elite red dragon tanking guide

**NolongerGoh** · 12-19-2012, 12:03 AM

Mind if I use this?

**Chopper** · 12-19-2012, 10:36 AM

Thanks to this guide. Most players now understand the general basics, although you still get frustrating players who break off from the pack during the fight.

I finally killed my 76th Elite Dragon yesterday. I find that with random teams, it can take 10 tries to finally get a kill, and with other teams, you can rattle off 12+ kills in a row before players get tired, etc. Makes a huge difference to play together, which i guess is what STS wants to promote.

Thanks to all those great players who helped me meet this quest too!!

**FluffNStuff** · 12-19-2012, 11:13 AM

Biggest difference I found yesterday (Did 52/76) was good teams had 2 mages. In teams with one mage, that mage would at some point die (usually during the second wave) and then the whole team would get wiped and the dragon would reset. Quite frustrating. Made it a point to not go into battle unless I saw two mages and a tank and it did wonders for my blood pressure

**Chopper** · 12-19-2012, 01:28 PM

Originally Posted by FluffNStuff

Biggest difference I found yesterday (Did 52/76) was good teams had 2 mages. In teams with one mage, that mage would at some point die (usually during the second wave) and then the whole team would get wiped and the dragon would reset. Quite frustrating. Made it a point to not go into battle unless I saw two mages and a tank and it did wonders for my blood pressure

true 99% of the time.

HOWEVER, we got a mage last night (cant recall name) that was the only mage in the group and he would NOT DIE!! It was insane, we'd go maybe three or four runs before he died once and then re-spawned quickly to get back. Huge props to that player for being able to stay alive!! We went like 20 runs. he died maybe 5-6 times.

Although i think he was using the rest of the party as human shields since we were making sure he was positioned away from the brunt of the attacks because we were all afraid of him dying ha ha

**Fusionstrike** · 12-20-2012, 12:58 AM

Yeah it's possible with one GOOD Mage, although I also like to see at least two when joining random games. But any Mage who keeps the party alive single handedly deserves major props.

**FluffNStuff** · 12-20-2012, 10:23 AM

Think I found the final key to beating this. I found that 95% of group wipes happen on the third wave when the mages come out. These are much more deadly then the dragon itself and taking a moment to deal with them appears to go a long way. Following everything else in this guide, and giving yourself a moment to regroup when he jumps, here are the class actions needed:

Bear: As soon as the mages come out of their shells, pull them in, but do NOT stomp.
Bird: Lay down roots and combo blasts.
Mages: Keep pumping those heals, but if you see the roots, take a quick second to drop some lightning on it.
Bears again: If you see the nature strike, scream at it to light it on fire and send those mages to hell.

REPEAT TILL THEY ARE GONE

Done properly, you can kill the mages before they get to you and you are home free from there. This is where having the damage elixirs really comes into play. Not killing them means taking a lot of damage PLUS MASSIVE MANA DRAINS which zaps your mages and wipes your team. Even if you can tank through them, the mana drain plays havoc on your skill rotation making the fight a lot longer then needed.

Try to take a second at the beginning of a pug to discuss this, and save your self a lot of stress.

** Just did test of this by joining a random game and discussing the strategy. Did six kills of the Red Dragon, One Mage, Zero Wipes.

**Chopper** · 12-20-2012, 10:30 AM

Originally Posted by FluffNStuff

Done properly, you can kill the mages before they get to you and you are home free from there. This is where having the damage elixirs really comes into play. Not killing them means taking a lot of damage PLUS MASSIVE MANA DRAINS which zaps your mages and wipes your team. Even if you can tank through them, the mana drain plays havoc on your skill rotation making the fight a lot longer then needed.

Try to take a second at the beginning of a pug to discuss this, and save your self a lot of stress.

GREAT advice. Yes, the third wave is the toughest for sure. I usually back off spamming skills right before the wave to charge up my mana (bird) so when the mages come, I have full area skills available to hit them pretty hard as fast as possible. Since the dragon is usually under control right before the third wave, most party members can probably do the same thing, just back off for a few seconds (using only the AUTO attack) to get ready for the third wave. It really helps.

**Ogbuehi** · 12-20-2012, 01:21 PM

I haven't even started this on my Mage as it is taking way too long to get this quest done with randoms using my bear. Plus, every time i get a useless xp elixir for a daily blessing (which I have for the last 2 weeks) I don't even bother using that toon. But if I were to use my Mage, no way would I be on the front lines. I'd be in the back spamming all the healing I could. Especially if I'm the only Mage in the group. The main problem I have is that I can never seem to find a consistent group of folks that want to complete this quest.

**Chopper** · 12-20-2012, 01:32 PM

Originally Posted by Ogbuehi

I haven't even started this on my Mage as it is taking way too long to get this quest done with randoms using my bear. Plus, every time i get a useless xp elixir for a daily blessing (which I have for the last 2 weeks) I don't even bother using that toon. But if I were to use my Mage, no way would I be on the front lines. I'd be in the back spamming all the healing I could. Especially if I'm the only Mage in the group. The main problem I have is that I can never seem to find a consistent group of folks that want to complete this quest.

I pushed a bit to get it done the last few days. I know that with more and more peole finishing the quest, there will be less dedicated party members to get the quest done with. My additional advice, is to not wait too long as it may be harder and harder to find a good group. Once all the "pros" have the quest done, there may be only a few games going.

**Techno Email** · 12-20-2012, 08:13 PM

You guys have NO IDEA how happy it makes me to see y'all talking about strategy for this fight.

It's really hard to know if a fight is going to be challenging for y'all or not. I'm also glad to hear that you are able to do this fight without elixirs. The goal is to make a fight that is challenging but doable for a full, organized group sans elixirs.

The sick, evil and twisted side of Techno is a little sad that the quest is only for 76 Elite Red Dragons so you guys won't be playing it anymore after you finish the quest... :'( But, I think a little mercy was in order after the Dragonet Ichor quest... Those quests aren't for everyone, so we can't do that every time.

Hopefully the folks who are really interested in the Elite weapons will continue to play after the quest is over.

If you guys like group content like this, I really enjoy making elite versions of boss fights (hence the bonus Elite Onyx we through in this time around). The boss fight have many different levels of complexity, so not all fights are interesting as Elite battles. Some of them feel more like tree chopping, especially if the boss doesn't deal enough damage to take you out, so you don't have to find mechanics that were built-in to make the fight more interesting, or even better...come up with clever ways to beat a boss on your own!!

The eternal challenge of a game designer...

The sick, evil twisted side of Techno also wants to make it so those lava pools might spawn on this magical line... I am SO EVIL!!!! The Dragonet spawns lava pools at even more dynamic locations than the Red Dragon... I could totally make the Red Dragon do that too...but it might impede my ability to sleep at night since I've played this fight many times myself, and I'm actually very happy that you guys have found this group mechanic. Getting a group who will use it is a challenge in and of itself, and it still takes skill to pull it off.

**Shellkaz** · 12-20-2012, 09:47 PM

Techno, this is exactly the kind of boss I like, challenging enough that if you don't pay attention, you will get killed, but not so hard that I'll want to avoid it after I finish my 76 kills. Actually it was quite amazing how quickly Fusions tactics were implemented in game. I logged in as soon as I got home from work and players were already giving instructions on where to stand!! I love the cooperative effort that this boss has, brought out in most players.

**Ogbuehi** · 12-21-2012, 09:00 PM

After doing 60 straight runs of killing this boss, I went to the turnstile to fight onyx. I couldn't imagine wanting to go against regular red dragon without full party. 2 of us destroyed that dragon in less than a minute. It's almost like the elite dragon was like lifting weights in the gym. Fought both as a cap bear and same full crafted set with egg (keep the crafted shield stowed in case it ever gets better than egg).

**Fusionstrike** · 12-21-2012, 10:32 PM

Just to clarify, I didn't originate these tactics; they were at least partially in use pretty commonly against the regular dragon. At least the idea of standing near the entrance and against the wall was pretty common. I used this idea as a starting point and extrapolated for the longer fight and the way the dragon tends to move as the battle progresses.

It's good to hear from you on this Techno. I think figuring out how to turn the battle to our advantage is the fun part, and I'm glad you're into that too. It would kind of be cheating to change the battle at this point, since that's really our advantage as players. The dragon gets a ton of health and special powers and we just get our noggins to outsmart it. On the other hand, I have confidence that if you changed it around so this strategy didn't work well anymore we can find another way to beat it. We have a lot more clever, sneaky people at our disposal than you do.

I'm also glad to hear that making battles that don't require performance boosting elixirs is a priority. People like to get cynical and believe that everything will be created just to drive plat purchases, but this shows that that clearly isn't the case here. As long as you keep putting in the effort to make challenges that are surmountable by the "average" player, people will respond positively to it.

**Terententen** · 03-02-2013, 08:46 PM

This needs to be bumped and every bear should have to read it before they're allowed in. It's months later but I actually came on here trying to find out what the point of a bear would be in Dragon Slayer. After doing a few hundred runs, all I ever see is bears running around like chickens with their heads cut off; jumping around and waving their scythes in the air trying to display their "dominance". It's even worse when you get more than 1 tank who doesn't know what they should do. There's no damage, the fights take forever, the team just separates and everyone but the bear dies over and over again. (I'm not completely biased against bears... I mostly play mage but I hate lazy mages who stand back, afraid to die, and don't spam heal.) I actually prefer 3 mages and 2 birds but if a bear would actually follow this and help out, I wouldn't want to leave a PUG every time a bear shows up and thinks about roaring at the entrance.

**Extreme** · 03-09-2013, 05:26 AM

GG.

**ebehiozury** · 05-01-2014, 02:38 PM

Originally Posted by FluffNStuff

Awesome Guide! I have found the difference between a group that gets it and one that doesn't is like night and day. As a damage bird, in a good team I can almost take a nap while firing off the damage. One thing I have noticed about teams that get wiped is that the mages seem to panic and stop healing. In a strong team, a mage will heal after every skill, no matter what, but when a player dies, I will see a mage go to Rev without getting out the heal first then another player will die and the mage will try to rev again, with no heals in between. This leads to a domino effect wiping everyone including the mage.

thankyou for pointing that flaw out.hope mages heed this.