FashionSense's Issue 9 Hamidon guide v1

FashionSense's Issue 9 Hamidon guide v1

Table of Contents:
1. Details of the Hamidon encounter
2. History, credits, and stuff
3. Hero strategy overview
4. Individual role details
a) Hamidon tanks
b) Tank support
c) Scrappers
d) Scrapper support
e) Ranged team

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1. Details of the Hamidon encounter

Hamidon is a level 45-50 raid encounter available separately to heroes and villains in the Hive and the Abyss zones, respectively. Hamidon only spawns when triggered by players. Hamidon spawns when a certain random number of DE monsters are defeated in the Hive/Abyss - the number is between about 8 and 50. After spawning, Hamidon stays up until defeated or server reset. While Hamidon is up, all DE monsters flee to large doors in the zone and disappear - they return immediately upon Hamidon's defeat.

The Hive and Abyss zones have a 50-player limit. They will spawn a second instance for the 51st player. Players can be locked out if they leave zone and someone else enters, so leaving the zone during a raid is not advised.

Since everything in the Hamidon encounter is level 50, players below 50 should be sidekicked up if possible. Level 50s are the most useful, not least of all because they don't care about debt.

The actual Hamidon monster consists of several parts:
- A large purple nucleus (Hamidon)
- 6 yellow mitos (Mitochondria Antibodies)
- 6 blue mitos (Mitochondria Electrolytes)
- 6 green mitos (Mending Mitochondria)
The mitos are arranged in 3 hexagonal rings around the nucleus, with greens on the inside, blues in the middle, and yellows on the outside. All mitos appear to be flying, but are actually perched on small invisible platforms. Mitos do not move and cannot be moved.

All mitos are believed to have mag 100 protection from most mez effects (hold, stun). Effects like sleep, fear, and caging have not been well tested because they are harder to stack in large amounts. Mitos are permanently immobilized, so controllers should always get containment damage. All mitos have extraordinarily high perception.

The yellows, blues, and the nucleus all have attacks using "electrolytic damage", a special damage type not resisted by any normal powers. These attacks can hit entities under the intangible state, so illusion decoys, phase shift, and hibernate are not useful. The only source of protection is a special inspiration called "Essence of the Earth" that gives a character their archetype resistance max for 60 seconds against this damage (but not any secondary mez effects). These attacks are believed to ignore defense and always hit.

Essence of the Earth can be collected by defeating DE monsters in the Hive, the Abyss, Monster Island, or the north islands of Peregrine. When a monster dies, every player on a team that did (enough?) damage gets a % chance of getting an EoE drop. Since the monsters always drop one regular inspiration, players must have 2 insp slots open to receive an EoE. EoEs can be traded, stored in SG bases, or bought/sold on the consignment house like any inspiration.

Powers of the individual pieces:
Yellow mitos - A ranged AoE with a huge range and very large area firing every 4 seconds for over 600 electrolytic damage (including the DoT), a high mag stun and knockback. The stun will overcome scrapper mez protection unless the scrapper has 1 clear mind, breakfree, or equivalent. The knockback will overcome 2 knockback protection IOs (mag 8), but will not overcome acrobatics or other knockback protection powers. The yellows have a PBAoE damage aura + stun that ticks for about 35 electrolytic damage very quickly. Yellow mitos have about 7800 HP, no damage resistance, and very high defense against ranged and AoE. Their regen rate is not particularly huge.
Blue mitos - A single-target fear + end drain + electrolytic damage + slow attack that jumps from target to target like chain lightning. The damage is less than 200. It appears that the "bounces" on this attack may be subject to defense and not auto-hit. The blues have a heavy PBAoE end drain + fear aura and very high melee defense. They also have about 7800 HP and no damage resistance.
Green mitos - A ranged single-target heal for 1205 that fires about every 5 seconds, and a PBAoE heal for 321 every 7 seconds. The single-target heal range is enough to hit any other mito. The greens have an unusual PBAoE that only hits 1 target every 6 seconds for about 100 toxic damage (total of the DoT) and a stackable 75% -heal debuff and very high -regen debuff. Green mitos have about 7800 HP, no damage resistance, and no defense, but have a toggle PFF-like power that grants very high resistance and regen until the mito is held.
Nucleus - A ranged AoE blast for 500+ electrolytic damage, plus a stun and knockback similar to the yellows, alternated with a single target DoT for about 800 total. The single-target attack has a long lasting and stacking 10% -heal debuff and a comparable regen debuff. Anyone being hit by these attacks will eventually be unable to regain HP. The nucleus has about 47,000 HP, very high damage resistance to all attacks, and very high regen.

The primary defensive power of the nucleus is its ability to respawn new sets of mitos. This ability is triggered when the nucleus reaches 75%, 50%, and 25% HP. When triggered, this power spawns an additional 6 yellows, 6 blues, and 6 greens in the same basic layout - with the rings rotated a bit so the new mitos are separated from any remaining old mitos. Fortunately, the respawn power does not recharge, so when the nucleus is brought down to 75% a second time, nothing happens. The devs have stated that this mechanism is intended to force the raid to take a certain amount of time, and there is no way to prevent the respawn. Therefore, the basic raid process involves defeating 4 sets of mitos in total.

When Hamidon is defeated, every player who either did damage to the nucleus or is teamed with someone who did damage to the nucleus gets a reward screen allowing them to choose a random Hami-O, random pool D recipe, or an SO. The Hami-O and recipe rewards are on separate 24 hour per-character lockout timers. The Hamidon buds that used to spawn after Hamidon's defeat have been removed. Hamidon can be respawned immediately by defeating more monsters.

2. History, credits, and stuff

Issue 9 Hamidon is an enormous change from the old raid encounter, requiring radically new strategy. Many people have been involved in coming up with ideas and testing them, publicly or otherwise. My primary contribution, while I9 was on test, was advocating the idea that all 6 yellows and the nucleus had to be attacked simultaneously. Most of the strategy follows directly from that concept. The biggest advancement since then comes from Virtue, with the addition of stacked Regeneration Aura to cut down the need for EoEs. In particular, the ideas in these two guides:
Virtue guide
Tanker tactics

So far, I have led successful raids both hero and villain side on test, a successful villain raid on Pinnacle, and participated in successful raids hero-side on Pinnacle and Virtue. This strategy can be executed in less than an hour once people are organized.

Some points about this strategy:
- Because of the heavy use of Regen Aura, this does not translate easily to villain side. It can be done with more EoEs on the brutes attacking yellows.
- It is possible to abuse some aspects of the encounter, for example by stacking tohit buffs to allow ranged attackers to hit yellows. I don't think this is practical or necessary for a public raid strat, so I don't bother.
- The recipe below is fairly flexible and can make some use of just about any powerset. In the interest of being clear and specific, I give a cookie-cutter formula - but the specific composition is not the only one that works. Some parts, like controllers and blasters, are very important but don't have any complicated requirements beyond "bring holds and damage", so I don't spend a lot of time on them.
- This strategy does not require extensive EoE farming. The EoEs acquired from spawning Hamidon with 3 or more full teams should be enough, although a stockpile of extras is always a good backup.

3. Hero strategy overview

A team of tanks with empath and kin buffs use EoE to tank Hamidon until most of the mitos are down, when they can switch to tanking with normal healing.

Two teams of flying scrappers with emp or storm backup and heavily stacked regen auras split up and attack all of the yellows at once. These teams are responsible for eventually clearing the yellows.

A main assault team of blasters, defenders, and controllers holds and kills the green mitos one by one, and then the blue mitos one by one.

Anyone with recall friend leaves the goo to a safe distance while everyone else attacks Hamidon and triggers the next mito respawn. Since there is no need for holds, this is an all-out all-debuffs all-pets (except Phantom Army) all-attacks zergfest. When the mitos spawn all raiders run for their lives, or get teleported if they don't make it.

Repeat until victory.

The staging point should be everyone on south rock to maximize the AoE buffs. Some scrappers will have to travel a long way to reach their targets, but the buffs are more important. The leader will call a 1 minute countdown:
1 minute to go - begin single-target buffs (CM, SB, etc.)
30 seconds to go - oil slick + kinetic buffs if available
20 seconds to go - all AoE aura buffs, Hamidon tanks pop EoE and go
10 seconds to go - scrappers go
0 seconds - main force go

4a) Hamidon tanks

4 tanks is the minimum. Taunt is almost essential, although just punching Hamidon will work most of the time. Tanks with +hp buffs are preferable, and they should pop them before going in. Self-heals are not useful. A good stock of EoE is required, and everyone in the raid should be supplying them. The other key piece is toxic resistance - the attacks of 6 greens add up quickly. Tanks should ask for toxic resist buffs any way they can get them - FF or sonic bubbles are good. Hibernate and Rise of the Phoenix are not useful, but Unstoppable can be very useful since surviving for 3 minutes is difficult.

The tanks should operate in pairs. The pair waiting outside the goo should be buffed and ready to go at a moment's notice. Since the aggro team has dedicated empaths and a kin, they should have SB and heavily stacked CM. Dead tanks will be extracted by recall friend and rezzed. Expect to survive about 2 minutes or less each time.

Be aware of the position of the main ranged team and keep the AoE away from them. Usually the ranged team starts at the south side and moves around in a circle.

Once the greens and yellows are down, the tanks should switch to being healed by the aggro team empaths to conserve EoE. With a bit of healing, rezzes will come up fast enough to keep at least one tank going at all times.

The list of things to defend against: electrolytic damage, stun, knockback, fear, slow, end drain, toxic damage.

4b) Tank support

2 empaths and 1 kin with all the usual buffs, at least 2 of them with recall friend. Their initial job is to buff the tanks with RA, CM, SB, ID, and AB, and tp+rez tanks that are getting low. Always keep the backup pair of tanks buffed and ready to replace the pair in the goo. Once the yellows and greens are down, move down into the goo to heal the tanks directly.

At least one recaller must leave the goo when the attack on Hamidon starts, to tp anyone who doesn't escape the respawn.

4c) Scrappers

8-12 flying melee scrappers. For the purposes of the Hamidon encounter, spines scrappers are not melee - they are ranged. Attacking yellows with a spiner is almost pointless. Regen with IH and resilience is the best secondary, but others are fine too. SR is the worst off because if they drop once they may have to wait for Practiced Brawler to come back.

The number one factor in the success of the raid is this: ALL OF THE SCRAPPERS MUST FLY. It doesn't matter how they do it - Atlas Park safeguard jetpacks, Siren's Call jetpacks, or the actual power (Hover is fine) - but if they are jumping their DPS will be far too low. Group Fly is of limited use, since the scrappers are working in pairs far from each other - one group flying scrapper could carry one other.

Scrappers will be divided into two teams, each with 4-5 scrappers and 3 support. If there are more than 10 scrappers, the remainder should form a roving third team. The two teams divide up the yellows in half, and then each team lead assigns their most reliable 3 scrappers to individual mitos, and gives the support and extra scrappers one of the main 3 to follow. Ideally, the fastest travellers should get the north side mitos.

At 10 seconds on the countdown, all scrappers should have several regen auras stacked up and rush to their assigned mito. Do not go straight through the goo to the farther mitos - go around the edge or up high. Fly up to the target and start pounding on it. If the target is being healed, in all likelihood someone else's target is not being healed, so keep pounding. When one mito drops, the scrappers on it cycle around to the next one.

When the regen auras start wearing off, regen scrappers should pop IH. Non-regens may want to pop EoE or rely on healing at this point, depending on how close the yellows are to being done.

Things to defend against: electrolytic damage, stun, knockback, fear, slow, end drain.
Insps to carry: a couple of EoEs for backup, breakfrees, blues
Buffs needed: RAs, mez protection, damage buffs

Really enthusiastic scrappers could bring bio nukes.

Once the yellows are down, help with the greens if they are still up, and then use ranged attacks (if any) on the blues.

4d) Scrapper support

6 emps or storms, preferably with fly, at least 2 with recall friend. The primary focus of this team is keeping clear mind or O2 boost on the scrappers to protect from the yellow mito stuns. Add in heals and rezzes where possible.

Each support character will be assigned a scrapper to follow. Before the attack begins, cast buffs during the countdown - single target at 1 minute, auras at 20 seconds. Support should wait until the scrappers have a chance to attract mito aggro before going anywhere near the goo, and then *cautiously* move down to refresh buffs. The yellow AoE is enormous, so everything has to be done from max range. Support can also buff each other so they can take a hit and not get stunned all over the place.

Once the yellows are down, the empaths can contribute to healing the Hamidon tanks. During the attack on Hamidon, anyone with recall friend should move to a safe distance to tp anyone who doesn't escape the mito respawn.

4e) Ranged team

At least 6 controllers, 6 blasters, and various defenders. This team needs some holds, some ranged damage, and some buffs/debuffs/heals - the exact composition is not critical. Group flying teams would be ideal.

This team (actually several teams) will have a designated main targetter who directs the attack. The group will move right up close to a green mito, avoiding the PBAoE auras of the yellows and blues, and then circle around through the greens and then the blues. Stay at a distance from the blues to avoid the PBAoE when attacking them.

Controllers: Focus on holds. All pets are welcome, except Phantom Army which tends to get unwanted aggro.
Blasters: Focus on damage.
Defenders: All defender primaries have something to contribute.
Empathy - all buffs and heals, especially regen aura on the scrappers before the attack
Dark - shadowfall, heals, howling twilight, tar patch
FF - bubbles on the Hamidon tanks, dispersion
Sonic - bubbles on the Hamidon tanks, dispersion, resist debuffs
Kin - SP+FS before the attack if an oil slick is available, SP+FS during the attack, SB+ID on teammates
TA - oil slick before the attack, resist debuffs
Storm - resist debuffs
Rad - heals, AM before the attack, EF+LR on a mito

During the attack on Hamidon, anyone with recall friend should move to a safe distance. Ideally, every team should have a recaller to speed up the regroup.

A good guide, as I expected FashionSense. Clearly written, and as elemental of a strategy as I've ever seen.

Regen Scrappers should consider carrying Respites, these can dramatically lengthen the amount of time a Regen can go mono y blobo with a yellow unsupported. It takes practice, but its one great way to lower EoE usage. Just use the respites between click heals to fill in the gaps in recharge of those powers.

This guide has now been updated to version 2, available at this link.