Hamidon for first timers

Hamidon Raid, or, just what the heck is all this stuff that's going on?

Everyone's always confused about what's happening at their first Hami Raid, so I put together this little guide to try to explain just what's happening, and why everyone's doing whatever their doing. Basically what people are doing is trying to defeat the most powerful entity in the game; the reward for this is a Hamidon Origin (HO) enhancement that will act as two SO enhancements in a single slot (or as 3 SO's for some types of HO) I'm not going to go into detail on the various types of HO's, and you take potluck as to which one you get at the conclusion of the raid.

Hamidon (Hami) is a large purple ovoid floating in the center of a mass of "goo" (usually referred to as jelly). He is surrounded by 36? smaller spheres called Mitochondria (Mitos).

Here's the gist of what happens at a Hami Raid, it's confusing the first time you arrive in the Hive at the Rock (a flat rock just south of Hamidon where everyone gathers prior to begining the raid). The Hive itself is a dangerous place filled with level 48-50 monster class Devouring Earth, and swarms hang around high in the sky.

Depending on your server, there may be some differences in the strategy, this is what happens on Guardian:

First, the Aggro team is formed, this consists of up to 8 Illusion controllers who will fly directly over Hami (at a considerable altitude to avoid aggro) and drop Phantom Army on Hami's... well, he doesn't have a head, but you get the idea. Usually one of the Ill trollers has group fly to get them all airborne (important info about group fly, the person with group fly will fly FASTER than everyone else so the rest can fall out of fly. The GF person should FOLLOW someone else who can lead the way so everyone flys at the same speed)

While the Aggro team is forming, the Mito teams are also forming. Specific team composition is unimportant, but the GROUP of Mito teams need the following: At least one toon with force field dispersion bubble to protect from mez, a number of toons with an aoe heal (vital, this is the only defense from Hami & the yellow mitos) who will set their heal on autofire. Everyone must either fly, or join a team with group fly. One person will be the designated "Main Assist", or MA, and everyone in the mito group will add them to their friend list, target them and follow. The MA selects which Mito the group will attack and guides the group thru the process. Everyone in the Mito group will attack the MA's target with ONLY SINGLE TARGET ATTACKS. AOE attacks will draw more aggro on the group, and tends to cause the Mito to "split", or summon a new mito as it dies. Holds are welcome in the mito team to prevent this from happening.

During the mito clearing phase, please turn OFF all defensive toggles, except for mez shields, these have no affect and just add lag. Tanks especially MUST turn off any taunt/damage auras! These include Invinceability, Mud Potts, Blazing Aura, Chilling Embrace & Icicles.

Once all Mitos are gone everyone will exit the crater and regroup at the "Rock"; the main meeting point in the Hive. At this time the Taunt team is assembled, consisting of one tank and 2-4 emp defenders. The tank will set up on the opposite side of Hami from the Rock at near maximum taunt range and continually taunt Hami while the emp's keep him alive from out of the AOE range.

Once the Taunt team has aggro the "Hold" team sets up on the opposite side of Hami from the tank and proceeds to spam holds on him (only holds, no immobilize, no slow, no debuff YET). At the same time Rad defenders & controllers will cluster in the center of the hold team (preferably hovering over them for maximum coverage) and spam AM. All members of the hold team need to be tight together for maximum benefit from the AM. Typically we get 8-12 AM's on each person. Kinetics also spam speed boost on the controllers in the hold team. Once Hami is solidly held, which will be after 5 minutes of not shooting at the Taunt tank, the call will be made for everyone NOT in the hold team to get one hit on Hami. This is vital, you MUST do at least 0.1 points of damage to Hami to get a HO enhancer when he dies. The ONLY pets that may be used during the hold phase are jack frost, singularity & dark servant. Hami tends to vanish when lots of people are around him, so to maintain target on him ALWAYS target thru jack frost or singularity pet (never dark servant, they're time limited and expire requiring you to locate another pet to target thru).

After everyone gets their hit, the call will be made for toggle debuffs on Hami (Rad Infection and similar) and the damage from the holds (holders, never stop spamming your holds until Hami dies!) will take him down. Once Hami dies, you get the HO (make sure you have a slot in your tray for it!) and Hami buds spawn, one for every person & pet in the crater. These are boss-level enemies, they drop SO's when killed, and they're not terribly dangerous. Kill them for the SO's.

The reason for all of this:
Hamidon attacks with an AOE attack every 4 seconds that does around 950 points of damage to a lvl 50 character. It's UNTYPED damage, so defense or resistance DO NOT APPLY, the only defense possible is healing the damage before it kills you, this is the reason for the AOE heals in the mito teams and for the Phantom Army drops, to control his aggro and heal any that gets loose.

Mitos come in 3 varieties, Yellow, Green & Blue.
Yellow Mitos attack with an AOE attack just like Hamidon's doing around 750 points of damage to a level 50.
Green Mitos heal other Mitos near them; they have no attacks.
Blue Mitos have an AOE STUN attack; this attack does no damage (this is the reason for the force field dispersion bubble)

Hamidon himself is a Hamidon-class enemy (the only one in the game) and he has 90% resist to ALL damage and roughly 47,000 hit points. He also has MAG 100 resistance to all status effects, thus the extreme amount of holding power required. If Hami breaks free of holds once he's below 50% hit points, he will instantly spawn a yellow mito for every character and pet in the crater, leading to near-instant death for everyone and a failed raid.

Miscellaneous stuff:
The biggest problem at most raids is LAG, to minimize it you'll want to reduce your graphics settings to a minimum level, turn off all effects and eye candy, and also turn off "display hero name". This should get you the best performance possible, but still expect massive lag at times. Also, everyone should use a costume WITHOUT a cape or aura to further reduce lag. Turn off all defensive shields while in the mito & hold teams, they have no affect at all on Hamidon's damage. The sole exception to this is any status protection shields, these ONLY should be run.

Questions or comments? Did I goof somewhere?

[ QUOTE ]
Everyone [on the Mito team] must either fly, or join a team with group fly.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not true, Liberty does just fine with Inertial Reduction. PA team is a different story, of course.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Everyone [on the Mito team] must either fly, or join a team with group fly.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not true, Liberty does just fine with Inertial Reduction. PA team is a different story, of course.

[/ QUOTE ]
Hadn't thought of that, good point. Guardian's never used that method, so I didn't think of it. Come to think of it, back in i4 Guardian used to have 2 Mito groups, one with fliers and one ground team for the low hanging Mitos.

If anyone has any other suggestions please speak up, I don't pretend to know everything about raiding . I wrote this because there's always new people raiding and it's a confusing process if you don't know what's going on; and so much of it is just a case of "everyone already knows" that we tend to forget about the new raiders. I'm sure different servers have somewhat different approaches; we could probably all benefit by pooling our thoughts.

You may want to consider making comments to or enhancements to this guide.

I really wish Seyda would get it stickied.