Xanthus_EU

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What about tanks and scrappers with epic holds? Will they be asked to contribute during the holding phase?

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1. We're trying to keep as few people in the bubble as possible, to try and reduce lag. Part of the reason we're failing is because we are getting lag spikes and hamidon is breaking free during them.
2. Tanks have Punchvoke/Gauntlet. If too many of them are doing too much damage, hami aggro will be taunted on the hold group. This is bad.

Tankers and scrappers will get a Hami-O as long as they get their hit on hamidon during the brawl phase.

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-Raid Costume: NO aura's, NO cape, and as little detail as posible. We will check everyone and if you aren't wearing an auraless/capeless costume we will ask you to go to icon and change it. If you don't have enough money, one of us will be able to provide you with enough to change it.

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Removing Capes and Auras actually costs zero influence. So everyone should be able to afford that.

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Well, you of all people would know that.

10%, iirc.

Guide is now up! Have a read!

Just a little revision of the normal guide so that people new to the raid can get to grips with what we're going to do. There are also a few changes to the old guide so please read it even if you've been to every single Hamidon raid we've ever had.


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Preparation

-Raid Costume: NO aura's, NO cape, and as little detail as posible. We will check everyone and if you aren't wearing an auraless/capeless costume we will ask you to go to icon and change it. If you don't have enough money, one of us will be able to provide you with enough to change it.

-Holds. We arent asking you to loose your lvl 53 SOs or anything but please try to get 3 hold durations in all your holds. It just makes holding the big guy WAY easier. If you're that worried about losing your SOs, you can easily get 10 L51+ SOs by running the first mission of the Croatoa TF with the AV in it. My SG quite often does this, and if you can't find enough people to do it with you send me a tell and I'll let you know when we run it next so you can come along.

-Bring awakens, just in case. Its a rare hamidon raid where people dont die. Honestly, if we get through a hamidon raid with no deaths at all I'll be extremely suprised.

Ok, we're all set to go! Now make your way to the Hive door in Eden at the time stated in the organization thread and follow the steps outlined below!

-If you are an illusion controller please send a tell to Arch Nemesis who is in charge of the Phantom Army dropping team. He will explain how this works when the PA dropping team has enough members. If the team is full, we'll try and organize another one as you can never have enough PA. Arch Nemesis will let you know who to go to if his team is full on the night.

-Teaming is up to you guys, but if your on a team with no players who have taken part in a hamidon raid before, send a tell to Xanthus and we will get an experienced player on your team.

-The only toggles you get to run in the hive are mez (status) protection and travelpowers. Hamidon does UNTYPED damage, which will hit straight through your shields no matter what AT and powersets you are. Not running your toggles will also reduce lag and ensure a smoother raid for everyone.

-If you have a slow computer we highly suggest you run in safe mode during the raid. You enter safe mode by quitting CoH and restarting the game. At the updater window you click Next -> then you get the screen where you agree to the EULA. Next to the I Agree button there is a small square and if you click that square the game will run in safe mode. Safe Mode forces CoH to run on the lowest settings possible, which should lessen lag for everybody.

-If you're still having lag problems, enter the options emnu and select "General". Scroll down until you find the "Display Player Names" option and switch it away from "Show Always". This is, unfortunately, the best you can do to reduce lag without buying a whole new computer.

- Make sure you can read the request channel. This is where you will receive your "orders" and hear explanations of the next phase. Only Xanthus is alowed to use this channel for the raid. If possible, move it to another tab so that you don't get caught up in the broadcast spam that is usually present at a hamidon raid. I may also create a global channel, details of which I'll go over on the night.

-The final step is to add Honsou to your friends list (/friend Honsou), who will be our targether for the raid.

Ok, we're all set in teams! Wait for the order from Xanthus over request and then enter the hive!


Mito Clearing Phase

There is a small hill close to Hamidon nicknamed Cowards Hill or The Staging Platform. Make your way here to meet up with everyone else and prepare to start the raid. If you don't know where Cowards Hill is, chances are someone in your team does as they will have attended a hamidon raid before (assuming you followed the instructions earlier and got an experienced player on your team).

First the PA drop team will fly above Hamidon and begin dropping Phantom Army down into the jelly to grab the Mito aggro. If you are NOT in the PA drop team (and you'll know if you aren't), do not follow them up as you'll only get yourself killed and slow the raid down. Once the PA have the mito aggro, the Hamidon tank (Novocaine) will move into the jelly and get the aggro from Hamidon. Once we have everything under control, the next phase will begin.

This is where the targetter (Honsou) comes in. We need to clear the Mitos surrounding Hamidon as quickly as possible, as they have a tendency to split into two if we do not do it fast enough. Your job is to attack his target and only his target. To do this, simply ensure that you have him targetted throughout the Mito clearing phase. Whenever you hit your attacks, they'll automatically hit the Mitochondrion he has targetted. We'll move around the blob taking down Mitos one by one, first killing the yellow mitos as these do damage and therefore are the most dangerous. Once this is done, we'll begin clearing the Blue and Green mitos. Those with a healing aura will try to keep a healing spam up so that death is minimal. All radation controllers and defenders should keep Enervating Field on the mito we are attacking as this will allow us to kill them faster and should speed this stage up with alot.

This should take around 30mins - 1 hours, depending on how well coordinated we are, so stay sharp and follow the orders on request to get things done as fast as possible.

Powers no to be used during the Mito clearing phase:

AoE or PBAoE attacks: Using these will pull extra aggro from other mitos onto the clearing group, which will cause many people to die. When they die, they aren't hitting stuff and so this phase will slow RIGHT down.

NO KINETICS POWERS except speed boost. While I know that it is tempting to slap a fulcrum shift down for the extra damge on everyone, Kinetics is by far the laggiest powerset in the game (to the point where it might even cause people to crash).


Any Pets: Pets tend to run off and aggro other Mitos. This is bad.

Taunt: The ONLY person using taunt inside the Hive should be the Hamidon tank. If you drop taunt, chances are you'll hit another two or three mitos as well as Hamidon himself. If you taunt hamidons aggro onto the Clearing group, we'll probably have a raid wipe and have to start from the beggining. Also, people really won't be pleased with you at all.

Hit Hamidon Phase

When all the Mito's are gone and the tank is still taunting away, everybody should run up and brawl Hamidon ONCE. This will make sure we all get a HO, even those not involved in the direct attacking of Hamidon.

Holding Hamidon Phase

For the rest of the raid we will only use Defenders, Blasters and Controllers. The rest of you are in charge of making bad jokes over broadcast to entertain us all while we repeatedly click our holds. Assuming you've brawled hamidon in the previous phase, you will still get a HO so don't worry, you won't be left out.

The name of this game is hold Hamidon or we loose. The indicator that Hamidon is held is if he stops shooting at the tank.

We all form up in a tight group at the opposite side of Hamidon from the tank team and start using our holds. If you power takes Hold Durations enhancements, its a hold. If it doesn't, it's not and shouldn't be used during this phase unless otherwise instructed. Those with Accelerate Metabolism should use it everytime it's recharged. Otherwise, people should be holds and powerboost only.

Powers to be used during this Phase:

Holds(of course)
Accelerate Metabolism, speed boost and adrenalin boost.
Singularity (The gravity pet)
Enervation field, when we call for it and not before.

(NB: We aren't using other pets because they cause far too much lag for extra help that they provide. Dark Servants spamming Twighlight Grasp often cause people to crash and Jack Frost just doesn't use his hold often enough to warrant being used.)

N0THING ELSE, everything else causes lag and slows down our progress or even worse can cause the server to crash.
The holds have enough damage to kill hamidon quite fast, so we won't use anything else.

If this doesn't work, we will call for around 8 scrappers to do the damage. If you're one of the eight, you'll know because I will have sent you a tell. If you aren't, stay on the platform and keep making jokes. Without your jokes, the raid will SURELY fail. If 8 scrappers isn't enough, I'll call for more, again via tells.

If at some point hamidon comes under 50% of health and breaks free we loose. You'll know we've lost because you'll be dead, and there'll be an angry looking Yellow Mitochondrion where you were standing. There are different Mito spawn points but the general rule is that if he isn't held and is under 50% HP the raid fails. For this reason we will call for all the heroes that takes part in the holding phase to use vanguard at 55% indicated by Xanthus over request.

Hamidon has a nasty tendency of becomming invisible due to lag at raids. Don't worry, he hasn't disappeared and can still be attacked. If this happens, find a Singularity to target as they'll never lose target. If you can't find one, add Xanthus to your friends list, target him and type "/assist" into your chat window. Doing this will mean that you switch to his target, which will be his pet throughout the entire raid.

How holding hamidon works: Hamidon has a mag 99 shield, meaning we have to stack alot of holds on him. A typical boss takes two applications of a hold to get him held, Hamidon takes (my guess is 99 holds, but no-one actually knows) to hold. During this phase it is vitally important that you guys to stay sharp and keep an eye on the request channel for the order to drop Vanguard.

After a little while, Hamidon dies. We all get a HO, we go to Atlas and party. The following day, we laugh as Union fails to raid Hamidon where we succeeded.
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Credit goes to Imaginary for actually writing the guide, I just corrected a few spelling mistakes (that I could see, there are probably some still in there) and grammar stuff.

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to PM me, ask in a reply to this thread or send me a tell in-game (My global handle, @Xanthus, is most likely work) and I'll do my best to answer it.

Hope to see you next sunday, boys 'n girls!

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A more organised start than ours!



[/ QUOTE ]That's defiant, we see what onion does, take the best parts of it and learn from their mistakes, and create it all in a neat refined form

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Our names are better

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I won't argue with that. Even if you were going to go with the House Of... thing, it might've been a good idea to at least go with something other than the AT name. House Of Glass Cannons (a name I came up with in 2 seconds) for the Blaster SG is one you could've gone with, for example.

Ah well, it's done now. Maybe the villain ones will have better names (Asylum Of Creeping Death for the stalker one, for example)

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/b G assist.

Doesnt work in the arena tho.

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My favorite one too

Does anyone have a list anywhere of all the items craftable on all 3 tables/forges? Or a list of the SG badges required to unlock things like upgraded reclimators etc?

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Are we using the regular strategy Xanthus or will you be posting one closer to the time?

Just wondering

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A revised version of the regular one, which I'll post later today.

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I'll bring one of my lv 50 Sonic Defenders I think... or my Kheldian

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One of your four level 50 sonic defenders? Sonic Man, Sonic Boy, Sonic Girl and Sonic Woman? YOU'RE LYING! I WILL BE FIRST, DAMNIT!

Also, you don't have a kheldian. I know you don't because of all the time you've ranted about how you hate them.

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Ah, but that could all be part of a cunning plan to make us think he doesn't have one.

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Damn right, I'll be there on my army of Kheldians all seperated onto different accounts and linked together with macro's and wireless keyboards. I'm heading straight for Hami. If you're quick you might get a hit in before I kill him.

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Shut up and get back to work.

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I'll bring one of my lv 50 Sonic Defenders I think... or my Kheldian

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One of your four level 50 sonic defenders? Sonic Man, Sonic Boy, Sonic Girl and Sonic Woman? YOU'RE LYING! I WILL BE FIRST, DAMNIT!

Also, you don't have a kheldian. I know you don't because of all the time you've ranted about how you hate them.

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Presuming there's no raid planned at that time in WoW, I'll be there for old times sake.

Blasters cossie is still all red?

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Cossie is whatever you want it to be, but without a cape and an aura.

Would confusing a bubbler with Force Bubble running cause all their teammates to get hit by the knockback? Because I can see it being INCREDIBLY useful if that's true. One hit and you can wipe the entire team with no fear of being knocked back. Drop it on a stormy and she/he will debuff the rest of his team hiding in his hurricane. Drop it on a rad with his debuffs on you and then run around debuffing the rest of his team. It has infinite uses.

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I'll be there if I can with Therra.

I've never done a hami, will we be using basic costumes like in this guide:

http://uk.boards.cityofheroes.com/sh...fpart=1#278138

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Yup - NO CAPE, NO AURAS PLEASE! It's a lag fest as it is and anything that helps would be much appreciated.

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All black with a purple trim it is then.

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I'm not too bothered what colour costume you have, but as everyone else has said, NO CAPE, NO AURA. If you have a cape and an aura, I will send you REPEATED tells until you go and change it.

What about a 1AT villain coalition? Instead of House Of.... We could go with Asylum Of.....

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I thought Singularity had very good control to back up those already in the set

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Grav is probably the worst "control" set for all the controller primaries, but it definitely has the best pet.

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U all prob noticed this already, but it was only after making my ill/kin that i noticed kinetics and singularity look samey!!! Now it's time to make a grav/kin for concept purposes

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It's because singularity runs Repel

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I've been to arena once or twice. No one is in there, looking for someone to come along and duel them.

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No, but a quick /ac message usually sorts that out.

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I don't know how to enter arena matches

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Have a look on the arena terminals dotted around inside the arena.

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and I'm pretty damned sure that I can't fight villians in arena either

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You can fight both with, and against villains in the arena.

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and I'll be damned if I sit down in Talos Park trying to explain to the one person how to do it.


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That's your problem, not mine. If you aren't prepared to do something to stop me from interrupting your duel in an open PvP zone, don't whinge about it when I do.

Are you on Defiant? I'll show you how the arena works if you send me a tell at some point today, @Xanthus is my global handle.

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For the record I dont see buff buff buff followed by a blapper doing BU/Aim/Bonesmasher almost exclusively as fun either, omg yeah sometimes he throws another power but the start is always the same

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Where's the problem with this technique? Are empaths not supposed to buff people now? And I suppose that bone smasher is a banned move as well? For the record, Imaginary rarely uses aim+bu together.

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perhaps you would glean a better insight into my play by going in the pvp zones solo (clearly not on your emp) or you are more than welcome to tag along on the villains side.

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Except that we enjoy team PvP more. I used to PvP a lot solo on my stalker, but I found it slow and boring (I'm not saying it is, mind, it just wasn't enjoyable for me). Unfortunately our SG rarely plays villains so we don't actually have anyone around the right level for sirens.

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As for BFs, the amount of holds I saw thrown at you, over periods of time, and didnt take leads me to suspect you are not entirely accurate in your recollection especially given that you dont have acrobatics in your build. 3xBF gives you 270 seconds of protection and holds were throw at you almost continuously over a much larger period of time.

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Do you play with "supress player FX" on? I wasn't there at the time, but it's possible that extremus was held and you just weren't seeing the block of ice or whatever. I get it all the time in PvP as well.


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zzzz, cookie cutter is certainly an applicable term.

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See, there's one thing I hate. Those two words, "Cookie cutter". Extremus has anything but a cookie cutter build on his empath, and Imaginary wrote the current cookie cutter build on ice/nrg blappers.

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Maybe Im wrong, its certainly possible, and everyone had a huge laugh, perhaps I should regale everyone with tales of how I "pwned" blasters/defenders/controllers/scrappers in sirens but then I dont like to do that, either in the zones or on the boards as it could be perceived as bragging and possibly demoralise people. This is why after killing someone a few times that i dont recognise I stop and take time out of my day to chat, discuss and offer any advice Vs my build that I can.

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Ok, I don't know if this is true for the others, but I certainly will tell people if they keep doing the same silly things over and over again (standing still etc) if it's getting them killed. I think it's great that you do that as well, but don't think you're the only one who does

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But anyway i digress, I merely took excpetion to your terminology and how you considered it fun which is now apparantly defined as taking on larger groups

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Not exactly, but any PvP is fun. We never said that we made a point to always be outnumbered, we said that we enjoy anything whether it be even teams or insanely stacked odds against us. The only time it really gets boring is when the zone has one or two stalkers in it who don't seem to actually be doing anything.

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, Hmm I guess I could take myself and another lvl 50 to bloody bay and issue a challange for hoardes of unslotted, DOd up lvl 15s to take us down but I just dont see that as fun, takes all sorts I guess

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When have we ever done this? Apart from maybe the first day of PvP in Bloody Bay, when we were on our villians, we've never made a point of hunting down low-level unslotted guys on purpose. If your name is orange, we'll attack you. Isn't that the point of PvP? It's not like we're discriminating.

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Personally I derive my fun from having a laugh with all players, being friendly, helping people and I am one of the very few players who will swap sides to help out the underdog side, help equalise and try to get some fun pvp going. Oh and in case you didnt know I consider "fun" pvp to be equalish teams, all getting kills and jokes and light hearted banter going across broadcast. You know, that way everyone has fun.

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Well, we would switch sides but, as I said earlier, none of us have villains that could PvP. The way you say this stuff makes it sound like we don't help people, that we just come into the PvP zones and get all "OMG N00B, PWNED LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!!!!" which just isn't true. We enjoy even PvP as much as everybody in the zone. It's just a shame that the zone isn't evenly balanced very often (the other night in warburg, towards the start, seemed pretty balanced, for example).

One more thing, why did you not just switch onto your PvP toons if they were doing so well against your "experimental" builds?

Yeah, don't think I didn't notice. Happy birthday man! Sore head tomorrow?

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You and anybody else that enters a PvP zone are free to kill whoever or whatever you like, reguardless of whatever they are doing at the time!
If people want a safe 1 vs 1, take it to the arena!
And anyone that stands in a PvP zone and complains of getting killed.......should stay out of PvP zones!

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What she said.

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Increase Density it's impossible to keep perma on all the team, it's the best unmezzing power tho, when you see 'ZZZZ' you just hit em with ID, it's not a buff like Clear Mind or Clarity, it's a power to use to unmezz people, not to keep them buffed.

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See, to me you've got it the wrong way around there. ID has an absolutely brilliant resistance buff, whereas CM and Clarity don't. I'd use them completely the opposite way around.

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Zonal PvP

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Now there's a phrase I'm going to use more.

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I'd imagine that stalkers have a role to play in IoP raids, when they are better equipped for sneaking in enemy base, finding a suitable location and planting those pylons..

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Except that planting the pylon drops hide...

I'll join the controller one with my ice/kin controller, Frozen Entropy and I'll probably stick my en/en blaster (Hyper Velocity) in the blaster SGs.

Any ideas for names so far?

Edit: No Kheldian SG?