Rooftop_Raider

I have two characters on Protector which have been dedicated Raiders. Rooftop Raider (surprise) and Psyclonus, my Mind/Emp Controller. Psyclonus has long been geared for support such as with TP while Rooftop hasn't. But I think I've got the bug in me now to keep them both Hami-friendly.

My characters with Teleport also have Hover, so that problem is solved. I like sometimes being able to fly on autopilot.

Regarding the Summon Teammates power, many lvl 50's never did that safeguard mission, so if they do it now, one someone else's dime, they should be able to get it. Just something cool to have if you're lucky enough to get it.

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Assuming the taunt strategy that FashionSense tested lastnight, I found this very useful for insertion into position to Taunt Hami. There is nothing that gets you into position faster to keep Hami's attention while the rest of the group comes in.

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Very nice! Great power for a Hami tanker to have. And most likely a Stone tanker or even a Kheldian will have that power and can fill that role.

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It would be highly unlikely someone will get through what is it? 35 levels from when you can first get team teleport from the mayhem in 3 days. It would be nice, however, that some of these former mayhem powers were craftable, maybe with less time attached to them. I would certainly enjoy being able to craft a replacement flight pack... mines almost out of gas >_>

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If you've never done the mission, and you exemplar down and get XP in that mission, you can get that temp power. But I'm not saying people should get the temp power from the bank, as much as I am saying this power exists, maybe there is a way we can invent it

However, if you have a lvl 50 character that never got it, you can seek out that mission and exemplar down to get it, and have that power for 3 days of in-game use. Several Hami raids for sure.

The reason I am making a separate thread on this is because I want to touch deeper on the subject of this optional-yet valuable set of powers. Basically I see these as valuable tools for making these raids more streamlined. And I'd love to get feedback or input on these types of powers.

Recall Friend. Everyone's best friend in a recovery situation, or to get a stray teammate to come closer (such as when they are slightly out of buff range, or are AFK). Base Recall Friend range is a mile, so pretty much anyone can be recalled from anywhere in the Hive.

Teleport Foe. Ha! I can't figure out how this would be useful in a Hami Raid. Sorry.

Teleport. Quite frankly a great escape tool, or a method that someone can get in the goo from a long way aways. With just one application of Boost Range and 3-slotted Range I can reach 645 feet, or 215 yards. Without Boost Range I can reach 465 feet or 155 yards. Everyone with it slotted for 3 range should be able to reach that second distance. I've personally avoided certain death numerous times in failed assaults on mitos using this power, as well as a couple blooms. Two TP's and I was on the other side of the map, thanks to my friend Boost Range.

Team Teleport. The perfect tool for getting a team into the goo really quickly. A variably-effective tool for getting a team out. Players tend to go outside of range of the effective PBAoE radius, and so not everyone gets teleported out. I can reach 161 yards, or 483 feet(with Boost Range. Everyone should be able to reach 116 yards, or 348 feet without Boost range.

Summon Teammates. I have no idea if this is a power available for heroes. But villainside it's a temp power that you can get for 3 days of in-game play from one of the mayhem missions, which allows you to summon all your teammates to you, from up to a mile away. I don't know if this is something you can pick up in Safeguard missions. This temp power has a 30 minute recharge timer, but with enough speed boosts and other speed buffs that tend to go on in Hami raids, such a power can be recharged quicker. But this can be a sleeper hit for Hamidon raids because everyone who expires in the Hive can be instantly ported to safety outside of the raid.

Inventions. Also, since I've heard the invention system is supposed to allow you to craft many things as a temp power or inspiration, I am wondering if there is a way to build Teleport powers that could be useful in raids for players who don't have the Teleport pool.

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As far as I know, there is no place in-game that ED is explained. People know not to slot more than 3 SOs in powers because of word-of-mouth and persistent education from people in the community.

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Well it's not explained anywhere persistant, but it IS explained in the game. In Outbreak when you go through the early cop contacts one of them sends you to a terminal that explains ED essentially. Enough to get a good idea what's going on. But that's consistant with a number of other things taught in the Tutorial but nowhere else.

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The Blues are doing a "linked" hit. The electric blast hits 1 target and continues to jump to multiple targets. Pretty cool IMO. If this is old news...well this is the first I've seen it .

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Well we _did_ notice the blue beam was thicker and more visible. But I didn't notice it skipping around like that. But it wouldn't surprise me now that you mention it because I quickly had 5+ fear effects on me and perhaps each one came from a different "Paralytic Blast" which is what they fire.

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Finally the weird part. Hami now has a -regen, -heal added to his attack. So in the Villains case the Brute I was trying to keep up was taking hits and my heals started having diminishing returns on him. I think I remember it taking about 10 hits to bring my heals to 0. This could be a bug but it also might be a new feature.

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I know the greens have such an attack - were the greens all gone when you noticed the -regen and -heal effect?

Yes PA can be damaged by all but the green mitos, and they cannot be healed or buffed, so thats a bit of a problem. However once the yellow mitos are down I suspect PA will be just as useful as other pets.

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Green/Blue phase isn't a problem, actually. There's no real need for a separate green team, becuase in msot cases, the buff teams go in for bles anyway. Blue and green clearing often end up as a sort of unified phase since it's so easy. Green and blue clearing are very simple...

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IMO EoE's should be used to have the yellows all cleared out first. Then as they wear off hopefully all 6 yellows are gone. How to do that, I don't know. But if everyone has EoE's we should be able to survive Hamidon as a whole - it's just a matter of figuring out how to divide it's attention to where it doesn't heal itself.

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Neither the mitos NOR Hami can overcome a tanker's standard mez shield on their own, it takes a minimum of THREE yellows to break unbuffed Unyielding. The Blues do not appear to stack mez with the yellows, I've had 2 yellows + 2 blues on me without breaking Unyielding.

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I don't know about the magnitude of the stun - a single Break Free has been sufficient to become unstunned. But I do know the blues do fear only as a status effect while yellows do stun. The blues, however, do stack recharge and movement speed debuffs on you.

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Hami can be tanked reliably in the same method we use now on Live provided the Greens are distracted. Hami's mez mag is NOT able to break standard mez shields.

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Hamidon and Yellow mitos fire the same kind of attack. A Special attack that deals 521 points of damage with 5 ticks of 31 points of damage, that deals 100% chance (or close) to stun. However the Yellows's attack is called Cytoplasmic Blast whereas Hamidon's attack is called Electrolytic Blast.

Hamidon also has another type of attack that is not going to show up in the damage log and it is something like 10 ticks of 81 points of damage - an 810point damage attack that will kill you if you're not careful. My Blaster with three HP accolades has 1285HP and was something like 40+ HP away from being essentially one-shot by Hamidon.

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The yellows can be tanked reliably as well, one taunter/one empath can handle one yellow AND one blue indeffinately. Also, a /Regen scrapper with taunt can do the job quite nicely. Once again, Mez and KB are NOT a factor to melee mez shields unless stacked by 3 of the same type of mito.

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I've witnessed this. While I didn't pay attention to the mez issue because I was CMing a Tanker anyways, I was able to with my Empathy Controller alone keep him alive indefinitely against the might of a yellow.

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The greens CANNOT harm Phantom Army, so once the yellows & Hami are under control PA are still highly effective in tanking the greens. A Granite Armor tanker with the +Toxic RES FF bubble could also easily tank greens for a reasonable amount of time, enough for a clearing team to hold & kill off the greens.

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I am so glad you mentioned this. It's things like this that people like me forget about, even though we understand it's a toxic attack, we get in that mindset that PA is going to have all of Hamidon's attacks be undefended.

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A Hami Taunt tanker hovering above Hami works well for holding his attention while PA holds the greens and the Mito team (Holders, Melee and Range damage) clears the greens. I see no reason for separate mito teams, sure some are more effective on some mitos than others but all can contribute on all of them.

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So long as those other mitos are all occupied. I've seen airborn tankers try to tank Hami from above but they fell quickly due to aggro from other mitos, and shortly thereafer the Tanker support fell too.

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I really do hope there is someone other than the fans thinking outside of the box around here. After all, if Mythic can figure out how to cluster low pop servers, so can Cryptic. This is better to pursue than doing nothing at all, because it's too HARD to do perfectly.

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I'd love to see our servers merged to some extent. I was trying to group this late morning on Freedom of all places in the 43+ range and it wasn't easy. We should work something out.

One thing that might speed this up would be perhaps a raid SG created specifically for the purpose of hoarding EoE's and a teleporter to Eden, as the drop point is next to the Woodsman and a skip away from the Hive.

If a raid SG is going to attempt Hami nightly, why not try to duplicate running a raid SG? And even if some players can't participate they can drop their EoE's off in a SG vault or something.

Just throwing ideas out there.

I can start it around 5-6pm myself, but if that's too late I understand. Tempted to bring my FF/Psi this time, and should give plenty of time to make it to tonight's Hami raid.

I think blues and yellows have the same aggro range, from the testing I've been doing near the SE rock in the Hive. The blues are a little closer to Hamidon, thus farther away from us, but I used the SE rock as an aggro protection device and if I got much closer the yellows would attack, but not the blues. I didn't get close enough to have blues attack me.

Regardless, both have a range that is further than their aggro distance, and once you snipe at any of them, you get return fire from them. So far when I've sniped a blue I've had that blue and 2 yellows attack me. I can't tell if more would attack, as the SE rock blocks many of them.

Just an FYI, that demo that I sent you HB, that was after a few minutes of sniping blues to verify this. I thought about making a demo just as I was losing interest in that particular sort of testing, which is why there is only one attempt to snipe in that demo.

Later on after I recorded that demo, I made snipe attempts on yellows, where I scored a hit 7 out of 10 times, with my Snipe. I posted somewhere on these forums about it in one of these Hami threads but I don't recall which one at the moment. I also deduce that a snipe team built similar to my character, would require at least 18 /Energy Blasters without any extra buffs to take out a Mito. Ouch!

I just want to say that Blues have _at least_ a 300ft range, as per my testing last night. I was at the Southeast rock doing my snipe testing and I managed to get blues to attack me while being out of sight from yellows.

I sniped a blue and was feared with it's return fire, from just beyond 300ft. I was near my snipe range limit.

The blues might very well aggro to you if you are 300ft from them, but I can't get close enough without being pelted from the yellows.

But I know that blues _will_ be able to attack you from at least 300ft distance, if you get their attention via a snipe. I sniped one at 320ft or so and it returned fire, as well as two other yellows.

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She is neutral in that she is neither hero or villain but more for hire at her own discretion.

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She might be like Jodie Foster's character "Madeline White" in the Inside Man, who knows alot, and does things of dubious nature for a high price, in order to protect secrets, etc. All the meanwhile cataloging information that imminently benefits her and gives her more power over those who hire her in the first place.

Here's a couple questions:

1) What is the average damage increase from criticals that Scrappers get over time?

2) What HP-level do you have to be at for your Blaster to reach similar levels of increase for damage over time?

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regarding EQ tactics.

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Brings back a lot of memories. I played a lot of EQ. Radically different game. Very fun, and really deep.

Back to the Defiance issue, I think it would be cool, if we are stuck with it, to at least have a "Defiance" message go off when HP is below 50% or something - that way people can see that effect, ala "Domination" or "Scourge."

One thing. The devs seem to also balance on "feel" which can invariably trump all math from time to time.

Regarding the mechanics of Defiance - thank you so much for your testing and discussion.

I just want to point out that even though "critters" is an internal term used by Cryptic, they've also let slip the term in the Prima guide. (There's multiple examples but read Sonic Resonance it's in there multiple times for that set)

Not getting into the arguement here but I laughed the first time I saw "critters" mentioned in the Prima guide.

My fix for Tankers is roughly similar in concept as my fix for Blasters. Fix certain powers in each set.

For example the INV passives and the -DEF in UY, increase the healing value for Healing Flames, put knockback protection in Plasma Shield, give Burn a ratio on it's fear effect (a compromise between two Cryptic positions), get rid of Hibernation and ROTP for a real tier 9 defense, give Clobber the damage that Cleave can do, replace Frozen Aura with Ice Sword Circle, for example. And of course do something about the current AV/GM Taunt situation.

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Blasters don't shoot constantly, really.

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With the right build and selection of powers, they can, but I certainly agree with you it's a matter of burst DPS first.

Well I do hope they really rethink the Gauntlet situation. Most of us really didn't know about AV's and GM's not really caring about it, heck I have AS on both my tankers and my Brute, but not Taunt, and I couldn't tell.

Why not have at least one of our attacks have a single target Taunt effect that works on AV's and GM's? For example something like Jab, Scorch, Frozen Fists, Barrage, Gash, Bash, and Stone Fist since they have quick recharges and can be woven in some attack chains.

Mainly I am suggesting this because I am a little skeptical that all the attacks would be given such an ability, as many of us might want.