Thread: The worst Draigoch run ever to actually kill the dragon

So last night I see a Draigoch raid advertised in glff. They're looking for DPS and I quickly jump onto my little hunter who is trying to get his wyrmscale cloak. They have space available and soon we're all watching the dragon climb the walls looking for hobbits to incinerate as they sneak into his lair.

Another kinnie of mine is tanking and I figure the run will be smooth given that Draigoch is old content at this point and most people know it fairly well. Then I take a closer look at the raid leader and I realize that he's a new 75 hunter with some gear issues. His virtues are low also and he has no physical mitigation virtues equipped at all. He has 4872 morale. He's also going to be the guy leading us from spot to spot, which is not good given that this means he'll be alone in front of the claws numerous times as we run by them to get to other claws.

Much of the chatter going on is in heavy french accents, likely a small group of friends who joined the raid together, and the raid leader and several other people are from a guild that I recognize as Brazilian. This is Windfola in a nutshell and it's one of the reasons I like the server. It has a diverse population and you get to hear and interact with lots of people from different cultures.

Tonight however the diversity is working against us as the raid leader is Brazilian and a couple of people in the cj group are French-Canadian and the raid leader actually isn't communicating very well to anybody as we set things up. He puts the cj order into raid chat and 3 of us mirror back the number we have which is pretty standard procedure. Two of the guys don't respond though and the raid leader just moves on to the next topic which is what we're going to do.

After about 5 minutes of this I get a tell from my kinnie, the guard who is going to tank for us, and he says "we're going to wipe." I'm sort of on the fence with this at the moment and I respond "it'll be ok." I'm just having fun listening to the accents at this point and I'm a bit concerned but it's Draigoch, assuming we don't bug what could go wrong?

The raidleader tells us all that he's run Draigoch on his guard many times and it will be easy. Still no action on the cj order though and I get antsy finally butting in to explain how the cj's work and tell people that if they don't want to be in the cj group they should say so now. One guy immediately opts out, one of the non-responders on the cj order. We switch somebody else in and that's resolved. Everybody puts their order in the cj into raid chat and we're ready to go.

Then I notice no target assist so I ask the raid leader to make a target assist and he does. As we're running down the ramp to get setup the raidleader suddenly says "who have not done this yet?" A chorus of voices comes back "I haven't, not me, not yet." It occurs to me at that point that we're gonna wipe. Which thought I send to my kinnie and he gives me an LOL. He's actually a really laid-back person and I'm pretty sure he's having as much fun with this as I am.

At the setup spot I butt in to voice chat again and explain the no's of the fight. Don't do anything that stuns the dragon or makes cj's when we're working on the body. Don't touch or open a cj if you're not in the cj group, etc. The raidleader is a bit impatient and says "of course, of course" as if half the raid knew this stuff which they don't. I momentarily wonder if I'm PUGing into an established group and they're all talking on Ventrilo somewhere forgetting that a few of us aren't there. I count noses, nope most from different kins, it's a PUG.

So we get started and we kill the first 4 claws without incident and we run out to the body and we start working it and a cj pops up and - there's no cj set for us to follow. The leader frantically tries to tell people what they should put in but we stick on two yellows and it does not go through. I suggest to the leader in voice chat that he should make an assistant who can put the cj's in so people can see them, his hunter not having them to put up yet. He makes somebody an assistant and they can't put the cj up because they don't know the order. The second cj attempt gets like 2 yellows and a red as the leader says, 5 yellows and a red people, come on!

Draigoch gets up and we head out to the north except for the two people who run south instead. We spend the next cycle getting the group together again. The leader finds somebody who has the cj's and knows the order and makes them a raid assistant during that interval.

As we run up to the claws when Draigoch has landed again after the missed cycle the leader get one-shotted. Then a LM dies because we only have two healers in the raid and one is upstairs with the tank. Another cycle gets wasted rezzing the leader and the LM. One of the other RK's starts healing despite not being traited to do so.

Long story short to get to the actual boss fight: we got off one cj in the first 4 times we hit the body between stuns making cj's not go off and people putting the wrong stuff in. The leader and the LM both died about a half dozen times more on the claws. When phase 2 starts the tank is late getting to the head and we start taking cave-in damage. By this time I'm thinking just a couple of ticks more and we're out of here but he gets the head with only 4 deaths. We spend a phase 2 cycle rezzing the dead. Two people including the RK healing from a DPS build have gone LD and not returned.

Nonetheless we finally get to phase 3 and things settle down. The leader calls charge on the first claw we try and is promptly one-shotted on the way in. We back off and range the claw. I suggest in voice chat that with two hunters an RK and a LM we should just range all the claws at this point but the leader is resistant: that will take too long. He gets one-shotted again on the way in the next time and his resistance evaporates. We range all the claws and eventually we have Draigoch down to his last 600k life or so. On the last phase the leader says, and I kid you not - "we should run in on the front claws, this is taking too long." I almost pissed myself on that one I was laughing so hard.

I say "wait..." but he's already gone with a "charge..." in his wake. We all run in and he gets one-shotted. He's a hunter! Why the heck does he keep wanting to charge in when he can't take the claws? We're one cycle away from killing the dragon and after proving that he can't take a hit he wants to go in again.

Ok, so the Mini puts a combat-rez on him and he's there for the last body attempt. And we kill Draigoch and everybody runs out as I belatedly told them too in chat because we hadn't discussed it before. My kinnie says to me "no way." I say "miracles do happen, lol" And the dragon does his hammy stuff and falls down and is dead with the raidleader underneath him. He didn't run out. Nobody has LOS for a rez. I tell him to retreat and he'll be able to run back but instead he says he'll LD for some reason. The loot changes when he leaves and we have a burglar from the Brazilian kin loot all the chests and gather up the scales and symbols and relics. We tell nobody else to touch anything but the Mini grabs a caster pocket item anyway.

The leader comes back in and runs back to the group and then begins to organize the loot rolls which literally takes 5 minutes to get to the first roll. My kinnie says to me "he doesn't even know how to do loot." I roll a high number on the scales and win them and I am outta there.

And the whole time I'm thinking "there's just no way that the bugs on Draigoch are player-caused." It has to be something else because there's no way we kill Draigoch last night with cj's getting missed and entered wrongly, with people getting killed and rezzed over and over again, with each of the phases except for 3 taking an excruciatingly long time to complete, there's no way we do that without a bug if players could cause the dragon to bug out.

But I got my scales so I guess its all good.

I loved the story Your desire to stick with it is amazing.

But, you know good Kinies do not let Kinies PUG.....

Oh man that was hilarious to read lol... Thanks for sharing and giving me a good laugh.

How long in total was the run? From invite to flight?

Originally Posted by Rhino-Man

How long in total was the run? From invite to flight?

I wish I'd tracked that but I didn't. I'm going to guess that we started about 10:30 PM and ended about 12:45 AM. Ballpark would be two to two and a half hours.

Originally Posted by Bowman99

Ok, so the Mini puts a combat-rez on him and he's there for the last body attempt.

What a waste of a long cooldown!

Grats on your scales

as a rule, i generally avoid PuGs.
on occasion, if a friend or someone i know is good, asks me to join in on a PuG then i will.

something similar happened to me once as well when an old kinmate asked me to tank a draig for her. i ended up taking lead, setting up a raid assist target on someone who knew the directions/order, moving the healers around, and setting the FMs. above all, i had to stop after a two or three drops in phase 1 to explain to the only burg that the FMs change each drop and he would not be pushing red every time. needless to say there were many deaths, phases wasted on rezzing, and general chaos that comes with PuGs.

Lucky for us we got good loot: 5 scales, 2 symbols, 1 fire place, unbent knee bracelet, the bracelet with 122 might (forget what its called) and all the assorted relics and runes and what not.

the group chalked it up to a "good leader" and i got many tells thanking me for helping them. i gave mad props to my normal raid leader for being able to handle all of that 12+ times a week.

Had a run recently, I was tanking the Head on my Warden when i saw something move to the left of me, there was a Burglar DPSing the head along side of me. I sent him a polite tell saying he should be in the lower tunnels with the other group, to which he replied "Yeah I know sorry, lagged and got lost"

Through out that run (which actually went very smooth and fast) I had a total of 3 visitors up top, all claiming to be lost and lagging, it made what is normally a pretty boring job hilarious

Originally Posted by Salahn

Had a run recently, I was tanking the Head on my Warden when i saw something move to the left of me, there was a Burglar DPSing the head along side of me. I sent him a polite tell saying he should be in the lower tunnels with the other group, to which he replied "Yeah I know sorry, lagged and got lost"

Through out that run (which actually went very smooth and fast) I had a total of 3 visitors up top, all claiming to be lost and lagging, it made what is normally a pretty boring job hilarious

Yes, the runs where somebody runs by you, usually a hobbit warden, are hysterical. Wardens can actually survive the breath discharge if they have enough morale and for some reason the breath does not always go off when somebody runs by. If my Mini is so much as an inch out of place for any reason he is toast but if an addled hobbit runs by Draigoch in full streaker mode the dragon sometimes just gawps and does nothing.

That's why hobbits are awesome!