Lair Of The Mad Dragon

xutjja

I tried to do this through the que last night and my group wasn't able to even scratch him. I play a GF and I held aggro on the dragon but the issue seemed to be adds. Our group was myself, a healer and then all mages. I was wondering if it was an issue with the group makeup? Is it impossible to take down adds fast enough without a rogue? The group I was in tried twice and then everyone left.

Any constructive information about this instance and doing it with a que'd pickup group would be appreciated.

raazen

Have one or two of your CW or GWF stick with your cleric and protect it from the ads. The fight goes a little slower without more DPS focus on the dragon, but is much safer if you focus on keeping the add count down and keep the cleric alive. All it takes is a couple of imps taking combat advantage on your cleric to drop them, so killing them as quickly as possible is paramount.

morbic

Yup, this is the first dungeon where even the queue groups have to focus on group strategy and know the roles/limitations of their classes.

txdekeon

This is not a hard encounter for a cooperative team that communicates well.
A properly geared team who have become experts at their class and know their role could face roll this fight.

-The problem is with pugs.
-The odds of players actually helping the cleric with adds is extremely low.
-Most pug players just stand in the red circles and spam at wills toward the boss. Then wonder why the dead cleric didn't heal them.
-Most pug players are under-geared for their level. I know I don't spend AD on gear while leveling. It will be useless in a matter of hours
-Most pug players do not bring 99 health potions. Or ANY buffing potions. Who wants to spend 3 or 4 gold on potions for a dungeon that MIGHT yield 1 gold worth of junk if your lucky.
-Most pugs don't use voice chat.
-This encounter takes too much teamwork for the average pug. Which would be expected of an end game fight.
-I think this fight is too much for a mid level pug.

The people that say join a guild are no help.
Needing to join guild and using vent and a dedicated raid night to down a level 32 trash dropping 5 man dungeon means it is broken.
Leveling dungeons should be puggable by the average player. This dungeon is not.

This is coming from an experience raider who has played most mmo's to date.

spyke2009

txdekeon wrote: »

This is not a hard encounter for a cooperative team that communicates well.
A properly geared team who have become experts at their class and know their role could face roll this fight.

-The problem is with pugs.
-The odds of players actually helping the cleric with adds is extremely low.
-Most pug players just stand in the red circles and spam at wills toward the boss. Then wonder why the dead cleric didn't heal them.
-Most pug players are under-geared for their level. I know I don't spend AD on gear while leveling. It will be useless in a matter of hours
-Most pug players do not bring 99 health potions. Or ANY buffing potions. Who wants to spend 3 or 4 gold on potions for a dungeon that MIGHT yield 1 gold worth of junk if your lucky.
-Most pugs don't use voice chat.
-This encounter takes too much teamwork for the average pug. Which would be expected of an end game fight.
-I think this fight is too much for a mid level pug.

The people that say join a guild are no help.
Needing to join guild and using vent and a dedicated raid night to down a level 32 trash dropping 5 man dungeon means it is broken.
Leveling dungeons should be puggable by the average player. This dungeon is not.

This is coming from an experience raider who has played most mmo's to date.

Don't think it's "that" hard, but the sudden escalation of the adds in difficulty near the end is completely unnecessary. One minute it's a few magus and imps extra to deal with, suddenly it's packs of devils and a shocktrooper....

kiralyn

txdekeon wrote: »

-The odds of players actually HAVING a cleric with adds is extremely low.

Fixed.
(well, that's not fair. I've not done it enough times to have a clear % of how often that happens.)

-Most pug players are under-geared for their level. I know I don't spend AD on gear while leveling. It will be useless in a matter of hours
-Most pug players do not bring 99 health potions. Or ANY buffing potions. Who wants to spend 3 or 4 gold on potions for a dungeon that MIGHT yield 1 gold worth of junk if your lucky.
-Most pugs don't use voice chat.

I'll agree with all of those. We had a basic strat the one time I tried MD ("get the adds. especially the magus"), but that's it. I know I didn't have buff pots, but I did have the potions I'd found along during questing (100+ lesser, 20ish regular.... by the end of the second attempt, several people were out of pots).
And undergeared..... could be. I know we were underlevel - the party was 30-32. And it was 3x rogue, 2x gwf. Great fun.

(personally, I've never used voice chat for anything. Don't even own a mic. /shrug)

kharma888

I personally like the difficulty of this fight. And I like the fact it is at mid-level. This event FORCES teamwork, and forces classes to really play their roles. It also gets the general player thinkinig in terms of strategy rather than straight zerging. It helps separate the real players from the pretenders - and when you win, especially after getting waxed a time or 2, it gives a great sense of accomplishment. Not to mention, if you get a good group that can handle it and everyone plays the right roles, it is good for your friends list.

It really is good for the game. More of the events at mid game should be so tough.

denverralphy

The biggest problem is aggro bug with Clerics. See this thread about it...

http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?207641-Fix-for-cleric-threat

jdnyc

The strategy I was told, but have yet to try out is this:

Have a CW tank the Dragon. Have your GF grab the adds with everyone else focus firing them down.
When the dragon hits 25% the last group of adds will wipe the floor with you if people aren't focus firing.

edit- and make sure you keep the adds away from the dragon as much as possible.

kiralyn

kharma888 wrote: »

I personally like the difficulty of this fight. And I like the fact it is at mid-level. This event FORCES teamwork, and forces classes to really play their roles. It also gets the general player thinkinig in terms of strategy rather than straight zerging. It helps separate the real players from the pretenders - and when you win, especially after getting waxed a time or 2, it gives a great sense of accomplishment. Not to mention, if you get a good group that can handle it and everyone plays the right roles, it is good for your friends list.

It really is good for the game. More of the events at mid game should be so tough.

True, it will drive many people out of dungeoning, which (I suppose) can only be good for the people who still queue for them. (I know I'm not interested in wasting 15-30min in a queue and then 1hr in a dungeon for a measly 3k AD. Which is mostly the only reason I was doing dungeons.)

aislingi

I actually duo'ed this dungeon with a friend. I was a level 35 rogue, and he, a level 60 wizard. His CC was enough for all the adds. He died at one point and I was able to res him, then I died with a sliver of the dragon's health and he finished it off.

I don't even think I'm going to bother with a party. I didn't get jack out of the dungeon for the effort, either. When you kill a dragon, you expect a hoard. Not a single item for neither of our classes.

If you can, get a level 60 or two to run you through it. Way easier than dealing with a pug. That doesn't solve the issue though.

aselia669

Making a boss fight "tough" by adding waves of mobs is a lazy half-assed attempt to make it hard. Why not make the boss itself hard? I don't mean higher HP. Give bosses better AI, moves, multiple forms and etc.

Dragon's Dogma and Monster Hunter did their boss fights right.

john242424

I am no expert but trying this dungeon now a couple of times I will say that you can't play this game like the standard mmo where you just burn down the bosses as quickly as possible. You can't tunnel vision on the bosses in this game, but sadly most people do. To quote another player that posted in these forums "If I as the Cleric am running for my life I'm healing me and not you" think about it. Pay attention to the adds and get them off of the Cleric, win win every time.

The dragon fight in this dungeon was going smooth as silk until their were 500 adds on me and nobody paid attention and were just locked on the boss. Dead Cleric, 1 minute later, wipe. If 2 of the dps would have gotten them off me the boss would have been dead 10 minutes later and this tough dungeon would have been over.

kharma888

It's a controlled burn fight, they have these in raid content in every single MMO out there. Experienced raiders have seen this many, many times. DPS the main target to xx%, deal with the adds, DPS the main target again to xx%, deal with the adds, etc. It isnt rocket science. It just forces the team to be aware of what they are doing.

xutjja

kharma888 wrote: »

I personally like the difficulty of this fight. And I like the fact it is at mid-level. This event FORCES teamwork, and forces classes to really play their roles. It also gets the general player thinkinig in terms of strategy rather than straight zerging. It helps separate the real players from the pretenders - and when you win, especially after getting waxed a time or 2, it gives a great sense of accomplishment. Not to mention, if you get a good group that can handle it and everyone plays the right roles, it is good for your friends list.

It really is good for the game. More of the events at mid game should be so tough.

I played WoW from the time it went live till until the first content patch in MoP came out. (I absolutely hated MoP and that's why I finally called it quits.) I know from playing MMOs (not just WoW) for many years that the average player isn't someone that's going to be using voice chat (in game or out of game) and doesn't really want to have to use advanced strategies. I would say the latter is especially so at mid level when players at still learning their class. I have to agree with txdekeon that it seems a bit too harsh for a pickup group.

That being said, I've already out leveled this instance. However, I'm looking forward to eventually joining a guild and seeing the level 60 version of this fight.

txdekeon

kharma888 wrote: »

This event FORCES teamwork, and forces classes to really play their roles. It also gets the general player thinkinig in terms of strategy rather than straight zerging.

It really is good for the game. More of the events at mid game should be so tough.

The problem is that as long as people have the option to quit the dungeon they are NOT FORCED to learn anything. Instead the players trying to learn are forced to waste time in a dungeon that wont get completed due to 1 or 2 players quitting
either before or during the fight. Remember leveling content is how you learn to play you character so that when you get to the end game you should be able to handle to increased difficulty.

Hard Fights requiring preparation and solid teamwork should be left for end game. If you took out all the casuals and non elite players in ANY mmo, it would cease to exist. I do not see how that would be good for the game. You may not like bad players in your game but without them there is no game. (most players are bad. even more so in a free to play but pay to win game) They spend lots of money trying to keep up with good players and therefore are absolutely necessary for the game to flurish.

I want the game to be successful(I am having a blast with it). Unfortunately that means leveling content should be doable by a random pug.
This fight is out of place. It is substantially more difficult than all previous and many post fights.
The only reason it is so difficult is because of the broken threat mechanic and unintelligent boss fight design. I mean really, the Dragon literally poses no danger in this fight. They could replace him with a boulder and have the same fight.
It makes absolutely no sense to have a 5 man dungeon that requires a 3 or 4 gold investment in potions just to award maybe 1 gold worth of loot.

scan69

Its easy.

Just run with 2 clerics, the game is cake.

Have a rogue focus on the Dragon DPS, the tank does the Dragon AND the big Demon at the end.

The control Wiz black holes all the adds, DONT kill the Magus as they wont spawn more if you don't kill them, as long as theres 2 up at all times.

The game is a scrub game.

koldmiser

Yesterday was the first time I got into this instance. The first group I was in was doing great. We got to the door for the final boss and the servers crashed.
As soon as I was able to get back into the game i queued again and got right into the group. This group was struggling from the beginning, but was able to get to the end boss...then things totally fell apart. I was level 30 (GWF) and the rest of the group was 33-35. We had 2 GWF, a GF, a Rogue, and Cleric. We tried every strat we could come up with and nothing was working. After the 2nd wipe people dropped from the group so it was a bust.
The thing that caught my attention was that the cleric and I kept pulling all the aggro. When I looked at the score card I was on the top of the list for dmg done. I couldn't believe I was out damaging the lvl 33 GF and the lvl 35 GWF. So obviously there is something wrong there that prob wasn't the encounters fault.
Still though I couldn't help but feel that coming to this instance from the lower level one really ramped up the difficulty and not in a gradual way. This game doesn't really define rolls like other games do, but this encounter really needs people to know rolls and stick to them.
They either need to take it down a notch or two, or work on defining rolls earlier and make sure groups are a little more balanced so they aren't doomed from the moment the group forms.

dummesforumbenut

I don't think this bossfight is too hard, it is just much much harder than anything earlier in the game. You just spam the bosses with your powers, when he spawns ads you take a few down, someone else is doing that too without any real teamplay necessary. Then everyone is back on the boss again. I only tried this dungeon once and we just weren't able to bring the adds down fast enough. After the first wipe we talked about it and mapped out a strategy (tank stays on the boss, others focus on adds as they spawn) but there where just to many. The learning curve is too steep. All the other bosses up to this point where a piece of cake haven't seen anyone die ever. Than you get this monster of a fight. Casual players like me without much mmo experience are just not ready for something like this because the game doesn't prepare you for this at all. They should increase the difficulty slowly and not from 30% to 100% from one boss to another.

lyokira

Just did the fight in the eyes of a GF, and went mostly smoothly, though I probably didn't pick the right skills (should probably have kept enforced threat). Still, we managed on a single run: I mostly held onto dragon and more importantly DON'T DIE, cleric, rogues, CW on add duty. I figure I probably had the easiest job of all though, even had enough leeway to res my cleric companion twice, dragon and mage barely tickled me thanks to guard and simply moving around. Granted a rogue and the CW died near the end, but by then everything was mostly stable, killed dragon, then stormlord, then everything else. (was third in damage done, 2nd was cleric, first was rogue)

This is compared to the time when I played as DC, which all hell broke loose: the fight seemed a LOT messier, dragon tended to be mostly unfocused, and things always went south when the first mass-spawn came by.

One odd thing I noticed though, the dragon's hitbox is a little weird, which made keeping the dragon's focus a little tricky: since when I attack, I tended to move forward such that I end up beside the dragon's head, which then pushed me around when he tries to turn to face me. That might've been a contributing factor to why tanking the dragon is so messy..

blackphoenixbg

Few hours ago i was in that dungeon.
I am lvl 35 cleric. Was easy as pie the entire dungeon.. and then we reached the boss.
God.. it was horrible. The aggro, the ads.. Hell, most of the time i was too busy running around in circles to be able to actually heal. It was not fun at all.. so we all left in the end.

lyokira

dummesforumbenut wrote: »

I don't think this bossfight is too hard, it is just much much harder than anything earlier in the game. You just spam the bosses with your powers, when he spawns ads you take a few down, someone else is doing that too without any real teamplay necessary. Then everyone is back on the boss again. I only tried this dungeon once and we just weren't able to bring the adds down fast enough. After the first wipe we talked about it and mapped out a strategy (tank stays on the boss, others focus on adds as they spawn) but there where just to many. The learning curve is too steep. All the other bosses up to this point where a piece of cake haven't seen anyone die ever. Than you get this monster of a fight. Casual players like me without much mmo experience are just not ready for something like this because the game doesn't prepare you for this at all. They should increase the difficulty slowly and not from 30% to 100% from one boss to another.

To be fair, the previous dungeon is almost like this fight, only with less hp, damage, attack zone on adds.

kelanator

kiralyn wrote: »

True, it will drive many people out of dungeoning, which (I suppose) can only be good for the people who still queue for them. (I know I'm not interested in wasting 15-30min in a queue and then 1hr in a dungeon for a measly 3k AD. Which is mostly the only reason I was doing dungeons.)

Yup being a solo cleric in this boss fight is about as much fun as slamming your head into a wall. Boss fight needs tweaking as does the agrro in this game. Seems many tanks don't understand or are unable to grab and pull aggro away from clerics for some reason.

bzzzd

kelanator wrote: »

Yup being a solo cleric in this boss fight is about as much fun as slamming your head into a wall. Boss fight needs tweaking as does the agrro in this game. Seems many tanks don't understand or are unable to grab and pull aggro away from clerics for some reason.

cleric aggro is bugged. but bringing the right people (that don't get tunnel vision on the boss only) is a HUGE help. the imps die pretty fast, and most of the time they're at the cleric. if you know the when and where, it's not hard to take care of it.

bzzzd

xutjja wrote: »

I know from playing MMOs (not just WoW) for many years that the average player isn't someone that's going to be using voice chat (in game or out of game) and doesn't really want to have to use advanced strategies. I would say the latter is especially so at mid level when players at still learning their class. I have to agree with txdekeon that it seems a bit too harsh for a pickup group.

as other's have said, it's not rocket science. imps > big mobs > boss, everyone can get that. but most just ignore it, funny enough it's usually DPS that's used to poking a boss' butt for 10 minutes.

kiralyn

bzzzd wrote: »

as other's have said, it's not rocket science. imps > big mobs > boss, everyone can get that. but most just ignore it, funny enough it's usually DPS that's used to poking a boss' butt for 10 minutes.

We tried going after the adds, but we just weren't able to put them down fast enough. So the AoE piled up and overlapped everywhere (with the adds having fun standing in it, which helped our all-melee crew). This might be an issue of underleveled/undergeared that we couldn't kill them quickly.

denverralphy

There are a few issues that make things go wrong quickly...

As had already been mentioned, the Cleric aggro bug. Which can be corrected when you enter the dungeon. The oddball target box of the boss which can steal your focus from smaller mobs, as well can make life difficult for rogues because instead of blinking behind the boss, you appear right in front of his jaws as he's about to breathe or chomp. Then there's the oddball targeting mechanics, which make it difficult, if not sometimes outright impossible to focus or lock on one target when there's a huge furball of mobs surrounding you.

bzzzd

kiralyn wrote: »

So the AoE piled up and overlapped everywhere (with the adds having fun standing in it, which helped our all-melee crew). This might be an issue of underleveled/undergeared that we couldn't kill them quickly.

having a CW is a real boon. queue put me in a group with 3 rogues, 1 gwf and me as a cleric. so... yeaaah...

morfedd

kiralyn wrote: »

Fixed.
(well, that's not fair. I've not done it enough times to have a clear % of how often that happens.)

As a cleric, I only run this dungeon with guildies. The potion bill is just too high with the typical PUG. I suspect a number of other clerics also avoid this dungeon.

I agree that it's a pain when groups don't have the trinity covered - but Q times would be even longer if all groups had to cover the trinity (I'm not saying that it wouldn't be better to have longer Q times, but have all the roles covered - just making an observation).

teldara

bridgemonger

oops, My bad.