A Guide to Hamidon Raids

[Balshor]

The Jell-O Age: Or, a Young Hero's (Non)Illustrated Primer
by Balshor, Ice/Kinetics Controller of Pinnacle

Welcome, hero, to the Jell-O Age. Now that you've been granted security level 45, you now have access to the Hive, where the biggest, baddest lump of protoplasm ever to mar the face of this planet currently lives. He's nasty enough to require legions of superheroes to defeat, and although he has been beaten many times in the past, he always comes back spoiling for another fight.

This document is intended for the uninitiated Hamidon raider. No prior experience with this encounter will be assumed. However, as you have successfully gained 45 levels of experience, I will assume that you are familiar with all of the various powersets and mechanics in this game.

Please note that this document reflects the current state of Hamidon raiding on the Pinnacle Server as of mid-March 2005. Keep in mind that Hamidon has been constantly changing since his first defeat, and the strategies and conventions surrounding the raids change and adapt accordingly.

[Balshor]

Where It All Happens

Hamidon is located in a zone called the Hive. To get there, travel from Founder's Falls, through the length of Eden, and proceed to the western edge of Eden, where you will find a partially destroyed gate leading into the Hive. You must be security level 45 or above to pass through this gate. Note that the zone "The Hive" is distinct from the region in Eden called "The Hive", although the latter is located very close to the gate.

You will enter the Hive from the southern part of the eastern war wall. Be extremely wary as you enter the zone, as the entire place is densely populated with duos and trios of giant monsters. If you choose to avoid these monsters by flying above their heads, be aware that this zone is also home to legions of Devouring Earth swarms. These swarms are far nastier than their conventional counterparts found elsewhere in the city. In addition to their usual damaging and slowing attack, they can drop you to the ground where you will also have to contend with their monster brethren.

In the far northwest corner of the Hive are the ruins of Portal Corp's original facilities. Explorers are highly encouraged to poke around this area.

The outskirts of the zone are open hills with occasional stands of trees. As you proceed towards the center of the zone, be especially wary as you attempt to travel to this large central region, as the four passes through the hills are guarded by giant walls of monsters.

Once past the monster walls, the grass will give way to dirt and immense spires of rock will replace the groves of trees. The land slopes down into a massive crater, and at the center of the depression lives Hamidon.

[Balshor]

About Hamidon

Hamidon is composed of a single nucleus surrounded by thirty-three mitochondria of various sorts. These cellular components are individually targetable and float inside of a huge blob of goo. While heroes can easily move about inside of this goo to reach the enemies within, the goo will slow your movement speed and prevent the use of any interruptible powers.

The mitochondria come in three flavors: the yellow Mitochondria Antibodies, the blue Mitochondria Electrolytes, and the green Mending Mitochondria. Hereafter, we will refer to them as yellow, blue, and green mitos. Initially, there are seventeen yellow mitos and eight each of the blue and green mitos.

Yellow mitos possess an attack of untyped damage that will hit a level 50 hero for an initial 782.4 points of damage, plus a nontrivial amount added over time. Their range is greater than any hero's; however, they will not begin to attack you until you are much closer.

Blue mitos also have an untyped attack, although it is somewhat weaker and much shorter ranged. However, this attack also has both a hold and a -recharge secondary effect.

Green mitos have no attack, but they will repair any damage done to either the other mitos or to Hamidon himself. They can heal about 800 points of damage at a time, with the heal cycling fairly rapidly.

As heroes defeat a mitochondria, it may split, creating a new mito of the same type in its location. Thus, although there are only 33 mitos to begin with, heroes will often need to defeat twice or thrice that number before clearing them all out.

Hamidon has an area-of-effect attack of comparable range to a yellow mito and radius approximately equal to that of Energy Blast's Nova. His attack also knocks heroes down and disorients them.

Hamidon has tremendous reserves to call upon, and if significantly damaged (at approximately 50% and 25% of his health), he will summon a new yellow mitochondria for each hero and pet within his range. Needless to say, this is often more than sufficient to completely wipe out the attacking heroes, giving Hamidon time to recover and regroup.

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The Current Strategy: An Outline

The current strategy incorporates ideas developed by many heroes across all servers. Many of these ideas were developed in parallel by multiple minds and inspired by previous efforts by both individual supergroups and entire servers.

The raid can be easily divided into two distinct phases: clearing the mitos and defeating Hamidon.

In the mito clearing phase, heroes move from mito to mito within the goo, staying as close together as possible. To counteract the incoming fire, AoE heals are constantly fired, ideally completely healing a hero before the next shot comes in. The holds used by the blue mitos and the stun on Hami’s AoE attack are countered using dispersion bubbles. In order to minimize the amount of fire this healing umbrella needs to deal with, illusionists drop Phantom Army to draw agro, and often a tank or regen scrapper is used to hold Hami’s AoE agro off of the main body of heroes.

After all (or sufficiently many, as judged by the raid leader) of the mitos are cleared, controllers move in on Hamidon to establish a chain-hold on him. Provided this hold is established and maintained before Hamidon hits half health, the two mito respawns will not occur. Thus, damage dealers wait to attack until the raid leaders are satisfied that the controllers can maintain their hold on Hamidon. Once this occurs, the attack is signaled, and the damage dealers take down Hamidon as quickly as possible while the controllers maintain their holds.

[Balshor]

A Few Words about Technical Limitations

In a large raid, the biggest problems and frustrations that occur are usually results of either players misbehaving or the client and server failing to keep up with the raid’s demands on them. This section will attempt to address the latter issue, and while we cannot eliminate the technical considerations involved, the following suggestions may help minimize them for you.

Before we begin, understand that the client and your computer impose one set of limitations on performance while the server imposes a much different second set of limitations. In actuality, a third set of limitations are imposed by the connection between your computer and the server, but improving the quality of that connection is far, far beyond the scope of this guide.

Client limitations usually involve graphics, and these problems are especially severe in the larger raids. First, there is the standard issue of having so much to draw on the screen that the game’s framerate hits the floor. The best way around this is to turn as many of the graphics settings down as possible (with the exception of character detail, which we will discuss shortly). Also, it is highly recommended that you wear a costume with no cape or aura, as having to render your cape and aura will slow down everybody’s computers. Turning off player names and health bars will also reduce not only the amount of things to draw on the screen but also the amount of information that needs to pass between your computer and the server.

Second, and much more frustrating to me, is the limitation that the client will only draw so many heroes and mobs on the screen at once, no matter how many are actually in your field of view. Turning up the character detail will increase the number of hero/mobs that the client will draw on the screen. However, even with that setting at the maximum, there will be times that you will be unable to target a mito or a hero simply because too many heroes or pets are between you and your target. To work around this, the raid leaders may choose to split the raid into two distinct attack groups for the mito clearing. For the second phase, it is highly recommended that you assist off of a pet, as they will never lose sight of Hamidon even if you do.

Server side problems are essentially caused by too many heroes all trying to use their powers all at once. Usually, this is an issue only with large raids and only during the final takedown of Hamidon. In order to minimize this, you should refrain from using anything but the most essential powers while taking down Hamidon. Future sections will detail which powers are useful and which are not.

You know that you’re stuck in a big puddle of server-side lag if your powers do not seem to go off when they’re recharged and take a long time to activate when they finally fire. The reason for this is that the server is so bogged down that time is essentially passing slower in the game than in real life. Your client, however, measures when a power is recharged using your computer’s clock, which is running at normal speed. Hence, powers appear to be recharged before the server thinks they are (and the server gets the final word in this decision). To work around this, create a new tab with only general combat messages in it. Chat messages will appear in this window telling you when powers are readied, activated, and recharged. Ignore your power tray and use this window instead to tell you when powers are available for use.

In order to increase your client's stability during a raid, you may wish to restart your client in safe mode. To do this, exit CoH, start the updater, and click on the "Safe Mode" box next to the "Next" button. Continue to start the game as you normally would.

[Balshor]

A Few Words about Raid Etiquette

Hamidon sits out in the open in the Hive, making him more like the Octopus or Paladin Construction Site events than the Sewer or Eden trials. In particular, players have no real control over when he is available to be raided and who is able to raid him. As one would expect, this can lead to a certain amount of conflict between various groups competing to raid Hamidon.

Raids are classified as either open or closed. An open raid is one in which any hero is welcome to join in, provided that they agree to work with the heroes already present and follow the orders of the leaders of the raid. A closed raid is one in which only select individuals are invited to participate. Due to the open nature of the event, there is really very little that raid leaders can do to prevent people from joining their closed raids; however, do not let this be an excuse to just jump in and assume that you will be welcome.

Your first job with any Hamidon raid is to determine whether you’re invited. The best way to do this is to ask politely whether the raid is open or closed, either via a tell to the raid leader or over the broadcast channel if it appears that it is not being used to coordinate the raid. If you are told that the raid is closed, either leave the zone or stand far back (on or among the rocks) to observe.

If you are invited to join a raid (either implicitly for an open raid or explicitly for a closed one), the first order of business is to discover who are the leaders of the raid. Follow their orders, and don’t try to do their jobs. Most importantly, don’t try to give orders unless it’s your job to do so. Stick to private tells, team chat, and local chat to keep the primary communication channels clear.

[Balshor]

Your Role in Clearing the Mitos

There are four basic groups involved in clearing the mitos: the attackers, the healers, the distracters, and the coordinators. In all likelihood, you will belong to one of the first two groups. We’ll deal with the most specialized groups first, then move up to the larger ones.

Aside from the raid leader, the two most important people to remember are the main assist and the main follow. The main assist will choose a target for the attackers to concentrate their firepower on. The main follow marks the position around which the heroes should gather in order to maximize the efficiency of the healing umbrella and of AoE buffs. Both the main assist and the main follow should be on your friends list, as you will want to be able to easily target them by clicking on their names. Note that in some raids, the main assist and the main follow may be the same person. In large raids, secondary assists are often set up.

The distraction group initially consists of flying or phased illusionists, although phase shifted heroes can fill with lesser effectiveness in if no illusionists are available. The job of these illusionists is to keep a constant rotation of Phantom Army inside of Hamidon to pull as much agro as possible off of the main body of heroes. After a number of mitos are cleared, a tank or scrapper with single-target healers backing them up often taunt Hamidon in order to keep his powerful AoE busy.

Attackers and healers move together, following the main follow and attacking what the main assist targets. Really, the only difficult part is staying as close together as possible. You may wish to auto-follow the main follow or (even better) have everybody follow the team leader, and the team leader auto-follow the main follow. (This cuts down on clumping interfering with auto-follow.)

So, what specifically should you be doing?

If you are a blaster, scrapper, or tank, you will almost definitely be an attacker. Add the main assist and the main follow to your friends list. You should assist the main assist by targeting him and using your attack powers. If you prefer to target the mito directly, target the main assist and use the /assist command to target his target. While doing this, try to position yourself to keep the group as tightly packed as possible. Standing on the outskirts of the group vastly increases the probability of a mito shooting you before the healing umbrella is able to catch up with damage from previous shots.

If you are a melee fighter, you may have difficulty reaching the mitos, as they can float very high up in the air. The best option, of course, is to hover next to the mitos, either via your own powers or by getting on a team with somebody with group fly. If you cannot fly, use superjump and auto-follow to close in on the mito for a swing or two before falling back into the healing umbrella. If you have neither superjump nor fly, try to get an inertial reduction buff from a kineticist.

The role of defenders depends largely on their primary powerset.

Empathy defenders should spam their AoE heal to help form the healing umbrella. They should also use recovery and regen auras and try to resurrect any nearby fallen heroes. By far their most important job is to stay as close together as possible, follow the main follow around, and keep the healing umbrella going.

Radiation defenders should support the healing umbrella with their heal, buff using AM, and use RI+EF on the current target. Depending on the number of healers available for the umbrella, their main focus may shift from healing to debuffing and back again.

Force Field defenders should use dispersion bubble and completely ignore the rest of their primary powerset. Hopefully, you have some well slotted attacks you can contribute with.

Storm defenders should use freezing rain when possible. Unfortunately, again the rest of the powerset is not terribly useful.

Dark Miasma defenders are prized mostly for Howling Twilight, which can very quickly get a raid back on its feet after a massive wipe. Again, the rest of the powerset is not terribly useful.

At this point, controllers should rely on their secondary powerset and operate as defenders. Spamming holds on the mitos is theorized to help reduce splits, so using holds and blasts from auxiliary power pools is also encouraged. The one exception to this is for illusion controllers on the distraction team (where illusionists usually end up). In this case, your job is to keep PA inside of Hamidon as much as possible and keeping them away from the main body of heroes. To avoid agro yourself, you will probably find yourself either hovering above Hamidon or phase shifted beside him.

[Balshor]

Interlude: Things You Should and Shouldn't Do at this Stage

Add the main follow and main assist to your friends list. Make a macro or bind for the /assist command. (You can do this with the command “/bind [key] assist” or “/macro [name] assist”. When you need a target to attack, click on the main assist’s name and hit your bind or macro. This will pick up the main assist’s current target. If the target does not change, this is because the next target has not been selected yet. Wait a moment or two, then hit your bind again.

Turn off all unnecessary powers. This includes shadowfall, steamy mist, pretty much all tank and scrapper defensive powers, all stealth powers, single-target bubbles, etc. Basically, all of the damage involved will be untyped, so most defensive powers are useless. Additionally, mitos have an insane amount of accuracy, so even if we could stack enough defense buffs to make a difference, the resulting graphics lag would make the game completely unplayable.

Tanks: turn off any auras that have a built-in taunt. This is a special case of the previous paragraph, as these auras will draw additional agro (especially Hami agro) to the group while providing no benefit to the user whatsoever.

Do use the following AoE buffs: Regen Aura, Recovery Aura, Accelerate Metabolism, Dispersion Bubble, Tactics, and Inertial Reduction.

In absolutely NO circumstances should you use any power on Hamidon. (There is an exception, but it will be made explicitly clear by the raid leaders if that exception applies to you.) This also means that you need to be careful using cone and AoE powers; if you are unsure whether Hamidon will be in your area of effect, err on the side of caution and use a single-target attack instead.

[Balshor]

Your Role in Defeating Hamidon

[Balshor]

Interlude: More Things that You Should and Shouldn't Do

[Balshor]

Leading a Raid: Opinions and Suggestions from a Raid Leader

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Defeating Hamidon: The Rewards

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Appendix: A Historical Look at Hamidon Raids

The first successful Hamidon raid was conducted by Liberty server on February 3rd, 2005 using a strategy essentially the same as the one described above. Two days later, an open raid on Pinnacle server defeated Hamidon with a similar, independently developed strategy. The following week, most of the remaining servers defeated Hamidon in open raids, and by February 19th, all servers had defeated Hamidon in an open raid.

However, the history of Hamidon raids begins long before this. Prior to Liberty’s raid, the only victories against Hamidon were made by supergroups and their allies in closed raids. Specifically, Jagged Legion on Pinnacle, Twilight Avengers on Guardian, and Evolution on Virtue are the three supergroups usually credited with defeating Hamidon prior to the successful open raids.

As I mentioned above, Hamidon has been evolving ever since he was first defeated. The first incarnation (affectionately known to some as the gimped Hami) was so weak that a single team of eight heroes could (and regularly did) defeat him. The encounter is usually considered to be so different from this initial easy stage that victories during this period are usually ignored. At this time, the level cap was also only 40, so any rewards from this time period are artifacts not useful in the current endgame.

The first major change to Hamidon was to boost his hit points and regeneration rate to require more than a single team to defeat him. This is usually considered the first “valid” Hamidon. However, at this time his hold resist magnitude was sufficiently low that very few controllers were required for the encounter. As most of the server population was nowhere close in level to have access to the Hive, Hamidon was the sole providence of the few high-level supergroups present at this time. It was in this period that Jagged Legion began making a name for themselves on Pinnacle server as successful Hamidon raiders.

Hamidon’s health was buffed again with the release of Issue 2, and his inherent mez protection was increased soon afterwards. At this time, sufficient numbers of heroes gained access to the Hive that open raids became a viable option. In this incarnation, heroes could outrange Hamidon’s attacks using snipes slotted for maximum range. Thus, the most commonly used open raid strategy involved gathering large numbers of blasters at maximum range and attempting to increase their damage output via various buffs and debuffs. Leaked information the successful Twilight Avengers raids suggested that large numbers of radiation debuffs were necessary for victory. At this time, Hamidon was largely considered impossible by the general population. Successful supergroups decided not to release their winning strategies, and the resulting animosity has had a sufficiently lasting effect to still be felt today.

Hamidon’s range was increased in Issue 3 to counter the long-range strategy then employed by open raids. Around that same time, limits were placed on how toggle debuffs interacted with phase shift and with moving far out of range from the target. These changes were largely seen as a response to the strategies employed by the Twilight Avengers. Hamidon also received another large boost to his hit points and regeneration rate. The loss of the advantages of staying at range prompted the development of close-in tactics for open raids, and the crucial idea of holding Hamidon was finally put into open practice. With a winning strategy to work with and plenty of determination to prove their mettle, the general population finally pulled together successful open raids on Hamidon.

Since then, Hamidon has been buffed up a bit but not significantly changed in any way. The reward system, however, has been completely revamped. Before, each of the mito buds dropped approximately 250,000 experience points, plus a random Hami-O. This led to widespread griefing and ninja-looting of raids, prompting the devs to instead reward a random Hami-O to each hero on a team that had damaged Hamidon. The buds were drastically reduced in terms of experience points and buffed up considerably to minimize their vulnerability to being one-shot by AoEs.