I'm in a guild currently trying to do TOS SM right now, but we're hitting a roadblock on Underlurker. Specifically, the adds are difficult to kill before the Ragestorm mechanic forces us to hide and move, then the cross comes and DPS is further reduced. We can usually get two down before the Ragestorm starts. We're all decent players in 186-192/198 gear.

I understand that lots of people have completed this operation, so short of spending months getting all 8 of us to 198 gear, can anyone suggest strategies for maximising DPS? Specific classes that might be useful, or tricks that can help us squeeze more DPS out while running around for the mechanics?

Thanks.

First thing to do is to learn to play whatever class you do play a little better.

Second thing to do is to augment your gear.

First thing to do is to learn to play whatever class you do play a little better.

 

Second thing to do is to augment your gear.

All our gear is augmented thanks, appreciated.

Ranged dps are stronger this fight- the adds hit melee really hard.

Every dps class in 186/192 gear can hit 3k dps on this fight. You need 5 dps and 1 tank - they need to do about 13,000 total dps to clear the enrage. That's about 2600-2700 every dps. You can't carry people through this fight

Try have tank place boss over the adds as you kill me so you can push the boss while killing adds

After 3 or 4 crosses - just pull boss to safe side of room and burn burn burn.

Ranged dps are stronger EVERY fight-.

Fixed that for ya

Ranged dps are stronger this fight- the adds hit melee really hard.

 

Every dps class in 186/192 gear can hit 3k dps on this fight. You need 5 dps and 1 tank - they need to do about 13,000 total dps to clear the enrage. That's about 2600-2700 every dps. You can't carry people through this fight

 

Try have tank place boss over the adds as you kill me so you can push the boss while killing adds

 

After 3 or 4 crosses - just pull boss to safe side of room and burn burn burn.

Yep. Need a tank with a dps gear,underlurker need only 1 tank

Another factor is the positioning during each step of the fight. When the first cross mechanic comes up, how far away from the add spawning positions is the boss?

When my guild runs ToS, we usually have 2 tanks/2 melee DPS/2 ranged DPS/2 healers. About 3 seconds before the adds spawn, the add tank calls out which end he will be starting at (adds spawn in the same place each time), and moves with the melee DPS to it just as they spawn; ranged DPS and healers should never be anywhere near the adds. Ranged DPS starts at the other end, so that when the rocks drop at least two should be dead; pick the rock closest to the last add to hide behind. Our sniper ignores the rock and just entrenches to take pretty much no damage, and can take out the last bit of health on the last add no problem.

Once everyone has been knocked on their butt, the boss tank is usually a good distance away so that the boss jumps to someone near where they were hiding behind rocks. This makes it so when he does the cross, it's pretty much right beside where the adds spawn, and everyone is nearby to get into position right away. Thus, there is a good amount of time to burst some DPS on the boss, and very little time needed to turn and start burning adds again. Sometime we even have the boss tank helping DPS the first add.

If DPS is still a major issue, you can choose to ignore the adds at about 4:30 and just heal through the damage to get more time on the boss.

If you're already doing this, though, it just may be down to people needing to practice their classes a bit. If you're wearing 186/192 (I'm presuming some people have their 2 or 4 set) mixed with some 198, you can get over 3K DPS just mashing buttons.

Do you use parsec or some other combat logger? You can directly identify areas that need improvement using it, and send whoever needs to adjust to any appropriate resources (Dulfy has some good reads). If they aren't doing what they need to and refuse to improve, it may be time to 'trim the fat'.

The dps requirements of Underlurker in SM is much much higher than any other boss on SM.

I'm fairly sure that the problems with the cross are not at all the only bugs on this boss, but there is also some other much bigger bug that causes the different phases of the fight happen too fast on SM not leaving as much time as it should to dps.

That being said...

Anyone in 186/192 mix gear, especially if it is augmented, and at least somewhat optimized (ie having right amount of accuracy, not stacking wrong stats on wrong classes, etc), should not have any difficulty in beating this boss, with any class combination, if they are any good.

You will though want to run with 1 tank and 5 dps, and not 2 tanks and 4 dps (having the 5th dps be a horribly badly geared offspec of a tank is just fine)

Also having melee dps does not really make it that much harder (though it kind of helps to have at least 2 of your dps be ranged, but you don't need all of them to be ranged as some try to imply).

You just want every dps to focus on the same add and everyone (including main tank) stack on top of it. (if there is only one person in melee range of an add they take huge damage, but if there is 8 people near it the damage gets divided by number of people and they suffer only minimal damage)

At below 30% just ignore the adds completely and have all dps focus on the boss. (you will probably still hide one more time, but then kill the boss before next adds overrun you.

The cross works fine now, so do not blame it on that, but I agree it is a tight fight with no room for many mistakes.

This faster you can trash the ads this more uptime you can have on the boss as well, it is one of those work like a unit fights, stay to spread out and the heals wont reach you, tons of AOE heals, so it is sort of move in synch, this better performed this more rewarding, the underlurker itself is not the big damage dealer whenever it get to it, but the enviroment is.

It put me and the people I work with on a test for quite a while untill finally downed it.

Word of advice it is not really pug friendly, but it can be pugged if people in the group are likeminded in a figure of speech.

Ideally all adds should be dead before rage storm, I know a lot of groups leave the last add and have ranged deal with it however those groups usually end up hitting the enrage. One tip I found useful is careful use of raid wide buffs like inspiration as well as adrenals during add phase, don't just pop them 10 seconds in. If for example you have two classes in your group with such buffs, have one pop their buff during the first wave, have the other pop theirs for the second, and on the third everyone use adrenals.

Everyone should be on the boss after the third wave, if on the fourth wave the bosses HP is still too high to YOLO it then there's a DPS problem with your group.

Ideally all adds should be dead before rage storm, I know a lot of groups leave the last add and have ranged deal with it however those groups usually end up hitting the enrage. One tip I found useful is careful use of raid wide buffs like inspiration as well as adrenals during add phase, don't just pop them 10 seconds in. If for example you have two classes in your group with such buffs, have one pop their buff during the first wave, have the other pop theirs for the second, and on the third everyone use adrenals.

 

Everyone should be on the boss after the third wave, if on the fourth wave the bosses HP is still too high to YOLO it then there's a DPS problem with your group.

This is a good idea, might have to try this. Or, I can just be lazy and wait for them to nerf it into the floor.

If you have problem with Dps, use the tips that everyone gives you (5 dps + tank, stack behind same rock for aoe heals) and in the last combo of adds + Underlurker before The enrage time, forget the adds and focus on boss.

Maybe it'll end in a doble ko. Maybe not 😎 but you will kill him and pass to the next fight that I imagine is what you and your guildmates want.

GL!!

Edit: Oh. Sorry. Just read that this has been said before.

You need 5 dps and 1 tank

Not true, we are clearing him with four dps and two tanks. You need well geared dps who know their class, thats all. We hit enrage few times sure, but at few last %. We also killed him without enrage. No need for tank in dps gear. We have 3 ranged on adds + one tank. MT and melee dps is on boss, problem solved

Also TzuCon make sure your ranged are in good spot behind rock to keep shooting adds. And all hide behind same rocks like others suggested. Cross should work now but why risk that Healers can spam aoe heals for everyone if you hide behind one rock.

The fact is, you shouldn't need "well geared" people for SM. Full 192, etc. That is the entire problem here. That is for HM and NiM. You can clear Ravagers in 186/192 no prob, as this should be as well. Even well geared you can still wipe and not clear it. I've seen a group of full 192 and 198 wipe 10 times in a row. You can know your class all you want, but this fight is borked. This boss has kept me from doing the rest of the Ops and I have done it many times, still never clearing it. Even with the elite players in my guild and other guilds. I "know my class" and am full 192/198 gear, it is just a borked fight and the bar is set too high for SM. One little thing is out of place and wipe, that is what NiM is for, not SM.

End of subject.

The fact is, you shouldn't need "well geared" people for SM. Full 192, etc. That is the entire problem here. That is for HM and NiM. You can clear Ravagers in 186/192 no prob, as this should be as well. Even well geared you can still wipe and not clear it. I've seen a group of full 192 and 198 wipe 10 times in a row. You can know your class all you want, but this fight is borked. This boss has kept me from doing the rest of the Ops and I have done it many times, still never clearing it. Even with the elite players in my guild and other guilds. I "know my class" and am full 192/198 gear, it is just a borked fight and the bar is set too high for SM. One little thing is out of place and wipe, that is what NiM is for, not SM.

 

End of subject.

Umm no, that is not the end of subject. The fight works fine since 3.0.2b, and the DPS requirement is hardly set high at all. Just because you can't clear something, don't complain the fight is broken and go crying to the forums. Get over yourself, learn how to play and kill the thing.

Best way to pass Underlurker:

step 1: Get 5 VG DPS, a VG Tank, and 2 Healers of whatever you want

step 2: Get all VG DPS to spec Tactics, and all VGs to have Reflective Armor and Electro Shield. Bonus points for having both healers Commandos with Reflexive Shield/Electro Shield utilities as part of their kit.

step 3: Stand within 10m of an add at all times. Use electro shield off cooldown if the adds are up.

step 4: Spam sonic rebounder at cross phase. Deliberately fail. End result, many reflected damage.

Step 5: WIN!

Umm no, that is not the end of subject. The fight works fine since 3.0.2b, and the DPS requirement is hardly set high at all. Just because you can't clear something, don't complain the fight is broken and go crying to the forums. Get over yourself, learn how to play and kill the thing.

no, if is says requirements for SM are 186 gear AND TO BEAT THIS people are saying you need 192/198 to beat this then it's not working correctly

Well the mathematical minimum DPS requirement for this fight is ~13.100 DPS for the whole group, which is (with 5 DPS) around 2.620 per DPS player (discounting tank dps, who also contributes). These are numbers that can be done in 180's gear (probably even in 172's). So I don't think it is only a gear issue.

That being said my group is also stuck at the Underlurker and if you look in the Gunslinger subforum you will see me asking for advice how to do more damage during this fight. So, when I say I believe that it could be done in 172's, I also believe that I'm not one of the people that can do it.

My group can usually down the first add wave before the collaps (and then weird things happen, see my thread in this subforum), but we usually fail after the first cross, even if we get it green.

The reason for failure is, as I believe, that the average player needs too much of his or her concentration for positioning in this fight which makes us completely forget doing decent damage. If done correctly, you can do a lot of DPS to the boss before, during and immediately after the cross, but me and my group do not manage it, as our mental ressources are occupied with positioning our toons correctly. The same is true for the second add wave. Everybody needs to position themselves correctly and by doing so the DPS goes down the drain. I guess this is the main issue most groups are facing.

For our group we are trying the following:

First get everybody in the raid into Parsec (or Starparse). Do Malaphar and look at the DPS numbers (they are huge in this fight). Do Sword Squadroon and look at DPS numbers (much lower than Malaphar) and then look at the numbers during Underlurker (numbers are pitiful). This made everyone aware, that the gear IS sufficient. If someone can do 3k+ DPS at Sword Squadroon, but only 2.5k at the Underlurker, there are other reasons, not the gear.

With everybody aware of the problem, people need to work on DPS uptime on the adds and the boss, while still doing the mechanics correctly. This needs a specc that can do decent DPS on the run and has decent burst potential because there is lot of target switching.

While AoE with hitting 2 Adds + Underlurker at the same time (Sorc, Sage, Sniper and Slinger have big enough AoE for this) is technically the most DPS you can get for this fight, I came to the conclusion it might not be the best way for a group still learning, because these AoE need to be placed carefully on the exact right spot (and we are faccing issues with our sages Forcequake).

So, what we will be doing next week is: Have everybody place the tank as focus target (ALT+F on the tank) and then attack the target of focus target (CTRL+F). So the tank will go from add to add (attacking it and telling in voicechat when there is target swap incoming) and take the boss with him, we will all focusfire on one add at the time and do as much splashdamage to the boss as possible. As we all are focused on the same target all the time it should also be easier to position correctly and meet behind the same rock (again, tank will choose rock). So basically we will try to use our tank as a pacemaker for this fight.

So, Tl;Dr: I do absolutely think that this fight can be done in 186's (even 180's) gear. But I also do think that downing the Underlurker requires coordination, skill in playing ones class and practice that is beyond what I consider appropriate for a SM operation. Do I and my group still have fun with it? Yes. But I can understand that others are frustrated and this fights difficulty is certainly not in line with the other 9 bosses of this tier in SM.

no, if is says requirements for SM are 186 gear AND TO BEAT THIS people are saying you need 192/198 to beat this then it's not working correctly

Just because people are incompetent doesn't mean that they are right. Or do you believe everything someone you don't know tells you on the internet?

If so, you have to pay me all the money you have, because reasons:p

And btw, we did beat it on HM in nothing more than a mix of 186(NiM Gear) and 192, as a lot of others have. Gear just allows you to beat things even if you don't know how to play.

For this fight it is easier if the entire ops group stays together, if you have melee dps everyone will have to stack up on the adds to share the aoe dmg, otherwise melee will get moved down. The boss only has one aoe on his own, and it doesn't hit very hard so dont be afraid to stack on tank. If you have a little trouble killing the last add in time, try moving behind a stone from where you can still hit it, and have one person be responsible for picking a stone to hide behind (as a group) and then follow his command.

Another thing you can do is having one of the tanks grab a dps gear set and simply go dps for this fight (I do this myself, even though it is not necesary for us, since it is considerably more entertaining being dps than a leftover tank ).

Lastly remember to pick utilities and speccs that provide you with aoe dmg reduction as it will help the healers quite a bit.