[ QUOTE ]
This is probably stupid thing to say, but would the NPCs at tram stations with coloured rings be connected to Hami? (click them all, in an oder, etc) Or are they normal contavts that I've never visted? Please don't hit me 
*would like to get a HO someday, and will say/do anything that might help*
[/ QUOTE ]
For all we know, the secret could be to have everyone stand inside the jelly and play a different boombox emote...
Actually, now that I've typed that it doesn't sound like such a stupid idea, there must be a reason for that emote...
I find the walls of DE monsters between rocks quite curious with level 42 DE underneath them, i mean whats the point in those lvl 42's with about 12 level 50 Giant Monsters standing over them? Nowhere else in the zone has lvl 42's.
As for the rest of the map i have personally cleaned it as in looked for doors etc in the woods everywhere. I have also been on the map with no hami there only to fall asleep by the time of whenever he spawns.
He will honor his words; he will definitely carry out his actions. What he promises he will fulfill. He does not care about his bodily self, putting his life and death aside to come forward for another's troubled besiegement. He does not boast about his ability, or shamelessly extol his own virtues. - Sima Qian.
They spawn Eminators.
it's pointless guys, unlikely you will find anything...
@Double
Double Flame 50 fire/devices
Double Shade 50 tri-form warshade
Double Light 50 dwarf-human peacebringer
Double Control 50 earth/rad
[ QUOTE ]
Well, the Dev's say 24, or 3 8-man teams.
Off the top of my head, things that "might" be womble spoons: (for those who don't know, the womble spoon is an item with seemingly no purpose required to defeat an invulnerable evil)
From the Eden Trial - resist inspirations dropped from opponents en-route
From the Hydra Trial - temp powers allowing much higher damage than normal powers allow
Neither TC or the cavern has an uberboss, although TV also has the precollected glowies in the reactor belts.
So, assuming that the Devs follow a pattern...
[/ QUOTE ]
Ice Mistral strike force on CoV has a way to drastically reduce an ambush that spawns when fighting the AV. Does anyone know if it's been investigated if something can be done about the Mito spawn, or is it definitely to do with people in aggro range?
Im far too much of a conspiracy theorist to completely deny the existance of womble spoons or whatever you want to call them. Maybe worth having a poke around Monster Island in PI. Or anywhere else that seems pointless for that matter.
The point is, a womble spoon isnt required. Just get 3 x 8 man teams of trollers, with a decent mix of secondaries, tending towards rad and kin, 2 stone tanks, 5 empaths and 1 full team of damagers and you are laughing every time.
Dont forget, the end encounter needs no skill, its organisation. Organisation isnt easy with a community that is unwilling to listen, read guides and follow on the fly instruction. Secret raids organised by, for example, Union Overlords would pwn hami every time. No question.
You dont even need the damange component, thats just being polite. With containment and lingering rad you could systematically hammer all the mitos and hamidon himself with 3 teams of trollers. Whats more, the server would be running at full speed and you wouldnt be lagging.
Womble spoons are not needed so much, sure its an interesting debate, but the key is in getting the right people at the blob without the noise of 60 other poorly dressed heros without half a clue turning up.
None of this is anybody's fault but the devs btw. As i said after the first raid, when half the people didnt get a Hamio etc. Why the heck is the only end game encounter requiring more than 1 team so broken?
OK, been musing upon this further at work, and have narrowed it down to 3 possibilities:
1) As someone already mentioned, maybe there are special insp drops somewhere on the map, either from GMs or swarms.
2) The fact that the Portal Corp building has no monsters within it seems suspicious, but as we know the doors are shut. Maybe a nearby GM has the key?
3) A contact that we have yet to come across, due to avoiding all the swarms and GMs...
Gonna check (2) out in a few mins, and maybe try to kill a swarm as well - Zapp at 415% power wiped off 750hp from one swarm, if I follow up with TB I can kill, see if they drop anything.
EDIT - OK, scratch the swarms off the list, just killed one, only got the xp and inf/prestige... as for 2, if you see any monsters different to the following, they might be our answer:
Quarry - 70680HP, Thorn - 70680HP, Stropharia - 70680HP, Lattice - 70680HP
Probably not your answer Blitz but there are regular lv 45 Devouring in there (quardians, Fungolds etc) probably not what you were looking for though
[ QUOTE ]
I'm not sure I'm right, but from what I saw earlier in the thread.. mito's weren't cleared? Why?
I know I'm a Hamidon n00b and never actually fought him, but from strategies I've read, clearing the mito's was one of the most important things to do.
What were the benefits in trying to do it without doing this?
(Just out of interest, as I've never heard of this tactic being implemented before)
[/ QUOTE ]
Sorry to bump this but I know how posts can get lost in big threads and I'm really interested to know, if anyone can tell me?
[ QUOTE ]
OK, seeing as everyone else is chipping in, here's my two cents on why it failed.
Team Leaders - The one thing that shocked me was exactly how little info there was on the Hamidon channel. Babel, as raid leader, should have been organising and informing the team leaders of what to do(I assume there were two channels, one for general and one for team leaders). However, at LEAST one of those leaders should have then been keeping the rest of the raid team updated on developments. Thinking people are going to wait around in The Hive when they have no idea of what's going on and none of the team leaders can be bothered to update them is a sure way to get people thinking 'I'm not standing here for another hour when we don't even know what's going on. I'm off'.
During the last raid, Jiaozy was telling the team leaders what was going on and we were relaying that info to the general channel, even if it was just an update every 10 minutes along the lines of 'holding phase ongoing'. I pretty much kept up a continual stream of info based on what Jiaozy was telling us to keep every member of the raid team informed. Jiaozy also removed broadcast and tells from his channels so the only info he was getting was from the raid channels, anything on the other channels that may have been relevant, the team leaders filtered out and passed onto him ove rthe leader channel so he wasn't bogged down in junk and spam. Do not expect people to sit around with no idea of what's going on until they are called for like some sort of obedient pup.
Targetting
I've heard that singularities were used for people to target Hamidon through. My only question there is WHAT! Using an AI NPC, when there are mitos around and they've just as much chance of attacking them as Hami is a bad idea.
I know Hami fades from sight due to the lag at certain points but there's always someone who can see/target him. As soon as a power recharges, looks who's firing into the blob and target through them(if none of the designated raid targeters have a lock), not blindly through an AI bot that could be attacking anything.
The thought of how many crucial holds were wasted here is frightening and, IMO, this seems to be the single biggest cause of failure.
Too Many Chiefs
At the end of the day, this was Babels raid and all the calls were his to make, NO ONE ELSES, unless input was specifically asked for by previous raid/team leaders. Unless you had been a raid or team leader in the past, how much you had read on Hammi raids or how many successful ones you had been on in the past didn't mean squat, especially if you had never done one before but were suddenly full of your opinions on how it should be done. I refer you to my initial taunt team requirements before I had to withdraw from the raid.
[ QUOTE ]
Must be willing to listen and follow orders.
[/ QUOTE ]
One of the biggest problems with Hami raids on Union is that there are a lot of people out there who think they know how things should and shouldn't be done. They may know the numbers in the game back to front, may have exhausted every bit of content in the game and have a list of lvl 50's as long as my arm but, here is the killer... NONE OF THIS MEANS A THING.
At the end of the day, if I had been on the raid, the only people who's opinions or instructions/orders would have held any weight for me would have been Jersey's, Jiaozy's, Babels and my taunt team members from the last two successful raids. Thankfully, I also know none of those would have issued orders outside their teams but would have passed any suggestions or actions to Babel as he was the leader and all decisions were his to make.
Hamidon is about being a team player. It's about knowing when to follow orders, when to communicate with the other raid members and keep them updated and, more importantly, motivated.
As for the future of Hami raids on Union? IMO, we'll never get to where Defiant are unless there's a major change in the way they are done.
People run Hami raids on here as 'the last big challenge'. Every successful raid, we've had a different raid and team leaders. When I put my taunt team together, I deliberately took as many members of the previous raid teams as possible but from what I've seen of the other core teams, very few had done Hami raids before. This meant when things went wrong, they were making decisions on second hand info. I only managed to get 3 previous taunt team members on my team, making four of us and was a little concerned about that. I would prefer two or three new members and 5-6 experienced ones so new people are learning without endangering the raid.
To see other teams led by people who'd never even been in a 'core' team for a Hami raid and where the rest of the team was made up of people in the same situation was quite a big concern.
I'm all for bringing new people into the key Hami roles as we need to get the knowledge shared around more but, as Defiant have shown, you still have to have a backbone of players who KNOW what they're doing, rather than have READ what they should be doing in the main roles.
The other reason I don't think we'll succeed? Ego. From what I understand on the Defiant raids, it's the fact that everyone listens to Xanthus and does what the hell they are told. From the reports I heard last night, that wasn't the case with people trying to issue their own orders.
Were I to put a raid farming team together, I would have Jersey(raid leader), Jiaozy(taunt team leader), Double(rad team leader), and Stagefright(PA drop leader). I would then fill 3 of the spots in each team with previous raiders and the others with new raiders. One member of each team would also be nominated as deputy to eventually lead the team in future raids. After 2-3 raids, I'd then look at promoting one or two deputies up for each raid, the leaders stepping down and new deputies picked to keep the continuity, rinse and repeat.
Hey presto, 8-10 raids down the road and you've suddenly got a dozen or so people who are all capable of leading a raid and KNOW how to react in them, rather than think they know.
Of course, this probably won't happen as the people who've been mentioned have all been there, done that, put up with the grief, aggravation, boredom, hard work needed to pull it off and probably have no desire to do it again.
Babel, Kudos to you for having the balls to organise one. Running a Hamidon raid is one of the few challenges I have left in the game but you'll sure as hell not see me anywhere near one in the near future as I've seen what a thankless task it is.
I'm gutted for you that it didn't succeed but don't feel too down as plenty of other people have failed.
[/ QUOTE ]Oh.. that's why...
[ QUOTE ]
Hence why 24 people can defeat him.
[/ QUOTE ]
I've read references to this legendary event frequently - when did the devs do this? Would it make any difference whether it was pre- or post-enhancement diversification?
DREAMSHADOW
dark melee/regen scrapper
ALPHA CORTEX, mind/empath controller, lvl 50
Its the psycology behind it thats interesting. There WILL be a clue somewhere if there is a way.
The reason is that if you are clever enough to put in a brilliant scheme like this, you will want someone to eventually find it and hence how clever you were.
Now we can either keep our eyes peeled or one of us has to do 'you know what' with a Dev or Bridger to find out. Kinslayer get my vote as he sounds the best looking of us when he writes. I am not their type.
A 3rd way would be to somehow look into the game code. I dunno if this is legal or even possible but I'm sure there are some clever people out there who understand all this jazz.
@Sweet Chilli
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I'm not sure I'm right, but from what I saw earlier in the thread.. mito's weren't cleared? Why?
I know I'm a Hamidon n00b and never actually fought him, but from strategies I've read, clearing the mito's was one of the most important things to do.
What were the benefits in trying to do it without doing this?
(Just out of interest, as I've never heard of this tactic being implemented before)
[/ QUOTE ]
Sorry to bump this but I know how posts can get lost in big threads and I'm really interested to know, if anyone can tell me?
[/ QUOTE ]
Okay. Last time we didn't clear them. Basically it meant that we didn't spend hours killing them. The last raid took about 2-3 hours.
The advantage is that we only spend time defeating Hamidon. The disadvantage is that we get blasted by the mitos so we need a thicker healing blanket == more lag. Much of that Healing blanket comes from Transfusion from the Kin cell, which also provides a -regen effect. However now that Hami attacks when held we are going to get blasted anyway. More lag means that actually fighting takes more real time, but probably the same amount of server time.
Fundamentally this raid failed because we attacked too soon when Hami wasn't held, not because Mito-ignoring doesn't work, as we proved last time.
However I think that Mito-ignoring requires better timing than Mito clearing. I imagine that it the case as you have to get the first part of the healing blanket deployed after the suicide drop of the taunting team but before they run out of awakens. In order to get the healing blanket deployed the Phantom Armies have to have aggro of the Mitos.
@Unthing ... Mostly on Union.
[ QUOTE ]
There's got to be a womble spoon out there somewhere, it's just really really really well hidden.
[/ QUOTE ]
If there is, it's nothing to do with anything within the Hive. Earlier on today myself and Archy scanned the entire Hive with Blinkie Finder. For those not in-the-know, Blinkie Finder is a program which looks at .cohdemo files and then brings up a list of the entities (visible and invisible) present in the demo file and their X and Y co-ordinates. If there was any hidden button, any NPC that might be invisible until certain critera are fulfilled or any strange doors they would have shown up on Blinkie Finder.
After scanning the entire Hive, we found..... nothing. No hidden doors. No magical buttons. No gigantic cannon to one-shot Hamidon. Nothing abnormal at all, just a few doors on the abandoned Portal Corp buildings (which are just part of the texture used for every building of that kind) and a whole lot of Swarms (you never realise quite how many there are in there until you see a list of every single one).
If there is a "womble spoon", it sure as hell isn't in the Hive.
My God I could kiss you! Dam good thinking man!
Right Kins - 2 letters. KY and plenty of it! Good luck!
@Sweet Chilli
[ QUOTE ]
1) As someone already mentioned, maybe there are special insp drops somewhere on the map, either from GMs or swarms.
2) The fact that the Portal Corp building has no monsters within it seems suspicious, but as we know the doors are shut. Maybe a nearby GM has the key?
[/ QUOTE ]
1: There isnt. Tried and tested in the US and on Defiant.
2: Theres some weird things about this I must admit. There was a theory that if you killed a certain numbers of GMs around the Crey Facility you would be able to get the "blue hand" over some power generator thingies at the facility. Same as above...tried and tested...does nothing.
SingStar:
"Extremists LOVE to fish to get us annoyed so we break the forum rules."
CRACK68:
"The origin of life wasn't planned either, should all life be declared a bug and wiped out?"
Lionsbane:
"You know me.Ever the realist"
[ QUOTE ]
Womble spoons are not needed so much, sure its an interesting debate, but the key is in getting the right people at the blob without the noise of 60 other poorly dressed heros without half a clue turning up.
None of this is anybody's fault but the devs btw. As i said after the first raid, when half the people didnt get a Hamio etc. Why the heck is the only end game encounter requiring more than 1 team so broken?
[/ QUOTE ]
I am inclined to concur, but really, anything where the cosmetic appearance of characters can make the practical business of killing a monster impractible is clearly and fundamentally flawed, and needs to be reworked. If they can't get it to work right, then removed. This isn't a "gameplay" issue, and everyone trying to look at it from that angle is WRONG and chasing a red-herring on a unicycle.
There may well have been "gameplay" / "strategy" flaws for us to learn from, but we'll *never know* because 5 mins of server side lag before a move fires off is a joke.
And as for all the other theories, all well and good, but really, what do you expect "organisation" to do when it takes 5 mins to fire off a power? A player can be dead several times over in the time it takes to respond to an order, and no amount of strategy or discipline can change that.
Secret 3 team raid with a good balance of players, try working with that, the teams in different combinations. Then you might be able to learn something without 98 additional players slowing everything down to a crawl.
[ QUOTE ]
If there is a "womble spoon", it sure as hell isn't in the Hive.
[/ QUOTE ]
Unless the spoon is a spawn of the dreaded Hamidon Killing Dragon that spawns for 5 minutes every day. Time might be factcor, as might everything else. The whole 24 man kill Hamidon thing might even be a bold faced lie, to amuse people how spend hours looking for it, or it might be an unsubstanciated rumor (I have never seen the original statement).
Oh well, back to work.
Black Light, Electricity/Devices Blaster at Union
White Knight, Illusion/Radiation Controller at Union
Obscurum est absentis lux lucis. Ego sum lux lucis!
Good thinking Xanthus, shame you didn't find anything really. 
Ok, what got added at the same time as the hive? Is there anything out on Monster or Monkey Island maybe?
Monster Island would be my next guess, although I'mm still willing to try fighting our way in through the walking route and seeing if anything happens.
First off - big thanks to Babel and all the team leaders for organising Monday nights raid. No small amount of planning had gone into it and I appreciate it.
It was a valiant effort, which I feel was definitely working well until Hami's secret ability of 'Hami Lag' (-move -power activation +frustration) kicked in big time!
This was my 1st Hami raid and, whilst eventually frustrating, was enjoyable for the 1st 90%!
I was there with Exengel, a dedicated healer, and believe that the big turning point was when lag got to the point that powers were not triggering... It's frustrating to spend 20min trying to fire off a single ressurect (and still not succeeding)... knowing that if you can't rez then slowly but surely everyone is going down and not getting up again!
Thoughts on Hami Raids...
1 Lag
The Hive exists purely for Hami. The devs know that 70/80+ heroes normally turn up for Hami - heard figures saying 100+ heroes are usually needed. So why do I keep reading that zones are designed to cope with up to 75 heroes?
It really would be nice to see them up the server capacity, or find a way to give The Hive some preferential processing time!
Quick aside: How many heroes do the US usually employ? Do they have the same lag issues as we in the EU? Are there servers specced the same?
But having said that...
2 The Devs 24 man Hami raid (raid24)
Ok, hands up, I'll admit I've not seen the original info regarding this...
However, given the 75 hero in zone server spec, it seems likely that Hami was designed to be beatable with 24. Why?
The devs knew the ****** in Hamis armour so should have tested taking him down with a minimal team. They know that normal players do not know these ******, and so imagining that normal players will take a up to a 3:1 ratio strikes me as a resonable assumption. the 3:1 ratio would still comfortably fit in the server limits, and so, to the Devs, Hami probably seems a reasonable challenge, doable without uberlag.
Also 24 fits nicely as 3 full teams... Anyone have any idea what the dev team AT makeup was for the 24-man raid?? btw - I would hope that the makeup included all available ATs... can't see them having designed a challenge with a great reward (the HOs) knowing that a specific AT is almost surplus to requirements and so will never get invited on raids nor get the chance to earn the reward!
3 Womble Spoons
I believe that there probably is a simple, but unfound (by players), technique to make the whole raid go smoother - heck raid24 (if true) proves this.
I'm intrigued by the swarms description.. it may refer to their SNAFUing of travel powers, but confuse 'em and what effect do they have (if any) on Hami and the mitos?
I suspect that this may be the sort of thing we are looking for, rather than a true womble spoon.
It also strikes me that analysing the map may not reveal any server-side delights that exist in The Hive...
Thinking of RV here... are there set spawn points for the supehero/villain AVs that can appear? If so, do they appear on the map?
As far as I'm aware the server could happily spawn the freedom phalanx under certain conditions whilst facing Hami, and no client-side map would give any clue to it!
Not saying that this happens, but if there is some special condition to seriously weaken Hami or boost the heroes, I'd keep it off the maps if I developed CoH... From the start the Devs knew that someone would analyse the maps, and I'm sure they'd want the secrets to their uber-baddy to be invisible!
Work now calls... so I'll leave my ramblings there.
Thanks again to Babel & co for organising the raid, and thanks to everyone who took part - quite amazing to see so many 50s in one place for the first time!
We'll get Hami next time....
By my mohawk shall ye know me!
my toons
Funny: Ee-Ai-Ee-Ai-Oh! #3662 * The foul-mouthed Handyman! #1076 * City of Norms #132944
Serious: To Save A Single World (#83744) * Marketing Opportunity (#83747)
Addendum:
It'd be darn nice for kindly Bridger or someone to comment on really stupid ideas... save troops of 50s spending hours on Monkey island chasing a wild goose!
Not suggesting that they help blow Hami away... but the really, really wrong ideas (outside of the Hive) could just lead to a lot of frustrated players (i.e. customers) who've effectively wasted hours of their life!
By my mohawk shall ye know me!
my toons
Funny: Ee-Ai-Ee-Ai-Oh! #3662 * The foul-mouthed Handyman! #1076 * City of Norms #132944
Serious: To Save A Single World (#83744) * Marketing Opportunity (#83747)
[ QUOTE ]
2 The Devs 24 man Hami raid (raid24)
Ok, hands up, I'll admit I've not seen the original info regarding this...
However, given the 75 hero in zone server spec, it seems likely that Hami was designed to be beatable with 24. Why?
The devs knew the ****** in Hamis armour so should have tested taking him down with a minimal team. They know that normal players do not know these ******, and so imagining that normal players will take a up to a 3:1 ratio strikes me as a resonable assumption. the 3:1 ratio would still comfortably fit in the server limits, and so, to the Devs, Hami probably seems a reasonable challenge, doable without uberlag.
Also 24 fits nicely as 3 full teams... Anyone have any idea what the dev team AT makeup was for the 24-man raid?? btw - I would hope that the makeup included all available ATs... can't see them having designed a challenge with a great reward (the HOs) knowing that a specific AT is almost surplus to requirements and so will never get invited on raids nor get the chance to earn the reward!
[/ QUOTE ]
I recall reading a comment which claimed they used lots of rad defenders but that could well have been hearsay.
Is there actually a comment from the devs confirming they defeated Hamidon with 24 heroes or is it one of those things that gets repeated so often that nobody questions it?
I'm inclined to believe it is possible to defeat Hamidon with less than a hundred heroes but I feel that if the devs did do it with twenty-four, it must have been so long ago that with all the changes made to the game since, it is probably irrelevant.
DREAMSHADOW
dark melee/regen scrapper
ALPHA CORTEX, mind/empath controller, lvl 50
[ QUOTE ]
I'm inclined to believe it is possible to defeat Hamidon with less than a hundred heroes but I feel that if the devs did do it with twenty-four, it must have been so long ago that with all the changes made to the game since, it is probably irrelevant.
[/ QUOTE ]
That's the other question, aside from team makeup, when did they do it?
One would hope that either they redo it after changes that would affect their strategy or that no changes have been made that substantially affect it.
Software testing is always a case of retesting after changes are made, even if the changes should not affect the part tested (there's always the chance of unexpected knock-on effects - ask Microsoft).
As we don't know all the details of raid24, it is possible that whatever changes have occured (since the raid) have zero or minimal affect on Hami's demise.
Heck - everyone's probably done at least 1 AV with no -regen now, it is possible just takes longer... this may be the case with Hami.
Whilst it's possible that Dreamshadow is correct, and raid24 took place so long ago that it's irrelevant, it also strikes me that I've not even heard of 48 heroes taking down Hami... which suggests to me that an undiscovered strategy is the key. As I see it, regen rates and enhancement diversification just don't have THAT big an effect. If it could be done with 24 toons at one time, pull in an extra 8/16 heroes and you have more than enough extra power to counteract nerfs.
By my mohawk shall ye know me!
my toons
Funny: Ee-Ai-Ee-Ai-Oh! #3662 * The foul-mouthed Handyman! #1076 * City of Norms #132944
Serious: To Save A Single World (#83744) * Marketing Opportunity (#83747)
The devs dont want us to kill hami pure and simple, each time a method is set up players are nerfed and hami is buffed. 24 players (not devs) farmed hami silly and the reward for figuring out how to do it was a round of nerfs.
Should we figure out what the devs consider to be "the right way" hami will once again be buffed and/or players nerfed which is pretty weak seeing it is such lame end game content.
The whole "find the right way" myth is there just to try and keep some mystery and as a result interest in Hami, remember the crap with Caleb and the "mysterious" way to spawn him, the devs insisted that this complex way had just not been discovered (very simple btw) and turns out Caleb was broken. There is no mystery, you just need specific alts and good players.
**Acceptable "support" responses**
Its your fault
Its your computers fault
Its your ISPs fault
How about. mmm I dunno.. off-top-head-idea::
8x Defenders :: RAD/RAD and Kinetics Mix
8x Controlls :: ?/? (RAD and Kinetics Secondary Mixed) (mixed for hold effectiveness)
6x Scrapper + 1 Tank + 1 Defender :: Scrappers for DMG, Healer for Hami Tank, combined with the Healing Blanket from the RAD and Kinetics, keeping them alive.
*shrugs*
as said, off-top-head-idea, as I passed through the forum post.
That sounds cool, i will bring my tanker along
lets hope we can find something.