PDA

View Full Version : elite red dragon tanking guide



Fusionstrike
12-14-2012, 04:02 PM
This guide discusses the elite red dragon battle and how best to tank the boss. Although this discussion focuses on the elite battle, the techniques are certainly applicable to the normal red dragon fight as well. And the discussion centers on a bear as the tank, but I expect the basics to eventually apply to rhino as well. (Even the hardest core rhino players haven't gotten to 76 quite yet....)

Overview
The elite red dragon battle is open only to level 76 players. It takes place in a zone called the "red dragon slayer" and can be hosted. Like all elite battles, this one features a strong boss and no potions.

The battle is against the "elite red dragon" and several waves of minions. Upon entering the area, the dragon appears and a bunch of small black mage creatures. All attack the party. The other waves are triggered by the health level of the dragon. Once the dragon's health is 1/4 down, the dragon flies off the screen and the second wave appears. This wave is a bunch of fire creatures (the big stone-looking guys). The dragon lands back down and continues fighting, pushing away the party. The third and final wave comes when the dragon is at half health and this time consists of staff mages. The dragon once again flies off and lands, pushing the party again. From then on it's a normal battle until the end.

Battlefield
The battlefield is a large crater. The dragon first appears in the center, and lava pits are opened at random positions on the field by meteor strikes during the arrival of the second and third waves. The lava pits do the usual damage to any player passing through them.

21712

Significant Factors
The dragon has a lot of health and the party has no potions. This means everyone's lives are in the hands of the mages, whose primary focus will be keeping the party's health up. Additionally, the waves of minions can do significant damage, especially when they first appear and are most numerous. Finally, the red dragon flying off and landing creates two complications: target is lost and must be restablished after it lands, and the landing push tends to scatter the party around the battlefield.

Strategy Overview
The strategy I discuss here is based on my experience, which is primarily with random pick-up games. This battle isn't that hard if the party stays disciplined and sticks to the plan. And the party doesn't have to be all elixired up to be successful either.

The most important goals of the battle are:

Keep party alive via healing, buffs and debuffs
Keep party together, especially through the dragon's landing push
Hold aggro on the tank so healing can keep up with damage


Party Composition
I have found that one bear acting as tank is the best. There should be at least 2 mages to handle the healing. The last two slots can be birds (to speed the battle along with damage) or only one bird and a third mage for extra support. I have found little value in multiple tanks. Likewise, it's pretty hard to do this battle with only one mage, so if you want to try it, bring a really good one.

Gear
Not surprisingly, survivability is a big deal with no potions. So the tank should wear the tankiest gear he has. I have had good success with the savage scythe set with either shield or egg. Mages seem to do best with wand sets for the extra armor. Birds seem to do ok with bows in a well-executing party, and the extra damage over talon is a nice boost.

Elixirs
While having elixirs certainly won't hurt anything, they aren't necessary. I have done some runs with a few on thrashers/daily combos, and the battle does go faster, but not by a huge amount. More importantly, I've done a bunch of runs without thrasher/combo users and it's gone just fine. Of course, it's hard to find a true no-elixir party in the daily blessing era, but I had only a 1.25 damage and teamed up with others with lesser damage or armor elixirs and found we could win reliably.

Battle: Setup
You want the battle to take place near the entrance to the crater. This is good for several reasons. First, it means you don't have to worry about walking around the lava pools that appear. Second, and more importantly, this area is the easiest for the party to stay together through the minion waves and the dragon's landing push. Third, the dragon's movements can be controlled more easily, again helping keep the party together. Everyone needs to stay within the mages' healing range, so anything that keeps the party near each other is a good thing.

The party starts by all collecting together near the entrance along one of the sides. The goal is to keep the battle in this area and orient the action along the ideal battle line (see picture).

21711

The reason for staying on the line is that the dragon's landing push will affect the entire party. However, it always pushes the players striaght back from the dragon. If everyone is standing on the indicated line when the push happens, they will end up travelling straight back only a short distance before the wall stops them. More importantly, the party will all stay together through the push.

Battle: First wave
The tank (or anyone) runs from the start point halfway to the center of the crater then immediately back to the start point. The dragon will appear after a few seconds and charge the party. It's very important that everyone stays put and does not move out to meet the dragon. This is the most critical part of the battle, where the positioning of the dragon is handled. It takes a little doing to get the dragon down to the battle line, so rushing out to meet it only means more ground to cover to get it down to the battle line.

The party buffs up as soon as dragon starts to charge. The first wave of minions will actually hit the party first, so it's important to be at full defensive strength to withstand the initial onslaught. The dragon will stop at its attack range, about 8 meters or so. The party should target the dragon for the entire battle and ignore the minions, who will die "naturally" from AOE attacks.

21710

The tank's job at this point is to move the dragon onto the ideal battle line. He does this by getting aggro via taunt, then running down out of the dragon's range to draw him out of the crater. The dragon takes a second or two to react, so the tank needs to move, stop, and allow the dragon to charge forward. He's not very fast, so just wait for him to advance down to the line and then run towards him to stop his progress.

21709

With the dragon in position, the tank now wants to keep himself and the dragon on the line. This is easy as long as tank has aggro, but if he loses it the dragon will face others in the party. This is why it's very important for the whole party to stay on the battle line. Not only does that help absorb the upcoming push, it guarantees that the dragon doesn't wander off the ideal battle line.

Caution: The dragon will reset if it goes too far away from the crater. The battle should take place just at the outer rim of the crater to avoid accidental resets. The battle can move a little more down, but not too much.

21708

Battle: Second wave
When the dragon has lost 1/4 health, it will fly off. All party members will lose target and could possibly switch to targeting minions accidentally by hitting an offensive skill. If this happens, quickly turn off auto attack to avoid moving off the battle line. Anyone who does inadvertently move should immediately run back to stand on the ideal battle line. The dragon will land and the second wave of minions will attack, followed by the dragon's landing push. The entire party will fly back (I've never seen anyone dodge this push), and crash against the back wall. If everyone was in the right place, the entire party will be together along the battle line up against the wall, and can simply re-establish target on the dragon and continue the battle.

21707

Anyone who got blasted away needs to run immediately back to the party. Hopefully the player holding aggro wasn't the one to get pushed off course, because this will move the dragon out of position. The worst case scenario is that the player with aggro goes flying away from the crater, drawing the dragon along to a certain reset.

Battle: Third wave
The third wave begins when dragon reaches 1/2 health and is just like the second wave. Party is knocked back, recovers and continues battle along the ideal battle line. As before, anyone flung away needs to run back to the right position. From here on out, there are no more waves, no more pushes and no more complications. The party should be able to just ride the battle out to victory.

Dragon Movement
The dragon will not only chase a player out of range as described before, but will also inch back away from the player holding aggro as the battle goes on. This can be annoying if it backs into the crater and over the lava pools. Fortunately, the tank can control this movement by getting aggro and moving the dragon's orientation. By turning it to face him, the tank can "aim" the dragon's tail at the side wall and pin it there as it backs away. Of course, if the tank stays on the ideal battle line the whole time, the dragon will inch back along this line into the wall without any additional effort.

Conclusions
I have found that this battle plan works remarkably well. The damage output from the dragon isn't so bad, so really if you can keep the party together and fighting in the right place as I described, you should be able to win pretty regularly. One thing to note is that I maxed all my buffs/debuffs to 9, used a defensive gear set and my black dragon elite vanity ring combo, so basically I had every possible defensive measure working for me. I'm not sure how much harder it is to stay alive with fewer of these advantages stacked up. However, my sense of it is that tanking effectively against this boss isn't all that difficult.

Of course it's key that you have good mages to keep you alive to pull all this off, but I've found that once you survive the first 15 seconds of a new wave of minions the battle is pretty well back in hand again. If you're going to lose, it will be during the start of one of the waves where the party either has several members die or gets scattered by the landing push. If you can get past those two minion/push steps, you're pretty much home free.

Multibird
12-14-2012, 04:05 PM
nice

Chopper
12-14-2012, 04:15 PM
nice

very nice, thanks!

One additional tip is that if the mage(s) die, the run is so short that they can respawn at the beginning and get back into the fight before the Dragon wipes out the party. So people shouldn't quit when the mages are wiped out, as they only ned to hold on for a few seconds while the mages respwawn and get back into the fight. The location of the battle is so close that it really helps survive a long fight.

Roberto077
12-14-2012, 04:20 PM
1 and a half days of release and already a very detailed guide. AWESOMENESS!!!

FluffNStuff
12-14-2012, 04:21 PM
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.

Sciazaratek
12-14-2012, 04:27 PM
Thanks alot !
I pretty like the fact that trasher is not necessary anymore

Chopper
12-14-2012, 04:37 PM
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. .

this is so true. With my bird in a good team, i can pretty much avoid any major damage and just keep firing off everything i have at the Dragon and not worry too much. n a bad team, i end up dying very often and people seem to scatter and then rage quit.

Silverpegasus
12-14-2012, 06:01 PM
Nice!

Fusionstrike
12-14-2012, 06:16 PM
very nice, thanks!

One additional tip is that if the mage(s) die, the run is so short that they can respawn at the beginning and get back into the fight before the Dragon wipes out the party. So people shouldn't quit when the mages are wiped out, as they only ned to hold on for a few seconds while the mages respwawn and get back into the fight. The location of the battle is so close that it really helps survive a long fight.

Yes, very good point. This guide only focuses on the tanking bit since that's what I know, but the mages have some work to do that's all just, ahem, magic to me. I encourage anyone else with tips on this battle to chime in.

Also, no rude comments on my mad MS paint skills. I guess raising that skill to 9 really paid off.

Jcyee
12-14-2012, 07:08 PM
lol i love the pictures :)

Sciazaratek
12-16-2012, 11:37 AM
Bump deserved.

modredd
12-16-2012, 12:22 PM
sorry if I was not pleasant this morning but don't show up to a game with no elixers dying right away or yelling at me when I'm the only mage yes I can revive but I'm not Jesus I try Im have to keep myself alive I say by a thrasher stick with the same team and get it done yesterday I did 20 and a half hour today its been 5 in an hour and a half my death count has gone up 57 it's ridiculous.
and why do I end up looking like a vampire once this is done that makes no sense

NotYoCookiez
12-16-2012, 12:59 PM
This dungeon seems really cool, how's the drop rate?

I'm almost 74 so I won't be there anytime soon haha

Energizeric
12-16-2012, 07:36 PM
Yesterday we saw 2 elite staffs drop at the same time. Both were rerolls. It was the only elites we saw in 15 runs. I got a diamond drop to me (no reroll).

McBain
12-16-2012, 08:10 PM
this is so true. With my bird in a good team, i can pretty much avoid any major damage and just keep firing off everything i have at the Dragon and not worry too much. n a bad team, i end up dying very often and people seem to scatter and then rage quit.

Yep. And for some reason, one dude in a PUG earlier today was trying to tell me it was my fault the party kept dying and calling me a noob. I'm a full dex bird, for crying out loud! I'm doing my job, which is to sit there and attack the crap out of the dragon. What were you doing? And by the way, he (or she, maybe) wasn't exactly pulling off miraculous feats of wonder either. It's a team effort.

Man...every now and then I really wish I could reach through the internets and slap someone upside the head.

Jsaieagle
12-17-2012, 04:44 AM
Awesome guide!

Chopper
12-17-2012, 10:42 AM
Awesome guide!

This needs to be mandatory reading for anyone taking the quest. They should be linked here automatically from the game.

Too many players (who are Lvl 76 of course but act like they dont know how to play) come in, stand wherever they want and blast away, getting killed and out of heal/rev range. And then they quit the first time they die, leaving the party shorthanded.

I've even seen people go stand in lava pits in the circle, like that will not hurt them faster.

Also, you do not need thrashers to beat the dragon. Some people think unless you wait for a perfect team of five thrashers, they just quit the game and keep jumping back in and out of your game.

slaveleia
12-18-2012, 11:54 AM
Finally got in a group to fight the elite red dragon. It wasn't too bad especially with your tips. It's similar to the regular red dragon but its harder when your mana drains out so fast.

Mages can't use mana shield otherwise your mana will be empty & u can't heal or use any other skills. My deaths are going up in this quest that's for sure. XD

angeldawn
12-18-2012, 01:33 PM
Very good!
Love the pics :)

DocDoBig
12-18-2012, 08:53 PM
Well Done !

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
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
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
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. :redface: 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
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.

Xyzther
06-18-2014, 02:04 PM
not bad