Discussion: Tanking Draigoch - What I worked out so far

So Yesterday I was in draigoch the first time and this morning again (both times with a pug group as my kinship is not able to raid atm).
I know there have been some posts around on this fight but I just wanted to share some mostly subjective impressions I had.

Because we had different leaders we had different tactics and group makeup so I will recap the outcome, the flaws and the impact on how I had to play of both strategies.

If you are only interested about the tanks part skip the next few passages or skip all text and directly go to the tl;dr part

So Day 1 Try I-II:

We had 1Warden 1cappie 2minnies 2burgs rest dps (2 of them were Rks and one of them swapped to heal from time to time).

We started with me (Warden) and 1Minnie (traited yellow) taking care of the head at first. It went pretty smooth unless I ate 2crits in a row but we didn't quite make it due to some missplacing of my minnie and so we decided to get the cappie to us, too.

Day 1 Try III:

So next try we had 1Warden (now with a standart) 1minnie 1cappy at top and 2burgs and a lot of dps with only 1Minstrel taking onto the claws. It wen't pretty well for us with me taking nearly no dmg due to regular To Arms and some cappy heals until the second phase were one Champ was supposed to come top and tank the head if the head ended up in a different window than me. Unfortunately both Champ and Cappie died at the same time and we failed because I couldn't get to the head in time. Additional I believe it was quite stressful for the dpsgroup.

We decided to stop here and get some sleep

Today I decided to join another puggroup that started with the intention to take the loot before the id reset so we could do him again this week.

Day 2 Try I-II

We had a completely different setup this time:

1Warden (me again )and 1 healing rk top and 2minnies, 2burgs, 4champs, 1hunter and 1warden DD below us.
I just want to emphazise that we did not have a cappy with us.

It actually went pretty good although I had just over 14.5k morale with mending verse on me.
After some try and error with FMs and stuff we finally managed to bring Draigoch down to <40% (alas managing the entire fight) and then he bugged out. YAY! But I'm 190% sure that we would have succeeded this run.

This time we did not have a second tank at top in phase II so I had to tank the head without any healer for a few moments twice - Surprisingly I survived both times *bless NV*.


So now for the Flaws of both strategies:
I will summarize only the part that I could see as I honestly have no clue at what they did below me:

1 Warden 1Minstrel top, 1Cappie 1Minstrel 2845838485345dps bot:

Out of all combinations this was the one I disliked the most. It was no problem if I didn't ate a crit but very stressful if I was critted more than once because of the chargeup of the minstrel heals.

1 Warden 1Minstrel 1Cappy top, 1Minstrel 2845838485345dps bot:

So this was a bit of overheal IMO with To Arms on CD, a standard and over 16k morale I never fell below 70% morale. For me it was kinda relaxed but I think we took too much heal/support away from the dpsgroup. We had only 1Healer for our dpsgroup this time (very big kudos to Almin who managed to keep up 1.5 groups) and it was quite risky as the dpsgroup was not allowed to do any mistakes (running into fire e.g.).

1 Warden 1Rk top, 2Healers + dps bot:

So this is my prefered combination so far. Although I didn't have any captainbuffs on me it went very well - The Rk bubble is awesome if you get critted and you always have green numbers above your head so even after eating a big hit you won't be that low for too long. Additionally the dpsgroup had a more relaxed time as they had two healers and were allowed to do some missplacement.


Now after a wall of text that I planned to keep briefly (obviously I failed) here comes what I believe is the most interesting part. Again I will differentiate between the different tactics and combinations of healer.

What I did:

I was traited 5blue/2yellow in all runs with all avoidancebuffing blues and both +1tick traits, too.

I focused on keeping the best avoidancebuffs and 2HoTs on me all the time:

Shieldmastery: Sh - SpFi - Sh
Dance of War: ShFi - Sh - Fi or Sh - FiSh - Fi (notice that I did not use both masteries for DoW).
Wall of Steel: SpSh - Sp - Sh
Conviction: ShFi - Sh - Fi - Sh or Sh - FiSh - Fi - Sh (whichever I did not use for DoW).
Restoration: ShSp - Sh - Sp - Sh

(Precise blow: FiSp whenever I had time)

As you can see I maximized the use of Sh as a gambitbuilder in order to maximize the chances to receive the additional buff to blockchance of Wary Blocks. Thats why I use ShSp for Restoration instead of WoS and SpFi for Shieldmastery.
I ignored the ShSh gambit as I prefer the 2HoTs + all buffs 100% of the time over some blockchance.

What is important however is the refreshing time: Don't refresh your buffs too late - It would be a big hit to your survivability if you wait for the last second of a buff till refreshing it and lose 2 other buffs or HoTs while waiting for this. I usually started to refresh WoS and DoW when their masteries were available again - WoS having the higher priority here as it runs out first even if you used it after DoW (What you should do as it makes refreshing WoS -> DoW smoother).

Another thing to note is that you should always try to take Shieldmastery with you even when you have to move - after figuring out the time between the flights I refreshed Shieldmastery at least twice per tankingphase so I would have at least 15seconds left of it when engaging the dragon again.

So now to the things I did to adapt to the healer:

1Warden 1Minnie:

Because the Minnie was traited yellow and provided me additional armor I decided to switch out my armor virtues and took Innocence, Zeal, Charity, Valour and Justice with me. (If I had discipline at 12 I would have prefered it over Justice, but I'm a lazy bum.)

1Warden 1Minnie 1Captain:

Again the minnie was traited yellow additionally I had a standart with me this time Because of that I swapped Justice with Determination for some additional Agility, although I believe that this did not have any impact.

1Warden 1Rk no buffs at all:

This time I had no armorbuff so I decided to get some armor into it again to bring me to 50% commonmitigation by myself, additionally due to the lack of a standart and motivating speech I tried to raise my morale as high as possible without losing to much mitigation. I used: Innocence, Zeal, Valour, Justice and Empathy.

So to summarize the virtues: You should always reach 50% common mitigationand have a somewhat huge moralepool after taking all buffs into consideration - after that physical mitigation gogogogo! (I believe that 13k morale should be minimum actually).



With all that I ended up getting hit for a maximum of around 6k on devs and something between 2k and 3.5k on normal attacks in all runs. Sometimes I avoided like every hit and sometimes I got hit by two devs in a row but thanks to my moralepool I was able to survive them quite easily.

So I hope this helped you a bit (as this thread is supposed to be more informal than my latest thread). If you have any questions or suggestions feel free to post them I will be happy to answer them or adjust my rotation.


Oh and here is what I promised the lazy sluggarts.

tl;dr:

Focus on the following gambits and don't run into the wrong direction:

Shieldmastery: Sh - SpFi - Sh
Dance of War: ShFi - Sh - Fi or Sh - FiSh - Fi (notice that I did not use both masteries for DoW).
Wall of Steel: SpSh - Sp - Sh
Conviction: ShFi - Sh - Fi - Sh or Sh - FiSh - Fi - Sh (whichever I did not use for DoW).
Restoration: ShSp - Sh - Sp - Sh

Yours sincerely,

Sheilyn

P.S As always: Ignore my grammar, k?

Envoyé par Sheilyn

Day 1 Try III:

So next try we had 1Warden (now with a standart) 1minnie 1cappy at top and 2burgs and a lot of dps with only 1Minstrel taking onto the claws. It wen't pretty well for us with me taking nearly no dmg due to regular To Arms and some cappy heals until the second phase were one Champ was supposed to come top and tank the head if the head ended up in a different window than me. Unfortunately both Champ and Cappie died at the same time and we failed because I couldn't get to the head in time. Additional I believe it was quite stressful for the dpsgroup.

To get around the 'where the f*** do I go?' in this phase, just wait for him to start spewing fire. Really, when he does coin attack move back and then watch him. Watch him talk and then he will move either left or right and start spewing fire. Then run in the opposite direction. You WILL be running through some fire like that, but it's easy enough to survive. Draigoch will then always move to the next platform towards where you're running and you can immediately pick him off and receive heals, since your healer is with you and not running around like a blind chicken.

Envoyé par Farw

To get around the 'where the f*** do I go?' in this phase, just wait for him to start spewing fire. Really, when he does coin attack move back and then watch him. Watch him talk and then he will move either left or right and start spewing fire. Then run in the opposite direction. You WILL be running through some fire like that, but it's easy enough to survive. Draigoch will then always move to the next platform towards where you're running and you can immediately pick him off and receive heals, since your healer is with you and not running around like a blind chicken.

Well today I did wait for this but we let the rk start to run immediately so he doesn't have to run through the flames as we were afraid of him dying. That might result in a few moments where you have to hold out alone but at least your healer won't die^^

Envoyé par Farw

To get around the 'where the f*** do I go?' in this phase, just wait for him to start spewing fire. Really, when he does coin attack move back and then watch him. Watch him talk and then he will move either left or right and start spewing fire. Then run in the opposite direction. You WILL be running through some fire like that, but it's easy enough to survive. Draigoch will then always move to the next platform towards where you're running and you can immediately pick him off and receive heals, since your healer is with you and not running around like a blind chicken.

Haven't had a problem with tank death at this point, just healer death. Will give this a shot.

Haven't had a problem with tank death at this point, just healer death. Will give this a shot.

My thought(haven't gotten a chance to try it out, my kin lost interest in draigoch due to multiple bugs forcing a reset) is to have the healer just run and pick a direction to make sure they're out of the fire(i know my RK certainly can't survive the fire, but he's quite squishy, only 6k buffed), and the tank waits around to pick the right direction. Tank should be able to survive long enough for the healer to run all the way around to him, if the healer didn't pick the right direction.

Not sure if a warden could survive, the one group i tried with a warden tanking, he was rather squishy, but i dunno, maybe it was just bad luck on devs or something. Guard certainly can, our guard maintank was accidently left w/o a healer for almost two full cycles and he lived.

Envoyé par Malephor

My thought(haven't gotten a chance to try it out, my kin lost interest in draigoch due to multiple bugs forcing a reset) is to have the healer just run and pick a direction to make sure they're out of the fire(i know my RK certainly can't survive the fire, but he's quite squishy, only 6k buffed), and the tank waits around to pick the right direction. Tank should be able to survive long enough for the healer to run all the way around to him, if the healer didn't pick the right direction.

Not sure if a warden could survive, the one group i tried with a warden tanking, he was rather squishy, but i dunno, maybe it was just bad luck on devs or something. Guard certainly can, our guard maintank was accidently left w/o a healer for almost two full cycles and he lived.

I did survive it this morning (as stated in my first post) one time without using NS and once I had to use it because I received some more firedmg than usual but it went smooth till he bugged out.
There are some kins on my server that use a 2tank strategy with captain+tank and minni/rk+champ. I was in a pug right not that used this tactic and we wiped twice because the champ died
Personally I have thought about a 1tank2heal strategy. With a Cappy waiting in one direction and the mainhealer at the other direction you should be able to survive it even if you are unlucky with devs (<- you see what I did here?).

I find it works well just to have a captain healer, there is no need for an extra healer, the captain can handle the damage from fire and can make haste for you if needed

I tanked this last night for the first time. What we did was have the captain and minstrel run right and I ran left. If he went to me, I'd have to use a manheal OR never surrender to stay up. If he went the other way, the captain would pick him up while I made my way over. Seemed to work really well.

As for damage, there was only 2 points where I was worried about dying, and that was getting a big crit when he first engaged at a ledge. Since we had a cappy + Runekeeper healing, the cappy just used IHW until the situation stabilized.

When he falls on the floor, you can tell which way he's going to go - whichever ledge his back is to. If you're looking directly at his back, that's the spot he's going to.

We eventually wiped on the transition to the 3rd phase on the floor because we (tank group) didn't know where to go.

Envoyé par geoboy

When he falls on the floor, you can tell which way he's going to go - whichever ledge his back is to. If you're looking directly at his back, that's the spot he's going to.

An easier way to tell where he is going after he is on the floor is...

When he gets up off the floor he always goes the the SW ledge, the one with the chest where you start the fight

During the first 8 conjunctions you can tank the head with only one healer.
(we've used an RK for this)

From conjunction 9 onward we have started to bring a captain up to join the RK. (the tank needs re-buffed @ this time anyway) Each stands on opposing sides of the tunnels and when the Dragon transitions they both run in opposite directions while I wait a bit to see which way the fire is going to go.

This ensures that when I run to the the next tanking platform I always have one healer there with me.

And yes whenever the Dragon drops to the floor he always resets to the SW where the chest you click to start the fight is located.

Envoyé par Tolfast

An easier way to tell where he is going after he is on the floor is...

When he gets up off the floor he always goes the the SW ledge, the one with the chest where you start the fight

HAHA. That IS an easier way.

Can you clarify the 'see which way the fire is going' statement. I'm still a little shaky on that phase.

Envoyé par geoboy

HAHA. That IS an easier way.

Can you clarify the 'see which way the fire is going' statement. I'm still a little shaky on that phase.

I wish I could, at the moment I am guessing, running right every time and if it is wrong I run all the way around with cappy make haste. So far been pretty lucky with this tbh....

If anyone has a better way, please share

Envoyé par Tolfast

I wish I could, at the moment I am guessing, running right every time and if it is wrong I run all the way around with cappy make haste. So far been pretty lucky with this tbh....

If anyone has a better way, please share

Like I said earlier. I go one way, cappy and healer go the other way. If I've got man-heal or NS up, that is enough to get me through until they get there - cappy hits IHW immediately if I'm running low on morale. Otherwise, the cappy picks it up until I arrive. He's sturdy enough to take hits without issue. If I don't have either man-heal or NS up... I pray that I'll survive until they get there. If not, we've at least stopped the cave-in and I get a quick rez.

I don't have a better solution to this.

Basically you always run in the oposite dirrection of where he moves after becoming green. Like he will turn green, move to your right, so you know he'll spit fire there, so you run left to the next tanking platform, where he'll come to meet you. It gets very easy to see which direction he moves and react. And yeah, when he falls down he'll always return to the platform with the chest, which is SW on the map. The dps group can also use this as a guide on where to get out so they don't end up on other side or spread out.

I think we're talking about the phase where he spits fire directly at where you are standing.

Envoyé par geoboy

I think we're talking about the phase where he spits fire directly at where you are standing.

Yup

I see your tactic but not sure it would work for me because I only have single captain healer. I was hoping someone had found some sort of indicator on direction but so far it seems random. Oh well what I do now works so it can't be that bad :P

Envoyé par Tolfast

Yup

I see your tactic but not sure it would work for me because I only have single captain healer. I was hoping someone had found some sort of indicator on direction but so far it seems random. Oh well what I do now works so it can't be that bad :P

Indeed. If there were a 'tell' of some sort, it would make that phase a lot less messy.

So I finally did it. After bugging out at 970k in try 1 we killed him in a whopping 34minute in our second try.
I had 1Rk top to heal me in the first phase, never dropped below 50% ^^
When the second phase started one of the minnies came top as we had no problems with heal even with only 1cappy and 1minni for the dpsteam.

We positioned as follow:

I tanked at the window, rk to my right, minnie to my left. When dragon started to fly away they both moved onto their next window. I waited for him to start breathing fire and watched where he started. He will either spew fire from right to left or from left to right. So if he starts left you run to the right where the rk awaits you and vice versa. The other healer now has time to run around the entire cave so there is one healer at each side again.
(Although we didn't need it as he only flew away once before dropping below 50% as we had awesome dmg :P ).

oh and i got the the helm what makes my first victory even sweeter

Envoyé par Sheilyn

So I finally did it. After bugging out at 970k in try 1 we killed him in a whopping 34minute in our second try.
I had 1Rk top to heal me in the first phase, never dropped below 50% ^^
When the second phase started one of the minnies came top as we had no problems with heal even with only 1cappy and 1minni for the dpsteam.

We positioned as follow:

I tanked at the window, rk to my right, minnie to my left. When dragon started to fly away they both moved onto their next window. I waited for him to start breathing fire and watched where he started. He will either spew fire from right to left or from left to right. So if he starts left you run to the right where the rk awaits you and vice versa. The other healer now has time to run around the entire cave so there is one healer at each side again.
(Although we didn't need it as he only flew away once before dropping below 50% as we had awesome dmg :P ).

oh and i got the the helm what makes my first victory even sweeter

Thanks, so if he's shooting fire from my left to my right, I go right. I'll use this tonight.

Envoyé par geoboy

Thanks, so if he's shooting fire from my left to my right, I go right. I'll use this tonight.

Yup. Always head to the opposite direction from where he starts to throw fire. Good luck to you =)

Could I get some clarification on which way to run during Phase 2 (75%/~6.5 million morale threshold) and how to predict it? Between this thread and another in the Raid/Instance forums, I've read two different things:

The Opposite Way:

He will either spew fire from right to left or from left to right. So if he starts left you run to the right where the rk awaits you and vice versa.

Envoyé par Sheilyn

Yup. Always head to the opposite direction from where he starts to throw fire.

The Same Way: http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.p...he-strat/page2

He'll fly up then he'll breath fire either Left To Right OR Right To Left.

If he fires Left To Right you move LEFT

If he fires Right To Left you move RIGHT

I'm a bit confused. ?_?

This is how it goes for me,

During the first phase your tanking the head, it turns green and then u stand for a second and watch him,
If he jumps to your left you run to right all the way to the next open ledge. (not the little holes in the wall a proper ledge)
If he jumps to your right you run to your left till you reach the next open ledge.

Phase 2 is pretty much the same, it starts at some morale threshold, 75% someone said I think but he has a catch phrase when it begins, something like "my breath is death" anyhoo. For all of phase 2 he seems to pick a direction then always goes the same way for the rest of that phase ,

i.e if he goes moves left he will always do that for the rest of phase 2 so you'll always run right or vice versa if he goes right.

So for the first time untill you figure out which way it is u might get a little cave in, if you got a cptn up there you can take a direction each, either that or guess, its 50/50 afterall, if you choose wrong just run all the way around quick.

After some more probably 50%? I guess, he gets annoyed and sets all the tunnels on fire, this goes with a phrase again,"Stand and face me cowards" or something along those lines. after that you jump in to the center for the last phase ect ect.

Envoyé par Bonasty-EU

i.e if he goes moves left he will always do that for the rest of phase 2 so you'll always run right or vice versa if he goes right.

Can anyone confirm this? This would be really useful to know.

Envoyé par geoboy

Can anyone confirm this? This would be really useful to know.

Definitely not, he will go either way.

Envoyé par horus418

Definitely not, he will go either way.

If he's went both directions for u during phase2 then I guess it's been a completely random thing that he did it every time for the 4 or so times we killed it so far. Just seems a bit weird.

Envoyé par horus418

Definitely not, he will go either way.

This. A few nights ago when we ran it, I did notice that he always seemed to move to the left/clockwise, and that ended up being the way I/my healer bolted for fear of fire. My RL asked how I'd predicted it before and I basically had to tell him I'd gotten really lucky, lol.

For the sake of security (I've already cause several wipes during cave-ins and we were limited on time for our tries today) I had a guard/capt come up top with me and my healer during Phase 2 and position themselves to intercept Draigoch if I went the wrong way. He definitely moved back and forth enough so that the guard ended up tanking about 1/3 of the time.

But thank you for the clarification, it was still helpful.

I could use some help if anyone here speaks german.

For reference:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jt8GQNvf-QU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X6lDWHeh3w

On a comment he says "also was ich nun rausfand. Man beobachte die Kralle die aufliegt rechts bei 0:03 vom Video, in die Richtung muss man laufen. So muss man nicht aufs Feuer abwarten war bisher bei 5 von 5 so wers ausprobiern mag solls versuchen *g*"

According to a not very accurate Goog Translator I got the word "PAW resting in front".

I believe he meant Draigoch always has one paw in the floor in front of you, and the other paw on a pillar, and he will go to the side of his floor paw is.

In the first video that happens at 0:03

In the second video that happens at 0:40 and 1:18 and 2:03

If he turns out to be right, then indeed, wissen ist Macht.

Is there someone here with availability to test this, please?

EDIT: If it's too dark use Fullscreen

^^^ Thank you very, very much for that info, that will help out immensely.

Well that would indeed be even better than waiting for his head to turn - saving both time and minimizing the dmg taken by the fire. As I have id this week I won't be able to test this until friday but I'll try to confirm this on friday.

"also was ich nun rausfand. Man beobachte die Kralle die aufliegt rechts bei 0:03 vom Video, in die Richtung muss man laufen. So muss man nicht aufs Feuer abwarten war bisher bei 5 von 5 so wers ausprobiern mag solls versuchen *g*"

A more accurate translation would be:

I found that you have to watch the paw he places at the platform and run into that direction (as shown at 0:03min). That way you don't have to wait for the fire. Worked 5 of 5times - you should try it, if you want to."

Can anyone confirm this 'tell'? This would make things a lot easier for us.

Envoyé par Bonasty-EU

This is how it goes for me,
.. all the way to the next open ledge. (not the little holes in the wall a proper ledge...

Does anyone know how many open ledge there are where you need to tank him? Do you need to go up and down levels (floor) when running to the next open ledge or those are on level? Does he automatically go to the next closest one or random?

Thanks.

Oh I hope this is it

Roll on Thursday to test it!!!

Envoyé par Morgrimlotus

Does anyone know how many open ledge there are where you need to tank him? Do you need to go up and down levels (floor) when running to the next open ledge or those are on level? Does he automatically go to the next closest one or random?

Thanks.

4 Ledges. He'll always go to the next one, except when he recovers from being knocked to the floor, in which case he returns to the ledge with the chest (SW corner).

Envoyé par geoboy

4 Ledges. He'll always go to the next one, except when he recovers from being knocked to the floor, in which case he returns to the ledge with the chest (SW corner).

Thanks very much.

@horus418 @Sheilyn @Tolfast @geoboy

Guys keep us updated on this if you get a chance to test it. I may get a chance tonight if there is burglar quorum.

Well I won't be able to get their before friday but I will definitively try to confirm it then. Although I might be the wrong proband as we will most likely end the second phase with only one switch of ledges again. Therefore my testresults won't be as meaningful as others.

Anyways I will watch him precisely =)

Envoyé par Sheilyn

Well I won't be able to get their before friday but I will definitively try to confirm it then. Although I might be the wrong proband as we will most likely end the second phase with only one switch of ledges again. Therefore my testresults won't be as meaningful as others.

Anyways I will watch him precisely =)

If you could fraps the tanking level from start to wipe, that'd be most helpful I think in determining the tell.

Envoyé par Crell_1

If you could fraps the tanking level from start to wipe, that'd be most helpful I think in determining the tell.

Huh?

Unfortunately I don't own any recording software so unless you can link me a Freeware that can do it I'm afraid I won't be able to take any videos. =/

I can't imagine how people are able to determine which way to run in phase two without taking extremely large amounts of fire damage, and risking death. The paw thing doesn't sound right to me; I'm almost certain the paws always go in the same place.



In my last run though, I did notice that you can avoid taking virtually any damage by hiding out of LOS. You get his aggro then run behind a wall (near where the healer stands). I was going back in to face 1 hit every 5 seconds or so to avoid rockfalls, but I suspect that if you hide close enough to him you can just sit there and not get hit while preventing rockfalls as well (rockfalls seem to depend on distance from the head, but not LoS). I'll test more next time.

Of course its rather pointless since its not hard to be kept alive through his damage, but tanking him is rather boring so I had to play around somehow.

Envoyé par Esegar

I could use some help if anyone here speaks german.

For reference:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jt8GQNvf-QU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X6lDWHeh3w

On a comment he says "also was ich nun rausfand. Man beobachte die Kralle die aufliegt rechts bei 0:03 vom Video, in die Richtung muss man laufen. So muss man nicht aufs Feuer abwarten war bisher bei 5 von 5 so wers ausprobiern mag solls versuchen *g*"

According to a not very accurate Goog Translator I got the word "PAW resting in front".

I believe he meant Draigoch always has one paw in the floor in front of you, and the other paw on a pillar, and he will go to the side of his floor paw is.

In the first video that happens at 0:03

In the second video that happens at 0:40 and 1:18 and 2:03

If he turns out to be right, then indeed, wissen ist Macht.

Is there someone here with availability to test this, please?

EDIT: If it's too dark use Fullscreen

@horus418 @Sheilyn @Tolfast @geoboy

GUYS! SPOILER!

Tried this stuff tonight, guess what? It worked! I still had another tank go to ther other side just to make sure we wouldn't wipe. But 99,99% chance it's the PAW. 6 of 6 times it worked, he went to the side of the floor paw.
I guess that's it my friends, it's still hard for a Runekeeper to stand in the fire, it's not much damage, but RK's are napkins. My cappy friend and I endured just fine. Notice that as soon as you see the paw, you have to run like hell, cause he'll get there before you.

Credits to our german friend Shalandur85 on youtube!

Mistery solved?