Do something with SM Underlurker already, TOS has been wasting for nearly 4 months

[Toweleeeie]

I figured it would be low, but where does this stat come from?

 

That was one of the reasons why Bioware chose to use Rav in the speed competition before they canceled it.

Edited March 25, 2015 by Toweleeeie

[Andrellma]

Eh. Underlurker is tuned tightly, but certainly not unreasonable. He was unreasonable back when he was bugged, and his mechanics would fail even if you did everything right.

 

He's nowhere NEAR as hard as the EC tanks were when they first came out, not by a long shot. I could see maybe extending his enrage timer through one more cross cycle, but even that's not really necessary.

 

As has been pointed out, if your DPS are each putting up roughly 2700 DPS (which isn't hard, I was putting up 3100 in 186/192 unoptimized comms gear, while I was still learning the rotation for that spec), and people follow the mechanics, you'll get through him without much difficulty.

 

If you're ignoring mechanics, or unable to put out 2700+ DPS, yes, you're going to wipe. SM should still provide a challenge to casual players, people just got too used to being carried through SM DF/DP by absurdly overgeared PUGs/Guildies that they came to think they were better than they actually were.

 

Don't worry, kiddos. As more players start to move into HM progression, there will be more people able to carry you through SM again.

[JouerTue]

Eh. Underlurker is tuned tightly, but certainly not unreasonable. He was unreasonable back when he was bugged, and his mechanics would fail even if you did everything right.

 

He's nowhere NEAR as hard as the EC tanks were when they first came out, not by a long shot. I could see maybe extending his enrage timer through one more cross cycle, but even that's not really necessary.

 

As has been pointed out, if your DPS are each putting up roughly 2700 DPS (which isn't hard, I was putting up 3100 in 186/192 unoptimized comms gear, while I was still learning the rotation for that spec), and people follow the mechanics, you'll get through him without much difficulty.

 

If you're ignoring mechanics, or unable to put out 2700+ DPS, yes, you're going to wipe. SM should still provide a challenge to casual players, people just got too used to being carried through SM DF/DP by absurdly overgeared PUGs/Guildies that they came to think they were better than they actually were.

 

Don't worry, kiddos. As more players start to move into HM progression, there will be more people able to carry you through SM again.

 

you are totally right, it's already possible to do it with all red crosses if you can heal

[MandFlurry]

Fun fact: the 1% of groups that can actually clear the content at the highest level were the only ones testing the content during closed PTS, and until Bioware makes a fight that is virtually 100% impossible to beat, that 1% of players will always say the content is too easy. That is a major part of why we're in the situation we're in now with HM level mechanics present in SM and NiM level mechanics present in HM.

 

This^^^^^

 

Only a few Guilds are able to do HM and Nightmare stuff includeing the overhauled Dread stuff and Ravagers HM. And a lot of these ppl that can't do it are Vets from the Military to, so I know that they are very Competent in the OPs and Flaspoints they do.

 

Me, I won't even try the Junk of HMs of stuff of OPs because I know i'm Under-geared and too old and physical problems bar me from doing them now, though I used to do Ops and Fps.

 

it would be nice if the 1% would shut up, as they Don't speak for most of us, no offence.

Edited March 25, 2015 by MandFlurry

[Transcendent]

This is the worst SM balancing in any ops in the game ever released, forget the EC Tanks or DP Council, this boss is overdone on every aspect in story mode.

 

Nope EC Tanks and DP Council were harder, I actually pugged those. TOS? Yeah, not even going to bother pugging it, I've run it with guildies once to see the story (all the way through) and see no reason to return to it.

[Toweleeeie]

This^^^^^

 

Only a few Guilds are able to do HM and Nightmare stuff includeing the overhauled Dread stuff and Ravagers HM. And a lot of these ppl that can't do it are Vets from the Military to, so I know that they are very Competent in the OPs and Flaspoints they do.

 

Me, I won't even try the Junk of HMs of stuff of OPs because I know i'm Under-geared and too old and physical problems bar me from doing them now, though I used to do Ops and Fps.

 

it would be nice if the 1% would shut up, as they Don't speak for most of us, no offence.

 

Military Vets /= Competent

 

I'm sorry, I literally laughed out loud. No offence.

[Declan_Vee]

Would love to see a source for this 1% figure. Is it 1% of the game population that are doing operations, or 1% of the total population (big difference)

 

Only change I would make to it would be to add a stacking debuff from the lurkerlings that one shots people if it gets too high. The DPS check may be a bit on the high side; but the HPS check if the DPS consistently fail theirs can be downright brutal.

[Icestar]

I have not seen one single groupfinder pug complete the TOS from start to finish since 3.0 launched. The only ones I have completed has been with guildgroups and voicecomms.

 

Players give up after one or a few tries and then the ops is over, the Underlurker is no way near SM casual friendly.

 

I would very much welcome a change with this boss SM to make it fun for all kinds of players, not only the ones with voicecomm, a low ping and a high end computer.

Edited March 25, 2015 by Icestar

[Tachenko_Yuri]

think it's been 2 months now that I host a regularly scheduled in-guild event consisting of ravagers-8 and tos-8 SMs , where everything gets 1shot.

 

Kill adds, and get your cross right. ignore 3rd and 4th ( or 4th and 5th? ) wave of adds and burn lurker down. then more power to you if u get the adds down, if adds wreck ya, just go back, lurker itself remains dead anyways.

 

Just don't have people looting the thing.

[Icestar]

think it's been 2 months now that I host a regularly scheduled in-guild event consisting of ravagers-8 and tos-8 SMs , where everything gets 1shot.

 

In-guild event yes, it is there I have completed the TOS aswell. Never with a random pickup groupfinder ops.

[Tachenko_Yuri]

In-guild event yes, it is there I have completed the TOS aswell. Never with a random pickup groupfinder ops.

 

Ok, then what is it you and OP are asking the chaps @ BW, to make clueless pugs less clueless? because that is not in their power I'm afraid

 

Or is the UL HP also messed up, a-laTorque 16 pre-nerf?

 

there is a reason folks ask for achs in fleet to make pre-mades for that ( even though it is known that it is just a psychological factor, more than anything )

[Orizuru]

I wonder if the people saying its fine for PUG groups are running with a mostly guild group and cheesing the cross mechanics with a PT tank? I can see this fight being possible with a PUG, but it would take a fair amount of luck in the random player lottery.

 

I also think Torque is a bit unfriendly in this same regard, but the fight is doable if you can get everyone on the same page. All it takes to wipe repeatedly only this fight is one Sorc who refuses to stop using Chain Lightning because it hurts their dps too much.

 

I think both fights are fine for well organized groups, but PUGs are struggling more often than not.

Edited March 25, 2015 by Orizuru

[JattaGin]

Why are pro raiders here commenting on a SM operation?

 

It is a fact that hardly anyone has managed to down Underlurker yet. I personally haven't heard of any pug yet winning that fight. Even my (casual but dedicated) guild hasn't managed to do it in our (frustrating) couple of tries.

 

Are you people seriously claiming that you should run a parser for doing a SM operation? Come on! No standard game content should require a third party program to participate in. That is just wrong. Fact is: A game needs to be designed to be fully playable without any external help. If it is not, it was badly programmed. Check e. g. the book "The Ethics of Computer Games" for info on that.

 

I agree that there can be additional content - in this case HM an NiM - which require e. g. a parser. That is acceptable, because no player needs to do this content. It is voluntary. However, in a story-driven MMO, you need to be able to see all the stories.

 

I personally have seen every single story in this game. All classes, all side missions, everything. Except this operation. I will eventually get to it, I am sure, but it should not be such a struggle to see the story.

 

It would be very interesting to see metrics for Ravagers and Tos. Someone mentioned 1%. While I cannot backup this number, just from experience, from talking to others, from watching fleet chat etc. pp. I have the strong feeling that this number is quite accurate. Even worse: People don't even bother running this OP (anymore). How odd is that: There is (new) content in the game and no one wants to play it. A pity.

 

TL;DR: Tos SM is Tos HM in my opinion and it should be adjusted, so that more players can experience the story of this operation.

Edited March 25, 2015 by JattaGin

[Icestar]

Ok, then what is it you and OP are asking the chaps @ BW, to make clueless pugs less clueless? because that is not in their power I'm afraid

 

I would like Bioware to investigate the stats of how many random groupfinder ops (not the ones that gets instant pop, they consists of players with the achievement already) that queue up for TOS that actually completes it from start to finish. From there they can see what boss that kills the ops and adjust accordingly, my bet is on the Underlurker.

 

The game is supposed to be fun, not meddeling with third party software that checks dps and if they intend to write the minimum speccs on this game then they need to provide content that is doable with such.

 

What I ask for is simply a boss that can handle the engine and random peoples computers and latency. They can try make a simple adjustment 16 man for example that it is enough with three-four players on each dps side. This will help alot for those that can not be in the correct spot in time either for the engine not updates position or for some other reason.

 

There are lots of changes they can do to make the SM version more enjoyable for the playerbase, the HM version they can boost and then in NiM they can have a react time of one second to cater for the most "hardcore" that needs to brag about their accomplishments.

Edited March 25, 2015 by Icestar

[Excise]

I would like Bioware to investigate the stats of how many random groupfinder ops (not the ones that gets instant pop, they consists of players with the achievement already) that queue up for TOS that actually completes it from start to finish. From there they can see what boss that kills the ops and adjust accordingly, my bet is on the Underlurker.

 

Agreed. Fact is, only BW really knows how many people are entering ToS and how far they're regularly getting. At least, I sure hope BW is keeping stats on this.

 

If the majority of PuGs are struggling with a specific boss on SM, then yeah, it should be toned down. SM should be regularly PuGable.

[Pietrastor]

Ok, then what is it you and OP are asking the chaps @ BW, to make clueless pugs less clueless?

To make it easy enough for "clueless pugs" to complete it after few attempts at most. Sorry but what did you think? That Group Finder is a tool for guilds to queue at scheduled time after everyone logs their best chars and TS? No, it's something you use when your guild is done with weekly raids, or won't take your crappy new undergeared alt on HM run, or when u don't like guilds at all, or when u can't work around gaming schedule due to RL, or when ur bored and feel like doing an ops with strangers in chat etc etc.

 

They may as well remove TOS from GF at the moment cause it's useless

Edited March 25, 2015 by Pietrastor

[Shwarzchild]

Agreed. Fact is, only BW really knows how many people are entering ToS and how far they're regularly getting. At least, I sure hope BW is keeping stats on this.

 

If the majority of PuGs are struggling with a specific boss on SM, then yeah, it should be toned down. SM should be regularly PuGable.

 

They most definitely are monitoring things. These operations need to last for a year. They need to be hard enough at this point in time to where players aren't cruising through. If you're a casual player, who doesn't want to be in a guild, and wants to run an operation... Please understand that ToS is made to be the hardest operation in game. You aren't supposed to just clear it whenever you feel like it. Do Ravagers instead. It's meant to be the puggable option at the moment. I pug Ravagers weekly on PoT5 and I don't think I've failed in the last 3 weeks on either of my two raiding toons. Granted, I'll admit it's probably a smaller sample size of what 6 runs? But, they were all general chat invitations I sent out to whoever wanted to join. I know it's not exactly what people may want as a lot feel like they should be able to fall down and roll through every piece of content. But, run ravagers some more. Get your gear. Then move up to ToS. See ToS as the next step,not the comparable side step to ravagers.

[Pietrastor]

Please understand that ToS is made to be the hardest operation in game

Really? Then why are 1st, 4th and 5th bosses extremly easy? You're just talking nonsense. TOS does not require nor give higher tier gear than Ravagers and is available in the same tier in GF as Ravagers. By defintion it is NOT suppoused to be hardest anything. Want challenge? Go into HMs/NiMs. Edited March 25, 2015 by Pietrastor

[Shwarzchild]

Really? Than why are 1st, 4th and 5th bosses extremly easy? You're just talking nonsense. TOS does not require nor give higher tier gear than Ravagers and is available in the same tier in GF as Ravagers. By defintion it is NOT suppoused to be hardest anything. Want challenge? Go into HMs/NiMs.

 

Maybe I am talking nonsense. If I know pug groups routinely fail ToS, and routinely pass Ravagers and they drop comparable gear and are in the same tier as the other...I know which one I'm pugging. I'm pugging the one most casual players in gen chat seem to grasp and understand. Or I could just understand that if I'm doing ToS I'm probably just doing up to Walkers.

 

In a general sense, I'm really tired of hearing people go to the tried and true line of "if you want a challenge go to HMs and NiMs". I really would like to see how well you do without us running your pug raids for you. I'm fairly certain, and this is subjective of course, that if the raiders who have cleared this content decide to leave you alone and go to hard modes or night mare modes, you still wouldn't clear any content no matter the difficulty. You'd still be trying to beat TfB on storymode. I'm sorry, but I'm just so annoyed with that "get out of here and go do your hardmodes" attitude. If it were possible for us to just leave you be to your own devices then we would. Because people like you end up being the problem in raids. You stand in gigantic red circles for no reason. You spam your basic attack because things should be easy and you shouldn't be required to learn anything about your class, you're in 120 blues because you just want to see the story and even though this is end game content you are entitled to be there because you pay money. And, most importantly, you're the first to screw up and the first to blame others.

 

Sorry if I'm being offensive. I'm not calling you out personally, Pietrastor. I'm calling out this attitude that somehow the ones who see raiding as the real draw to play this game are the problem over people who feel entitled to everything no matter what. If people are THAT into seeing the story...and don't want to do any work...youtube has it all. I mean let's be fair here, the description of what an operation is states that it's higher level content that requires higher levels of performance to complete. If your'e in 192/198 comm gear but can't pull over 1500 dps on a dps toon then you're basically the problem end of story. You're basically dpsing at what 148 gear levels? You're so far behind skill wise that it's incredible. I'll admit here that this might be a failure of the overall leveling process where it isn't a good teaching tool for classes. People with the attitude that operations must be snorefests on storymode are just simply in the wrong place, in denial about it, and holding a lot of us hostage because they refuse to accept any type of responsibility regarding really anything in game.

 

I do agree that minor minor tweaking is probably appropriate for UL only. I don't think it needs to be so heavily nerfed that it becomes Malaphar times 5 (who hilariously I find pretty challenging on hardmode, talk about insane difference between the two).

[GopherLuV]

Really? Then why are 1st, 4th and 5th bosses extremly easy? You're just talking nonsense. TOS does not require nor give higher tier gear than Ravagers and is available in the same tier in GF as Ravagers. By defintion it is NOT suppoused to be hardest anything. Want challenge? Go into HMs/NiMs.

 

Nefra, grob'thok, C-Zero, brontes were all cakewalks in SM.. while Bestia was a bit of a DPS check, tyrans and cal were raid awareness checks and raptus/council were all of the above (although council was kinda a cakewalk too in SM.. almost)

The difference is they listed a higher gear rating under DP's info than for DF's.. This time (i've never looked but i'm guessing they both say 186..) they are "supposed" to be even by that number.. sad fact is they aren't.... I've seen groups fail to enrage on the walkers just as often as i've seen groups die from underlurker.. As someone said before, UL is a DPS check with the ads, if they don't go down it becomes a heal check, then a raid awareness/adaptability problem...

The other MAJOR issue here is that some of you are talking of 16 man GF runs (so. 16m obvi, but also bolstered. . . ) which means gear is irrelevant.. It comes down to, do the players know how to play their class/spec and can they actually raid.. because it's not meant to be easy... it's meant to force raidwide cooperation and awareness.

While the other half are speaking of 8 mans.. in general a 16m will be HARDER!!!! you have 8 more people who need to cooperate and work together, you can't really carry very many people yet because of the fact that we are on par with the gear level required (not *********** 3 tiers above it like DF/DP), and the lag just gets aweful for many people who are on slower connections/crappy comps. Making it all that much harder...

I really like the UL boss.. i think it's a whole **** load of fun (and i'm' not trolling..) It's an amazing boss for every single thing you can have to do in a raid other than tank swaps... If your schedule doesn't allow for set raids with a guild, or your never on when that happens, or you just don't like guilds (why. . . ? ? ? it's an Massive MULTIPLAYER game.) then you need to resign to the fact that you probably won't clear these ops consistently each week until NiM rolls out and they nerf it all (if they do...) or we get a new tier of gear that is easy for a casual to get.

 

And to all those posting up numbers of this and that saying "it's a fact" or "you [bioware] stated yourselves".. let's seee these facts because i've never once seen them post statistics of ANYTHING (except that one time with like NPC kills and chars made and all that ****..) let alone figuring out how many people are clearing these operations through this or that or w/e...

[Declan_Vee]

One more comment. The issue with these fights is that they are relatively difficult (compared to over-gearing the 55 ops to farm more and more ultimate comms) and a lot of people instead if taking the correct approach: Having a good hard look at themselves, the group and getting better decide that they would much rather rage and cry for nerfs.

 

Why do I care if sm ops require some degree of player skill and/or coordination?

Without it the baseline for what's expected for the average player goes so low it's pretty much subterranean. This makes it very difficult for players in these groups and groups themselves to grow and branch out, pushing HM further and further away, and making NiM pretty much impossible. If we can encourage the broader player-base to improve by having hurdles which can be overcome in sm operations and indeed nurture a HM community from that we could see some really good things for the game.

 

Imagine if the majority of the raiding community (across all difficulties) were to start looking at sm ops (as they are now) the same way a lot of people look at tacticals. The devs have done a great job with Ravagers and Temple as an opportunity for community to make this paradigm shift... if only there wasn't so much resistance toward it.

Edited March 25, 2015 by Declan_Vee

[curulz]

The problem is one bad dps like 1500 dps can make the fight impossible PuGing. I would lower add health a little bit and increase enrage timer by 30 seconds. Leave HM as is.

 

I tend to agree. I don't want to dumb it down too much, but the windows are just a little tight for most pug groups. One less than optimal healer, one low DPS, etc makes it extremely difficult if not impossible.

[Tachenko_Yuri]

To make it easy enough for "clueless pugs" to complete it after few attempts at most. Sorry but what did you think? That Group Finder is a tool for guilds to queue at scheduled time after everyone logs their best chars and TS? No, it's something you use when your guild is done with weekly raids, or won't take your crappy new undergeared alt on HM run, or when u don't like guilds at all, or when u can't work around gaming schedule due to RL, or when ur bored and feel like doing an ops with strangers in chat etc etc.

 

They may as well remove TOS from GF at the moment cause it's useless

 

Well... we're talking about Underlurker in this one thread, so let me talk about this one folk.

 

Adds: a bunch of critters that don't even more around. just pelt them until they die.

 

Cross, where I'm guessing most pugs are gettign squelched. Assuming some sort of coordination took place, I do not know how can BW make even more clear who needs to go there. A big , fat tank, heal, and dps sign are already where people are meant to be going. If people don't know how to go left and right... Left.And.Right. We're talking kindergarten stuff here.

 

Also, if can someone tell, some time go I attempted a tos gf run, which got wrecked at walkers, but that's not my point. My point was that in this pug there were no tanks. Has that been fixed?

[TUXs]

It's ridiculously over difficult. It's a STORY mode Operation, not Hard mode. Story mode Ops should be easily completable by most players - 90%+. IMO, HM should be 30-40%, NiM should be 5%. There is no reason voice chat should ever be needed in any SM Operation imo. SWTOR is a casual game, these Ops are not created with that in mind.

 

If Bioware were capable of releasing tons of content, I wouldn't give a flip, but they aren't...this is it. They killed all older Ops by removing the incentive and reward from doing them, these 2 newest ones are all players have for "good" Ops content now. The difficulty needs to be toned down.

 

Simple fix, cut the adds health and damage in half. It's STORY MODE!

[FerkWork]

One more comment. The issue with these fights is that they are relatively difficult (compared to over-gearing the 55 ops to farm more and more ultimate comms) and a lot of people instead if taking the correct approach: Having a good hard look at themselves, the group and getting better decide that they would much rather rage and cry for nerfs.

 

Why do I care if sm ops require some degree of player skill and/or coordination?

Without it the baseline for what's expected for the average player goes so low it's pretty much subterranean. This makes it very difficult for players in these groups and groups themselves to grow and branch out, pushing HM further and further away, and making NiM pretty much impossible. If we can encourage the broader player-base to improve by having hurdles which can be overcome in sm operations and indeed nurture a HM community from that we could see some really good things for the game.

 

Imagine if the majority of the raiding community (across all difficulties) were to start looking at sm ops (as they are now) the same way a lot of people look at tacticals. The devs have done a great job with Ravagers and Temple as an opportunity for community to make this paradigm shift... if only there wasn't so much resistance toward it.

 

This so much. For me SM of this content was a great way to prepare for HM and without it I would be less prepared for HM. Take that away and I would have nothing to prepare for HM and many I beleive would feel the same way. Why should we go from super easy to very hard with no in between?