Tell me how it was grandpa...
By
Acemace,
Posted on: 2009-11-19 12:33 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
Back in 2004-05' while I was in college, I was using my roommates CoH account on toons that I built. I will always remember those old Hami Raids outside of Eden in The Hive. I also remember how everyone would gather on top of those long rock formations and wait outside the "pit". I would recall there was always someone who would take a "lead" roll and call out commands to everyone. They would be hovering over the middle of the pit and it would seem this was normally the same toon who did this for every raid. In fact, they almost came across a little cocky sometimes thinking they owned the place...lol.
Anyways, I do fondly remember the drops that came down and this was before the enhancements were nerfed over. I had one toon almost fully loaded with Hami Enhancements. Ahhhh those were the good old days. With those old hami enhancements, my Nova on my Blaster should have been illegal in 48 states..hehe.
I do also remember the grandiose lag that would take place. I mean it was almost comical as you would be standing there one moment firing away and then the next moment on the ground deader than a doornail. The nice thing though was you would most always have someone rez you back up right away. When these raids were broadcast, everyone came like it was a half off sale at Macy's. It was fun. 
I remember Hami raids going like this:
I'm somewhere else doing my thing.
Incoming /tell from my brother: "Hold phase is on, come get me another HO."
I'd beeline to the hive just in time for attack phase, get the HO, give it to my brother and go back to doing my thing.
Nowadays I have zero reason to encounter Hami at all beyond his weakened version in the LGTF.
Be well, people of CoH.
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Heh, Twilight Avengers. Boy does that bring back some memories. I remember a prominent member of that group being publicly tar and feathered for revealing their "secret" Hami raid strategy.|
Originally Posted by Call Me Awesome
Public raids, the Twilight Avengers were the only SG regularly raiding at the time. We rarely had major issues with them... public raids happened Mon/Wed/Fri and TA raided at other times. Yeah, there was occasional friction but actual conflict was pretty rare. We, the public raiders, had set raid times and TA didn't interfere and we returned the favor.
Both the public raiders and TA were pretty good at Hami and yellow dawns were rare. Of course all this is neither here nor there now, and if people enjoy the current incarnation of the raid then more power to them. I don't enjoy the current raid myself so I do other things instead. |
I'm old enough (game wise at least) that I remember when devices blasters were considered cheaters since they could lay mines before all the Hamidon buds showed up and hence get more than their fair share.
I've attended the new raid just once and only because the Virtue raid leaders are friends of mine in game and they were desperately short people one day.
Ever since STF and LRSF came around as a source of HOs and inventions have largely made most HOs irrelevant, I have gladly skipped these. I found them awful back then and awful now.
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There was at least one, a couple months back. Victory isn't a server for raids of any sort for some reason.
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Originally Posted by Vivace
I remember doing plenty of raids before the change, and now I haven't been to a single one since. I don't even know if there has been a successful one on Victory since the changes were implemented.
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The problem with the STF is that I have only finished it once. out of 6 tries. |
Originally Posted by UberGuy
Just bear in mind, unless you can't get on teams that do them well that the STF is a far better place to give up the merits/time spent to get a (Synthetic) Hami-O. That's to say that, in order to take a HO you probably spend less time and you definitely give up less merits.
I understand not everyone needs or cares about merits, so maybe they're just not an important consideration for you. I wanted to point it out, just in case. |
Merits I can get from other TFs also.
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Also, back when Hami buds spawned it was also one per target affected, so controllers would start spawning pets like crazy, often just *before* Hamidon was defeated to try to get the maximum number out (until that point, most raid leaders restricted pet usage to Sings, because Sings had lots of holds and they could be used as targeting proxies).|
Originally Posted by Castle
1 per enemy effected. So, Imps counted, but PA did not, since they are essentially perma-phased.
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For those that did bot attend the early level 50 raids and aren't familiar with the "buds" being refrenced in this thread, when Hamidon was defeated it would spawn one "bud" per target, much like a yellow dawn, that was a boss-class critter and would drop a Hamidon enhancement when defeated (it was a small two foot radius object that looked like a miniature Hamidon nucleus: it was intended to be a Hamidon fragment I believe). This created a couple problems, most noteworthy of which was that since the reward logic in CoH only requires a player do some minimum amount of damage to a target to have a *chance* at its drops, anyone with AoEs would just go berserk hitting everything in sight, because a chance to get drops from thirty buds was a lot better than a guaranteed chance at getting one from a target to kill in a dedicated matter (it wasn't uncommon to have players trip mine the entire area specifically for this reason, as mentioned previously).
Since the encounter spawned one bud per player (plus or minus some pets), anyone who got two meant someone else got none. If you were melee or single-target only, you had a really good chance of being out of luck (due to the lag induced on the server at that moment, your chances of being able to effectively move to any target to hit it with a melee attack were nearly zero). Being on teams mitigated this somewhat, but you definitely did not want to be on a team with seven scrappers and a mind controller. The team with six fire blasters and two dev blasters would simply take all your drops.
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Yeah, everyone with one used to fire their nuke as soon as the game rendered the buds for that reason.
You know, right after the 12-second lag as the server figured out its life dealing with that many entities.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
The original Hammy raid went like this:
My Hammy has three phases: first M-I-T-O-S.
My Hammy has a second phase it's H-O-L-D, hold.
But don't attack him first, they say. For if you do, then Hammy maaaaaay . . .
Fill the Hive with mitos, yay! And all the heroes D.O.A.
Now it's more like this:
You taunt the yellows out, you scrap the yellows down,
You hold then greens ones close, then you shoot the blues around.
You do the Hammy-Lammy then you run your arses out.
That's what it's all about!
See? Easy.
50s: Inv/SS PB Emp/Dark Grav/FF DM/Regen TA/A Sonic/Elec MA/Regen Fire/Kin Sonic/Rad Ice/Kin Crab Fire/Cold NW Merc/Dark Emp/Sonic Rad/Psy Emp/Ice WP/DB FA/SM
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If I cared about rep, you'd be the first to get some from me! |
Originally Posted by Bionic_Flea
The original Hammy raid went like this:
My Hammy has three phases: first M-I-T-O-S. My Hammy has a second phase it's H-O-L-D, hold. But don't attack him first, they say. For if you do, then Hammy maaaaaay . . . Fill the Hive with mitos, yay! And all the heroes D.O.A. Now it's more like this: You taunt the yellows out, you scrap the yellows down, You hold then greens ones close, then you shoot the blues around. You do the Hammy-Lammy then you run you're arses out. That's what it's all about! See? Easy. |
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I've got a demofile of a 40 minute nucleus fight somewhere. I recorded it with the intent of sending it to the devs to show them how horribly laggy it was, but there was one problem: |
Originally Posted by ketch
Very interesting reading. I wish I could have seen the old style Hami raid just for the sake of seeing it.
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It plays in 30 seconds.
The new one is so much better.
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That may be true for some expert STF'ers, but on average, I would guess that most people do both STF and a Hammy raid right around an hour.|
Originally Posted by UberGuy
Just bear in mind, unless you can't get on teams that do them well that the STF is a far better place to give up the merits/time spent to get a (Synthetic) Hami-O. That's to say that, in order to take a HO you probably spend less time and you definitely give up less merits.
I understand not everyone needs or cares about merits, so maybe they're just not an important consideration for you. I wanted to point it out, just in case. |
And I still say that a Hamidon Raid is probably the best wealth creator in the aggregate. Fifty players and an average 5 million influence per player is 250 million. And that's being conservative. Some of the HOs go for much more than 5 million. And if everyone took merits and tried their luck at a roll, that's 100 chances. I guarantee their will be several LOTG, Numinas, Miracles, etc. in 100 rolls.
Of course, you, individually, might not be the person with the lucky roll and would probably be better off solo farming.
50s: Inv/SS PB Emp/Dark Grav/FF DM/Regen TA/A Sonic/Elec MA/Regen Fire/Kin Sonic/Rad Ice/Kin Crab Fire/Cold NW Merc/Dark Emp/Sonic Rad/Psy Emp/Ice WP/DB FA/SM
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Woe thats a lot of Yellows!
Wow. Thanks for that pic DumpleBerry.
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Median for the STF is about 1 hour 50 mins.|
Originally Posted by Bionic_Flea
That may be true for some expert STF'ers, but on average, I would guess that most people do both STF and a Hammy raid right around an hour.
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Source: Back calculations from the merit rewards,
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Originally Posted by Camper
There was at least one, a couple months back. Victory isn't a server for raids of any sort for some reason.
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Rikti Ship raids were running every Sunday for a long time. Haven't been playing much on Sundays anymore, so don't know if they are still going on or not.
As far as the Old Hami vs New Hami.
Definitely Old Hami. New Hami essentially doesn't exist on Victory. The new mechanic is too limiting for smaller servers it seems.
<sigh> Viv says its no longer "all me".
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I can't speak to the LRSF or the STF; I've never done the STF, and have had more LRSFs fail than succeed on me until everybody on my server gave up on doing them altogether. Seriously; I don't remember the last time any of the three or four global team-building channels I'm on announced an LRSF. Last year, for all I can prove.|
Originally Posted by Bionic_Flea
That may be true for some expert STF'ers, but on average, I would guess that most people do both STF and a Hammy raid right around an hour.
And I still say that a Hamidon Raid is probably the best wealth creator in the aggregate. Fifty players and an average 5 million influence per player is 250 million. And that's being conservative. Some of the HOs go for much more than 5 million. And if everyone took merits and tried their luck at a roll, that's 100 chances. I guarantee their will be several LOTG, Numinas, Miracles, etc. in 100 rolls. Of course, you, individually, might not be the person with the lucky roll and would probably be better off solo farming. |
But on Virtue, even without going evac-less, we villains are consistently cranking out a full Hamidon raid, from beginning of monster-clearing to popping Hamidon, in about 65 to 70 minutes. Now that so many 50s have Assemble the Team, even an evacuation and re-launch takes less than 5 minutes.
I understand why it's not on the priority list, since other things deliver more value and more fun for Paragon Studios, but I feel like the Hamidon raid is overdue for another redesign. It's out of character for Dr. Pasalima to not have gotten tougher by now, to not have tried something new, to just sit there like a punk and get beaten over and over again. This guy's supposed to be an existential-level threat and the smartest mad scientist in history; raiding him should never feel as routine as it does now. I feel for the people on empty servers, for whom this raid is impossible, but for those of us on the two populated servers, it's too easy.
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Originally Posted by First Son
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I seem to recall regen scrappers being the preferred hami tanks at one point. Hell I attempted to tank the old hami raid on my empath. In hindsight (being 20/20 and all) I probly could have pulled it off if I had played a bit better, as it was the PAs and I kept trading aggro so they swapped me back to healing a real tank. All that was really required to tank hami were the abilities to hold aggro and to survive one hami hit (this was pre one shot code. Fun fact, hami could one shot defenders, but if you had the HP boosting accolades you'd have a sliver of HP left.) 7 empaths pumping you full of heals/regen from the support team pretty much meant that if the shot didn't kill you, you'd be back to full before you got shot again.
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Originally Posted by Ironblade
What does Granite have to do with it?
Did I ever bring a non-Granite tank? Yes. Even better: Was I ever lead taunt on a non-Granite tank? Yes to that also.  P.S. A yellow dawn also resulted in epic, crippling lag as the number of entities in the area instantly doubled. |
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The best part is when he macro "sings" that at raids.|
Originally Posted by brophog02
If I cared about rep, you'd be the first to get some from me!
|
People start to ask for it if he hasn't been to one for a while.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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Yes, but a raid is quite a few more merits, and it only takes 7 other people to form an SSTF, as opposed to a very conservative 34 raiders.|
Originally Posted by Bionic_Flea
That may be true for some expert STF'ers, but on average, I would guess that most people do both STF and a Hammy raid right around an hour.
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Either way, unless you're running the raid insanely faster, the STF/RSF are a lower opportunity cost per time you choose a Hami. This probably wouldn't matter as much except for the serious weighting Hamis have towards just a few types, with several of them being seriously rare.
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| Of course, you, individually, might not be the person with the lucky roll and would probably be better off solo farming. |
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
Quote:
I think the bigger problem is that people don't want to put in the time to learn, given how easy Hami-Os are to get via STF. The raids that were tried on Vic had a lot of people bail after one attempt at taking down the mitos because they weren't just steamrolling their way toward merits or lewt. By the end of the attempts we had been there hours because about 20-30 people were left in the zone.
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Originally Posted by Toril
Rikti Ship raids were running every Sunday for a long time. Haven't been playing much on Sundays anymore, so don't know if they are still going on or not.
As far as the Old Hami vs New Hami. Definitely Old Hami. New Hami essentially doesn't exist on Victory. The new mechanic is too limiting for smaller servers it seems. |
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Regens were preferred because they could tank the nucleus solo, as long as a nearby mito didn't take a crack at them, *if* they build to maximum effectiveness. Maximum effectiveness being: fully slotting FH+INT+IH, plus slotted recon, plus slotted Dull Pain, plus hasten. If you didn't have the full boat (or weren't loaded with HOs) you probably wouldn't be able to keep up indefinitely. The number of regens with every single regen recovery power and taunt were, of course, low. The way this worked was that the attack team cleared out a 90 degree arc around Hamidon, which cleared space for the regen to tank the nucleus. That in combination with PA drops would keep the nucleus firing on the Regen and the mitos firing on the PA or everyone else.|
Originally Posted by Elaith
I seem to recall regen scrappers being the preferred hami tanks at one point. Hell I attempted to tank the old hami raid on my empath. In hindsight (being 20/20 and all) I probly could have pulled it off if I had played a bit better, as it was the PAs and I kept trading aggro so they swapped me back to healing a real tank. All that was really required to tank hami were the abilities to hold aggro and to survive one hami hit (this was pre one shot code. Fun fact, hami could one shot defenders, but if you had the HP boosting accolades you'd have a sliver of HP left.) 7 empaths pumping you full of heals/regen from the support team pretty much meant that if the shot didn't kill you, you'd be back to full before you got shot again.
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(The yellow mitos actually hit harder overall but the nucleus was an AoE and was thus much more dangerous to the attack team in general. That's why it was more important to tank away nucleus aggro than worry about what any of the mitos did.)
Otherwise, any tanker with empath support could do it, but they were basically acting as large bags of health with taunt.
Granite was worthless against Hamidon because Hamidon shots were untyped: typed resistance was worthless and typed defense was worthless (for a brief time in there, PFF and Elude had base defense and offered protection against Hamidon: Granite never did). Granite was more than worthless because its recharge debuffs would slow down taunt and EE for no benefit. But Stone tankers themselves were a little better than the average tanker due to Rooted. But even with Rooted and EE, I'm pretty sure Stone tankers needed heal support to tank Hamidon. A maxed out Regen didn't.
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You could generally puzzle out what they were doing anyway, based on the three months of wierdly specific nerfs that followed. The Twilight Avengers broke the game so aggressively, the devs probably datamined more exploits during that period than the remaining 4 years combined.
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Originally Posted by Fury Flechette
Heh, Twilight Avengers. Boy does that bring back some memories. I remember a prominent member of that group being publicly tar and feathered for revealing their "secret" Hami raid strategy.
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Originally Posted by DumpleBerry
Tell me how you thumbnailed it and we'll call it even!
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Fair enough PM sent
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The old Hami event had problems, we all knew that. Most of us didn't participate in Hami raids, though, so we only knew about it via bug reports, datamining and second hand observation. One day, I wandered into Pohsyb's office while he was on one of these events. I talked with him and watched for half an hour, all the while he floated up near the zone ceiling dropping Phantom Army down onto Hami, along side 2 or 3 other Illusion controllers. That was his job...it was boring.
Ironically, the times I put it on auto-pilot are the few times I never died during a raid. <_<
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