showed up, a whole bunch of ESK and VORI dropped whatever they were doing and piled into WB as well to fight them, with more SF collateral damage . I never had the pleasure of seeing it, but I’m told that the carnage in that zone that night was epic.The raid went off without a hitch. Despite LS’s best efforts to taunt Hami (no one steals UMann’s agro), there was no yellow dawn.

Next to the first successful raid on this server, this raid was my favorite. Not because it was a particularly amazing raid, or because of anything I'd done myself, but because it demonstrated just what this server community can do as a whole when differences get put aside. Everyone may have had different reasons for participating, but the end result was the same. It reminded me of the fact that Superman’s greatest power (according to him) isn’t super strength, or invulnerability. It’s his friends. And this community has those in spades No SG, no matter how willful or angry, can beat that.

-M