Hamidon raids, post-50 cap

[Veracor]

Hello Everlasting, I am one of the raid organizers for the server.  Over the last three months, we have witnessed Hamidon raids go from 1 full league, to a creeping overflow league, to two overflow leagues.  During this time, we went from the safe-and-slow strategy of killing every bloom, to nuking at 50% health, to 75% health, 100%, and then finally 100% ignoring Mitos.  This is pretty impressive given that we are Everlasting and half of our server population occupies some sort of galaxy dance club with talking seagulls.

 

As of 9/10, The Hive, The Abyss, and Rikti War Zone are now capped at 50 players instead of 150, meaning we're probably back to the slow 50% health strats, or 75% if the league has lore pets.  This is fine, but this 50-cap change has caused a number of other problems:

 

1). We have way more than 50 people wanting to attend raids, and we were already forming up 30 minutes before schedule due to sheer attendance, which is understandably unfair to west coast 9-5 workers in the first place.

2). The league will fall apart every time we switch zones to The Abyss from people waiting or switching characters.  I mean, it already did, but now it forcibly does.

3). There will be no more reserving of spots in a Hami league.  You will either arrive in the zone or you will stand at the door going let me in waiting for someone to crash.  No more tells to get invites into a Hami raid -- broadcast only.

4). Leechers cannot be removed from the zone, only from the league.  All we can do is kick them from the league to deny them rewards.  On the 150-cap leechers didn't matter so we didn't police it, but now it is a detriment.

5). Fewer EoEs will be available and a couple of shady people are already buying them all up to resell at exhoorbitant prices.

 

There's really not much we can do about problems 3-5.  For problems 1 and 2, we are considering the following options:

 

1). Hami can form up early and then overflow can take the next instance, and each league kills Hami consecutively in their own instance.  But if overflow doesn't get enough people then they wasted a bunch of time waiting for the main league to fall apart and backfill them.  No zone changes, everyone would be raiding in The Hive for its greater Monster density.

2). Blue and red Hami could be run simultaneously at the scheduled time.  Raid leaders will probably have to LFG together to advertise which league needs filling the most.  The problem is that this will probably cause a lot of confusion in the LFG channel, at least until people get used to it.  No zone changes, but villains would get to participate.

3). Hami can be run seperately at multiple hours (such as 7pm, 8pm, and then 9pm EDT) by different raid leaders, with an honor agreement from the raiders that people don't greedily alt into multiple raids unless there's space for them to do so.  So far, multiple Hami raids at different hours of the day have only seen mixed success but it might get better with regular scheduling.

 

So, arguments and opinions aside about the 50-cap killing the server's biggest social get-togethers and whatnot, I want to know what people think is the best way to adapt the daily Hami raiding to the new player limit, and if anyone has a better idea than the above 3 options.  Obviously the solution here was to instead buff Hamidon to be a challenge to 100+ players, but it is what it is: we have a 50-cap now and we have to make it work.  We will try all three of the options over the next few days to see what worked the best for everyone, then tweak schedules to get it right for next week.

[swordchucks]

One thing I noticed last night is that hardly anyone stayed in the Hive to kill the buds after Hami fell, and quite a few people left the league either to alt or to make space for new folks.

 

What might work best is if we were to do something like the following:

1. The blue Hami runs in the Hive. 
2. People who can't make it into the Hive are directed to the Abyss where a different raid leader gathers up a second league.
   1. If the Abyss team fills, then they run a red Hami.  The blue Hami team re-clears the Hive and does their second run there.
   2. If the Abyss team doesn't fill, then some portion of the blue Hami team joins the red team and clears the red Hami.  Players from the blue Hami are mostly not doing a second run.

The above plan would ensure that as many players as possible can run Hami once per day without really changing the schedule around.  It would mean a lot fewer double runs and would not accommodate person #101 that wanted to run, but seems to be a fairer method in other ways.  The only real problem with it is that it requires multiple competent leaders and targeters.

 

Independent of the above, I feel like we should probably extend our monster clearing prior to Hami a little to allow a chance for more EoEs to drop if prices get too bad. 

[Kallisti]

...and taunters, don't forget the taunters!

 

What it boils down to is that Veracor shouldn't be solely responsible for organising Hami raids. Others need to step up to organise alternative times and locations so that people from all timezones get an opportunity to take part. Participants need to learn their roles - the problem with the mega raids was it allowed people to become complacent and not bother too hard, get in the league or overflow then go afk and reap the reward for others work.

 

On Sunday Robokitty ran an early Hami and we did not have a full league and ended up with a double bloom, but we persevered with the old tactics and eventually wore Hami down. My tank at that time was lvl 47 and came away with half a bub of debt, but it felt good to have struggled and achieved something. After some false starts, eventually everyone started listening to the raid leader and playing their role properly, the tanks were holding agro on 2 or 3 yellow mitos at once at one point, that (to me) was a great challenge and made the raid special.

 

I might try to organise one earlier in the evening for UK/Euro zone players - I can't keep staying up until 1am+ every night during the week! Will need to work out reliable targetters for the various roles though.

 

From now on as well, the Hami Dance Party will end when the monster killing starts! 🙂

Edited September 11, 2019 by kallistiuk

[macskull]

12 hours ago, Veracor said:

All we can do is kick them from the league to deny them rewards.

Not being on the league has never stopped people from getting the reward table.

[Veracor]

1 hour ago, macskull said:

Not being on the league has never stopped people from getting the reward table.

It does if they are leeching hardcore and not even attacking anything, which has been the case in the last few raids.  But yeah, there's not a whole lot we can do about it.

[BlastLord]

It can work

[Ironblade]

On 9/11/2019 at 5:08 AM, Veracor said:

Hello Everlasting, I am one of the raid organizers for the server.

I haven't done any Hami raids since Homecoming came around, but I did every role (except raid leader) in the various raid formats on live.

 

Currently, my only 50 is a scrapper.  Since I want to get back into raids, what would be most useful for me to level up?  Hopefully it's either empathy defender or tank, since I'd like to level those guys anyway.  🙂

[Veracor]

4 hours ago, Ironblade said:

I haven't done any Hami raids since Homecoming came around, but I did every role (except raid leader) in the various raid formats on live.

 

Currently, my only 50 is a scrapper.  Since I want to get back into raids, what would be most useful for me to level up?  Hopefully it's either empathy defender or tank, since I'd like to level those guys anyway.  🙂

Everlasting's Hami raid composition is, on average:

 

Arachnos: 1

Blasters: 9

Brutes: 4

Controllers: 6

Corruptors: 2

Defenders: 3

Dominators: 4

Kheldians: 2

Masterminds: 1

Sentinels: 2

Scrappers: 8

Stalkers: 1

Tankers: 5

 

Though there is some overlap with powersets and ATs for roles, Defender and Tanker would certainly be worth levelling up for helping with Hami raids.

[Veracor]

Well we've had 3 days since the 50-cap change and so far:

• It seems everyone assumes overflow just takes place in Hive 2.
• Recruiting simultaneously for blue/red didn't work out, everybody just camped in Hive.
• The overflow raid doesn't get quite enough people to launch until the main league downs their second Hami and breaks up to join them.

So far it looks like doing the 8pm EDT raid works best if the main league forms up 30 minutes early (nothing new there) and the overflow doesn't bother forming up until the actual 8pm EDT, and both leagues are in the Hive.  Also, thanks to Elmyder for stepping up to lead the overflows after the 50-cap hit us!

 

If anyone else wants to lead a Hami raid, possibly even redside in the Abyss, feel free to form one up!  I'll put it on the Everlasting TFs schedule.