Fulminorax broken aggro.

iwontpostderp

What's going on with that dragon? At the first phase, I can hold aggro on him no problem, but at the 2nd or 3th phase, it will start attacking another person at random until it dies, the only time I can keep him on me is when I use knight challenge.

I'm pretty sure this isn't intended, and it really makes this fight a real pain if you are a GF.

beckylunatic

I'll vouch that on a guild run of this dungeon on the weekend, our GF couldn't really get that naughty dragon to behave either.

kattefjaes

Isn't that the mechanic of the fight?

iwontpostderp

I hope not because if this is true and it's part of the mechanics of the fight, then, I have to say, that's a c****y one, because it makes the GF completely useless. Why would you bring a GF if the boss "mechanics" makes any tanking class superflous, and easily replacable with another CW or TR that will help burn the boss faster?

beckylunatic

It was my first time in the dungeon, but I doubt it was Bran's. And he seemed surprised that he couldn't hold it.

Edit: I'm now not even sure I'm talking about the correct phases of the fight, honestly, because it was all new to me.

kattefjaes

Ok, well, maybe there's some confusion.. In the first phase of the fight, the dragon is pretty tractable. He knocks the tank around a lot, so it's necessary to spam charge back into him to keep him still. However, a decent tank can usually lock him down pretty solidly with some effort and suitable skills slotted.

Iin the second big ground phase, there's a mechanic where he aggros on a random player (a common mechanic in other MMO boss fights). When that happens, the player who has aggro can go and stand behind the tank, and the tank can use a skill to take some of the damage.. The dragon moves pretty slowly, too, so that player can sort of kite him around, trying to move in straight lines where possible- as spinning him around makes life pretty hazardous for the party. I can't remember if he does extra additional AoE in this phase or not, but it's pretty obvious after one cycle of all that stuff.

Later, in the third ground phase, you have everything that you had in the second phase in terms of aoe and aggro, but extra breath attacks, and the wing aoe attack too (as well as Valindra still being annoying). In the last phase, it's controlled chaos, everyone just has to avoid all the red and nuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuke. The faster you do it the better, as there's so much red flying about that a lag spike can easily kill people.

I'm fairly sure that the funky aggro isn't a bug, it's a very familiar mechanic from similar games. In the second ground phase, I think it's possible to get the dragon back with Enforced Threat, given an alert tank. If I'm honest, I haven't really paid enough attention to the third phase, as I am usually nuking/healing flat out, and get a bit of tunnel vision

It's actually quite a decent fight now that most of the bugs are fixed, but it does require the tank to work somewhat harder than usual to stop it getting irritating. It's probably one of the few bossfights in NW where the tank has to do a "traditional" tanking job of a single big ugly mob.

ranncore

Fullminorax and Valindra's portal adds seem to either ignore the aggro table or occasionally have their aggro table reset. Valindra's casket adds in VT also seem to have this problem.

I'm going to assume this is a bug, at least with the adds, because if it's not, the only other explanation is that the devs are intentionally and repeatedly designing content for which a Tank class is useless.

kattefjaes

You don't need a tank for the adds. If you are unlucky enough to miss a portal, then the DPS can nuke them down- by kiting or facetanking, depending on class. The tank should stay on the dragon. You shouldn't get adds anyway, have a GWF slam the portal, or if they don't have their slam ready, a suitably powerful ice knife will do the trick, too (assuming you can spare one and have the choke covered elsewhere). Maelstrom of chaos can also interrupt the portal cast, but few CWs bother having that these days.

Really, this fight is about the only one that actually demands traditional tanking skills, and really shows who's good and who's just along for the ride. I know a couple of really decent tanks who can lock this dragon down usefully for most of the fight (hi Oreo!), and the difference is like night and day.

Whether it's intentional or not, I can't say.. but it does remind me of a lot of bosses in other MMOs who reset aggro and randomly select targets in certain phases. Hell, I have tanked a good few of them myself in raids in various games- so I am a bit surprised that other folks are finding the mechanic so unusual.