Lady Grey task force

This is the way we have routinely run the LGTF for some time now, and in my opinion it seems to make the mission go much more smoothly than the "traditional" way.

No hard evidence I can share, just a LOT of runs that seem to be easier as far as this mission is concerned by taking out the Mitos before the Pylons.

If you want fact, then we can just point you back to the [Drain] power that is used between the Pylons and Hamidon:
That indicates that there is a Taunt effect, which would make it less likely for Hami to just shoot you out of the blue. With the Pylons up, you'd have to attack or taunt to grab Hami's attention, whereas he's likely to shoot a player if they come into a certain range with the Pylons down.

As mentioned, pulling the Rikti into the goo can cause agro on Hami, which can cause players to be caught in the AoE, but that's not strictly the fault of the Pylons being up or down, and it may or may not be a problem for some teams.

As for my personal experiences with it: I commonly play melee characters, and I usually run straight for the Yellows and take them out solo before the team even decides what their plan is going to be. If I'm on a ranged character, I'll wipe out the blues instead. Hami always leaves me alone. If you want to chalk that up to at least one pylon still being up, or just dumb luck.. you can decide.. but based on the facts and experiences, I'd say the pylons make at least some difference.

That doesn't mean it's necessary to use any single method, and people already have their own methods that they are used to, so it shouldn't matter whichever way a team leader wants to run the team. In either case, it shouldn't give people an excuse to be rude to each other just because they don't understand the way something works. There is too much of that in the game these days.

He will actually shoot players who wander too closely even with the pylons up. I had dug up that taunt power a while back, and to be honest, I can't reconcile it with how he actually behaves. Part of that may relate to the fact that it's a taunt by an ally, and I have no idea what that even does to the NPC AI.

I can say though that his willingness to shoot people who stray too close (even ones with no taunt auras, etc.) is one reason I like dragging the Rikti in early. He's usually much more interested in them, since they're actually attacking him or the mitos.

Thing is, that power is used by Hami, and the "If a Rikti TF Pylon" refers to the target--Hami is taunting the pylons, not the other way around. I have no idea why.

The pylons do have a power though: [Objects.Drain_Hami.Drain]. It has exactly one effect, which is to make Hami untouchable.

I saw that for myself during a master run over the weekend. We left the pylons up just to see what, if anything, would happen; after taking out the mitos we found we couldn't affect Hami at all until we eliminated the pylons.

I don't know if that's the case. It says the target is "caster" and the taunt is applied to the target. So I read it as he's taunting himself for every ally in range. I have no idea what that would actually cause him to do.

But if that's wrong and he really is taunting the pylons, that probably makes sense as the way the devs get the pylons to apply the Drain power to him.

The target = caster thing is just how all PBAoEs are defined. You don't damage yourself when you use Irradiate, for example.

Taunting the pylons to make them use their power on Hami makes some sense, except it's a 300-foot radius PBAoE auto power. They basically can't not use it on him (unless someone Wormholes them all away, I guess.) Possibly at some point it was supposed to be single target for some reason, and the taunt was left in as an artifact of unimplemented design?

And careful observation to test a theory is hardly in the same boat as believing the Earth is flat. My personal OBSERVATIONS are that leaving the pylons does help you get less aggro from Hami.


And does it make a difference from the perception point of an arrogant player? You know, the kind that thinks they know more than everyone else.

Or, an educated player would just admit that any possible subtle differences may be negligible based on several other factors. The uneducated players simply follow what they hear without knowing or caring why, and then somehow think it's mandatory, which causes problems on teams later on.

The bottom line is that we all know that there are several methods that work just fine, so there is no point arguing with a team leader about which way they feel comfortable running their own TF. It just causes unnecessary drama and wastes time.

If somebody has had better luck using a specific method over another, just let them use that method. It's not big deal. lol

Correlation does not equal causation. You can observe several fat people drinking diet coke but that does not mean that the diet coke is what caused them to be fat. Just because leaving the pylons up and less aggro from Hami happened at the same time means squat.

People have had personal OBSERVATIONS that are wrong, such as the world being flat. People were just as passionate about being wrong about that topic as people seem to be about being wrong on this topic.

Unless you're wrong about being wrong, which makes you wrongier than what you wrongishly perceive to be the wrong side of the party of this conversation.

Still, I'm pretty confident that I'm right. I had teams do it both ways, and watched passively from above Hami (everyone knew what needed doing, so the patterns of attack were very similar). Except in one instance where someone who got close had a taunt aura going, the Hami never fired a shot at a player that got up to the green ring when the pylons were up. On the runs where the pylons got dropped first, Hami would fire off AOE blasts at players regularly and directly (not splash damage due to Rikti targets nearby).

@TURGENEV - Freedom Server / IRON / B.A.N.E / HORDE

Turg Fiction: Ghost in the Machine Acts III & IV coming 2012!
Turg Fiction: IX is now LIVE on Architect Entertainment!

The Pylons as I understand it are merely objectives, I tend to dive in and clear the Yellow Mito's while the Pylons are still up. Hamidon can still attack while the pylons are active and defeating Hamidon with or without a Pylon up are exactly the same.

People insisting or kicking players for wanting to take down the pylons first as intended really should worry less about objective order and more about what the objectives are, as each and every strategy is in effect, exactly the same.

The only strategy I've seen that does make it easier, is to chuck the rikti into the Hami-goo to make them attack the Mito's while teammembers do the same with less aggro (Hami has more stuff to fire at)

And yet there have been others that say they have been targeted and hit by Hami both before and after the pylons were down without being that close. From my personal observations it would appear that Hami just kind of sits there until someone gets too close, and does not seem to matter if the pylons are up or down.

So far, not a single person has offered any other proof other than observations. Observations (including my own) that can be flawed due to several different variables, not under the control of the observer, on different teams. No one has scanned Hami before and after the pylons were down to find any difference in any powers. No one has found any discription of any power that would cause Hami to have a different aggro range depending on the status of the pylons. No red name has come in and said, hahaha you are all wrong, this is how it works. All we have is conflicting observatsions.

The OP was looking for proof that leaving the pylons up makes things easier. So far, there has been none.

That's one of the reasons why I made it my pet project last week during the LG runs: The teams I ran with were fairly coordinated and followed the same tactics either time, with the one variable being when the pylons came down. Having eight heroes attack a green mito, unstealthed, without being attacked when the pylons remain up (except if you have someone with a taunt aura get too close), whereas having them being hit with AOE blasts from the nucleus when the pylons were down, seems like evidence of behavior to me.

What you're saying is that you don't want evidence based on observation, you want numbers, which ultimately only a Dev can come forward and confirm/deny outright - which they're most likely unwilling to do.

I can't PROVIDE any further evidence, honestly. I tried using the Analyzer temp power over the Hami, but I ended up expending the charges w/o getting anything substantiative or quotable. I focused on behavior at that point, since it seemed easier to gauge if the Hami was swelling for an AOE blast release or not.

If you want to give this a whirl, look me up on Freedom (or Test, if you can get interested parties to check it out) and you can do the number observations while I run the team thru its paces.

@TURGENEV - Freedom Server / IRON / B.A.N.E / HORDE

Turg Fiction: Ghost in the Machine Acts III & IV coming 2012!
Turg Fiction: IX is now LIVE on Architect Entertainment!

Then again, there has been no proof that it doesn't either. One way or the other, there is no reason to be so insistent about the way people run their teams.

To offer more to the theory:
Even if the Pylon being up or down doesn't do anything specific mechanically or number-wise to sway an advantage, it doesn't mean the act of taken them down or leaving them up doesn't have an impact. As strategy changes, the behavior of players does too, and then the AI of foes can react differently.

Nobody was saying that Hami would never attack anybody while a pylon is still up. I think what they were saying was there seems to be less of a chance of it. For all we know, Hami's untouchable status alone could make the AI decide that some players are not a threat and decide not to attack them. With the pylons down, Hami's not untouchable anymore, meaning that any powers we do use can affect it, and thus possibly affect the AI... which might be the difference of being attacked or not that some players are reporting.

Like we've all said, if somebody gets too close or uses a power in range, Hami might still strike, Pylons or no Pylons. The question is.. where does somebody draw the line to make a comparison? Is it threat rating? Is it an agro distance? Is it the number of players within a certain range? Is it based on if a player in range killed any of the Rikti or Mitos recently? Nobody can say for sure. There are too many factors involved.

Either way, if you got attacked by Hami, you probably did something to cause it, even if it was accidental. That type of behavior can be avoided regardless if the Pylons are up or down. It's not much to stand on to say something like "Leaving a Pylon up doesn't help because we left one standing and Hami still killed me". Like you said, correlation does not equal causation. The Pylons being up or down wont have anything to do with it in certain circumstances anyway.

Even if a Dev came in here and said "it's not designed to make any difference" still doesn't mean it has no effect. We all know the AI does funny things that even the Devs can't explain sometimes. This might be one of them... and even if it isn't, it's still no reason for people to get bent out of shape about. lol

Have you tried yourself defeat Hamidon with pylons still up? Or you just made it up?

As far as I understand, pylons make hami untouchable.

I'm might be wrong though, but of hundreds times I've been on LGTF, I've never seen Hami taken down before pylons.

On another hand, before Castle made ill-informed change to green mitos, we usually killed things in the following order: yellows, greens, pylons, hami and at very last blues.

Your observastions you listed here are better than most because you are lowering the number of variables. Prevously no mention was made of what testing was done, only that it seemed to work better one way over another.

I would actually love to check it out but it is quite difficult to find a team of people willing to test this. Those that do want to run a LGTF want to burn through as fast as possible. Even on shard runs, they burn through that mish as fast as they can to get to the last mission. I do have my main on Freedom and would be glad to be part of a test group to try and figure out just what the hell, if anything is going on with the pylons. Sat and Sun work for me.


And I do agree with most that if the leader says to do the mish one way that you should do it that way and do your best to save arguements as to who is right/wrong until after the TF and in tells. No need to get everyone upset on a TF and ruin others fun. Exceptions would be if they were suggesting to do something utterly stupid or ignorant like trying to kill Hami first before the rikti, mitos, or pylons.

Yes, I know all of those things. You still demonstrate epic fail. In the part I highlighted, you make a statement of fact on a subject that you don't actually have any facts about. You THINK the pylons don't help. I THINK they do. Stating that I am wrong, rather than that you disagree, just makes you look foolish.

Look up the forum crew "The Freedom Horde". E-Man and Luna are our two biggest cheerleaders, but we all get messy as a collective. You can also contact me and we'll hash out a time/date too.

@TURGENEV - Freedom Server / IRON / B.A.N.E / HORDE

Turg Fiction: Ghost in the Machine Acts III & IV coming 2012!
Turg Fiction: IX is now LIVE on Architect Entertainment!