Hey Phalczen, this is Aeralos. I think I was the one who explained the situation when it comes to relics to you so I want to clarify. For tank relics (and stims + adrenals), the amount of mitigation you gain in those items is almost unnoticeable and so I favor using DPS relics, DPS stims, and even DPS adrenals when I play a tank on many fights. I don't know the exact % of mitigation gained using these pieces of gear, but it's vastly less than the DPS you gain as a tank for using DPS relics, DPS stims, and DPS adrenals. You can gain 300-400 DPS alone from running these items (along with increasing your burst during burn phases), which is a great deal. Tanks that know how to do their rotation in PvE and maximize their DPS to help their team can put up to 2k DPS in fights (depends on fight, tank class, gear and other stuff, but this a rough top end considering mechanics tanks normally deal with) and so an extra 300-400 DPS is massive as you gain about 15-20% damage and lose very little in comparison in terms of survivability. This is especially true if both tanks are doing this as you've increased the team's overall DPS by up to 800 DPS. Now I main a Jugg tank, but I do this on all the tank classes when I have the items available (even Ruusan relics are easy to craft and are great). I have done this for a long time because on any fight with a DPS check (especially during progression), the entire team's DPS is incredibly important. Healers will DPS in fights, especially initially because the beginning of most boss fights generally have low incoming damage and their resources are full, tanks can throw out extra DPS with these items, and DPS will DPS as normal. There is more to it than that, but the point is, all DPS matters during progression and beyond. There is a tendency among most tanks to view DPS as not their job because it is not their main responsibility in that role, however, it's amazing for your team when you can do your rotation correctly. There is no benefit to not doing your rotation well enough to put in significant DPS as a tank so this is one option available to us tanks to aid our team on any fight with any kind of DPS check.

Scoundrel DPS has a number of useful utilities for a team; probably more than any other class in the game. They have some off-healing, battle revive, off-cleanse with Triage, self-cleanse with Dodge, the 10% crit boosting team buff (Stack the Deck) and most importantly, stealth resurrection. If you know how to stealth res very well, you're a huge asset to the team on many fights (especially Coratanni). No one does it better than a Scoundrel DPS since you have no cooldown on your revive and can try to stealth res every 1.5 minutes (with the right utility) allowing you to resurrect multiple people at times. In terms of DPS, they parse quite high and can do very well in raids (though they do not really gain DPS in fights like Sentinels/Marauders, Guardians/Juggernauts and Vanguards/Powertechs do) when it comes to single target damage. It is true that their AoE damage is amazingly awful, but almost every class in the game can do good AoE damage so it shouldn't ever a be a problem for your team. When it comes to survivability, Scrapper Scoundrels are one of the best in the game with their Scamper roll giving them 100% immunity to almost all damage in the game for 1.5 seconds and can be used twice every 10 seconds if necessary. They also have 30% AoE damage reduction, some other good defensive cooldowns like Defense Screen + Pugnacity (when used with the appropriate utility). and Dodge (mainly good for Underlurker, but has some use otherwise). Scoundrels also have good mobility thanks to Scamper being able to be used twice every 10 seconds and Sneak giving a decent speed boost. They can gain even more mobility with Holdout Defense if necessary (not recommended in general) and have a 15% standard speed boost with the appropriate utility. Their main downsides (outside of the aforementioned awful AoE damage) is that they have no way to prevent pushes and pulls (very useful in current content), no knockback (mainly useful on Revan). They are also a melee class with a heavy emphasis on being in melee range to do damage, which is more difficult to deal with in current operations. You have more ranged options to do damage than most melee classes (exception being Vanguards/Powertechs) and still maintain most of your DPS, though. There is also more of a positional requirement for the class as you want to be behind your opponent roughly every 12 seconds for Backblast. Overall, Scoundrel DPS is highly underrated and brings a great deal of utility to the team. If you take the time to learn it properly, you'll be a huge help to your team.

Congrats.

Ah oops, sorry about that purple circle then. Hopefully I'll get a chance to test some of these reflect possibilities out soon on my Jugg.

I did this fight in 16 man with Intrepid several months ago, but I don't recall Phase Walk acting in that way. It would be pretty odd for that skill to change specifically with 16 man, though, and in current 8 man teams with Assassin tanks that cheese the knockback, I've never heard them comment on Phase Walk not going on cooldown. That seems like an interesting bug, but I haven't done 16 man Master Blaster in a while. When you say tank him directing to the edge, I assume you mean tanking him in phase 1 by facing towards the outside of the map away from the entrance and exit of the fight? If so, you don't need to actually do that, even in 16 man. If you tank the boss facing towards the entrance or exit (in the non-flying V strat way), there is actually quite a bit of space in front of the boss for healers, ranged DPS and even melee DPS. That's a video of Intrepid doing it back in March with only 2 melee DPS (though, vanguards, aren't arguably mDPS for the most part), but we had some kills soon after that with 4 melee (I believe it was 3 sents + 1 vanguard). Not exactly a super clean kill, but it worked. That is kind of pushing the limits of space for them to actually get meaningful DPS in, though, and was unnecessarily painful in terms of team composition. Also, yeah, the multiple mines are pretty ridiculous ever since that started happening months ago. I assumed it would get fixed because I don't remember it ever happening to us when the fight came out, but ever since we first saw it, it has been here. Unfortunately, I doubt it will get fixed.

Missed this post earlier, but thanks.

Push is now 10/10. Also, I wanted to add in another guild to the list. Rogue Elite is an Imperial guild that has a few teams that have progressed in the current operations. Team 1 is 7/10 and Team 4 is 8/10.

Unfortunately, it doesn't prevent the throw itself, but you have time to Force Leap back to the boss before he moves to you if you time it right a little before you hit the ground. Unlike Force Shroud/Resilience, I don't recall Saber Reflect ever negating any actual effects from bosses; it just reflects damage.

That's a fairly complete list and I only have a few additions with some comments about best use of the skill for those fights. There are some other skills I recall reflecting at some point, however, those other skills aren't worth the Saber Reflect, anyways, so I won't bother with them. If anyone has any corrections about any skill I mention not working with Saber Reflect, that would be helpful. Ravagers: For Sparky, I would add Shoulder Throw to the list for tanks. I typically reflect the first Shoulder Throw, then use it on either Brutalize if I'm supposed to take it or on future Shoulder Throws. Temple of Sacrifice: On Walkers, I'm almost completely sure you can reflect the mine that spawns from the orange circles on each boss as either tank or DPS. I believe it can also be used against the purple circle Squadron #2 drops on his aggro target for tanking. Overall, it is best used against the normal attacks from the Walkers if a tank. For Revan, if you are a DPS, I think you can reflect or at least negate the damage from the droids during the HK phase if they are targeting you and aren't killed quickly enough. Dread Palace: With Calphayus, you can reflect his Inevitability attack as a tank. If you are tanking Bestia on the Dread Council fight, it works on the Force Push attack. I'm not sure, but I think it also works on Calphayus's crystalline-looking attack where shards fly in and strike the tank as well on that fight. Colossal Monolith: Just to add this boss in as well since it's a somewhat important boss in the current game, you can reflect the ground slam-like attack the boss does as DPS or tank that hits everyone.

That is probably true as many groups I've seen do look for DPS that can be recognized as tanks in the group finder. That makes the difference between the DPS checks between Sword Squadron and Underlurker around 500-700. That means the group needs to pull around 28-39% more DPS just for Underlurker with an arguably more mechanically more difficult and less intuitive fight.

I know my post above was very long so I wanted to comment on one aspect of the Temple of Sacrifice operation that contains an unique problem. Before I mention, I would mention that everyone would pretty much agree that the Temple of Sacrifice operation is the hardest SM one in the current game. Now when players complete their storyline on Yavin IV, they are given the option of beating Revan solo or doing it through an operation. I believe this choice is there to encourage players to do operations and to give raiders a way to complete the storyline without doing a bunch of extra quests (although really, the quests don't take much longer than doing the operation with a solid group). However, this choice has in part created the monster of the problem that exists with the Underlurker boss fight. Since Temple of Sacrifice is the hardest SM operation to do, new players really shouldn't start their raiding here. They should start with the first operations and work their way up, ideally with a guild guiding them. However, due to this quest, many probably do and go into PuGs trying to finish the storyline they did while playing solo to get a feel for group dynamics. Of course, since the requirements for successful raiding are far steeper than leveling, players inevitably will play poorly, which most likely leads to a bad experience for everyone involved and turning these players off from raiding. This problem became clear to me as I stood in front of Temple of Sacrifice operation while waiting on some guildies. A random person asked me if I was interested in doing the operation so he could complete the storyline. After speaking to the player, but declining due to my aforementioned guildies, I checked this player's achievements and noticed he had almost none for operations. This player had chosen the operation version of completing the storyline instead of fighting Revan solo. I politely discouraged the player from doing the operation as a PuG as it was the most difficult one and recommended joining a guild as that was the best chance at completing the operation. Also, every player should really do the Revan fight solo at least once because it's a great fight on a dramatic level due to the inclusion of all the storyline NPCs. Anyways, this is a small issue, but I believe it is one of the many reasons why such a great deal of solo players are doing operations like Temple of Sacrifice and getting frustrated with both the game and the community.

Temple of Sacrifice as a whole is mostly fine with Underlurker being the only really problematic fight for many players. People keep talking about it being a DPS check, but I don't think it's really understood just how much different it is compared to the other fights there. I'm fairly sure anyone who has done SM Temple of Sacrifice or Ravagers knows Underlurker is a significantly harder DPS check than any other boss in those operations, but few specifics are given. Now personally, I PuG a decent amount on the Harbinger (typically as a healer, but sometimes as a DPS) and about 8 out of every 10 groups I join, beat Underlurker. Sometimes there's a wipe or two, but for the most part, it's fairly smooth sailing. I'm aware that my numbers will differ from others in terms of success rate on this operation because I'm a very experienced raider in this game. The reason I mention this is I have done Underlurker many, many times on both SM and HM and know the fight far better than the average player in a PuG. I know how to maximize damage and survivability (including adding DPS as a healer, which helps a great deal on that particular fight) plus I can help fix mistakes while figuring out what to do as a team to make progress. Most players have nowhere close to this level of experience with raiding in this game and for a SM fight, I would say that Underlurker is overtuned for that population of players. This is why so many players complain about this fight and ask for a nerf. Let's look at the numbers so we can see the fight in a more objective manner. Underlurker Enrage is 4:50 (290 seconds) Lurkerling: 89110 x 3 for each wave x 5 waves = 1,336,650 Underlurker: 2,615,644 Total = 3,952,294 for 5 waves, 3,684,964 for 4 Combined DPS check = 13,628 for 5 waves, 12,706 for 4 Pure DPS check (5 waves) = 13,628 - 1,000 (one tank) = 12,628/5 = 2,525 Pure DPS check (4 waves) = 12,706 - 1,000 (one tank) = 11,706/5 = 2,341 With the numbers above, the combined DPS check is the total DPS required to kill the boss. I assume healers will not be DPSing significantly (although I do this all the time, most pug healers don't) and tanks do about 1,000 DPS (a rough estimate based on my experience). I also assume a team comp of 1 tank, 5 DPS, and 2 healers as that is what most PuGs run. I've separated the DPS check for two common strategies for the fight. The first is killing all 5 waves, then burning the boss. The second is clearing 4 waves for adds, hide behind a rock while ignoring adds, then finishing the boss before the enrage. There is another strategy that involves starting the full burn on the boss itself right after the 3rd wave, but the cumulative damage from Lurkerlings jumping adds up quite a bit at this point and in my experience, most PuG healers will not be able to keep the team alive. Going along with the healing required, this fight is unnecessarily brutal on melee DPS as the Lurkerlings have an attack that only hits nearby targets. Any team with 2 or more melee characters (including the tank) is going to take significantly more damage on the fight and those melee DPS will also have a harder time switching targets if needed to help kill the other adds. So if you see the DPS check for the 5 wave and 4 wave strategies, it's actually quite high for SM. Somewhere between 2300-2500+ DPS is required for each of those DPS players. To compare this with the HM version of the fight, you need roughly 3272 DPS from each DPS, which is a bit too close. This equates to what is realistically an unreasonable amount of DPS for the average PuG player to do while dealing with mechanics for a storymode operation. Since the team is already running 1 tank, you probably can't replace the tank with a DPS and the healing is significant enough that you still want 2 healers. The average tank that does go DPS as well generally are less familiar with DPSing and have less DPS gear so they are likely to do less damage than a standard DPS player. In contrast, we can look at what is probably the 2nd most difficult fight in terms in the current operations on SM: Sword Squadrons. Almost every group I have done this with has done this successfully with it only becoming a barrier for progress when it first came out. Part of that was just the learning process that comes with every new operation and the other part was the higher degree of coordination required to kill both Sword Squadron bosses in quick succession, lest they enrage and kill the team. After the nerf, there have been little to no issues with PuGing the fight and to this day, it does a fairly decent job of teaching the players how to do the fight to be somewhat ready for HM while still being fair. Sword Squadron Enrage is 6:00 (360 seconds) #1: 1,795,180 #2: 1,795,180 Total = 3,590,360 Combined DPS check = roughly 10,000 Pure DPS Check = 10,000 - 2,000 (two tanks) = 8,000/4 = 2,000 Initially, you may look at the total health of the Sword Squadron bosses and then the Underlurker. With just that comparison, the health totals seem pretty similar. However, the much lower enrage timer on Underlurker (70 seconds shorter) makes the fight much more difficult. The average player only needs 2,000 DPS to beat this fight (300-500 DPS less than Underlurker) and if there are issues with the DPS check, a tank can run a DPS discipline and use DPS gear to help close the gap. There isn't much DPS downtime in the fight as players with the Huge Grenade will typically move away from the team to prevent damage, but can still DPS. If Sword Squadron #1 is immune, players can simply switch to #2 in the meantime. Also, the mechanics of the Underlurker fight cause many players to miss out on a good deal of DPS when they hide behind rocks or scramble to rejoin the team during the cross. While HM healers can just heal through players standing out and DPSing full time, the average PuG healer will not and most PuG teams consisting of average players will need to group behind rocks to let healers keep up the team. This means that players are spending even more time not doing DPS to help the team than say Sword Squadron where the only time players don't really add DPS is if Sword Squadron #2 is very low and the team is waiting on a bomb on #1. Based on the numbers and the difficulty of dealing with mechanics while DPSing on these two fights, I would agree that Underlurker on SM should be nerfed a bit. While the fight does a good job at getting players accustomed to the mechanics and DPS requirements for HM, it's an unfair fight on SM for the average player as there is a large distinction between the highest tier of difficulty that currently exists in HM and the lowest one in SM and this fight does not reflect that difference very well. From this information, I would say that on SM, the specific attack done by the Lurkerlings to nearby targets should either be removed or greatly decreased and the boss himself should have about 500,000 less health. With about 500k less health on Underlurker (such that he has around 2,115,644 health), the average DPS needed per player with using the 5 wave strategy goes down to only 2180 DPS and with the 4 wave one, becomes 1996. This is more on par with Sword Squadron while still being a more difficult boss in general.

Hey Ash, I sent you a message.

Hey Camels, your parse is a great example and you should definitely be proud of it. I wish I could go back and play Saboteur on Torque again, but I don't think I'll have the opportunity as I'm mostly healing on my pub guild now. If I do, though, I'll definitely try it out as well. Lack of intention is still irrelevant and always be regardless of how many times you bring it up. There are many other unintentional aspects to this game and many others that improved the gameplay and roll-in-place was one of most positive ones for a number of reasons (even beyond boosting Saboteur's damage). Also, there is no evidence to your claim that roll-in-place did more harm to Saboteur than good. Roll-in-place has been gone since around 2.10(?) and guess what, Saboteur has only gone downhill from there.

Thanks. I wrote a post on another thread about it that I'll quote, but you use Orbital Strike, Plasma Probe while filling in the gaps with Suppressive Gunfire while utilizing the energy return from Explosive Probe + free Frag Grenade (with EMP Discharged used before adds to get this). You still mostly use Suppressive Gunfire, but Orbital Strike can also hit 3 targets (it's stronger in Engineering due to a 1 second lower cast time and does more damage) and Plasma Probe is very powerful when hitting 2 targets if you can maintain it. Since I wrote it as a Saboteur, I'll list the equivalent terminology below. Orbital Strike = Freighter Flyby Plasma Probe = Incendiary Grenade Suppressive Gunfire = Sweeping Gunfire Explosive Probe = Sabotage Charge Frag Grenade = Thermal Grenade EMP Discharge = Sabotage Adrenaline Probe = Cool Head Target Acquired = Illegal Arms

Trying some people, but still looking for the healer.

Engineering is viable on pretty much every boss, although definitely not optimal on most and I've beaten almost every boss fight in operations at some point with it. From what I noticed, many people use the phrase "not viable" (not talking about you specifically) to mean that a discipline is just not optimal or that it is not face-roll easy to get good results. In terms of stigma, it has such an one because in the past, a lot of people gave up on Engineering due to its difficulty to play it well and safely. Another big reason is that some popular players that couldn't play it at a level where it was useful deemed it to be a dummy parsing spec only despite the fact that other players in the world like myself and a few others were running it consistently well. Since human beings in general have no issue talking authoritatively on subjects they know little to nothing about (see any forums on almost any subject), eventually other players who don't know any better take it as gospel. Thus, Engineering was not considered "viable". In the fights where Engineering is best (like Underlurker), it takes a great deal more skill to achieve higher results than simply playing Marksman and still getting pretty great numbers. Similarly, Engineering does not fulfill an unique role amongst the disciplines for Snipers. It has the highest possible AoE damage in the game, but like I mentioned with Underlurker, you can get very similar and sometimes better results (depending on the fight, strategy, and team in general) by just playing Marksman. In terms of single target damage, it's below Virulence in general, but has greater flexibility in the rotation and more mobility due to a lower reliance on channeling. However, since Virulence is a powerful discipline and has a very easy rotation with the old 4 set bonus, most players will not bother learning Engineering when they can do better with Virulence. This is compounded by the fact that Plasma Probe (the most notable skill in all versions of Engineering) is almost impossible for most players to use properly and for most teams to maximize. Since the damage relies on your target staying in the same place for pretty much the entire fight and is generally your highest or 2nd highest source of damage, it can get rough. There are many bosses that need to be moved around in the current ops, which causes us to delay the use of the skill, making what would normally be a simple rotation much more difficult on a real boss fight. This skill puts responsibility on the tanks to keep the boss inside your Plasma Probe, putting more work onto other players of your team as well. Plasma Probe also has an unfortunate side effect of blocking vision of the ground below where it is cast. Similar to Phase Walk from Assassins, it's harder to see enemy attacks that appear on the floor with the fire animations + particle effects from Plasma Probe. This could probably be fixed by making it such that only the outline of the area of effect itself rather than the full circle continues after the initial cast or by lowering the opacity of the ground effect in general. Then we can come to defensives and utility where Engineering is sub-par compared to Marksman and Virulence. Marksman has a longer Entrench by 3 seconds and an extra Entrench after rolling (great for the 60% AoE damage reduction and/or massive speed boost with utilities). Marksman also brings the armor debuff, which is one of the best debuffs and is only commonly brought by AP PTs (a few other disciplines bring it, but they are very rare to see in the current ops). Virulence gains 5 seconds on Ballistic Shield (the main team utility brought by Snipers) and 30% damage reduction from DoTs (very useful on some fights). What does Engineering get for special defensives and utility? Absolutely nothing that can be used in operations. We get a stun that doesn't work on bosses, doesn't work on the large majority of adds it would be worth even using on, and relies on a good deal of setup to even use as it relies on 3 skills. We used to be one of the top disciplines for defensives and utility with the old EMP Discharge (since it reset a large number of those types of skills). With the removal of that unique mechanic and the change to it for 3.0, the current EMP Discharge is a just a mediocre damaging skill that even requires Shock Charge to even activate that has the small benefit of allowing us a free Frag Grenade (a low damaging filler skill). That's pretty pathetic for what used to be one of if not the most awesome ability in the game. Beyond the removal of EMP Discharge's defensives and utility, we somewhat recently lost almost all the damage from Scatter Bombs when rolling. A skill that could once be fairly useful for damage in the right circumstances (mainly before 3.0 when you can roll-in-place) is now completely useless in an actual boss fight and is only used to slightly increase DPS on a dummy. So why do we continue to play Engineering despite its many flaws? Clearly, it's because it's still somewhat enjoyable (more so than the alternatives) even in its current neutered form. If you want to be an asset to your team, you play what works best for the team to help them progress. In a few cases like Underlurker, Engineering can be the best discipline if you put in a ton of work into it. Other than that, you can run it when you have bosses on farm and you aren't needed for anything special. That's about all Engineering is good for nowadays and that is sad.

Heh, no thanks, Kal. Double Sage healer makes me sad.

A highly skilled Sage player would work, but the person would have be really worth it since I'd probably end up switching to a Commando to compensate.

Intrepid is 10/10 as a guild with this specific team being 9/10 (the 9th kill being Revan) so we are currently working on Coratanni. As it stands, I'm the main healer for the team as a Sage and I'm looking for a exceptional co-healer of any class (preferably not Sage, though) to join the team on Sunday and Monday starting at 9 p.m. to 12 a.m. PST (aka server time). This is not a training guild so we are not interested in teaching people how to play their class/role a great deal. High end experience in the current ops is a big bonus, but if you know your class very well and can learn quickly, most of the fights can be taught fairly easily. Our current main tank had beaten 2 or 3 of the current 10 bosses before he joined us and he has done very well for himself with being 9/10 now. There are a few important traits that are necessary as a player that I'll list below: 1) Reliability This is perhaps the most underrated aspect of a person, but if you are going to raid with a team, we want you here at least 90% of the time. If you can't make it around this much of the time, you are going to significantly stifle the progress of your team because team synergy and familiarity are very important. Of course, everyone has real life circumstances that will prevent them from playing at least some of the time and in those cases, just have the common courtesy to communicate with us when you can't make it. If your work schedule or real life in general is too volatile to be able to commit to these times with this kind of regularity, this is not the team for you. 2) Skill If you can't deal with mechanics, be raid aware, position properly, and put up the necessary numbers to beat the fights, then you are letting down your team. We are not looking for people who think they are good; we want those who know they are and can back it up with proof. As a healer, you should be able to put out at least 4,000 EHPS (closer to 5k+ for Commandos) in full 198 raid gear pretty regularly on any fight (or just the healer-intensive sections of it) where you don't have a good chunk of time to just DPS. You should understand how fights work well enough to know who needs healing the most at any given time and focus that target. Also, healing is not about dealing with situations in a purely reactive way; you should know your rotations for burst healing, AoE, energy positive ones to regain your resources when incoming damage is lower than normal, and so on to fluidly swap between them as needed. Beyond the pure healing aspects of your role, you should be able to use your personal defensive cooldowns well enough to keep yourself alive and help with DPS when healing is not strenuous. 3) Attitude Raiding is a team effort and as one of the 8-16 people involved in a fight, it's critical that all players have a mentality where they strive to improve themselves and work together. Everyone makes mistakes and some will just have bad days in general. What is important is figuring out the problem and resolving it in a reasonable and respectable manner. No one is in a raid group to deal with drama so if you have issues with a particular person or strategy, talk with him/her/them or about it appropriately. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you want to apply, just message me on the forums with your character information (name of character, class/role), level of experience with raiding, any references you might have, a link to your UI, and an explanation for why you want to join the team and would be a good fit for us. Parses would help a good deal, especially on fights where your team was struggling so if you can include that and some context like your team comp and what you specifically did to help your team beat the fight (or try to), that's great as well. Remember that if you are going to raid with us for 6 hours a week, you should be able to spend more than 5 minutes on an application. That's just basic logic.

No, it wasn't needed. It did nothing to improve the discipline and only lowered the available options to the few good players in the game that could play Saboteur anywhere close to optimally. Average players like you are just glad it got nerfed to dumb down Saboteur because they lack the skill and/or creativity to do anything beyond the basics. Your petty spite towards playstyles that don't match your own is pretty hilarious.

Unfortunately, you just have to use free skills because the energy cost of AoEing is so prohibitive in Saboteur unless you are doing it for a short time and are using Cool Head and/or Illegal Mods to cover the cost. According to my math, without those two abilities, you'd have spend 37.5 seconds (roughly 25 GCDs) of every 90 seconds (roughly 60 GCDs) to maintain an almost energy neutral AoE rotation in perpetuity. This assumes you are using Freighter Flyby, Incendiary Grenade, and Sabotage Charge on cooldown and using as many Sweeping Gunfires as possible (which would be almost 6 full times in this 90 second cycle). I know when my team is pulling those terribly long trash packs in Temple of Sacrifice and have to spend a minute or two just spamming AoE to mindlessly kill them, this is what I end up doing to usually average around 8k DPS. Having to spend over 1/3 of the time just using free skills is fairly boring. As for Torque, I've done it as Saboteur a few times, but I've ended up needing to kill adds every time so it's just not very fun (though Saboteur on Commanders is more enjoyable to me for some reason). If you just focus the boss with your spec, I think it'd be fairly interesting.

For Saboteur on Underlurker, I find the most important way to manage energy on that fight is to try to be near your maximum energy (110) when adds are coming up and have Sabotage Charge cast on the boss if you don't have Cool Head up. Illegal Mods helps with keeping energy up, but it's not enough to use Sweeping Gunfire much at all. What this means during the fight is that I use Thermal Grenade less than I normally do on almost every fight. Since Thermal Grenade is often used once in every 9 second rotation, I cut out the one that isn't free with the use of Sabotage. I tend to throw in more auto-attacks (Rifle Shot, but you can use Quick Shot with the utility) in that space just to maintain my energy near its peak. This is critical because Sweeping Gunfire is ridiculously strong on this fight and it's definitely worth lowering your boss damage by a bit to have the available energy for more Sweeping Gunfires. So ideally, I have used Sabotage recently (for the free Thermal Grenade later), have Sabotage Charge ready to place on the boss as soon as the adds spawn, then I cast Freighter Flyby cast immediately, use Incendiary Grenade, and lastly use Sweeping Gunfire until adds are dead. If the adds are dying slowly, I put in 1 Rifle/Quick Shot in between each Sweeping Gunfire to keep my energy from being destroyed. As I retreat to hide behind a rock, I typically throw out my DoTs if I used Cool Head or use the opportunity to use my free skills (ideally, a free Thermal Grenade from the previously used Sabotage). Once I get behind a rock, I strafe in and out to get more damage on the boss with any non-channeled skills (can typically get 3 skills once the Rage Storm is cast) and use Hunker Down to avoid the knockback. Strafing in and out of the rocks takes some practice, but as long as you don't get greedy for more than one skill used per strafe and you immediately head back to the rock each time after that skill is used, you'll be fine. The only other trick I use sometimes is if I'm confident in the team's survival (i.e. we don't have a bunch of melee who are forced to eat far more damage than range do on that fight), I'll use Dodge at times to get more attacks in on the boss before being forced to retreat to a rock. Dodge gives complete immunity to the boss' Rage Storm as it is considered to be a melee/ranged attack. This means you can afford to stand there and use a Speed Shot on the boss and then still have 3 seconds of invincibility to use instant skills on the way to a rock.

I don't know how doing more damage on targets that need to die can not be useful. Speaking as someone who is both a raid leader and runs Saboteur on a regular basis, your raid leader is just wrong. Unless your team's healers put out low healing in general such that you need to kill the adds one by one just to survive or you just have bad tanks, AoEing is just strictly better for that fight and Saboteur has the best AoE. Also, I'm not sure if you are asking about maintaining an AoE rotation on that fight with Sharpshooter or with Saboteur?

Top 5: 5. The Infernal One, Soa (any mode) This guy is the definition of an epic boss with his voice acting, dialogue, and overall presentation. The descent to the bottom floor by way of falling platforms along with other unique mechanics like the mind trap, whirlwind, and others make fighting him an unforgettable experience. 4. Master Blaster (HM, especially 16 man) Similar to Soa in terms of great voice acting, but this time it's on a sassy robot with an unexpected accent. While this fight can be cheesed pretty easily, it's one of the most difficult ones in the game when actually doing the mechanics properly. This is due to the positioning needed throughout the entire fight to deal with both bosses while avoiding the numerous AoE attacks present. On that note, the massive scope of this fight makes use of the play area (and it's a large one) better than any other boss. 3. Dread Guard - Ciphas, Heirad, Kel'sara (NiM) The "mathematically impossible" fight was amazing, especially before the nerfs that came too soon to strip away a good deal of its fun. Each role (tank, DPS, and healer) had an unusually even amount of responsibility to perform at a high level (most fights are somewhat lopsided for one role or another), have good positioning (placing circles in the right spots), and putting out a respectable amount of DPS/healing. 2. Warlord Kephess (EC NiM, especially 16 man) This fight had all the mechanics, heavy reliance of positioning, and DPS/healing output required to make it a classic. On 16 man before nerfs, it was likely the most difficult fight the game has ever had for either 8 or 16 man and Ace's world first kill showed an expert level of control, teamwork, and strategy that is easily the most impressive boss kill I've ever seen. 1. TITAN 6 (16 man NiM) Being introduced to TITAN 6 alone is just awesome as it just leans against a wall in a smug and superior way while your team gets in range to fight. Hiding behind rocks, dealing with 2 Huge Grenades (which would destroy rocks that were struck by the explosion), and generally good positioning required makes this fight highly enjoyable. What pushes it over the top to being my favorite boss fight is the burn phase once the boss is pushed at the end. When I did this during 16 man progression, it was by far the most intense burn phase and I haven't seen anything that great again. The entire team takes a great deal of periodic damage and Huge Grenades would still be going out every so often. It was a true rush to be pushing the boss as fast as possible while teammates with Huge Grenades run away to probably die, but still do as much as they can before their time is up. Honorable Mentions: Operations Chief (any mode) - While very easy overall, it was a fresh experience and encouraged player skills in areas that people don't normally think about so it was a well designed fight. Splitting into 4 teams and sneaking around while moving as quickly as possible was just great. Cartel Warlords (NiM) - This was a crazy fight during 16 man progression even though we spent several minutes discussing strategy and allocating positions + key abilities. On our first several pulls, our entire team just got slaughtered in seconds from the ridiculous amount of initial damage in the fight. 16 man scaling has never been particularly great, but this fight was on a whole other level in terms of healing and good use of defensive skills required. The last phase with timing the killing of the last bosses at once was fairly intense as well. Even in other modes, there's a great deal of variety in this fight depending on which boss you choose to kill first and it was much more enjoyable to replay as a result. Infernal Council (any mode) - This fight was interesting in that it forced non-DPS players to get a decent idea of how to play outside their normal role and even DPS players get to play a little better. Another aspect of the fight was that it became almost a spectator sport when you finished early. Everyone hung out around the one guy who took a while to kill their council member, encouraging them and helping out a bit. Overall, it was a great learning experience. Tyrans (8 man HM/NiM) - This fight was great due to the mechanics and I saw a wide variety of strategies used for the fight in general. When players can come up with many different ways to deal with positioning and controlling the boss while still being successful, you have a very well-designed fight. This fight was only odd in that the 16 man scaling was incredibly low such that only the 8 man version of the fight really provided a reasonable challenge. Normally, 8 man versions of HM/NiM boss fights during progression are easier and this was one of the few that was clearly the opposite case. Raptus (any mode) - This fight had great presentation and excellent voice acting + dialogue along with some interesting mechanics due to the nature of the role-specific challenges. However, on the harder modes, the difficulty was very uneven with the healing challenge being the hardest by far (and biased heavily on one class), the DPS being fairly easy (even in 8 man) and the tank one being super easy. There were some great ideas here, but the execution was off. I thought they could place more emphasis on getting players to perform well outside their main roles, but it was just doing the standard stuff you would normally do in your particular role.