Paragon_Girl

Shocklingly the hero builder says 6.25% defense on SI, 3.5% on GI. However, the description on SI is out of date. These may be old pre-defense nerf changes.

Personally would agree. Don't slot for defense buffs, but energy usage is high. I slot 2 energy rdx on SI, I would suggest do that as a minimum.

Paragon Girl

Linkie for info. on post from Positron

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showf...art=2&vc=1

Paragon Girl

Some people would say regen is the king of scrappers, but I have never seen it said don't invite a scrapper to a team just because they are SR. If you enjoy your scrapper that is what counts.
If you posted your build it maybe that you get offered advice which can improve it, or it may be that they say it is as good as it can be. Unlike some scrappers I would personally recommend that you take all the secondary powers. Some don't but personally I recommend it.


Paragon Girl

Personally if I was starting up a new troller I would do ?/rad. Why? As a bet against the future. Could be I bet wrong, but that is the way I would go. What do I base this bet on? Recluse Strike Force (RSF).

Come I9 Statesman's Task Force (STF) should be here. If it has lvl 54 AVs, rads will be welcomed opened armed into teams. I personally hope the task Force is designed differently so that some powersets aren't seen as gimped, for doing it with, by many players. However, if they don't have so many tough AVs players on CoV may complain that STF is to easy compared to RSF.

Primary may be important, but more in terms of your playstyle than actual choice. Don't think there is a bad or good choice in the primaries except at certain lvls. If you solo a lot Illusion is hard at the lowest lvls owing to lack of attacks compared to powersets such as gav. However, Ilusion does solo well enough at high lvls (slows down between PA recharges though). Illusion is good for ghosting missions with invis. The other good thing about Illusion control is it has many "fire and forget powers" leaving you to concentrate elsewhere, eg send your PA into the spawn ahead and forget about them. Also with Illusion you can deceive those dreaded sappers, turning them on their allies.

In conclusion I would recommend a primary controller powerset that suits your playstyle with rad secondary. To demonstrate how significantly some players are taking the potential benefit of rads on any STF I can tell you that in my SG we have players who are/going to, lvl rads just for it. Of course it depends how much you want this toon to take part in a STF, and how they design it. Could be I bet wrong!

Paragon Girl

I have a elec/elec brute, he never got stunned or held whilst lvling in sharkshead. Have to agree the 2 obvious answers are your status protection shield was not up or energy ran out. As you say you had full energy sounds like your status protection shield was not up.

There have been problems in the past with toggles dropping after people have left missions and/or entered zones. Therefore, it's always been worth checking to see if the toggles have dropped after entering a zone. You could have put your shield up and had it dropped by this problem without realising.

Paragon Girl

The bubbles give about 4x the defense. Would suggest you try and fit them in your build and use them on your pets, they will live alot longer if you do.

Plus if another villain in your team has shields the defense from stacking shields is great.

I have the shields on my lvl 50 MM and would never give them up. They get to be a pain to apply yes, but so does having to resummon and upgrade pets who have died because they had no shield.

Paragon Girl

Regarding conserve power an easy answer is, if you have problems with running out of energy alot take it and love it WHEN it is up. Otherwise I wouldn't take it. It is great on toons with hasten as it is up more often and means you can use those hastened attacks and not worry about your energy. (I know this thread is about scrapper epics, but on a similar note, when I have hasten and conserve power up on my peacebringer he deals soooooo much more damage that I wouldn't be without either hasten or conserve power). Slot conserve power 3 recharge.

Regarding your hero planning and updating. If it is the right program try the following, then it should, hopefully update.

Select the following, setup, configuration, auto update. Then make sure the following option is not on, use a proxy server for connection.

Hope that helps.

Paragon Girl

If you are interested much more in teaming than solo play you could also consider ice melee to go with either Inv. or Ice.

In my opinion the damage from ice melee is truly terrible (frost is okish, as has wide aoe cone). So makes soloing painfully slow.

However, it has ice patch which will help manage aggro in many missions, especially at lower lvls. It will also help you survive longer at lower lvls. Enemies cannot attack you or any of the team if they are slipping on ice, hence less aggro on the other players.

Sometimes if the group has aggroed 2 spawns you can drop ice to make some of the enemy slip. Leave them slipping on the ice while you move to the second spawn and gather the aggro there.

Both ice and inv. are good solid tanks, but ice patch often helps add alot to that. It doesn't help with AVs and I recommend taking unstoppable if you go the inv. tank route, it may allow you to tank the AV long enough for the team to defeat it.

Even in I7 I have tanked +6 council, as the only tank on a team, on my inv tank thanks to ice patch.

Paragon Girl

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Masterminds and corruptors are pretty similar really, and yes reds help a lot. Well if enough people are interested I so far plan on starting it sunday at 11:00. I do want a few corruptors/masterminds with ok sets though.

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The thread got lots of views so you could try again giving longer notice and a different time. I can usually offer one evening a week or fortnight to help people on CoV with something. (CoH, or teaming with some1 from my CoH SG on CoV, takes up the rest of my time online).

I'm not convinced that you will get enough response to an evening time, but no harm in trying. However, a weekend day time is usually out for me, so I couldn't offer to help then.

Also I'm fully aware of the need for debuffs/buffs to suceed in taking on the final AVs. However, I'm not convinced that the strike force hasn't been a somewhat negative experience for some players. This may hold somepeople back from offering to join.

When Black Jon Budd was running his attempts he put me in every team I offered to join and had a 100% success rate when I was in the team. He completed it once with 3 MMs in the team, 2 being FF. On an occasion when the initial pull went badly rather than reset we did a frontal assault buffed by my vengance.

However, when the SF was run by other people my toon was often at the end of the wanted list because of the powersets. This may put some people of putting themself forward as they have been passed over before.

I hope the developers don't design Statesman's task force in such a way that certain powersets are seen as much more important than others. Otherwise we could have similiar issues with that.

Paragon Girl

You get a bonus for the first few members that join a SG, it was (and still may be) iirc in the region of 300000 total for the first 20 joining. So you can get a small base running quickly. If your number drops under this you lose the bonus for that person, but can earn the bonus back by recruiting back up to 20. (Someone may be able to confirm or correct those figures but they are the ballpark figures that I can remember).

You can look up how much the items you want to buy cost in the edit base/upgrade plot option in the base entrance.

If you then monitor how much prestige you earn in a week, you will get a rough idea how long it will take you to get what you want.

With 20 people playing frequently, I would agree you can get a nice base in a couple of months.

However, some new SGs have expressed an issue that once heroes get to lvl 35 they either earn prestige or influence to upgrade their enhancements. Therefore, they experience a fall of in prestige earnt.

This is not such an issue for older SGs, such as my own. They can fund new, lower level players, to run in SG mode by transfering influence from lvl 50 heroes so that new players always have the best enhancements.

Best wishes with your SG. Remember you face a lot of competition for players from existing SGs, so it can be a frustrating as well as rewarding task.

My supergroup tries to help new players/new supergroups in the game by offering some a temporary coalition so that that they can use our teleports, whilst they develop their base. If you want to join us in coalition, to use our teleports, you are welcome. However, as we are limited in coalition numbers we are allowed, will have to remove you from the coalition once your base has developed. This is so that we can help another new supergroup develop. Email me if you want to take up this offer.

Paragon Girl

I think it's great if you play either, not enough of either about. I'm not going to say which is better, people are entitled to their opinions.
The fact that force field has a few "meh" powers is great, gives you some you can drop to take elsewhere, but still do great job with your main shields. Only taking defection shield, insulation shield and dispersion bubble adds alot to a team.
Personal force field is fun in pvp, frustrates villains, & can save debt in pve.
Force bubble is situtional & can draw aggro, but can also be fun pushing enemy about. Again can be fun in pvp, frustrating some villains in getting to you.
I was in a team as an inv. tank doing Synapse task force with a controller who had force field secondary. Never had to worry about death once when I had bubbles on (and yes had taunt running all the time I was in combat). Actually most people agreed the task force was boring as there was little to no danager as the tanks had aggro and the tanks faced no real threat with bubbles on.

In my play experience I find few force field defenders or controllers. There seem many more toons with shields as options in use on CoV, eg force field MM or corrupters with shield options. However, it seems to me alot of players don't use shields, either because they get fed up applying them or don't value them enough.

In conclusion I wouldn't worry about the figures, both add alot to a team, and I would welcome both to a team I was in, if the appropriate powers are taken and used.

Paragon Girl

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Ahh, that's a shame, if you had less than twenty I can see you had an issue.

@Cognito: That was way back in the day. All you need was Rad Defenders w/snipe. Back then there's wasn't a range cap so you could snipe from outside Hamidon's bubble. They've also upped his difficulty since then as well I believe.

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They have increased hamidons difficulty many times either through buffing hamidon or through nerfing heroes.

Btw Union a little hint for hamidon raids. Your effort to reduce lag is what killed your raid from what I can tell. Hamidon isnt hard to take down if you do what you can to optimize a raid. Take time to tell people what powers to use and what not to use, take time to explain everything during the raid. Yes it will take 10 minuts, but you save 30 minuts because of lag.

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2 issues arise for me from this post.

Firstly, regarding lag. Everybody who had a hold was asked to use it. So we didn't reduce holds to reduce lag. Despite asking everybody who had a hold to use it I suffered no obviously lag during the holding phase, unlike every previous successful raid I have attended on Union. Not to say other people didn't get lag but that was my experience, that there were less people and less lag than successful attempts I have attended. We did plan for lag with the taunt team having its own jack frost to target through.

Secondly, regarding instructions. After the clearing phase I asked everyone (except taunt team) to go back up the hill so could give instructions. However, a number of people did not follow even this easy instruction.

In my initial thread I had asked for people to sign up to be leaders with the intention for them to relay instructions to their teams. However, if you look through the thread I had no one offer to even be the holding leader and many leader positions went unfilled. Unfortunately despite there being experience on the server no one who had previously lead a team raiding hami said it me, yes I will definitely be there at 5pm to lead a team. Whether a number of players have left the game or there is more committment to private than public raids, on hami, on Union, by an important minority, I don't know. Certainly I have helped out on every public raid, on Union, in the past year, that I have known of, and some characters I have met before I did not see this time. None of the first 3 illusion controllers I met had fly, and around 5pm there were 3 illusion trollers with fly at most. (Thank you to those who respeced hover/fly in).

However, as I have said before I am very proud of the leaders who arranged to attend before hand, special mention to Gilga, Streetz01, MD, Killamnjoro, without whom the raid would not have even started. Another mention goes to Oxton, who, whilst saying not to depend on turning up, was another person who was necessary to get it going.

With hindsight (given the fact that there were a number of people who ignored instructions) it would have been best to have withdrawn the taunt team after the clearing phase. Making people listen to instructions and realise that if instructions were not followed the taunt team would be withdrawn again.

Certainly instructions were broadcast to hold & not attack hami, but he was still attacked. Even when I sent private tells to 1 tank (which stand out in yellow, to the broadcast messages in white) he carried on attacking.

In the end the following decision was reached. An attempt to hold hami had been on going for awhile but appeared to be making no progress, eg no frequency of change had been noted in somewhile to the frequency of attacks on the taunt team & no hold animation could be clearly seen. He was continuing to be attacked, although not as much as before many requests had been made to stop attacking. Debuffs would be called for, and when his health hit half way if he was not held then at least we had asked for all the holds we could get and given them sometime to work. No actual attack was called for, but we realised his health would
hit halfway after debuffs.

As I have said before I will help out on community events and hope that such events help the community thrive. Such events also create experience among those that attend and I think in future withdrawing the taunt team is an option to consider. It should be an option considered quickly though, as we had hami's attacks down to less often than 10 seconds, plenty of time for those healers not listening to instructions to heal hami's attack, and so reduce the affect of withdrawing the taunt team.


If any of those who attended the raid wants to experience the cathedral of pain on the live server, but have no SG to do it with, let me know. My hero SG MAY do it on the first Sunday it is live at about 7.45pm BST (or GMT if BST has finished). I will do my best to fit people in but obviously depends on demand and spaces available to invite people to the SG. Sign up below if interested or send me an email. I may offer spaces on a separate thread at the time.

Paragon Girl

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Out of interest, how many controllers were present?

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I had seen less than 10 by the 5pm start time. How many it grew to I don't know. To busy trying to tell people to stop attacking Hami.

Paragon Girl

Welcome to the world of the inv tank. I have a lvl 50 inv/ice tank and I know its the one I have played around with, in regards to build, the most. Go with a build you enjoy playing, but I agree to try and move taunt down. It will help make the teams you tank in work better so you will all enjoy the experience more. Don't be afraid to ask for bubbles, fortified, etc from those in the team that have them. Yes it's a pain having to ask (but in part they made tanks squishier to give them more of a role, so try and get them to fulfill that role!).

I'm not going to try and offer a "perfect" build but some ideas. Firstly, unstoppable only needs 1 damage resist as long as you run unyielding at same time. The 2nd damage resist could perhaps go in tough which is end heavy.

In aid other, personally I would take out the Intrdx, as one will not make much difference & you will struggle to get it of in combat. In aid self stick to 3 intrdx (possibly a error it getting there as you have stuck to the rule of 3 of same type of enhancements max. in a power elsewhere), a recharge can be used instead of 4th intrdx.

Also I would personally pick char as first epic if taking that pool, its great for holding sappers.

Hope this gives a few ideas.

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Aww well done for trying all that attended, it had some good team set ups, ran pretty well, taunt team was best i been in (shockingly) and i knew going in we didnt have the holds.

But!

I wonder Paragon Girl, fancy doing this everyweek? until ppl get it right, then ppl make progress, and then more ppl come at a promise of a higher chance of succeeding which should lead to a better success rate and quicker time of doing it.

Just a suggestion.

I wont do it cos i'd probably fall out with the whole server.:P

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Thank you, and the many people who sent in game tells, for the positive comments.

With all the spamming that went on I wonder how many people saw my comment at the beginning that I don't think we had enough holds for the holding stage but I was prepared to carry on if they wanted?

I was very proud of the team leaders, some of whom this was their first raid. I was really pleased with how the mito clearing went, with no need to restart.

I can only say a big thankyou to those who organised the teams and those in the teams who supported them. The taunt team did a great job which meant PA drops could be done from lower down & with greater accuracy. I could be down low enough to read heroes names and still drop safely.

I hope people enjoyed the raid, I certainly did as on a personal level it gave me something meaningful to do with my main 50. I know some people are frustrated by the fact that there are those who will not do as requested and we faced hami heading towards half health without being held because he was being attacked despite requests to the opposite. However, I was really pleased by how many turned out and supported each other, just in the end not enough people with holds in order to suceed I think.

As for running another one. I have talked to some of the leaders, they enjoyed it and yes you are right have learnt from it, and some may give it another go. On a personal level I never wanted to organise a raid and hope not to do so again, but if no one starts one in a couple of months I'm sure my main hero will be bugging my mind to do something meaningful again, so never say never, but I hope someone else will organise one and I'm there to support them.

Paragon GIrl

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Seeing we're now 2 days away from commencement, do we have teams set up and do they know what they're doing (because I don't!)

Can someone post the link to the Hami raid costume requirements also please (If we're doing this!)??

In case someone has a team space for me, assuming they're already set up, I'm a L50 Kat/xmas tree scrapper... I mean Invuln. ;-)

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Usually on raids there are a few key leaders. Once they have sorted out main teams every1 else sorts themselves into teams. I had hoped for a few more players to volunteer to set up teams & so be more organised than this but i'm afraid this has not happened.

Main leaders are enervator who has offered to lead the clearing team. Streekzo1, killamonjaro and stonegiant have offered to help with the clearing teams.

Gilga is leading the taunt team.

Nobody has offered to lead the holding teams. Perhaps no one wants the public responsibilty of calling hami held. However, I do have someone who has agreed to monitor hami and tell me when they think he is has been held for enough time to finally defeat him.

I have offered to lead the PA team. I am hoping to hand this over to someone else so I can form up the holding teams and keep those in eden upto date on progress.

If anyone wishing to attend the raid can arrive about 4.50pm at the entrance to the hive and wait there. Having previously made a cossie that has no cape or aura.

If you wait patiently for an invite the teams will then be filled. (If this is your first raid expect many not to wait patiently and the broadcast channel to be filled by a number of different people, it has always happened like that before!).

Players invited to the teams will then be invited to their respective chat channel & further instructions given over those channels.

If to many people turn up you may not be invited to a team. In that case please wait patiently in eden to be invited to the "1 hit on hami phase" if you want to wait around in the hope of getting a HO. Controllers are essential but some may asked to wait in eden for the appropriate holding phase.

Hope this helps.

Paragon Girl

Thanks for replying to people Gilga.

I asked Gilga to include a grav troller. If players follow the instructions lag should be much reduced compared to previous raids. However, to plan ahead if hami disappears the taunt team can still target him via singularity.

Taunt teams have been used at different times during raids. Sometimes after the clearing has finished to get aggro from the holding team. Sometimes during the clearing phase, after some mitos have been cleared. This reduces aggro on clearing teams.

Gilga is going to go in during the clearing phase. So his team will benefit from more people than if he just went in after the clearing phase, as he may get aggro from mito.

This is Gilga's first time leading the taunt team and I have told him to have FUN & experiment, if he wants to, as to when he can deploys. As far as I am concerned he can even go in much to early and get a team wipe if that is a challenge he enjoys! (as long as he warns the rest of the team).

The only requirement Gilga has in deploying is to make sure that no aggro he generates hits the other teams and he is in place, at the latest, for the "1 hit on hami phase".

I want as many players to have FUN and feel valued during the raid as possible and so I have no problem with Gilga wanting to get involved during the clearing phase rather than waiting till later on, if that is what he prefers.

Allowing people to feel valued is also another reason to include forcefield/sonic heroes in with the taunt team & clearing teams. Hopefully they will have a more enjoyable experience by being included in essential roles. Yes these roles can, and may have to be done by others, but why not have a dispersion field up in the middle of clearing teams rather than need many times more heroes to spam hold/stun resists, say clear mind.

The raid may not even start owing to lack of attendance, but at least if people have been offered the chance to attend, and know that if they attend their presence is valued, I feel I am doing my part in trying to keep this a thriving community.

If it works out the other way, that we get more players than we want to place in teams, then can I ask in advance that players remain in Eden until called for the "1 hit on hami phase". That their attendance is valued & we be acknowledged as such by the opportunity (if all goes well) for the change to hit hami.

Paragon Girl

Yes looked online for you but didn't see you.
Paragon Girl

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The 1 hit on Hami works in the States, and if you read the recent patch notes they have stopped the problem in which people "fell" of the list of people who had hit hami.

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Yeah, but you have to be inside the zone.

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Have to take crashes into account as well, somebody might crash between the time of the brawl and when holding phase was going on..

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No reason to affect the damage list as it should not have crashed.

This reminds me of a tip for anybody that wants to make use of it. If, on 1 of your toons, you have a mission that awards a badge eg, the missing fortune teller mission, and you also want it on another of your toons you can get the badge for both.

Log on the toon with the mission badge. Get a team mate to enter the mission and wait. Change to the other toon you want the badge on. Get them invited to the mission and finish it. That toon will get awarded the badge. Now log of and log the toon on who had the mission, they will also now get the badge. So it is possible to get the missing fortune teller badge on 2 of your toons at the same time and 9 heroes in total. This works with accomplishment badges.

Paragon Girl

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The 1 hit on Hami works in the States, and if you read the recent patch notes they have stopped the problem in which people "fell" of the list of people who had hit hami.

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Yeah, but you have to be inside the zone.

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Source for this plz. However, I am more than happy for those who are not involved in the phases after the clearing phase, to stay in the Hive after the 1 hit phase, as long as they are a decent distance away from Hami, to reduce lag.

If people stay near hami because they are worried they have to be nearby to get the HO when he is being defeated it serves to make it more difficult to defeat him and makes it more difficult to conduct public raids. making it more likely that private raids are the way forward.

I know of claims in the states that people who have hit hami with multiple toons have had HO awarded to even those who are logged off. This particular 1 I have not checked myself and hope to do so this raid. I will post the results if we defeat Hami.

Paragon Girl

The 1 hit on Hami works in the States, and if you read the recent patch notes they have stopped the problem in which people "fell" of the list of people who had hit hami.

On a positive note to confirm that Gilga has kindly agreed to lead the taunt team. Thank you Gilga.
Paragon Girl

I was on & was available. Stayed on line badge hunting till about 7.30pm, then swopped to CoH.
Arachnos Girl

There are about 6 people from my SG planning to do the above task force.
As such if 2 people want to sign up for this, with the name of the hero they are planning to use, I will reserve them spaces.

Paragon Girl

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I'll give you a hand PG. I'll sign up to be empath coordinator or just a teamleader. Give me a shout of what you need. (MD lvl 50 emp/rad defender)

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Thanks alot StoneGiant. I will put you down as empath team leader. I realise some other people who have agreed to be team leaders I have not confirmed, but so far anybody who has offered to be a team leader can take it that they are 1. I will confirm positions in a later post as we get more positions filled.
Still looking for that holding leader plz.
Paragon Girl

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Even though the "private" raid was a much more pleasant experience, I agree with Idris that there is probably scope for both types of raids. I would nonetheless discourage you from trying to fill up 17 teams (if I read the plan correctly) since lag is what causes the large raids to fail. Even though our attempt was not succesfull, my guess is that with 60 people, half of which controllers (we only had about 20), it would be more than enough.

Anyway, I'm not sure I can make it on the 24th, but will try. Also, having been the PA drop team leader during the above-mentioned raid, I would suggest to whoever is leading it this time that they practice with their team beforehand because the changes to PA mean that you have to place your drops more precisely (since the decoys won't follow you). We found that 6 illusion trollers (preferably all flyers) were enough, as long as you have 2 (flying) kins to SB you. Anyway, just some suggestions in case they might be of help.

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The plan is there should never be more than 80 people near hami at any time, apart from maybe "the come & give hami your 1 hit for HO" phase. The 80 includes the Pa members who will be some distance from hami.

Yes there are several team leader positions but those teams will not all be around hami at the same time. For example, the holding team leaders should be filling up their teams during the clearing phase & be in eden during this time.

Obviously there is to be some lag expected and certainly more than in your private raid. However, the US experience, where they regularly take down hami, is that lag has to be expected & planned for. As such Baldrick has a cunning plan to keep those holds on Hami in case he should disappear! (ok he swiped it from the yanks! (who plan for lag))
The plan will very closely follow tactics successfully used in the states to the point where I will be introducing some tactics they use which I have not seen used over here although I have taken part in successful raids on the Union server.
So in summary the plan is to minimise lag,
1, by keeping clearing team to a minumum and requesting every1 else says in Eden during the clearing phase.
2, only have taunt & holding teams in hive during holding phase.
3, if hami is held, he is attacked at distance with ranaged attack so minimising the numbers close up to him even during the final phase. The tactics have some flexibility depending on the numbers turning up, including being cancelled if we do not get sufficient numbers.

Regarding your suggestions about the PA. Yes, again swiped from the yanks, I was going to be using kin as required. They often use the tactic of the PA members who drop away from the centre of hami flying back into the centre for speed buffing knowing that their PA will still be in place as they do not follow.
About having experienced PA droppers, again agree. Which is why I am asking for support from the experienced Hami raid community. Certainly I know players who say they will leave the Union server for Defiant if need be to get hami raids (when server transfer is introduced), which would be a shame as there is the experience and skill to take down hami during a public raid on the Union server.
Paragon Girl