SWTOR Mutated Geonosian Queen boss guide (5.10.1)

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Game Update 5.10.1 adds a new operation boss, the Mutated Geonosian Queen. Follow this guide for details on how to beat her on SM and VM.

Enter the Hive of the Mountain Queen…

Ima SM hero, gimme the TL;DR

🚕 Getting to the boss: There is no weekly quest for SM, you can go straight to the boss. The entrance is on Ossus, the closest taxi point is Catacombs (next to the Kil’Cik world boss). After killing all trash groups, click the Loose Rock Formation to unlock a shortcut. There are four Lost Ossan Relics hidden throughout the instance that reward a hidden achievement and a decoration.

⚔️ Boss fight: There are a ton of adds, make sure to stack them under the boss for AoE. If you have an off-tank, let him grab aggro from the huge Royal Guards; the other adds don’t need to be tanked. Players with the big circle (Pheromonic Blast) should run away so they don’t hit the group. The other mechanics can be ignored in SM. The first soft enrage starts at 4:00, the second soft enrage at 6:30 and the hard enrage at 7:45. Good luck!

🤓 Why does the boss look like a Colicoid? Read the codex entry for the canonical explanation.

Rewards

• The Artifact Lockboxes contain a random 252 gear piece for your class and selected discipline; these are the same items that you get for completing 10 Ossus dailies.
• The Forgotten Transformers can be used to craft a 258 main hand or offhand for players that don’t want to collect the data crystals or that have not played through the Ossus story.
• The weekly quest [Weekly] Monumental Data Crystal can be picked up from the mission terminal in the Ossus starting area. You do not have to complete the Ossus story to get the quest. If you are no raider, you can also complete the weekly with 50 Solo Ranked arena points.
• At the 258 gear vendor, you can now upgrade your 252 main hand or offhand weapon to 258 using 5 Masterwork Data Crystals and 2 Monumental Data Crystals each.
• If you don’t need the new gear or have some data crystals left over, check out the new D3-C0 vendor on Ossus where you can trade in the data crystal for 14 Ossan and Geonosian themed decorations.
• 16-man drops twice the items compared to 8-man.

Detailed boss mechanics

The Mutated Geonosian Queen has 6.2m HP in 8-man SM, and 7.9m HP in 8-man VM. In addition, four types of adds will spawn during the fight and there are many eggs placed throughout the room.

Summoned by boss	Hatched from eggs
Geonosian Royal Guard	Geonosian Berserker
Caustic Drone	Bantling Lacerator

At first, all eggs are blue. When the boss hits eggs with Growth Hormone, they turn red. Eggs can be intact, cracked or destroyed. Once destroyed, an egg will respawn as an intact blue egg.

Eggs destroyed by a boss ability will hatch an add. Blue eggs hatch a Bantling Lacerator which are very weak but red eggs hatch a Geonosian Berserker which can quickly wipe the raid if you get too many of them. Some boss abilities only hit eggs once (so intact eggs become cracked, and cracked eggs are destroyed), other other boss abilities hit the eggs twice and immediately destroy them.

However, you can use the cleaves from the summoned adds (Royal Guards and Caustic Drones) to destroy eggs without calling any adds. Therefore, try to use their cleaves to destroy any red eggs, especially if they have cracks, to avoid hatching Berserkers. The cleave from Royal Guards immediately destroys an egg, while the cleave from Caustic Drones puts a DoT on the egg (shown by the bubbles) that kills it after 9 seconds.

Boss room

Adds always spawn in the same spot. The boss can freely be moved throughout the room but avoid entering the outer toxic pools so you don’t take damage fromHive Goo.

Timeline

Abilities

Mutated Geonosian Queen

•  Growth Hormone (1s cast): In VM, turns three random eggs red; in SM it turns one egg red. In addition, any destroyed eggs will regrow as intact blue eggs.
•  Pheromonic Blast (4s cast): Targets a random DPS player with an inner red circle and an outer yellow circle. The inner circle will instantly destroy an egg and hatch an add, the outer circle will crack an intact egg, or destroy a cracked egg and hatch an add.
  All players hit by the red circle receive the DoT  Toxic Pheromone Coating (Physical) for 15 seconds (ticks every 3s, can be cleansed) which increases threat generation by 10x. All players hit by the yellow circle take damage.
  
• Kick Out: Knocks back the main target and sets their threat to zero.
• VM only  Overhead Skewer (instant): Stuns the main target for 4s. If the main target remains stunned, the boss uses  Guillotine which instantly kills the player. Make sure to use stun break, or have another player taunt immediately after Overhead Skewer.
  Overhead Skewer is casted four times throughout the fight, at 0:36, 2:29, 4:15 and 4:50.
•  Royal Summons (3s cast): Spawns in turns either two Royal Guards or two Caustic Drones. Use the cleaves from these adds to get rid of red eggs and optionally cracked eggs as well.
  Shortly after summoning two Royal Guards, the boss will do  Rallying Call (30s cast), giving you some breathing room to kill the adds and burn the boss. Once Rallying Call finishes, the boss is stunned for 11.4s by  Rallying Call Recovery. Any Royal Guards still alive will turn enrage. In addition, the boss will damage all eggs throughout the room, so intact eggs become cracked, and cracked eggs are destroyed and cause adds to hatch.
• Enrage phases
  • 1st soft enrage @ 4:00:  Pheromonic Multi Blast (5s channel): The boss will place the circles on multiple DPS players at once; first on two then on three players. The AoE damage is less than on the normal Pheromonic Blast but it will hatch many adds. In SM, you can continue killing the adds with AoE; in VM you must ignore adds and burn the boss by this time.
  • 2nd soft enrage @ 6:30:  Save the Queen (1.6s channel): The boss will destroy eggs and hatch adds in an increasingly larger radius. In SM, continue stacking adds under the boss for AoE. In VM, you will wipe before reaching this phase.
  • hard enrage @ 7:45:  Royal Indignation (3s cast): The boss turns red, so make sure he dies soon!

Bantling Lacerator

• Bantling Lacerators hatch from blue eggs during  Pheromonic Blast,  Rallying Call and  Save the Queen.
• Melee Attack: Deals very little damage and does not need to be tanked. To pass the DPS checks in VM, make sure that DPS players never directly attack these adds. Instead, stack them under the boss so they die due to AoE or DoT spread damage.

Geonosian Berserker

• Berserkers hatch from red eggs during  Pheromonic Blast,  Rallying Call and  Save the Queen.
• VM only  Hardened Carapace buff: Reduces AoE damage by 80%, so use single target damage or DoT spread to kill them.
•  Reave (instant): Melee cleave attack that places a stacking DoT  Reft (Physical) (18s duration, ticks every 3s) on any players in front of the add. The DoT can be cleansed.
• If you get more than two Berserkers at once in VM, they will quickly wipe the raid. Make sure to call out whenever a Berserker spawns and have all DPS switch to the Berserker to kill it quickly before players get to 3 or 4 stacks. You can keep the Berserkers stun locked to avoid getting stacks.

Geonosian Royal Guard

• Two Royal Guards are spawned by the boss’ 1st and 3rd  Royal Summons cast.
• Each Royal Guard puts a stack of  Guarded onto the boss that reduces the boss’ damage taken and damage dealt by 50% per stack and reduces movement speed. Therefore, make sure to kill the Royal Guards quickly so that DPS can go back to damaging the boss.
•  Inspiration buff: If standing close to the boss, the Royal Guards have faster movement speed and 25% more alacrity. This is a good thing because it means tanks can hit eggs with the cleave faster but it makes little difference in practice.
•  Alertness buff: Is immune to crowd control effects that break on damage but can be hard stunned.
•  Focus on the Present buff: Threat against this target decays by 20% of the current total every two seconds. Tanks need to constantly deal damage or they risk losing aggro to a DPS.
• Cleaving Strike (instant, 9s CD): Will destroy an egg without hatching an add and deals minor damage to the player. This is a great way to get rid of red eggs, or to reset cracked eggs to the intact state. These adds are not moving very fast, so tanks can harpoon them to red eggs.
• VM only  Concentrate (1s cast): Roughly 22s after spawning, the add will start this complicated three-part mechanic. First, it casts  Concentrate and receives the  Concentration buff that enables the next ability. This is a very short cast but pay attention so you don’t miss it.
  Next, the Royal Guard will use  Staggering Strike (instant). This attack deals up to 170k damage to a DPS or healer but muss less on a tank (i.e. players that have a shield equipped). Therefore, tanks must ensure that they have the aggro at this point. The targeted player will be immobilized for 1s and then stunned for 6s; stun break cannot be used here. In addition, the Royal Guard has the Swing Recovery buff which means it has a 4.5s GCD before it uses the next ability.
  If the main target is still stunned after this 4.5s GCD, the Royal Guard will use  Execute (0.8s channel) which will instantly kill the target. Therefore, DPS must use their 4s hard stun in a 2.3s window, namely 3s to 5.3s after Staggering Strike to ensure the tank won’t die. Alternatively, they can deal enough damage so they grab aggro from the tank, or you can reduce the tank’s aggro by having a Sorc/Sage pull the tank, or a Jugger/Guardian leap to the tank. Outside of Staggering Strike, avoid stunning the Royal Guard so the tank can destroy many red eggs with Cleaving Strike.
  
• The off-tank should quickly grab one Royal Guard when it spawns. The main tank has to tank the boss for a few more seconds until it enters Rallying Call but can already start tanking the other Royal Guard. You can either assign all DPS on one Royal Guard so it dies before using Staggering Strike and then stun the other Guard during Staggering Strike, or assign two DPS to each Royal Guard and make sure that both Royal Guards will be stunned during Staggering Strike.

Caustic Drone

• Two Caustic Drones are spawned by the boss’ 2nd and 4th  Royal Summons cast.
•  Caustic Blast (3s cast): Ranged attack (up to 70m) where the add will spit at a player, usually the healers. The player gets a stack from the  Caustic Acid DoT (12s duration, ticks every 3s, cannot be cleansed) that will quickly kill the player when reaching 6-10 stacks.
  These adds should not be killed too quickly as they are the best way to get rid of red eggs or reset cracked eggs to the intact state. When the spit hits an egg, bubbles appear on the egg that will destroy it after 9s; there’s no need to hit it a second time.
  When getting too many stacks, you can stun or interrupt the add so your stacks fall off or have another player taunt the add. In addition, you can have Sorcs/Sages or Mercs/Commandos sleep the add for 60s if players are too busy handling the other adds, and then wake up the add again to destroy more eggs.

VM strategy

General tips

This is the first lair boss with trash groups. The trash groups have the same mechanics as the adds from the boss fight, so pay attention to them. Once you have killed all trash groups, place explosives on both Loose Rock Formations to unlock a shortcut for a faster travel time after wipes.

The key part to killing this boss is to maximize the DPS players’ uptime on the boss. Any adds must be quickly focussed or stacked under the boss. Tanks can keep the boss positioned in the center of the room so players don’t have to move very much.

After the second Rallying Call finishes, the boss must be below 30% health so you can start burning the boss. In the burn phase, the off-tank and healers can kite any Berserkers and Bantling Lacerators. Since those are melee adds, they will deal no damage as long as the player runs away, but the fight will get very laggy with many adds on screen. DPS players must be careful to not place down any AoE during the burn phase so the adds stay on the kiting players. Note that Caustic Drones are range adds and their spit can still kill your healers if the stacks get too high, so just sleep the second set of Caustic Drones for 60s as soon as they spawn. The boss must die before the third Royal Guards spawn (@5:00) as they will put the Guarded buff on the boss and reduce damage taken.

Finally, make sure that no players die to the boss’ Overhead Skewer or the Royal Guards’ Staggering Strike so you have the battle rez available for other situations. The boss’ Rallying Call is also a great time to get up any dead players with stealth rezes.

If you still have trouble, farm a few more 252 gear pieces from SM and make sure to activate the Operation Mastery guild perk (+4%/6%/8% mastery), and either the Zeal Set Bonus (+5% alacrity) or the Fortune Set Bonus (+5% critical chance).

Also, you can try playing with 1 tank and 5 DPS. In this case, have all DPS focus the same Royal Guard before it can cast Execute, and have a healer handle the Caustic Drones and kite the adds during the burn phase.

Handling red eggs

Red eggs are not very punishing at first but if you ignore them, you will get three or more Berserkers with the boss’ second Rallying Call, leading to a wipe.

There are multiple ways to handle the red eggs:

• DPS can place the inner red circle from Pheromonic Blast on a red egg to instantly spawn a Berserker so that your DPS can quickly focus it down. This is more controlled way to handle Berserkers, as opposed to waiting until Rallying Call where you will otherwise get multiple Berserkers at the same time.
  When positioned correctly, players can hit two or even three eggs with the inner red circle.
• Tanks can use the cleave from Royal Guards to destroy red eggs without spawning Berserkers. Since the Royal Guards move slowly, tanks can harpoon their Royal Guard if it does not move to an egg fast enough but avoid doing this if you have a lot of melees.
• The spit from Caustic Drones is the best way to destroy eggs. A mobile class (e.g. Consular/Inquisitor with Force Speed or an Operative/Scoundrel with roll) can quickly put bubbles on multiple red eggs but make sure that your Caustic Acid stacks don’t get too high.

We ended up utilizing all three strategies: At first, our DPS would call Berserkers with Pheromonic Blast. Then when the Royal Guards spawn, tanks can clean up red eggs without spawning Berserkers. At this point, DPS should avoid hitting any red eggs; they should only place the Pheromonic Blast on blue eggs. Once Caustic Drones spawn, we immediately kill one Caustic Drone (ideally harpooning it to the boss) while the off-tank will move around the room and place the spit on any red eggs. When the second set of Royal Guards spawns, we would sleep the Caustic Drone for 60s so the tanks can handle the Royal Guards before taking the Caustic Drone again.

Kill video

This VM kill video was recorded during the final PTS patch for 5.10.1 and shows the fight from a healer perspective.

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Appendix

Hidden achievement

There are four Lost Ossan Relics hidden inside the instance. Once one player clicks on it, it counts for everyone in the group. As soon as you have all four relics, you receive the hidden achievement Secrets of Geonosian Lair as well as a decoration, the Ancient Ossan Statue.

1. In the room between the second and third trash group, jump up the wall on the left.
2. Follow along the path, and jump to the left before the entrance to the next room.
3. On the path, jump up the wall on the right.
4. In the shortcut, jump to the fallen log above.

Decoration vendor D3-C0

This vendor, added with 5.10.1, sells 14 new Ossan and Geonosian themed decorations for both the old Masterwork Data Crystals (MW), the new Monumental Data Crystals (MO) and some Unassembled Components (UC). If you do not need the new gear or are already best-in-slot, they are a great way to spend your remaining data crystals.

Codex entry

When designing her mutated Geonosian super-soldiers for the assault on Ossus, Darth Malora ensured that her new army would be both self-sustaining and nigh-impossible to eradicate. Given their insectoid nature, the key to Malora’s success was in the careful creation of the mutants’ queen.

Natural Geonosian queens have poor mobility and defend themselves only via indirect means; thus, Malora chose to splice her queen’s internal structure into the bodily frame of a Colicoid, tremendously increasing the creature’s speed and natural defensive capabilities. Like the soldiers it brings to life, the mutated queen also has a reinforced carapace, enhanced sensory organs, and a vicious temperament. The resulting hybrid may well be Malora’s most dangerous creation.

FAQ: SWTOR Mutated Geonosian Queen Boss Guide (Patch 5.10.1)

Q1: Who is the Mutated Geonosian Queen in SWTOR? A1: The Mutated Geonosian Queen is a challenging boss encountered in the “Hive of the Mountain Queen” operation introduced in SWTOR Patch 5.10.1.

Q2: What are the key mechanics to watch out for in this boss fight? A2: Key mechanics include handling the adds that spawn, avoiding or mitigating the Queen’s various area-of-effect attacks, and managing the infection debuffs that can spread among team members.

Q3: How many phases are there in the Mutated Geonosian Queen fight? A3: The fight consists of multiple phases, including add management, burst damage windows, and surviving the Queen’s enrage phase.

Q4: What is the recommended team composition for this encounter? A4: A balanced team of two tanks, four DPS (damage dealers), and two healers is recommended to handle the Queen’s mechanics effectively.

Q5: Are there any specific strategies for handling the adds during the fight? A5: It’s crucial to prioritize and quickly eliminate adds as they spawn. Assign specific DPS to handle them while the rest of the team focuses on the Queen.

Q6: How can we manage the infection debuffs effectively? A6: Healers should be vigilant in cleansing infection debuffs quickly to prevent them from spreading and causing additional damage to the team.

Q7: What gear level is recommended for attempting this boss fight? A7: It’s advisable to have gear at least at the level provided by the latest content updates, ensuring that your team is well-prepared for the mechanics and damage output required.

Q8: Are there any rewards for defeating the Mutated Geonosian Queen? A8: Defeating the Mutated Geonosian Queen rewards players with valuable loot, achievements, and commendations that contribute to overall progression and gearing.

Q9: What are some common mistakes to avoid in this fight? A9: Common mistakes include failing to manage adds efficiently, neglecting to cleanse debuffs promptly, and not coordinating cooldowns and damage phases effectively.

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