New York Raid

[Rurik Nogard]

Well this section event was created cause we really need to see how much improvement are in the cabal... Well I gonna see and dare u to put extra efford to get equipped and get strong materials and equips...

Well Im start putting the knowledge I have from NY raid:

Raid:

Several strong mobs and HUGE and strong boss 5 Millions of HP and must be killed in less than 6 mins.

Almost all is follow the basic strategies bout raid and boss attacks.

1.Here we need 10 ppl to make a full run team the groups are divided in 2 getting one pure dps and the other tank/healer like this:

Group 1 - Group 2
DPS - TANK
DPS - TANK
DPS - HEALER
DPS - HEALER/LEECHER
DPS - PODDER


Characteristics:

DPS: the DPS need it to make bout to 1.5k DPS per fight, must have full purple gear and know to move cause the raid is made with full AR leaving hp of all dps except PODDER in 1.9k, all DPS must know how to AID kill PODs, the right time to kill ADS when they appear and most important when to stop DPS.
TANKS: Well TANKS must know, here the most important is aggro switching and quick mob reaching, cause almost every dps-healer die in the Dragon and ads 2nd face of the raid.
HEALER: The most easy job in raid, the only stuff that they need to know is where stay, quick heal switch, and avoid mobs aggro (including dragons) when 2nd fase comes.

Lets pass at the mechanics:

The Unutterable Lurker is the raid boss for the New York City raid encounter in the Secret World. This fight is a 10-person, 10-minute raid with a 5-minute achievement. This is the first content to award 10.5 gear along with kits to upgrade 10.4 gear to the 10.5 level.

The Unutterable Lurker

The raid consists of three distinct phases with important transitions between phase-1 to phase-2 and a critical transition between phase-2 to phase-3. Much of the fight features aggro swapping, requiring your tanks to coordinate their activity. The battlefield consists of a number of piles of rubble and downed cars, these are actually objects that block one of the bosses periodic attacks, you will make use of these in the second phase.

Here I will explain attacks and things u MUST know and how to manage them:

The Unutterable Lurker, Stage-1: Whisper of Darkness

During this first stage, the boss has four primary mechanics which must be countered. All of these mechanics will return in the third stage as well, so learning to process them perfectly is essential.

The tactics for this stage:

Tanks swap aggro (provoke, mass provoke or art of war) at 10-stacks
Healers maintain regens on both tanks due to persistent dots
Close combatants strafe past the column attack
Ranged combatants also have to watch for the center column
Ranged combatants drop filth pools off to the back sides of the fight
Call out and clear pods quickly.

Whisper of Darkness: this is the primary tank-swapping mechanic for this fight. The person with aggro receives a 20-stack of Whisper of Darkness counter. This causes a damage over time effect the entire time this is up. The damage is entirely physical and can not be blocked, evaded or glanced. The Whisper of Darkness dot can NOT be purged or cleansed as well. The damage must be healed through until it ends. The counter begins a countdown from the moment it lands. If the effect is still on a person when the counter reaches zero, that person immediately dies (roughly 10 million damage). To avoid the death effect, you simply need to lose aggro for about 3-seconds. The easiest way to do this is to have the two tanks arrange to force taunt aggro from the Unutterable Lurker when the aggro tank hits 10-stacks. The tanks should swap aggro anytime Whisper of Darkness hits 10 stacks. You can run it all the way to 1-stack, but you should probably process the swap earlier. We find that simply using snap aggro (provoke, mass provoke and art of war) is more than enough to handle these transitions. As we have become more comfortable with this, we often just organically swap aggro, letting each tank simply “win” in the aggro race by slowing down rotations as needed.

Filth Pools: throughout the fight, players near the back will periodically find a white circle at their feet. Do NOT randomly dive out of it. This is the Unutterable Lurker pre-casting of what will become a persistent filth pool. Instead, run it outside of the battle area and park it somewhere out of the way. Once the casting completes, simply run back to your party, leaving your filth pool behind.

The Column Smash: Players in the front and middle have to deal with this mechanic constantly and players in the back have to deal with this mechanic occasionally as well. The Unutterable Lurker will place a rectangular column emanating from his position and progressing towards the party. This ability does not have a casting bar, merely the column animation. The smash does moderate physical damage, enough to kill a non-tank and additionally causes a knockdown/stun to tanks. Be aware that the column effect is slightly wider than the draw radius. The column can appear to the left, center, or right of the battle area – be aware that columns to the middle aim far enough out to hit assault rifle players.

Pods: throughout the fight, players near the back will also periodically become trapped in one of the Unutterable Lurker’s tentacles. This manifests as a “pod” around the player (and any other players standing directly adjacent to the target of the tentacle pod). It is important that DPS tab target and drop the pod quickly. The pod itself has a DOT effect, however it is one that can be easily healed through. Because of this, it is critical you do not have your two healers standing close to one another. Additionally, a player trapped in the pod can easily become stuck in a filth pool or become the victim of a column attack.

The Unutterable Lurker, Transition-1: Shadow out of Time

The tactics for this transition:

Have a call-out for the beginning of the transition.
Clear anyone in pods
Avoid the knockback as best you can
Everyone rally to the back-center of the battle arena and kill adds

The transition for phase-2 begins when the Unutterable Lurker begins casting the Shadow out of Time effect. During this, the visible area turns a dull grey, the Lurker rears back and releases a large filth bubble which emanates from his body outward, gradually traversing the entire length of the battle arena.

Shadow out of Time does little damage, however it causes a knockback/stun to any who are caught in it. You can avoid the knockdown by simply hiding behind a pile of rubble (or even a lamp post if you are really good) or simply dive rolling at the right time. Shadow out of Time recurs roughly every 30-seconds for the remainder of the battle.

Two packs of filth spawns appear immediately following a Shadow out of Time. These will typically cluster to the fist healer, so your tanks should cluster with this person to quickly pull aggro off of them.

We move our team to the back of the battle arena during this stage. We find that the large rubble pile in the back-center is ideal for DPS and healers (additionally this location provides protection from the knock-back of from upcoming “Shadow out of Time” filth effects) while the crashed cars on the left and right are ideal for tanks in stage-2.

The Unutterable Lurker, Stage-2: Eldritch Guardians

The tactics for this stage

Have tank-1 take the odd number drakes and tank-2 take the even number drakes
Consider letting the drake stay in the party until it begins casting its first Downfall, interrupt that and then move the drake to your kill location
Tank-1 should pull odd drakes to the left (or right) car
Tank-2 should pull drake #2 to the car opposite tank-1
DPS should focus fire on guardians sequentially
Tank should avoid remaining downfalls
Call out Shadow out of Time waves, DPS should huddle at the middle rubble pile until the effect passes. Tanks should use the cars to avoid the knockback
Clear adds immediately after Shadow out of Time
Party should begin transition-2 when the third guardian dies

During the second stage, the Unutterable Lurker becomes unassailable (he’s surrounded by filth). Instead, the players must contend with a sequence of four Eldritch Guardians (bird-like shadow-drakes). Eldritch Guardians can not be targeted until they are almost at the raid, often requiring tanks to counter a Downfall right inside the raid team. Throughout this stage, players will also encounter the Shadow out of Time knockback/stun and its subsequent wave of filth spawns.

The Eldritch Guardians primarily attack with physical damage. This is a single target attack with no cleave effect. The guardians, however, have two aoe type effects which must be managed well.

Downfall – Downfall is a cone breath attack. This is a high damage filth attack with no persistent filth effect. It is simply a high DD with major knockback/stun. This effect CAN be interrupted, but it can also be easily avoided by strafing around the bird.

Death Circle – Upon death, the Eldritch Guardian lays out a large circular effect and will explode upon completing the casting animation. The damage of this explosion is more than enough to kill a tank outright. Dashes (Death from Above) come in handy here, but a simple active dodge and paying attention are more than enough. Because of this effect, it is often useful to CEASE DPS on a bird if it is near death at the start of a Shadow out of Time wave. Mistiming this can easily wind up getting a tank (fleeing from the Death Circle) being knocked back into it by the Unutterable Lurkers wave.

The Unutterable Lurker, Transition 2: Who got Whispered?

The Unutterable Lurker tends to fire off a Shadow out of Time right near the death spot for the fourth Eldritch Guardian. This specific Shadow out of Time signals the end of stage-2 and the commencement of stage-3.

Managing this transition is the most important element of winning this fight. It is very easy to lose a tank or healer at this transition, which effectively is a wipe.

Need to Know the tactics for this transition:

Move the 4th Guardian forwards to one of the rubble piles in the middle of the arena
Place the DPS at the far rubble pile
After the Shadow out of Time wave, the path to the boss clears. Additionally, the Lurker opens with a Whisper of Darkness.
Tank-1 runs to boss and taunts. Healers must cover Tank-1 as well as whomever picked up the Whisper dot before the tank arrived (this is usually your fist healer)
A Flak Jacket at this point of transition is often helpful
Tank-2 finishes guardian, avoids circle, and then helps clear adds
Tank-2 must then get into the Lurker and pickup Whisper of Darkness before it finishes countdown on Tank-1

The Unutterable Lurker becomes accessible immediately after the Shadow out of Time wave during the 4th guardian. He also opens up with a Whisper of Darkness, this Whisper often targets a player other than a tank (often the fist healer). It can hit all the way at the back of the battle arena and ignores line of sight.

It’s pretty much a guarantee that someone, other than a tank, will initially pickup this dot. We use a Flak Jacket to help here and healers must put regens on the damaged non-tank.

More importantly, though, tank-1 must get into range of the Unutterable Lurker and hit a provoke to make sure no one else gets a Whisper of Darkness.

The remainder of the team needs to finish the last guardian and the wave of adds which follow the Shadow out of Time wave.

Once that’s done, tank-2 needs to hustle in and pickup aggro from tank-1 who is probably nearly out of stacks of Whisper of Darkness.

The Unutterable Lurker, Stage-3: Find your Buff Circle

At the beginning of stage-3, the game’s signature NPC’s (Zuberi, Alex, Mei Ling and Rose) come out and join the raid force. They position themselves in front of the Unutterable Lurker – Zuberi casts a spell which surrounds all four in a particle effect. This effect creates a 2x damage buff for specific weapons.
Mei Ling buffs melee oriented weapons,
Rose buffs short-ranged weapons like pistols and shotguns, and
Alex buffs long-ranged weapons like Assault Rifles and Elemental magic.

The tactics for this stage
Tanks must swap Whisper of Darkness
Avoid column attacks
Ranged attackers should drop filth pools behind the raid force
Ranged attackers should charge INTO the boss on Shadow out of Time
Respond to waves of filth mobs that come out after Shadow out of Time
Respond to pods
Beat the timer

During this stage you face every effect, except Eldritch Guardians. Your tanks must counter Whisper of Darkness. Your DPS must address Filth Pools and Pods. Everyone must watch out for the column attacks. Finally, everyone must handle the Shadow out of Time attack and its subsequent adds.

Most of the more preferred DPS builds will find themselves unable to take advantage of the buff for both of their weapons. For instance, AR/Shotty builds would require buffs from Alex and Rose. While you could “dance” between the two, in our experience this leads to more frequent problems with the filth pools. Because of this, we recommend simply going to the buff circle for your highest DPS contributing weapon (often AR).

We find that spreading the DPS out along the front of the Assault Rifle buff makes it easiest to deal with the filth pools. Simply run yours out to the back and drop it off, then return to the fight. Make no mistake, properly managing these filth pools is a significant part of this stage. (By staying near the front of the buff area, you might need to dodge pillar effects from the boss, however you seem to have fewer pods to manage. A poorly placed pod effect can wipe this stage due to the number of players who can get stuck in the pods).

On the Shadow out of Time mechanic, we have everyone charge INTO the Unutterable Lurker. This causes the player to get knocked back, but you tend to land right back on the buff circle and thus avoid getting knocked farther back into the filth pools. Additionally, you can continue to DPS while you run in, and end up losing no more dps from the KB effect then if you had to run out of the effect in a traditional manner.

DPS should use aoe’s to take down the wave of adds that come in after Shadow out of Time. These adds generally swarm the fist healer who is up with the tanks.

This final stage is simply an attrition stage (stay alive) and dps check (beat the timer). By the time you finish the second transition, you have seen everything the Unutterable Lurker can throw at you.

[Rurik Nogard]

Now we have to focus on the GEAR and good management of the build, (DPS-TANK-HEALER-ing) of our members so I hope u can fill this post with some important stuff like:

NAME
ROLE (S)
GEAR AND UPGRADE

We must know if we are well prepared for fight out the boss raid like this I will put mine:

NAME Rurik Vlein Nogard
ROLE DPS (Complete)-LEECH HEALER (still working ON it)
GEAR:

Weapons 10.5/10.4 Purples
Headgear Purple 10.4
Mayor Talis Purple 10.4
Minor Talis Purple 10.4
Aux Weapon Purple

In case u dindt get all ur equip and have several qualitys and color can put this way

Weapons 10.0 Blue and 10.0 Green
Headgear 10.3 Purple
Mayor Talis 10.0 Green, 10.0 Blue and 10.0 purple
Minor Talis 10.0 Blue (2) and 10.1 Purple

This will help to know what we got and try to help out the ppl interested in taking part of our Raids and the chance to improve ur gear and weapons to 10.4/10.5 (yeah to 10.4 cause boss drops 10.4 weapons, head and talis).

So Well wait for u to join us n.n

[Elrojo]

Vlein,

Nice post and good job on the effort.

Don't be disheartened but the job of getting 10 regular 10.4 players to practice and get NY down will be hard. Unfortunately most won't read forums, so you'll need to do a lot of ingame research.

The second problem will be having the same core of 7 or so on at the same time all the time.

Good luck however

[Chrisax]

It's indeed a very nice effort and a nice post. I think we can be positive about this, not dreaming and thinking it's easy, but be positive. Rojo is right to stress the difficulties: as i said we must not dream and imagine we can do it very soon... but, to repat myslef, we have decent reasons for being positive.

First, if we work with new waves of recruitment as we just did not long ago, we will have the numbers for a NY raid at some given time (members can make an effort for a raid, also). We will fail the first raid(s)... who cares! We will probably learn much more by doing this bet ween us (or with a majority of us), without stress, pressure, intolerant or easily dropping PUG raiders.
See the results we have with the first wave.

Second, let's all remember that when I said we would have good results if we really started t recruit, the opinions around were so-so... not everyone was really convinced but thanks we tried. And it worked, mostly as expected. So... let's work and try.

Third, a LOT of cabals are inactive / unfriendly / dying... we have a big opportunity here.

Four, of course we won't make this raid within two weeks... but if we believe in it and work, we will do it. We can even start it just as training, not even with the numbers required, perfectly knowing we won't go very far. But learning. We did that whne the raid was released, by the way.

[Rurik Nogard]

Ok ty for the comments, yeah I think that will be posible if all put efford in it and well is not a waste of time I forget to put rewards in here:

For finish raid we got boss drops:

-Upgrade 10.5 Stone (Weapon-Talis)
-Upgrade 10.5 Element (Glyph upgrade)
-2 Weapon-Talis 10.4 random

And the members who end it for the first time will gain Upgrade 10.5 Stone (Weapon-Talis) and 500,000 exp points.

The members who end it for second time and so will gain 20 Black Bullions and 500,000 exp.

So this raid will help to upgrade ur equipment and gain good points for habilities; this raid have a cooldown time of 64 hours so every 3 days u can make it and improve ur AP and equipment.

This Raid is done for equip upgrading and we have another raid, the new one "the Eidolon of the Outer Dark" is focused in upgrade signets, this boss drop 4 blue signets and I think give a lot of exp, obviously requires a lot more of preparation, good healers and good dps, so we will be talking bout it when we have a solid NM-Raid group

I think is a good reward and help our cabals in their progression but well lets prepare ourselves and make this happend. Good luck and lucky improvement to all n.n

[Asdran]

Whisper of Darkness (the tank swapping attack), starts out at 1300 or so per tick (with a stack of 20), and ticks for less each second until it only hits for a 100 or so - right before it hits you for 10,000,000 on zero stacks. As long as you do not have aggro you are are "safe" at 0 stacks.
Stacks look to clear if you lose aggro for about 4sec+, Start at 20 when you regain aggro.

There are only 2 things that help mitigate this - % based reduce incoming damage abilties, and physical mitigation. With 894 physical protection, my median hit was 483 (*503 for Fragie)
So you want clean swaps at low numbers, not both of you in the high teens or healing gets hard. 617 Block seems fine - I had one penetrate from the lurker all night, mind you that hit for 4.8k

Downfall (From the Eldritch guardians avoidable/interruptible cone attack) is 2000-6000 so survivable. For a tank at least. Occult Singularity (the AoE on their death) is not at 30k+

*Take these numbers with a grain of salt, I was running Shield Formation, Defensive Turret, Hardcase and Steel Palace. As that kept putting me behind in aggro, A less defensive build may be required. (I also had one major and one minor AR talisman, and Fragie had an extra minor).
Provoke looks to take a second or two, and hitting other abilities to kick in. Alternating that with Mass provoke, with Art of War for backup, is how we were swapping aggro. Fragie did have to stop dpsing now and then - so really want tanks with balanced threat. (1394 attack rating with anima, 446 weapon power if anyone was curious what I had - presumably Fragie had significantly more).

I think for drakes you need Art of War or Mass Provoke to pull them, and then rocket jump away from the centre, as we generally had adds up making a single target ability too had to target the drakes.

Planned build for future attempts:
1) Blade Torrent
2) Flack Jacket (for add phase - not sure if whole raid gets the buff or just group, but healers are in the tank group so ....
3) Binding Wounds (high hate single target consumer which I was lacking)
4) Defensive Turret (12% less damage for both tanks with perfect timing)
5) Art of War (elite)
5) Mass provoke
6) Provoke
7) Rocket Jump

1) Flight of Daggers (none of the elite tank actives seem that useful - well maybe Shield Formation, but all I'd be sharing with this build is Hardcase)
2) Agitator
3) Breakdown
4) Hardcase
5) Fever Pitch (not sure about this one - No glances from Blade Torrent, but it was blocked 25% of the time with 633 Hit Rating and a Blue Signet of Castigation)
6) Unfair Advantage
7) Full Flack Jacket

Notes: Would be mostly applying Afflict (Flight of Daggers is up about 80% of the time)
Applying Exposed/Breakdown of course (might not require both tanks to take it though)
NOT applying Debilitated (Stuff all penetrate in my full defensive tank gear) - a DPS will have to.


'twere good fun. Looking forward to us beating this raid.

[Aesop]

I'm not a tank, and have never tanked big bosses, so you can take this as an academic viewpoint. I do spend a lot of time in solo pve, managing the targets state for passive procs.

To that end, I've found that (Fist) Bloodsport is better than Flight of Daggers for keeping affliction up. Even if you glance and loose the afflict, it comes back with the next hit. I pair this w/ (Blood) Dark Potency for the Penetration buff (+30 pen up to 150) stacks, (Blade) Fatal Flourish does the same thing. If you're not glancing, it might be worthwhile to swap out FP for either of these to reduce your hits being blocked.

As a strike/pen heavy DPS, if the tank is providing affliction, I often swap bloodsport for punisher (and Dark Potency for Body Piercing) to provide debilitation. If that's not feasible (i.e., Machine Tyrant), I'll use 12 Gauge which is slower to build.

I need to work on my "not getting killed" game for this raid, but I really enjoyed the training and look forward to doing it again. Hopefully being awake will help

- Aesop
a.k.a., DreamsDotter