Old Hamidon Raid
This article contains information that no longer applies to the current version of Homecoming: City of Heroes/Villains. It is provided for historical purposes.
Overview
Attempts to defeat Hamidon, generally referred to as Hami Raids, occur regularly on most servers. Since it takes 50+ heroes to defeat Hamidon, these are loosely organized events that bring together many heroes hoping to acquire Hamidon Origin Enhancements.
Over time a basic strategy evolved for defeating Hamidon. Exact strategy may vary from server to server, but generally it involved several teams of people, and three distinct phases.
The old Hami Raid was criticized because the most successful strategies relied heavily on only a few crucial Powersets, which left many players feeling useless. NCsoft redesigned the raid, and the new version requires a much wider range of Archetypes.
Roles
Raid Leader
Single person who coordinates the raid. This person has the responsibility of organizing the various teams, and coordinating the timing of certain actions within the raid.
PA Drop Team
The Phantom Army (PA) Drop team aka Illusionist Suicide Squad is made up of Illusion Controllers who hover over Hamidon and drop PAs down into him. The purpose of this is to have the PAs grab as much aggro as possible, removing it from the rest of the attacking players. The Drop Team often tries to get its PAs to land in a wedge formation with the Mito team between the two walls of PAs. Usually, the Drop Team will be up in the air and seeding PAs five to ten minutes before the Mito Phase begins.
DT Retriever
A member of the PA Drop Team who has an additional responsibility. When one of the DT gets killed, the Retriever must go down to the safe area, teleport the dead team member, and rez them. This role requires a combo of at least 3 powers, namely a rez power (but not one that requires nearby enemies to work like Howling Twilight), Recall Friend, and a method to get back up to the Drop Teams position (usually fly, or Jump Pack). This role should NEVER be filled by the DTs leader or a Group Fly anchor.
Targeter
In order to concentrate the fire from attackers, a single designated targeter is used. All attackers are instructed to attack only through the targeter. Usually the targeter will request that everyone add his or her name to their friends list to help facilitate targeting them in the often laggy Hive. Also called Main Assist (MA) on some servers.
Taunt Team
Two Tanks, usually two Stone primary Tanks, and 6 Empathy Defenders/Controllers. Their objective is to grab the aggro from the Hamidon core and keep it off of the rest of the attackers. The main Tank keeps Hamidon taunted, and if he dies the secondary Tank goes up and takes the aggro.
SMA Team
SMA stands for Stealers of Mito Aggro, and taunt the Mitochondria's, as a Taunter would Taunt Hamidon. Several servers have implemented this, since an Issue changed the direction of Mitochondria aggro. If given a choice between a regular player and a PA, it would rather choose the player. The SMA team is made up of 6-7 Tanks of any kind, and 1-2 healers.
Phases
Mito Phase
This phase is to clear out all the Mitochondria that are defending Hamidon. One by one, at the direction of the Targeter, the Mitos are defeated. A variation of this involves stacked Dispersion Bubble: as the blue Mitos only Hold the targets, they are left alive and the hold team protects itself with stacked Dispersion Bubbles to avoid being held during Hold Phase.
Hold Phase
Hamidon has defenses that can summon large numbers of additional Mitochondria to defend himself. The only way that has been discovered to avoid this is to ensure that Hamidon is securely Held continuously while its health is under 50%. Generally only single target holds are used, and do not include Temporary powers, as they are considered unreliable. Controllers are generally the most-seen Archetype, and some others with Ancillary Pools with Holds are allowed as well.
Attack Phase
Once Hami is held, the third phase (also known as the DeBuff Phase) is to have the remaining heroes attack and defeat him. However, some servers use attack-less variants, including simply Holding Hamidon to defeat (known as the Death Cuddle on some servers), or something in the middle, with -Regen and -Resist debufs and max range attacks. Whichever variant is used, the idea is to bring Hamidon down to zero health while keeping him completely Held. Vanguard Medal is often used at this point as well to improve the current holds and prevent a Yellow dawn (see below).
Lighting Raid
Some servers opted to do "Lighting Raids" before Issue 6 and Enhancement Diversification. The most notable difference between the two styles is time, but play-style is also markedly different. It has been generally agreed that after ED and several graphics upgrades, this style is no longer feasible. The raid would begin in the same way, with the PA Team taking initial aggro, followed by the Taunt Team keeping Hamidon taunted. After this, the Mitos are ignored, and the rest of the group puts any AoE heals on Auto. This keeps the Mitos from doing enough damage to kill the main group, although attacks from Hamidon can wipe out the entire group. After this, the raid continues as normal, with Hold Phase, then Debuff and Damage Phases.
Failure
The first way for a raid to fail is insufficient heroes showing up to clear the Mito phase, or so many team wipes that people give up.
Yellow Dawn
The second thing that can ruin a raid is Yellow Dawn (aka Yellow Death). If the Hamidon Core is not properly held when its health hits the 50% or 25% thresholds, it will spawn a Mitochondria Antibody for each player and pet in the goo at the time, regardless of their distance or current health (i.e. dead). Due to the number and density of the Mitos, it is usually impossible to clear them after this. This is called a Yellow Dawn due to the sudden expanding presence of the yellow Mitos above where the players are usually gathered to attack Hami.
In event of failure, no further raids can occur until the zone resets (when the server resets, or on the rare occasion that the GMs reset just that single zone).