Apparition

There are four huge advantages to the LFG Rikti mothership raid. 1. With only one league, there's much less lag. Lag with two or more leagues is just ridiculous. 2. Far less chance of griefing. Rikti mothership raids have been griefed. I know, I've lead Rikti mothership raids on the Excelsior server that were griefed. People spamming Dimensional Shift and/or Black Hole, among other things. Making it available in the LFG cuts chances of griefing substantially. If someone does grief, well, they can be easily kicked out of the instance and not be invited back. With the zone Rikti mothership raids, there's not much you can do about griefing other than deal with it or cancel the Rikti mothership raid. Sure, I could have kicked the two idiots spamming Dimension Shift from the league, but that does nothing about them being in the bowl nor prevent them from spamming the heck out of Dimension Shift. 3. It is limited to those level 35+. I have seen numerous people at Rikti mothership raids under level 15 (some even as low as level 1 or 2), using it as a method of PLing. What the heck is a level 10 Scrapper going to contribute to a mothership raid, nonetheless a level 1? In relation, it also cuts down the number of AFK leechers trying to PL. They can be kicked from the instance, and not invited back at the next mothership raid. 4. There can be concurrent Rikti mothership raids. Excelsior server had no scheduled Rikti mothership raids for months. I've tried, but someone who doesn't read the forums nor the Homecoming Discord started an impromptu Rikti mothership raid ten minutes before the scheduled one was to form. The zone cap was at 200, so intentionally forcing a second zone to spawn was impossible. IMO, all four points outweigh a social experience.

It's being addressed.

Just a reminder that is in less than eight hours!

Yes. In the LFG window, there's an option to join an event in progress if it isn't locked.

Excellent changes. I especially like the level 35+ requirement, and the Rikti dropship spawning after the destruction of the first pylon. How Rikti mothership raids are run now (at least on Excelsior server), are that we'll hunt the dropship after the raiders are evicted from the mothership. But it's an annoying little gnat that will occasionally one shot people while taking down the remaining pylons. I've been one shotted quite a few times during the Pylon phase. It makes it a wee bit disorienting while leading. Now we can destroy one Pylon, turn our attention to the dropship, and then return to the Pylons.

The mission has been bugged since Issue 6. As soon as you start fighting mobs or get anywhere near the Council spy (and that can be 100 feet away), he will take off like a bat out of Hell. I have done the mission many, many times since CoV launch. IIRC, only once did it complete successfully.

Back in May and June, there were a lot less level 50 PCs running around. I am a crazy bastard in that I like to level five levels at a time, turn off XP, and do all of the content I want to do. I turn off XP at level 9, 14, 19, 24, etc., and only after I finish the content I want to do do I turn XP back on. It takes me about a month (more now now that I have level 50 characters to switch to when my friends want to do something, or for raids) to level a toon to level 50. I didn't ding level 50 on a toon until at the very end of May. Next ding of 50 was in early July. Then again in mid-August. Next one will probably be in early-to-mid-October. Then there are others that I actually know of that started the day the Excelsior server opened and have over a dozen characters, none of which have reached level 50 yet. Regardless, there were far fewer level 50s running around three months ago than there are now. As to having well over 100 people in the Hive on a raid, that was pre-Issue 9. That was an entirely different Hamidon raid. Hamidon raids were completely revamped in Issue 9 to what we have today, and that Hamidon was capped at 50 people. So, yes, yes it is changing it back to how it was on live.

In a perfect world, I would agree with you. If the league bug didn't exist, I would do that as well. But it does, so, as I said, I try not to poke the bear by moving people around much unless I have to.

Not sure. I wanted to have six team leads in place before inviting people to Rikti mothership raid leagues, but finding six level 50 players that I know and trust that are actually interested enough to do Rikti mothership raids has been difficult as of late, making that impossible. So now I just form up Rikti mothership raids myself the new way by directly inviting everyone to the league, but I do two things: I only change teams around in the league to make sure that there is a level 50 character leading the team, and I specifically repeatedly ask people on the Request channel before hand to check their team tab to make sure that they are actually on a team, and if not to drop and send me a tell for a re-invite. So far, cross my fingers, no issues, but I don't poke the bear by moving people around if I don't have to.

The change was "just dropped on us," because, let's face it: The raid zone cap being changed to 200 was a mistake, and people exploited the heck out of it for months. The Zerg/Hamikazi Hamidon raids were essentially an exploit. No one ever intended for people to make 240 to 400 reward merits in one hour per night. The Homecoming developers, with the exception of the base TP macro, never announced an exploit fix before hand.

The league bug would have to be fixed first before making instanced raids available.

Exactly. It will take some time to learn for those who have never done normal Hamidon raids before, but it's not rocket science.

Uh... you do realize that mothership raids in RWZ were a thing when the zone was capped to 50 from 2007 through 2012, yes? I lead at least two a week for years. It will be fine.

Two The Hive maps spawned on Excelsior server last night. Tuesday nights are my tabletop gaming night, so I didn't make it into The Hive 1, but I made it into The Hive 2 after the raid had already started. From what I have been told, the raid leader in The Hive 2 was completely unfamiliar with the normal Hamidon raid strategies to the point where he ordered the meleers to take down the blue mitos. Most of those in The Hive 2 never did a normal Hamidon raid either. After a couple of wipes, most left. Then I came, bringing 20 EoEs with me since they were fresh out. We gave it another go. League wipe, causing a double bloom. Then some of those that finished in The Hive 1 came to help out, (thank you!) We gave it another go. I think I died four more times in that round. We just didn't have the DPS as too many had already left over the previous half hour. Eventually, the raid in The Hive 2 was called. It was GREAT! Sure, we lost. So did many other Hamidon raids back in the day. It's a learning curve, like any other raid. It helped teach people that were willing to learn the actual raid mechanics and to respect The Hamidon. :D After over a month of staying away from the Zerg Hamidon raids, I look forward to Hamidon raiding again on occasion, and plan to be there again tonight. I look forward to it, whether we succeed or not.

They kind of already can, by flooding the zone with players until a second zone is forced open. Which a lower zone cap actually helps.

Dang it, now I'll have those re-occuring nightmares again that there were sequels to The Matrix.

Putting someone on ignore didn't help when people were TPing whole leagues to directly next to Hamidon, causing whole league wipes. Or when multiple people spawned team TP jets, asking everyone nearby multiple times if they would like to TP to a mission. Or when people spammed the heck out of Dimensional Shift and/or Black Hole. All of those happened, some of them repeatedly. IIRC, zones in Homecoming disappear after a few hours of non-use, so leaving Hamidon in a screwed up state wouldn't be permanent until a server reset. Even if I'm wrong, it would be relatively easy to force open a second The Hive map, or, as @GM Capocollo stated, just /petition it.

You left one bad out. The uncapped raid zones made it far easier to grief raids, and there was a lot of that going on.

The Abyss, The Hive, and RWZ were all capped at 50 players for years and Hamidon and Rikti mothership raids ran just fine. It may take a re-adjustment period, but eventually they'll be just fine on Homecoming as well.

Rikti drones could always see through Stealth.

Excelsior had 150+ people a night, and believe me, there was tons of lag. It was so bad that I stopped going over a month ago. Besides that, it was pretty danged clear that Hamidon raids were completely and utterly broken. Now Hamidon raids will be slightly challenging again and people get to relearn the raid mechanics.

Now that the Rikti War Zone zone player cap has been fixed, it's time to give this a go again. I will hold two weekly back-to-back Rikti mothership raids every Thursday evening (with the exception of holidays), at 8:30 P.M. ET/5:30 P.M. PT, starting this Thursday, September 12th. We will meet in Pocket D. You must be level 35+ and have the Member of Vanguard badge to participate. When the Rikti mothership raid begins, we will start with Pylon 11, going in a roughly clockwise formation. When Pylon 1 is destroyed and the Rikti mothership's shield drops, we will stay at the Pylon 1 location and buff up. Once buffed up, one or two people from every team will plant a bomb on the mothership, and everyone else will head directly to the bowl. Once the Rikti mothership raid is over, we'll begin the Rikti dropship hunt. Once the dropship is destroyed, we'll give a five minute rest period for everyone to do what they need to do, then queue up again. Hope to see y'all there.

Praise the Lord Jesus Christ! Thank you!

Where's this mag 3 protection for Clarion coming from? My Blaster has a minimum of mag 6 from Clarion Core. Rebirth and Barrier are nice, but Melee Core Hybrid gives very nice regen and +resistance as well.

Or you can be a crazy person like me and take Tier 4 Clarion Core Destiny and Tier 4 Melee Core Hybrid and have mez protection out the wazoo, along with high regen and near capped resistances.