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

[TUXs]

Disagree with you hear. Story mode should provide some sort of compentence and coordination test even to Casual Players. There should be at least 1 Ops boss that pushes you to further improve your skills. Last Round was Draxus, and even that was a bit easier than I believe should be. Underlurker should be a roadblock

I don't mean for it to be faceroll easy, but I do believe SM should be a mode where 5-6 good players can carry the rest - healing needs to be moderate, tanking needs to be fairly forgiving and DPS checks need to account for the bottom 25% of players. Of course I want players to improve themselves, but not everyone can/will. I think 5-6 players trying their hardest (not meaning they're top DPS/heal parses, but a solid performance), should be able to carry 2-3 lesser skilled players.

[DarknessInLight]

You didn't specify HM or SM so I can only assume you were talking about SM due to the OP. In that case, my raid group has two mdps (one constantly on the boss) with me jumping around to the adds. It hasn't been a problem, even when there's bad rock placement and I'm too far away from the last add to damage during that phase.

 

To say you can't bring mDPS in this fight is wrong as we do it with two guardians. If you can't beat it with all classes then somebody is doing it wrong in SM. I haven't attempted Underlurker on HM, but we shall see how that goes.

 

I haven't seen it done with Guardians, so I'll have to take your word for that. When I meant mdps I was referring to the strictly dps classes, Sents and Maras. Guardian DPS is out there and at the moment, because of 3.0, I suspect Guardians to be better dps output overall vs. Sentinels atm.

[DarthZaul]

This boss is causing so much guild drama now - People threatening to leave, people that want to start a new raid team segregating the can kill lurkers from the can't kill lurkers.

 

JUST NERF IT FFS, put everyone out of their misery.

Edited April 2, 2015 by DarthZaul

[AshlaBoga]

This boss is causing so much guild drama now - People threatening to leave, people that want to start a new raid team segregating the can kill lurkers from the can't kill lurkers.

 

JUST NERF IT FFS, put everyone out of their misery.

 

They did nerf it.

 

If you can't tell left from right then you have bigger issues than an Ops boss - for one thing I don't think you can legally drive.

[TUXs]

This boss is causing so much guild drama now - People threatening to leave, people that want to start a new raid team segregating the can kill lurkers from the can't kill lurkers.

 

JUST NERF IT FFS, put everyone out of their misery.

 

Agreed. It's sad when the only rewarding end game PvE content is limited to a few players. I don't want it to be easy, but easier.

[Dakkus]

Rant ahead - skip to the end in bold for summary

 

No this is hard mode mechanics. Drop the add health by 20% and you're on sm - enough to get through it smoothly if you know how the fight runs, but if people aren't paying attention then you die. It gets easier the better gear you have and becomes butter. That is how ravagers is, and that's how this should be.

 

If the mechanics are so messed up that the average guild can't get through it, then its a bit too difficult. Its supposed to be a cruise type of OPs for people that want end game, not hard for people that want more of a challenge - its not hard mode. From there is NiM if you want something harder.

 

Getting 2.7k dps isn't the issue on the other fights since you can maintain LoS fairly easy and in a fight like Bulo, you can take adds out with a neat mechanic like the barrels. This fight on the other hand requires the team to fight the adds entirely and ignore the boss while the adds do stupid aoe damage unless the ranged stack with the melee - which defeats the purpose of choosing ranged. The majority of the videos on youtube show teams barely passing by ignoring adds and letting them stack up to 3 duplicates of adds - that's a broken game mechanic if this is how people are passing with 192 w/ 186 augs and 4set pieces from ravagers.

 

The times I see underlurker get passed is with 16m, ironically, or when the 8man has a couple of overly geared people - meaning they have set peices from beyond lurker or 198 comms gear. Although according to the devs, 192 is overgeared since 186 is their recommendation. The odd bit is that the off-tank is useless. People are using a 5th dps. That's not what the devs had in mind - clearly defined by the second shield behind the underlurker. Except the off-tank can't grab the adds and taunting the boss is about useless since he doesn't apply any measurable dangerous debuff/dot.

 

Not to mention the requirement they recommend for equipment transitions from SM (186) goes straight to HM(198). That shows a good unbalance in the mechanics. The actual ToS requirements are SM(192) as any OPs runner knows and that's after many deaths in practice and hoping for luck on your side to give you a point of view to dps the last add from behind a rock - assuming no set pieces from ravagers on any of this btw. The dps check is 2.5k if I remember correctly if you have 5dps and higher if you have 4. You can not get that with 186 w/ 186 augs due to having to move around to maintain group heals and getting to the cross. The adds won't die quick enough. SM ops should be something for the average gamer. If you want something harder, do HM and eventually NiM if you want an achievement to show off that no one will look at.

 

Its bad enough with the enrage on the walkers being less than 10seconds if downed one before the other so you have to down them same time, but underlurker is just retarded. Mechanics are decent, but adds just bit too much for a SM OP which, keep in mind, should be done in 186 gear according to the devs - not sure they even include 186 augs in that since 192 gear is hm ravagers and there isn't 192 augs.

 

Bottom line, can it be passed with 192s + augs? Yes.

Can it be passed with entire team of 186 comms gear w/ 186 Augs? Probably not unless you're a hardcore gamer.

Is it too much for SM? Yes.

How do I know? Majority of the people geared above the recommended gear level can't pass it even after trying with their guild for some time, but can proceed on post-lurker lock outs to finish ToS and complete ravagers start to finish.

 

Suggestion: Have a Dev team go to each server and make characters, set level to 60, equip 186 comms gear with 186 augs and pass underlurker to show them how retarded it is right now. In case some people don't know, there are sometimes variations in the OPs from one server to the next. Probably not intended, but it happens. Then after they get frustrated from failure, they raise the recommended rating to 192s and lower the add hp pools by 20% so the average player can run progression in OPs with their guild. If you have to practice and practice and practice like some hardcore gamer to get that extra 200-400dps in hopes of passing since you can't gear anymore upgrades without getting ultimate 198 comm stuff, then you're doing HM or NiM mechanics.

[Galdos]

Honestly, I think the only thing that needs to be changed is to add an extra 30seconds -1min to the enrage timer. Or make it so adds dont do more damage the close you are so melee arnt a hindrance.

[MuratReis]

It's a bit too hard.

 

I did it last week with a PuG 16 man and it took me two groups and about 3.5 hours. That's with my sniper that pulls more than 4k dps on a dummy. The problems are that some players can't operate their toon. There's nothing you can do to fix that, and (2) dps and the enrage timer. I'd work on making (2) a bit easier. People that can't operate their toons should put the time in to learn how to or not do ops. Otherwise, SM ops would be so easy that there would be no fun in doing them (like tactical FPs).

[Sylvidre]

Answering "L2P" to people asking for a nerf of the Lurker is neither constructive, nor accurate. As well as telling "if you can't tell your right from your left", if it was only depending on that, my guild would have succeeded after two nights of tries. My guild succeeded twice in 1 month and a half... and we are not even sure we wille be able to do it again.

 

Why ?

 

1 - Bugs : Yes, there are still bugs on this boss.

The cross goes green = at least 25 000 damage on one of us.

The cross goes red, instant kill of one or two toons... or no damage at all Oo

The cross goes red and green (Yeah it's christmas !) and... well this one does nothing bad, but looks like there is still something rotten in this fight ^^

A toon is behind a rock (that has already fallen) and is instant killed

 

2 - the adds

If I remember well, adds' health in SM is only 9000 less than in HM. This is just inconsistent !

 

Then I'll point out the difficulty level of the other bosses of TOS : First one so easy that it is an insult for pugs, the second a little bit more difficult (that you can handle with a little practice) and the two last ones... whose difficulty is just ridiculous after the Lurker. This is also inconsistent.

 

I remember when Draxus 8 SM was bugged (damages of the gards' debuff were twice what they should have been), even with that and it's "20 phases" we passed it far more easily (before the bug was fixed) than the Lurker.

 

So yes, there is définitively a problem with this boss.

 

I think it is the first time in my player's life (over 10 years now) that I ask a nerf (and the only one I ask is : lower the adds health). I play SWTOR since the servers opened, and we never encoutered so much difficulty to down (and "re"down) a boss in SM.

(sorry for my english and hello form France ^^)

Edited April 2, 2015 by Sylvidre

[TACeMossie]

Rant ahead - skip to the end in bold for summary

 

No this is hard mode mechanics. Drop the add health by 20% and you're on sm - enough to get through it smoothly if you know how the fight runs, but if people aren't paying attention then you die. It gets easier the better gear you have and becomes butter. That is how ravagers is, and that's how this should be.

 

If the mechanics are so messed up that the average guild can't get through it, then its a bit too difficult. Its supposed to be a cruise type of OPs for people that want end game, not hard for people that want more of a challenge - its not hard mode. From there is NiM if you want something harder.

 

Getting 2.7k dps isn't the issue on the other fights since you can maintain LoS fairly easy and in a fight like Bulo, you can take adds out with a neat mechanic like the barrels. This fight on the other hand requires the team to fight the adds entirely and ignore the boss while the adds do stupid aoe damage unless the ranged stack with the melee - which defeats the purpose of choosing ranged. The majority of the videos on youtube show teams barely passing by ignoring adds and letting them stack up to 3 duplicates of adds - that's a broken game mechanic if this is how people are passing with 192 w/ 186 augs and 4set pieces from ravagers.

 

The times I see underlurker get passed is with 16m, ironically, or when the 8man has a couple of overly geared people - meaning they have set peices from beyond lurker or 198 comms gear. Although according to the devs, 192 is overgeared since 186 is their recommendation. The odd bit is that the off-tank is useless. People are using a 5th dps. That's not what the devs had in mind - clearly defined by the second shield behind the underlurker. Except the off-tank can't grab the adds and taunting the boss is about useless since he doesn't apply any measurable dangerous debuff/dot.

 

Not to mention the requirement they recommend for equipment transitions from SM (186) goes straight to HM(198). That shows a good unbalance in the mechanics. The actual ToS requirements are SM(192) as any OPs runner knows and that's after many deaths in practice and hoping for luck on your side to give you a point of view to dps the last add from behind a rock - assuming no set pieces from ravagers on any of this btw. The dps check is 2.5k if I remember correctly if you have 5dps and higher if you have 4. You can not get that with 186 w/ 186 augs due to having to move around to maintain group heals and getting to the cross. The adds won't die quick enough. SM ops should be something for the average gamer. If you want something harder, do HM and eventually NiM if you want an achievement to show off that no one will look at.

 

Its bad enough with the enrage on the walkers being less than 10seconds if downed one before the other so you have to down them same time, but underlurker is just retarded. Mechanics are decent, but adds just bit too much for a SM OP which, keep in mind, should be done in 186 gear according to the devs - not sure they even include 186 augs in that since 192 gear is hm ravagers and there isn't 192 augs.

 

Bottom line, can it be passed with 192s + augs? Yes.

Can it be passed with entire team of 186 comms gear w/ 186 Augs? Probably not unless you're a hardcore gamer.

Is it too much for SM? Yes.

How do I know? Majority of the people geared above the recommended gear level can't pass it even after trying with their guild for some time, but can proceed on post-lurker lock outs to finish ToS and complete ravagers start to finish.

 

Suggestion: Have a Dev team go to each server and make characters, set level to 60, equip 186 comms gear with 186 augs and pass underlurker to show them how retarded it is right now. In case some people don't know, there are sometimes variations in the OPs from one server to the next. Probably not intended, but it happens. Then after they get frustrated from failure, they raise the recommended rating to 192s and lower the add hp pools by 20% so the average player can run progression in OPs with their guild. If you have to practice and practice and practice like some hardcore gamer to get that extra 200-400dps in hopes of passing since you can't gear anymore upgrades without getting ultimate 198 comm stuff, then you're doing HM or NiM mechanics.

 

There is a big rant here, but a few things I'd like to point out:

 

1. The DPS requirement of 2.5k DPS per person assumes 4DPS, not 5. 5 DPS in 8-man drops the requirement to 2kDPS per DPS.

 

2. You actually need 50% more DPS in hard mode than story mode to pass, and the slow is incredibly painful to deal with

 

3. The fight is 100% completable with 186 gear, so long as you craft some of it. My SM clear for ToS was done on the 11th of December, the same night as my SM clear for Ravagers, same with the rest of my guilds main progression team. We made sure that we got all our enhancements updated to 186 token levels, though augments were still of the 156 rating variety. Since better augments can be crafted, people have figured more stuff out, and the boss was nerfed by fixing all the bugs we had to deal with in week 1, you need to realise that the main issue with the fight now is people who don't know left from right.

 

4. Finally, people 4-manned this fight without revanite mainhands. 4-MANNED. AND THEY ADMITTED TO SCREWING UP ON MULTIPLE OCCASIONS DURING THE KILL. AND THEY ONLY HAD ENRAGE FOR 1 WAVE OF ADDS.

 

If people are able to 4-man this fight with only mostly 198s, it means that you can get 4 decent players in 192s (1 tank/1 healer/2 DPS) and they should be able to easily carry everyone else through SM Underlurker - so long as said people know left from right and not to stand in circles - only squares.

Edited April 2, 2015 by TACeMossie

[dbears]

People having problems with the cross:

 

Have your tank stay where they land after the knock back from the rocks. We've found that moving around afterward, trying to reposition, etc. can (what we think) spawn the cross in a different orientation than what shows up on your screen.

 

So again, have your tank that's on the boss stay where they're at after they get knocked down.

 

People insta-dying from already fallen rocks:

 

My group has noticed (and I'm sure others have) that even though the rock has fallen, running in to it will kill you. It's kind of like the Barrage circles from Bulo. Although not an insta-kill, it stays on the ground for an extended period of time and will deal damage to anyone who goes in it.

 

Treat the rocks as void zones and make sure to not clip them or run through them and you shouldn't have anyone die.

 

Admittedly, both comments are work arounds for bugs. But try them out, hopefully they work for you and you can clear the boss more consistently until it's fixed (if ever).

[TUXs]

4. Finally, people 4-manned this fight without revanite mainhands. 4-MANNED. AND THEY ADMITTED TO SCREWING UP ON MULTIPLE OCCASIONS DURING THE KILL. AND THEY ONLY HAD ENRAGE FOR 1 WAVE OF ADDS.

 

If people are able to 4-man this fight with only mostly 198s, it means that you can get 4 decent players in 192s (1 tank/1 healer/2 DPS) and they should be able to easily carry everyone else through SM Underlurker - so long as said people know left from right and not to stand in circles - only squares.

Who cares what hardcore players can do? We know they can beat it, they can beat it on HM too...they're the upper 5% of players, not the average Joe PuG.

 

Reduce adds health and damage and it's easily PuG'able.

[Shwarzchild]

Who cares what hardcore players can do? We know they can beat it, they can beat it on HM too...they're the upper 5% of players, not the average Joe PuG.

 

Reduce adds health and damage and it's easily PuG'able.

 

So this is an interesting point you make. No I don't think anyone cares about what hardcore/ hardmode/ nightmare raiders can do. What I think do matters is the, for lack of a better way to say it, "carrying people curve". I do believe that for pugs groups that consist of the admittedly less skilled players there has to be some element of carrying them through it. To me at least, I see carrying lesser skilled players through as kind of the first step to get them into a better place skill wise. After all, gaining experience is the way to get better. The more you see something, the more prepared you are for it in the future whether it's in another instance of the same boss or another boss with a similar mechanic.

 

I've been really on the fence about this whole argument. Originally, I was sitting at ok well nerfs are needed but let's not go to far. Now though, I think the theory I agree with more is that the "carry people curve" just hadn't caught up yet before so the casual people just couldn't clear it since their skill level simply was too low, and they lack the ability to self improve on the fly (I think they can improve, and do improve with that "carrying" player over them healing them through their mistakes, or picking up threat to negate a mistake taunt, or putting out heavier dps to make up the difference if the casual is low.) Now though, I think that curve is starting to catch up to the casual community. I'd preach patience to be honest. If you're a casual raider just kind of dabble with ToS, and farm Ravagers. In the not so distant future casual pug groups will start clearing UL.

 

I've talked about sacrificies in this thread, and some others. And, this I think is a perfect example (in a broad sense) of what I was talking about. If the player doesn't want to spend the time/ effort finding the right guild for them, and stick to being a mercenary for hire per say then they're going to have to deal with this type of curve, and the catch up it will require. They just aren't, and I don't think should, have the ability to just clear everything right off the bat if they don't want to really dive into what generally operations require (higher levels of coordination, awareness, communication). My bold prediction: when Ziost hits end of this month/ next month ToS will be a completely puggable, and easy run for a lot of randomly formed groups.

 

And, as an aside, I know people are like well my computer bugs out and what not. This is just my guess (after hearing some guy in a pug rav group last night complaining about his computer, but also talking about what games he's about to buy for the xbox1) is that sometimes it's more of a look in the mirror and you know maybe think of spending some money on a new computer (it doesn't need to be a huge deal, but if you've spent 600 bucks or so or more on a new console gaming system, games, and the like, I'm almost pretty sure that person is able to save up for a 600-700 dollar computer that could handle the game just fine. Frankly, I'm tired of excuses from people who are too afraid to change their situation either in game, or out.

[TUXs]

So this is an interesting point you make. No I don't think anyone cares about what hardcore/ hardmode/ nightmare raiders can do. What I think do matters is the, for lack of a better way to say it, "carrying people curve". I do believe that for pugs groups that consist of the admittedly less skilled players there has to be some element of carrying them through it. To me at least, I see carrying lesser skilled players through as kind of the first step to get them into a better place skill wise. After all, gaining experience is the way to get better. The more you see something, the more prepared you are for it in the future whether it's in another instance of the same boss or another boss with a similar mechanic.

 

I've been really on the fence about this whole argument. Originally, I was sitting at ok well nerfs are needed but let's not go to far. Now though, I think the theory I agree with more is that the "carry people curve" just hadn't caught up yet before so the casual people just couldn't clear it since their skill level simply was too low, and they lack the ability to self improve on the fly (I think they can improve, and do improve with that "carrying" player over them healing them through their mistakes, or picking up threat to negate a mistake taunt, or putting out heavier dps to make up the difference if the casual is low.) Now though, I think that curve is starting to catch up to the casual community. I'd preach patience to be honest. If you're a casual raider just kind of dabble with ToS, and farm Ravagers. In the not so distant future casual pug groups will start clearing UL.

 

I've talked about sacrificies in this thread, and some others. And, this I think is a perfect example (in a broad sense) of what I was talking about. If the player doesn't want to spend the time/ effort finding the right guild for them, and stick to being a mercenary for hire per say then they're going to have to deal with this type of curve, and the catch up it will require. They just aren't, and I don't think should, have the ability to just clear everything right off the bat if they don't want to really dive into what generally operations require (higher levels of coordination, awareness, communication). My bold prediction: when Ziost hits end of this month/ next month ToS will be a completely puggable, and easy run for a lot of randomly formed groups.

 

And, as an aside, I know people are like well my computer bugs out and what not. This is just my guess (after hearing some guy in a pug rav group last night complaining about his computer, but also talking about what games he's about to buy for the xbox1) is that sometimes it's more of a look in the mirror and you know maybe think of spending some money on a new computer (it doesn't need to be a huge deal, but if you've spent 600 bucks or so or more on a new console gaming system, games, and the like, I'm almost pretty sure that person is able to save up for a 600-700 dollar computer that could handle the game just fine. Frankly, I'm tired of excuses from people who are too afraid to change their situation either in game, or out.

This is just a video game...people just want to play it, not study it. The "curve" you speak of is too steep and Bioware is losing customers because of it.

 

And what the hell? Now you're suggesting people save $600-700 to buy a new computer to beat this? You're outta your flipping mind!!! This is a FREAKING VIDEO GAME, one that is almost entirely about progression at end game. If players aren't having fun and progressing, they'll just quit. To think they should buy a new computer is absolutely asinine.

Edited April 2, 2015 by TUXs

[Shwarzchild]

This is just a video game...people just want to play it, not study it. The "curve" you speak of is too steep and Bioware is losing customers because of it.

 

And what the hell? Now you're suggesting people save $600-700 to buy a new computer to beat this? You're outta your flipping mind!!! This is a FREAKING VIDEO GAME, one that is almost entirely about progression at end game. If players aren't having fun and progressing, they'll just quit. To think they should buy a new computer is absolutely asinine.

 

The curve has always been there for every single op in this game, and I'm sure in every game where players who have lesser skill want to get into higher levels of content, but lack the introspection to be able to identify quickly their flaws and improve upon them. They need the help, and that's what people do in these types of games. They do carry people either consciously or unconsciously. I think you're totally overreacting to that point.

 

To my second point, I'm advocating that people put time/effort/money into their hobbies (if they consider this a hobby of theirs which I assume most people who play video games consider gaming in general a passion of theirs..and seeing how an mmo speaks to people who play alot of gaming or want a game not to end I'd say it's a safer bet that we are more into gaming than say a guy who only plays call of Duty.) put time/effort/money into their hobbies. If the UL is glitchy on their computer (and they like computer games as a whole and plan on playing them as their hobby), I would venture a guess that a whole lot of other stuff is too...ranging from video games to anything else on there. So no I'm not saying "dudes and ladies if you have an old comp that's not running just underlurker well you gotta uppgrayyed right meow". I'm saying put some personal effort into your own hobbies/ dreams instead of relying on/ blaming things on others.

 

In a general sense, I see way too many people in this world who have no concept of their own behaviors, and are so quick to blame everything and everyone around them for their own mistakes when really if they just stopped and said I'll take the time to fix this myself, or I'll need to just have some patience, it would get them to a better place in 10x less time.

[TUXs]

In a general sense, I see way too many people in this world who have no concept of their own behaviors, and are so quick to blame everything and everyone around them for their own mistakes when really if they just stopped and said I'll take the time to fix this myself, or I'll need to just have some patience, it would get them to a better place in 10x less time.

They're lucky they have you to point out their errors in life huh?

 

This is about a video game mechanic...drop the ridiculous self help nonsense and get a stage somewhere else to spout your crap. Geezus...

[DOHboy]

one of the first things I would change wouldn't necessarily be the damage/health of adds.

 

I would start simple, make collapse a set location and have the boss not jump after cast. meaning the rocks will always fall in a given location AND boss will not jump/reposition after the channel. This really should be a HM mechanic beyond just additional life/damage.

 

at that point you can eliminate some of the RNG from the sm, which is what ends up wiping groups most of the time.

[Shwarzchild]

They're lucky they have you to point out their errors in life huh?

 

This is about a video game mechanic...drop the ridiculous self help nonsense and get a stage somewhere else to spout your crap. Geezus...

 

I've got a little soap box next to my desk thank you very much. In the same vein how about you stop preaching this poor woe is me everything is too hard in this game junk as well. The fact that you champion the crowd who thinks that they are entitled to doing as little as possible for the greatest reward is in my opinion wrong, and off base. If we both decide to drop our Jesse Jackson routines I bet everyone else would probably say "thank god".

[TUXs]

I've got a little soap box next to my desk thank you very much. In the same vein how about you stop preaching this poor woe is me everything is too hard in this game junk as well. The fact that you champion the crowd who thinks that they are entitled to doing as little as possible for the greatest reward is in my opinion wrong, and off base. If we both decide to drop our Jesse Jackson routines I bet everyone else would probably say "thank god".

I don't champion anyone, I simply care about the current state of the game, more than my own personal accomplishments, and I make suggestions that I believe will improve the game for a number of people who otherwise become frustrated.

 

This has nothing to do with entitlement, they're still doing the Op, but it needs to be more forgiving for PuGs.

[Shwarzchild]

I don't champion anyone, I simply care about the current state of the game, more than my own personal accomplishments, and I make suggestions that I believe will improve the game for a number of people who otherwise become frustrated.

 

This has nothing to do with entitlement, they're still doing the Op, but it needs to be more forgiving for PuGs.

 

We're going to have to agree to disagree. I don't think you're right, and you absolutely don't like what I'm saying.

[TUXs]

We're going to have to agree to disagree. I don't think you're right, and you absolutely don't like what I'm saying.

Just to be clear, I don't want this to be faceroll easy, but 15-25% less health on adds and 15-25% less damage would make a HUGE difference for those players struggling to complete it, while hopefully maintaining the integrity of the original design.

[Shwarzchild]

Just to be clear, I don't want this to be faceroll easy, but 15-25% less health on adds and 15-25% less damage would make a HUGE difference for those players struggling to complete it, while hopefully maintaining the integrity of the original design.

 

I think that's just way too much of a reduction. That's virtually no damage in that encounter outside of standing under a falling rock or getting the cross wrong. To me that's faceroll easy. I would consider like a 5 percent reduction in add health. I don't think the issue is the damage. I think the issue is that the dps in this game are at a generally incompetent level. I could see a longer enrage timer I guess as well. But think about how massive a 15-25 percent change would be. You probably wouldn't even need two healers at that point.

[DarthZaul]

one of the first things I would change wouldn't necessarily be the damage/health of adds.

 

I would start simple, make collapse a set location and have the boss not jump after cast. meaning the rocks will always fall in a given location AND boss will not jump/reposition after the channel. This really should be a HM mechanic beyond just additional life/damage.

 

at that point you can eliminate some of the RNG from the sm, which is what ends up wiping groups most of the time.

 

That is a very good idea.

 

They did nerf it.

 

If you can't tell left from right then you have bigger issues than an Ops boss - for one thing I don't think you can legally drive.

 

Its not about the mechanics, its the DPS. People can't do 2.8k on this fight. On most other fights, yes do your rotation right and mash your buttons to get your APM up and you can easily do 2.8k in any spec. But this fight kills your DPS. 4k on a dummy is like 2k on Lurker for some people. If people spent some time practicing on the dummy they could improve their DPS but story mode raiders are not willing to and should not have to do that. I can do 2.9-3.2 in lightning (Pre-nerf) on Lurker but if they continue nerfing OP specs instead of buffing UP specs and nerfing ranged instead of buffing melee no one will be able to do enough DPS for Lurker.

Edited April 2, 2015 by DarthZaul

[Papazmurf]

So this is an interesting point you make. No I don't think anyone cares about what hardcore/ hardmode/ nightmare raiders can do. What I think do matters is the, for lack of a better way to say it, "carrying people curve". I do believe that for pugs groups that consist of the admittedly less skilled players there has to be some element of carrying them through it. To me at least, I see carrying lesser skilled players through as kind of the first step to get them into a better place skill wise. After all, gaining experience is the way to get better. The more you see something, the more prepared you are for it in the future whether it's in another instance of the same boss or another boss with a similar mechanic.

 

I've been really on the fence about this whole argument. Originally, I was sitting at ok well nerfs are needed but let's not go to far. Now though, I think the theory I agree with more is that the "carry people curve" just hadn't caught up yet before so the casual people just couldn't clear it since their skill level simply was too low, and they lack the ability to self improve on the fly (I think they can improve, and do improve with that "carrying" player over them healing them through their mistakes, or picking up threat to negate a mistake taunt, or putting out heavier dps to make up the difference if the casual is low.) Now though, I think that curve is starting to catch up to the casual community. I'd preach patience to be honest. If you're a casual raider just kind of dabble with ToS, and farm Ravagers. In the not so distant future casual pug groups will start clearing UL.

 

I've talked about sacrificies in this thread, and some others. And, this I think is a perfect example (in a broad sense) of what I was talking about. If the player doesn't want to spend the time/ effort finding the right guild for them, and stick to being a mercenary for hire per say then they're going to have to deal with this type of curve, and the catch up it will require. They just aren't, and I don't think should, have the ability to just clear everything right off the bat if they don't want to really dive into what generally operations require (higher levels of coordination, awareness, communication). My bold prediction: when Ziost hits end of this month/ next month ToS will be a completely puggable, and easy run for a lot of randomly formed groups.

 

And, as an aside, I know people are like well my computer bugs out and what not. This is just my guess (after hearing some guy in a pug rav group last night complaining about his computer, but also talking about what games he's about to buy for the xbox1) is that sometimes it's more of a look in the mirror and you know maybe think of spending some money on a new computer (it doesn't need to be a huge deal, but if you've spent 600 bucks or so or more on a new console gaming system, games, and the like, I'm almost pretty sure that person is able to save up for a 600-700 dollar computer that could handle the game just fine. Frankly, I'm tired of excuses from people who are too afraid to change their situation either in game, or out.

 

TL;DR at the bottom.

 

I hated that I had to quote your entire post, but I couldn't just snip it due to your back and forth with TUX. I wanted to make sure it was known I was replying to this.

 

There's only a few names I really notice on these forums and yours stuck out from the productive discussion that occurred in this thread: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=798532&page=5

 

I only note this because it was interesting to me to see your thoughts evolve over the course of a month dealing with these raid issues. I think the idea of your "carrying curve" fits in well with the accessibility argument I mentioned a month ago. That was the most important part of your post, but it got sidetracked by the computer affordability comment. I should add that I thought the computer problems portion supplemented your post well because the reality we are seeing with the raid problems is bigger than "ToS is bugged".

 

Everyone in this thread wants to view this fight in a vacuum solely based on mechanics and what BW can do to alleviate user problems. Do I believe there that the mechanics should be dumbed down a bit since it is story mode? Yes. However, the issues people are dealing with in guilds and people wanting to quit raid groups is real. The thing is, this isn't a new phenomenon, it's just that this is the first time you are seeing such drama on a large scale because everyone "should" be able to do SM.

 

In HM progression raiding you see this all the time. You really learn about your group and sometimes the reality certain players you've gamed with might not be that good. What do you do? This tends to lead to drama as many cases people refuse to look in the mirror. You start recording fights to see what you can do better and have parse requirements to get to the next boss. You and your group start getting fed up and get upset with each other or a particular member since you believe it's just not going to happen with your current group. You get upset because you know other groups have cleared the content so why can't you? The problem is, this isn't HM.

 

I've never recorded or parsed for SM until Underlurker. I've done it for HM, but never a SM. For this boss it got to that point though. My raid group had to have a gut check, we ended up kicking a member out and next thing you know, we clear it in two tries. This was going on for over a month and I know other groups who still have trouble. I'm not saying I haven't had trouble in other SM bosses (EC tanks and TFB Dread Guard come to mind), but Underlurker has been on another level.

 

I wish more people would go to the OPS/Flashpoint forums, because there really was a great discussion about BW possible losing players due to new content difficulty. Having beat ToS many times on different toons part of me thinks, well if I can do it certainly others can. However in my own experience in various raid groups I know there are individuals that can't do things and for various reasons (mental health issues, lack of eye hand coordination, bad internet/computer or a refusal to take advice to improve a characters stat distribution are examples that I have personally witnessed). These are real issues that no one wants to talk about since it's a videogame and no one really wants drama over a videogame. So you beat your head against a wall for a month until your fed up because you don't want to hurt someone else s feelings that you know aren't pulling their weight. Again, prior to Underlurker I had only experienced these scenarios when it came to HM content.

 

So IMO, BW does need to fix this, because all of the content needs to be accessible to everyone. I'm not saying it needs to be faceroll easy, but currently people aren't getting a sense of accomplishment during their playtime and anger usually left for upper tier raid groups has worked itself into the general raid player base. There's a reason for HM and eventually NiM and casual players tend not to even attempt this stuff because they don't want to put in the effort. They do attempt SM, because they want to see all the content and to this point have been able to beat that content with small effort or being carried.

 

I won’t expand on this last point, which Shwarz mentioned, but the “carrying curve” simply isn’t there for this content yet, but I suspect once NiM hits and you have people geared from that, Underlurker SM will be much easier for all groups.

 

TL;DR:

Even though I've beat the boss many times now, the fight should be nerfed. Raid drama normally only encountered in HM and NiM progression raiding has seeped its way into SM. It doesn't need to be faceroll easy, but all SM content should be easily accessible to players of all types and skills as that is the BW’s market. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a decent nerf once NiM comes out.

Edited April 2, 2015 by Papazmurf

[xxtwofivexx]

Instead of everybody whining so hard, why don't you just get better? The SM ops are just fine for the average player. I've only seen complete **** players fail at this new tier of content.