Trickster Rogue tanking Group Dungeon Boss Fights

dragoonhit · May 2013

I am pretty new to Neverwinter, my rogue only a couple weeks old now and level 36. I've taken to focusing on Power/Crit for stats and taking the time to gear myself through repeated dungeon runs (both boss drops and collecting lion seals) instead of quickly leveling through the insane amount of exp that PVP seems to grant. As a result, I am always top dps. Not bragging (well, maybe a little :P), but as a result, I am always the one being hammered on in the group dungeon fights.

Things were still plenty easy though up until the lair of the mad dragon, Chartilifax. He melted our faces off, but it was so fun that I didn't care we wiped. After a couple of runs, I began to notice a pattern: No one had a plan for him outside chug potions and kill the adds first. I also noticed that Chartilifax continuously targeted me even when I was focusing on mobs. One run he immediately started focusing on me and a thought occurred: Well if I am doomed to be covered in acid, I may as well stand on the opposite side of everyone else. So I did. I killed every imp that came near me, hoping to snare, continuously dodging the acid on one side of the dragon while my party members fought the adds on the other, wailing on the dragon whenever adds were low. After a while, the dragon had moved up towards me, giving me little space to roll around, but giving my allies a huuugge space to work with. It took a good while, but in the end we had won. I did do as much damage to the dragon as I could just to be sure aggro would be with me so even when the party was wailing on him and I was stuck dodging acid.

A quick breakdown of the attacks I noticed:

He has a basic melee attack that does around 1000 damage.
He also has a simple tail swipe that does a bit of damage but shoos you away from his butt.
A roar which briefly dazes everyone in the room. While he is never fast enough to hit you with something else before you recover, it could be deadly if you get stuck on a pool of acid or surrounded by adds.
His breath attack which sprays a column of acid aimed at whoever has aggro, if you get caught in this, it will push you away from him like a slip-n-slide and quickly rack up damage. That acid column left on the ground afterwords -does- hurts you if you stand on it.
Sometimes he'll shoot a single blast of acid, centered on his aggro target. I've been hit by the ball of acid before, not just from the impact, but while it was in mid-flight, so be careful where you roll. Roll to the sides or back, but not -at- the dragon to dodge this. When I was hit, the acid knocked me prone.
He has an attack where he quickly launches several acid balls on the ground around him. Typically one in front of him and one on each side. They seem to focus on covering the most ground around him without over-lapping just to make things difficult.
And lastly, he has an AoE centered on himself where he flaps his wings to pop into the air and then smash into the ground. Obviously you want to dodge, but after he lands, he kinda keeps his head lowered for a moment and a smaller aoe ring appears centered on him while he is "crouching." I have no idea what he is suppose to be doing, but if you enter the smaller ring, it will DoT you for 3-400 damage relatively quickly. So wait for the second ring to disappear.

On a side note, whoever decided that the rogue ability to teleport behind a foe should teleport you to the mouth of the dragon instead, I HATE YOU. lol.

OH! Another note: In one of our runs, the pillar that you knock over after the second boss fight righted itself while a dwarf was lost. We couldn't knock it over again and after someone jumped down that couldn't get back up, we had to call it. We're not killing a dragon with three people lol. Point being, climb the pillar immediately and make sure everyone else does the same before going through the door.

Shortly after killing him, I was able to get into an Idris run later that day. The group got to the boss easy enough, but didn't clear all the possible adds, and just tried to manhandle Irdis and her black orbs. That didn't work. Tried again, this time we got adds from the other side of the room. Tried again. Nope. I was getting frustrated by this point so I pointed out a couple things:

The black orbs deal (to me at least) 871 damage and daze you while inside them. So avoiding should be a priority.
They do not go through pillars or walls, so you can use them for cover.
Orbs can safely pass beneath or above you.

So I suggested that I cover her face in dps and drag her to one level while the party pulls adds to the next. It was a very costly thing to do as I was often impatient with the black orbs and had to chug pots so hard it made my bladder feel full watching my rogue. I also ran into some difficulties:

She has a quick single shot of arcane damage which I was never able to avoid that dealt 1400.
For some reason, whenever I ducked behind cover from her orbs, she would forget about me and start making her way for my party. If I popped back out, she would suddenly remember I was there. Which is odd, especially since she couldn't see any of my other party members. I think this might be something put in to make it harder to tank her away from the group.
She can teleport a decent distance. There is a limit to how far it will take her though. I would say about halfway across the room, maybe a third of the way. If her teleport is down and she wants to close the gap, she will simply fly towards you. She seems to try to close the gap when her orbs aren't up to cast rather than get close to **** with the orbs. This might be because her orbs have such a good range that she casts it as long as her aggro target is inside that range.
When she does the orbs, she always casts a black hole looking thing first. Then the black hole shoots out eight orbs in circular burst and Idris casts cone of four of them in a semicircle of whatever direction she is facing. I like to think of the orbs as cars: It's easier to see them coming from a distance and the best way to dodge is with right angles. If for some reason you can't dodge an orb, run -at- it, not away. Why not away? Because you'll be in the orb longer which means more damage and a longer daze. This way it is over in an instant and the minimum damage has been dealt. Basically just wait for her to cast the orbs, dodge them as you run at her, pop your encounters as fast as you can, run away, and repeat. I do not recommend using shift to dodge unless dodging towards her as chances are, you're gonna roll into another orb.

So in the end, I settled on a pattern. She would stand by the stairs on the top level. I'd wait for her to do the orb thing, dodge, dps, back out. Whenever adds spawn, it'll be two zombie hulks and three skeleton archers. I don't know why, but those archers really hurt. So I would run across the room to the other stairs, dip out of sight a second. With the camera, I would see them all forget about me and immediately turn to attack the party. Then I would pop back up and Idris would turn to me while the adds rained down on my allies. Then go back to orb dodging and dps until the next wave spawned. Toward the end, I ran out of pots and let the party know. Since she was less than 20% by this point, I said to burn her down and that was that.

Well that's my experience thus far. Hope this helps someone stuck on those two dungeons. I have noticed that unless there is a healer in the party, people can't keep themselves up. I once thought everyone was up, they all had full health, but turns out they were all sitting at the campfire, waiting for my demise without telling me, lol. I think it is a simple matter of thinking the dungeons will be as easy as the last one. It isn't. If anything, Cloak Tower feels like a tutorial dungeon and is that easy just to get you use what they are like. I also suggest not doing a dungeon unless the next couple hours of your day is open (just in case), bring pots, injury kits, etc. If you die, spam the crud out of the help button. It's sometimes hard to tell everything that is happening.

Leaving because you run out of pots or because you are on-call and have to stop playing because someone's heart literally stopped kinda screws over the four other people. Yeah, I get that it is your job and it is important to start someone's heart again, but maybe not queue for long, time consuming event when you never know when you'll be called to perform that service and yet people will be counting on you to do your part (talking directly to a guy that did this and then raged me for saying you shouldn't queue in a pvp match lol).

sythe777 · May 2013

A well written post, and I too believe that the abilities of Trickster Rogue go beyond that of a Guardian Fighter. Fact of the matter is that for PvE, Chartilifax (?) is ridiculously challenging if you are doing it at-level. Upon attempting to down the dragon, we found ourselves more overwhelmed by the adds, specifically the Hellfire Magi, they nuke everyone with knockdown effects while simultaneously launching them into the air and causing fall damage. Unfortunately in my group we had the great courtesy of people trying to plan for it, assigning roles for what they will do, and then break those roles and do their own little thing in the corner, ruining the plans. I have also noticed lately the increase of Trickster Rogues in PvP and find it is because that TR are the only actual source of real dps, sure there's Great Weapon Fighter, but they mostly fight masses of creatures, not a couple. The abilities of TR also outweigh other classes, starting with Dazing Strike, a 10 second cooldown that stuns people for up to 3 seconds and hits like a freight train headed to pound town. Just my little 2 copper on the whole Trickster Rogue business.

kinada350 · May 2013

If anyone is ever in melee with the dragon you are doing it wrong.

jarlax1 · May 2013

Well, my friends and I were talking about roles in this game compared to the many books I have read. The cleric and the great warrior are usually the ones fighting the massive horde army while the rouge ninjas the commander. This game fits that a little better on purpose or it's a crazy error; because, as the cleric I am definitely tanking hordes and having the rest of the team help is often required on end bosses. They never came out and said generically what they intended as far as roles for the different classes in a boss fight

treenalahey · May 2013

Good thread

Trickster Rogue tanking Group Dungeon Boss Fights

Comments