Hi,

I've taken it upon myself to see if I can solo the last boss (Koric) in the Heroic 4+ "chasing the shadow". I am in full columi and my companion is in mostly columi.

I am currently full scrapper build, and using my healing companion. I've heard it was possible to solo this boss, but I'm not sure if that goes for all the classes (I think they said shadow tank is the one that did it.) Just wondering if any scoundrels/operatives have done it, and what tricks they used.

I can solo the rest of the heroic just fine, by sneaking past mobs, and the guard champ was easy to kill.

However, I'm having a really hard time with Koric. I can make a small dent in his HP but because he can't be CC'd, I find myself having a really hard time healing (in between running away from the giant circle and getting sucked into his void).

I'm guessing I should be saving my interrupt for his full auto instead of the hypermatter thing? Cuz that does a lot of dmg.

I was thinking maybe it would be better to use my ranged dps companion and go heal spec for this one. Or even go heal spec with a heal companion out, and just do dps super slowly (unless he enrages? I've never seen him enrage, anyone know?)

Or is it still not possible for my class/gear? Thoughts?

It is very possible to solo this daily, it just takes quite a while. I can do it as a shadow tank (Rakata + Black Hole gear), and our scoundrel healer (Rakata + Black Hole gear) can also do it. There's really only two fights to deal with: the access card fight and the final fight against Koric. Stealth allows you to completely bypass everything else.

The thing though is that soloing this quest takes *really* long. You spend a lot of time waiting for your blackout to come off of cooldown, and that's just tedious. Grab a geared friend, whip your appropriate companions and do it that way. I generally 2 man this, just because it's faster.

Could you provide a video to show how to get the access card sneaking mobs?

You still have to kill the champion guard. I can fraps it next time I do it and put it on youtube.

Basically I flash grenaded all the healers as soon as they spawned and used Freighter flyby to kill them quite quickly. Then on the main guard I interrupted abilities, using dirty kick and flash grenade as part of my interrupt cycle when they came up. I kept her dotted and she fell fairly quickly.

I feel like my class is great at this kind of soloing when I have access to CC, it's just when dealing with boss immunity I'm running into trouble.

It is very possible to solo this daily, it just takes quite a while. I can do it as a shadow tank (Rakata + Black Hole gear), and our scoundrel healer (Rakata + Black Hole gear) can also do it. There's really only two fights to deal with: the access card fight and the final fight against Koric. Stealth allows you to completely bypass everything else.

 

The thing though is that soloing this quest takes *really* long. You spend a lot of time waiting for your blackout to come off of cooldown, and that's just tedious. Grab a geared friend, whip your appropriate companions and do it that way. I generally 2 man this, just because it's faster.

I agree that it's more fun to just bring someone along (basically my goal here is the personal challenge of it), but I found it didn't take much time to solo compared to the time it takes to kill all the mobs. I'll browse the forums while waiting for the sneak cooldown, which may be lower than your shadow's (40 secs if I recall).

Great to hear your healing scoundrel friend can do it! His gear is definitely better than mine, but it's still encouraging. If you get a chance to find out what companion/strategy he uses, that would be cool. Also does he run into a lot of close calls in his gear? I ask because I don't generally like respeccing, but will if I think I have a chance for it in this current gear.

In this thread http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=457961&page=4 there is a video of a Sent soloing it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTdaNxRoxTs The last boss fight starts at about 12 minutes. It looks like he does a lot of hit and runs.

As an Imperial, our last fight is different and by the looks of it...easier. Though I only solo this when my weekly is up.

I agree that it's more fun to just bring someone along (basically my goal here is the personal challenge of it), but I found it didn't take much time to solo compared to the time it takes to kill all the mobs. I'll browse the forums while waiting for the sneak cooldown, which may be lower than your shadow's (40 secs if I recall).

2 minutes for us. :-( It's lower for an Infiltration shadow; can't remember by how much.

Great to hear your healing scoundrel friend can do it! His gear is definitely better than mine, but it's still encouraging. If you get a chance to find out what companion/strategy he uses, that would be cool. Also does he run into a lot of close calls in his gear? I ask because I don't generally like respeccing, but will if I think I have a chance for it in this current gear.

His strategy (iirc) is to stealth past everything, using positioning, sneak and stun dart to get past it all without a fight. When it comes to the access codes guy, he uses Akavi and just heals her through it (he has also used Bowdar, but it goes faster with Akavi). I believe he stuns the adds whenever he can, but he's primarily focused on just keeping Akavi up. The final fight is really, really easy to heal through. He doesn't even bother trying to get Akavi to move out of the AoE, he just heals her through it. All of his companions are at least Columi geared; Bowdar is mostly Rakata geared.

From what he has told me, he never really has any serious issues. He's a pretty insane healer though (healed his first nightmare bonethrasher in quest blues after the other healer went down), so I'm not sure how well his experiences can be replicated. :-)

I shudder to think about doing chasing with a dps specced toon without an amazing geared healer companion to back me up.

Recently have been soloing it with akavi on my sawbones healer adn its not really too much of a struggle to keep her up (her gear isnt that great mostly tionese equiv) in full columi. Interupting the full auto seems to help more than interupting the grenade as it doesnt tick for alot.

I solo this once a week on my main (shadow dps) and i respec for it to tanking just to smooth it out.

I decided it would be fun to try soloing the last boss without using a companion. Here's the result:

I've also cleared it as a Sawbones (Rakata/Aug. WH/Black Hole) with Bowdaar (Columi/Centurion/Champion.) It was... slow. Sneaking past the mobs was actually fine, I had no issues with waiting around for Blackout as Tranq let me past most groups. The final fight was very, very slow though - close to ten minutes I think although I didn't time it. Bowdaar did hardly any damage and I was spending 80% of my time healing him due to his mediocre gear instead of DPSing.

I don't think I'll be doing it solo again though - it's so much quicker, easier and more fun doing it in a group.

I have done it on the imp side with as an op healer, and a darksin. On the imp side there are a few mobs in some of the packs that have bad stealth detection, and can be charged/CCed, making it where you only need to use your blackout ability 2 or 3 times (i think i only wait around 20 seconds max for it to come off of CD).

On my Op i use Vector (melee dps) for the key card fight, and for the final boss. I use Kaylio (range tank) for the human, and droid phase of the final encounter. Vector does about 600-700 dps (rakata majority w/ tionnese mh), Kaylio sits at ~20k hp.

On my Darksin i use Ashara (melee dps) for the key card fight, and for the final boss, and i use Telos (sp)(healer) for the humans and droid phase of the final encounter. The companions on my darksin, mainly have lvl 40-48 greens with one or 2 pieces of columi.

I hope this helps, not to sure how much of a difference there is between the Imps, and Pubs version of this, but on most days i can get it done on either of the two toons i listed in about 15 minutes.

I have a few tips that might help.

After guildies repeatedly asking me for strats on solo'ing Chasing the Shadow I just made a video with some tips on the fight's mechanics in solo mode. This video is from a Sentinel perspective, I'm not overly familiar with smuggler PVE abilities at high level but I"ll try to give some things that I learned that may help you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EL9_6lMnzA&feature=youtu.be

1- I don't believe he has an enrage timer, I've messed up a few times and had the fight go for a LONG time and he never enraged so survival is priority over dps.

2- He does Hypermatter gravity grenade about twice as often as Full auto. Normally the sequence will be Hypermatter- Full auto - Hypermatter then he'll do something else for a bit before starting over. As a Sentinel spec'd into shortened interrupt times I can still BARELY get all three of these (literally interrupting the 2nd hypermatter grenade in the last .1s of casting) by using kick-force leap- kick. Unless you have several interrupts you'll probably have to choose which one to stop. Once he starts using bombardment and bouncing around it gets very hard to interrupt (as you probably know).

Hypermatter grav grenade is never cast on the person highest on the threat table, which when solo'ing means it will always be used on your companion (if you're using a healing companion while tank/dps'ing). One strat I've found effective is to keep the boss (and myself) at least 15-20 meters away from my companion. That way if he gets the hypermatter grenade off I know I'll get pulled to my companion. As soon as I get pulled I can force leap right back to the boss (and out of the AOE), normally catching him right as he starts the full auto cast, effectively negating both abilities. I don't know if you have a sprint type ability but if so it may be used similarly. Strangely, the ability seems to do more damage to the person that gets sucked into it than the person it is actually used on. If you have a healing spec for your scoundrel, maybe reversing the roles may work. If you can keep your companion top on threat and have a keybind to your companion's charge you may be able to use my strat only in reverse so that your companion is charging out of the AOE when it gets used on you. I suppose it could be viable.

3- The bombardment (big yellow circle) hits for just over 4k on medium armor, do whatever you can to stay out of it.

4- He'll charge back to you after he goes to restock on grenades at the side of the room. I use this time to let my healer companion catch up. If you chase him you'll spend most of your time just running anyway and possibly getting out of healing range, I wouldn't recommend it.

5- There is a phase where he will start throwing grenades all over (the small purple and sometimes green circles). There doesn't seem to be anything you can do about it except run around and dps as best you can. I've tried using my cc breaker when he throws the knockdown grenade. It isn't very effective, at best you buy yourself a second or two to get back up more quickly. I would recommend saving your cc breaker for getting out of snares when trying to avoid the bombardment circles.

I hope something in there is helpful, I realize that's some pretty general stuff.

Good luck!

Thanks for all the tips, guys! I went on a big trip after I made that thread and didn't get a chance to get back.

I managed to solo this quite easily, first with Corso (looong fight) and then Risha (still long, harder to heal, but made it). It was a great exercise.

My next goal is to do this as dps (hopefully manageable if I put my Rakata level gear on my healer). However, I only have one interrupt and no leaps, charges, or speed increases. I'm fine against champs with boss immunity as I have 2 stuns at my disposal, which I can just rotate between my 12 sec interrupt. You're right about full auto - that is a crazy strong attack. Also, I think I would go as dirty fighting spec, because it's impossible to get behind the boss, and my favorite spec (scrapper) is too dependent on back blast.

@Stormrane: Your video is awesome. I've recently decided upon trying to solo the entire heroic, too, not just skip the mobs.

I'm a little worried that I have less interrupts and effective defensive cooldowns than sentinals, though. However, I figure if I'm heal specced AND I use a heal companion, I can keep HoT's rolling on myself, use my interrupts and cc's, and pull just enough dps to down mobs before the cc breaks on others. I'll update this thread if I manage to do it, or I get really close and ask for some advice.