Hami Raids in The Hive

[Ukase]

I am super curious about this. 

Way back in maybe 2019, I probably earned close to 8K Reward Merits either taking turns leading the raids in the Hive or taunting hami. And then I just got kind of weirded out by some of the strange commentary by other folks in the league, so just figured I'd stop attending. 

Back then, a lot of the decisions on who would lead the raids was discussed either in chat on the Excelsior Discord (not run by anyone official as far as I know.) I want to say it was @foxfyre who started the discord, or some other former Justice player. Not sure how I squeezed into the rotation, but I did. 

It's not clear to me who the cool kids are now, calling these shots. And I guess my one big question is - why are we clearing mitos when it's clearly proven it's not necessary? One part of me likes it, because I always get some shards for my characters, which save me from having to use threads. 
And while it only takes another 2 minutes - it's time enough where we could squeeze in another round instead of just 3. 

Back then, the story went that folks were concerned about a nerf bat for us, or a buff to Hami, so we should play it slow. Well, I dunno. Okie & the Goddess and Maiden have been zerging hami for months on end. So why not zerg in the hive, too? 
Just wondering the why, more than anything else. 

[Oklahoman]

I don't know the answer, but I'm going to weigh in anyway because that's sort of what I do.

 

You can earn a Master of BAF badge through 2 runs (Keep em Separated and then Strong & Pretty), or you can do it all through 1 run. Obviously, the 1 run is preferable time-wise, but it is riskier. Just 1 misstep here or there and you miss one or more badges. We're at a point where the vast majority of the time a single run approach is successful, but I still run it both ways so everyone can choose what works best for them.

 

The zerg approach is a little quicker (as you mention), but riskier. I know we get complacent sometimes, but those of us who lead it know all too well how easily things can go south. It may look easy, but trust me - just a few disengaged people, or a few people bringing in low damage, and things can get uglier than truck stop sushi. And, we all dread the annual Trick or Treat event and people showing up with their brand new 50s to do a zerg - that's when we tend to see more failures than normal.

 

I rarely attend the Hive raids, but that's mostly because I'm old and decrepit and need to be in bed by that time. But I am glad that - much like Master of BAF - we have people offering the player base some different options. I'm told a diversified portfolio (whatever that is) is a good thing.

[lemming]

I take part in the raids on Everlasting and there are three different versions of the raid.

1) Standard

2) Fast Sue

3) Hamikaze

 

Standard is taking out the first set of Mitos, damage Hami to 75% to get next bloom, take out second, then kill Hami

Fast Sue is take out first set, then kill Hami

Hamikaze is just port in with as much DPS and kill Hami

 

Hamikaze is usually a special schedule.    Fast Sue happens when the lead thinks there's enough DPS.    Standard is the usual safe method.

Every so often the Hamikaze fails and you have a quad bloom.  Less often Fast Sue fails, but sometimes people don't take the EoE.    It's been years since I saw a Standard fail.   (And it's usually a soft fail, just takes awhile to cleanup and instead of at most 30 minutes, it takes a lot longer.)

 

And there's usually two runs there, but since Everlasting does 5, 7, 10, and midnight Eastern that's usually plenty.

 

And when one does a Hamikaze, unless Hami pops quickly, you're usually hanging out waiting for Lores to become available again for the second round.

[Oklahoman]

1 hour ago, lemming said:

And when one does a Hamikaze, unless Hami pops quickly, you're usually hanging out waiting for Lores to become available again for the second round.

 

Do they summon ALL lores each round?

[Laucianna]

Both work and there isn't a huge difference in time taken, some people like to keep that original feeling and I highly respect that and glad they do ❤️ Honestly the biggest factor when it comes to how fast and how many Hamis you can kill in a set amount of time is down to RNG with Hamidon spawning

[lemming]

7 hours ago, Oklahoman said:

Do they summon ALL lores each round?

Seem to.   At one point, I think they tried having 1/2 summon, but that's usually with the "slow".

 

As Laucianna says, the time it takes isn't much different anyway.

[Dazl]

I guess as one of the main leaders of the 10pm Hive Hami, I should help provide some clarification. The 10pm Hami raid was started by Foxfyre and company using the standard 2-bloom clear method like so many Hami raids. It’s probably the safest way to do the raid with the highest success rate especially with lower numbers of people. Considering the probable dev intension was clearing all 4 mito blooms, only having to do 2 rounds is pretty cool thanks to incarnates.

It's important for people to understand the reason to clear the mitos with Hami blooming new rounds at 75, 50 and 25% health, and how that is going to make killing hami harder. The system works well, and everyone tends to end up coming back together on the greens before killing the hami. It’s sort of a dance, with everyone working together. If you never do at least the 1-bloom clears, you will never be able to clear multi-blooms. BTW we found focusing on the yellow and green mitos works best for clearing a triple bloom.

Another thing most people may not know is this raid is tanked totally different than all other raids. The tank team leader D Lyra started this process back at the begining with Foxfyre. There are normally 7 tanks and one mender. Six tanks are assigned to each of the yellow mitos and will join the melee team when their mito is cleared. The last one tanks the hami and it changes each round and is not limited to just tanks.

When I started leading the raids a couple years ago it was the standard 2-bloom clear system. I had done raids on Everlasting and Torch and had seen both 1-bloom Everlasting “Fast Sue” and Hamikazi raids. By far the best Hamikazi raid I’ve seen is the Saturday Midnight on Everlasting (killing hami twice with the same lores). I wanted to bring these things to Excelsior, but the old leadership wasn’t too happy about it. Changing the raid from the 2-bloom clear to the 1-bloom clear was a major battle at the time and is now the standard for Excelsior and Everlasting raids. We use half the league lores each round and this system seems to provide the best time vs merits reward with minimal failure. Sure, we have done Hamikazi’s from time to time, but it’s just not as efficient as the 1-bloom clear for us.

Funny how when I pushed for the 1-bloom clear over the 2-bloom, I was trailblazing new ground, now if we don’t do it Hamikazi style I’m old school. That’s fine, I’ll take old school. It’s good to have diversity, if people want to do Hamikazi raids in the Abyss God bless you all. I wish you nothing but success.

Edited September 24 by Dazl

[lemming]

43 minutes ago, Dazl said:

If you never do at least the 1-bloom clears, you will never be able to clear multi-blooms.

I've seen the four bloom pain in a Hami, we managed to clear.  The first part is concentrating on yellows with everyone and it can be a bit rough at first, but once you get a bloom's worth it speeds up.

[Swoo]

On 9/4/2024 at 5:30 PM, lemming said:

Every so often the Hamikaze fails and you have a quad bloom.  Less often Fast Sue fails, but sometimes people don't take the EoE. 

 

as a former regular tank team member (back when I was the other side of the Atlantic ^^), I stopped counting how many time the league disolve itself when a quad bloom occured because "I don't have time for this" type of guys (me, I worship and call it every time ^^)

 

[Laucianna]

7 hours ago, Dazl said:

I guess as one of the main leaders of the 10pm Hive Hami, I should help provide some clarification. The 10pm Hami raid was started by Foxfyre and company using the standard 2-bloom clear method like so many Hami raids. It’s probably the safest way to do the raid with the highest success rate especially with lower numbers of people. Considering the probable dev intension was clearing all 4 mito blooms, only having to do 2 rounds is pretty cool thanks to incarnates.

It's important for people to understand the reason to clear the mitos with Hami blooming new rounds at 75, 50 and 25% health, and how that is going to make killing hami harder. The system works well, and everyone tends to end up coming back together on the greens before killing the hami. It’s sort of a dance, with everyone working together. If you never do at least the 1-bloom clears, you will never be able to clear multi-blooms. BTW we found focusing on the yellow and green mitos works best for clearing a triple bloom.

Another thing most people may not know is this raid is tanked totally differently than all other raids. The tank team leader D Lyra started this process back at the start with Foxfyre. There are normally 7 tanks and one mender. Six tanks are assigned to each of the yellow mitos and will join the melee team when their mito is cleared. The last one tanks the hami and it changes each round and is not limited to just tanks.

When I started leading the raids a couple years ago it was the standard 2-bloom clear system. I had done raids on Everlasting and Torch and had seen both 1-bloom Everlasting “Fast Sue” and Hamikazi raids. By far the best Hamikazi raid I’ve seen is the Saturday Midnight on Everlasting (killing hami twice with the same lores). I wanted to bring these things to Excelsior, but the old leadership wasn’t too happy about it. Changing the raid from the 2-bloom clear to the 1-bloom clear was a major battle at the time and is now the standard for Excelsior and Everlasting raids. We use half the league lores each round and this system seems to provide the best time vs merits reward with minimal failure. Sure, we have done Hamikazi’s from time to time, but it’s just not as efficient as the 1-bloom clear for us.

Funny how when I pushed for the 1-bloom clear over the 2-bloom, I was trailblazing new ground, now if we don’t do it Hamikazi style I’m old school. That’s fine, I’ll take old school. It’s good to have diversity, if people want to do Hamikazi raids in the Abyss God bless you all. I wish you nothing but success.

I always love that there is that option to do it the more intended route that you all do ❤️ It adds variety into the game despite it being the same boss which is never a bad thing! I know if it wasn't so late for me I would attend more of yours but sadly being in England has it's downsides 😄

[Dazl]

23 hours ago, lemming said:

I've seen the four bloom pain in a Hami, we managed to clear.  The first part is concentrating on yellows with everyone and it can be a bit rough at first, but once you get a bloom's worth it speeds up.

Clearing the yellows is absolutely the most important part of clearing a multi-bloom. Keep in mind though the greens are going to keep healing the yellows you are trying to kill. If you are lighter on melee you may not be able to burn the yellows down fast enough. So the greens are a major threat too. The blue mito’s are the lowest threat. So we have the tank and melee teams focus on the yellows. The range team only on the blues and everyone else dog pile the greens.

It’s not easy but an interesting experience once in a while. Good thing with the 1-bloom raid is the worst case you only get a triple bloom if you fail.

 

Edited September 23 by Dazl

[lemming]

1 hour ago, Dazl said:

Clearing the yellows is absolutely the most important part of clearing a multi-bloom. Keep in mind though the greens are going to keep healing the yellows you are trying to kill. If you are lighter on melee you may not be able to burn the yellows down fast enough. So the greens are a major threat too. The blue mito’s are the lowest threat. So we have the tank and melee teams focus on the yellows. The range team only on the blues and everyone else dog pile the greens.

It’s not easy but an interesting experience once in a while. Good thing with the 1-bloom raid is the worst case you only get it a triple bloom if you fail.

Many blasters have a decent melee attack which helped.   Biggest issue were the stuns, so Clarion, breakfrees, (the new accolade), etc... important.  Treat the Yellows like old style regen scrappers, they were either full health, or dead.

[Dazl]

On 9/3/2024 at 10:14 PM, Ukase said:

I am super curious about this. 

Way back in maybe 2019, I probably earned close to 8K Reward Merits either taking turns leading the raids in the Hive or taunting hami. And then I just got kind of weirded out by some of the strange commentary by other folks in the league, so just figured I'd stop attending. 

Back then, a lot of the decisions on who would lead the raids was discussed either in chat on the Excelsior Discord (not run by anyone official as far as I know.) I want to say it was @foxfyre who started the discord, or some other former Justice player. Not sure how I squeezed into the rotation, but I did. 

It's not clear to me who the cool kids are now, calling these shots. And I guess my one big question is - why are we clearing mitos when it's clearly proven it's not necessary? One part of me likes it, because I always get some shards for my characters, which save me from having to use threads. 
And while it only takes another 2 minutes - it's time enough where we could squeeze in another round instead of just 3. 

Back then, the story went that folks were concerned about a nerf bat for us, or a buff to Hami, so we should play it slow. Well, I dunno. Okie & the Goddess and Maiden have been zerging hami for months on end. So why not zerg in the hive, too? 
Just wondering the why, more than anything else. 

In terms of who are the current care takers of the raid that would be the following.

 

Varine @Nicodemous Bain

Jenny Quark @Hunter Smith

D Lyra @MsAligned

Dazl @Dazl

 

We also have great group of people helping target and lead the tank team. We could always use more people to learn to help and even lead the raids as well. We don't have the deep bench of raid leaders like Everlasting. If anyone is interested please contact any of us.

Edited September 23 by Dazl

[MsAligned]

3 hours ago, lemming said:

Many blasters have a decent melee attack which helped.   Biggest issue were the stuns, so Clarion, breakfrees, (the new accolade), etc... important.  Treat the Yellows like old style regen scrappers, they were either full health, or dead.

correct, some blaster and dominator do, but not all.  corruptor, defenders, controllers do not, or maybe a pool power.  Green mito preference healing greens, so holding and doing damage helps the melee team.  we have done a few triple blooms with all melee on the yellow and all range on the green, ignored the blues completely and took down Hami.  of course, can always just Hamikaze the triple.

[Ukase]

On 9/22/2024 at 12:15 AM, Dazl said:

If you never do at least the 1-bloom clears, you will never be able to clear multi-blooms.

I remember a couple of times when we had to deal with multi-blooms - and the solution is simple, though problematic in relaying to the rest of the league. 

Have an EoE, buff up as before, and only aim to take down 2-3 mitos before we head back to re-buff and redeploy until the mitos are gone. 

You may trust me when I say I remember how things were with Foxfyre and the rest of the gang wanting to stick with their method. Back then, their position was to not be more efficient because they felt the HC devs would either nerf things for the characters, or buff Hami. I kind of miss Foxfyre. For whatever reason, people would tease him relentlessly, and some of the jokes were pretty funny. 

I only asked because when I would go into the hive, I would never know who is leading. Because if I knew who was leading I could ask them why they are waiting until 45 past to invite when the zone is already full. It makes zero sense. We're all here, let's start! 

 

[Dazl]

On 10/24/2024 at 9:34 AM, Ukase said:

I remember a couple of times when we had to deal with multi-blooms - and the solution is simple, though problematic in relaying to the rest of the league. 

Have an EoE, buff up as before, and only aim to take down 2-3 mitos before we head back to re-buff and redeploy until the mitos are gone. 

You may trust me when I say I remember how things were with Foxfyre and the rest of the gang wanting to stick with their method. Back then, their position was to not be more efficient because they felt the HC devs would either nerf things for the characters, or buff Hami. I kind of miss Foxfyre. For whatever reason, people would tease him relentlessly, and some of the jokes were pretty funny. 

I only asked because when I would go into the hive, I would never know who is leading. Because if I knew who was leading I could ask them why they are waiting until 45 past to invite when the zone is already full. It makes zero sense. We're all here, let's start! 

 

Waiting till *:45 to form the league is to keep the raid in the scheduled 10pm start time frame. In the past when we started invites early and started when the zone was full we found the 10pm raid was becoming the 9:30pm raid and if left unchecked that would become a 9pm raid. I understand they do it like that on Everlasting, but they don't tend to get the start time creep like we can.

 

Since we do 1 bloom clears, our worst case scenario is a triple bloom. We can usually can clear it by regrouping once or twice, sometime not at all. Just depends on luck and if people are focused.

 

I can understand why Foxfyre and company started the raid keeping it as a 2 bloom for the reason you stated, but also probably due to people coming back and being a bit rusty at hami raids. It is the safest way to run the raid and would have made sense in the beginning. Moving to a one bloom raid might have caused the devs to give us a sideways glance but as I pointed out to them, like any other content in this game the more you do it the more efficient you become at it. It's not that the raid is simple (there have been many cases of failures) we are just well practiced. We will do a 2 bloom raid if we don't have the numbers, it doesn't happen often but if we have to we will do it to avoid a multi-bloom. If anything I would think Hamikazi raids would be a bigger red flag for the devs.

 

Other raid leaders and I have asked the devs for an instanced Hami, like the MSR. My suggestion was to have different difficultly levels like 2 bloom, 1 bloom, hamikazi, triple and quad bloom clear raids and have them adjust the rewards based on the difficulty of the instance, but I'm not very hopeful. Heck at this point I would be happy if they just fixed this broken league system.

[Ukase]

13 hours ago, Dazl said:

In the past when we started invites early and started when the zone was full we found the 10pm raid was becoming the 9:30pm raid and if left unchecked that would become a 9pm raid.

See, if this is what happened, this would be for the best, would it not? If the zone is filling sooner and sooner, it would seem the players would like to start earlier than later. No? 

Or is it just greed and impatience? I dunno. 

I appreciate the time writing out your answers, though!

[Swoo]

you move to 9:30pm then everyone's here at 9, so you move it to 9, then everyone's here at 8:30....

 

amha, people come sooner to ensure a place

Edited October 28 by Swoo

[Laucianna]

19 hours ago, Ukase said:

See, if this is what happened, this would be for the best, would it not? If the zone is filling sooner and sooner, it would seem the players would like to start earlier than later. No? 

Or is it just greed and impatience? I dunno. 

I appreciate the time writing out your answers, though!

If it's anything like with the Abyss Hami, it's also for the league leader to not have to get there super early, I know I have to arrive 30 minutes before invites go out just to make sure I get a spot in zone for my own event 😄 

[Ukase]

31 minutes ago, Laucianna said:

I know I have to arrive 30 minutes before invites go out just to make sure I get a spot in zone for my own event 😄 

<doh!> 
This never even occurred to me. Excellent point! 

[Dazl]

On 10/29/2024 at 8:47 AM, Laucianna said:

If it's anything like with the Abyss Hami, it's also for the league leader to not have to get there super early, I know I have to arrive 30 minutes before invites go out just to make sure I get a spot in zone for my own event 😄 

Thanks Laucianna for pointing that out. If the start time keeps changing, the raid leaders may not even be able to get in.

[TheMoncrief]

Clearing mitos allows me to feel comfortable bringing a character with lower damage potential to the raid. It's no  longer a DPS race, and can fall back on clearing 2 blooms if required. If I raided Hamidon on a Defender or Controller, I would feel super uncomfortable joining a Hamikaze raid.

 

That said, I usually bring a Blaster anyway, because I'm most comfortable on Team Cannon. Although my Hamidon raiding Blaster is specialized for Hamidon raiding by having a full melee attack chain and 4 single target holds in addition to my ranged attack chain, so I'm free to help deal with any kind of mito. But unlike a hamikaze, I don't feel like I have to bring a damage dealing monster.