In beta, the 2nd wave of adds were supposed to have been changed to summon at 97%, not 100%. Trying this the other day, it seems they still summon at full hps. An anti-kite mechanism is in place, so the adds are not going to be kiteable regardless, but the change would make life a little easier on this pita mission.
I've heard over and over how hard this mission is, and because of so, I've not been able to find anyone to run it. That's kind of frustrating, to be honest.
Mission seemed easy as far as difficulty goes if you are patient, though it is much harder than the other tier 1 missions. several tier 2 missions are significantly more challenging than this mission is. That being said I'd love to see the stupid summoning at 100 percent bug to be fixed.
/agreed I am running into the same problem. My wife and I tried it with a group made of SK, 2 mages, 2 healer mercs, one wizzy merc all level 100. We died miserably over and over. I was in beta, but never did this mission. I still have access to beta boards and all I can say is....shame on all of you that completed it that you won't give us group make up ideas or let out how you did the fight. I am at a total loss as far as strategy. Only way I can see this working is to load the group with real wizards and have them do a burn-down on the entire thing. I am very frustrated by the lack of any information coming from other players about their success or failures on this mission. The whole idea of progression is to progress, not to do all quests and then get stopped on one fracking mission. Personally, I only know one wizard in-game. I am so frustrated at all the deaths for this fracking mission I am ready to pay for a TA. I never do TA's and have enjoyed this expansion so far up til now (except for the lack of bunnies before), but this is taking the fun out of the game in a hurry. I understand that one group make-up is not ideal for all tasks, but come on...Are you fracking serious?? I am asking for info from everyone who has passed or failed this mission so some good ideas can be put on the table...and I shouldn't have to go out and buy raid gear to stay upright for a few more seconds. We need some ideas here peeps.
Some of these missions are easy if you have the group makeup that they were designed around. Don't have charming capability and/or high DPS, don't bother trying mission X. Don't have massive AE's, don't bother trying mission Y. etc. etc.
Don't pull them all at once... The summoning at 100 sucks but if you watch pathing you can grab them single
When we did it, we ran with 2x cleric mercs, chanter, warrior, mage and myself (necro) after wiping to the adds a couple times, we repositioned ourselves, at the new spot we found the adds pathed in such a way that we didn't get them all at once. We were to the right of the big hill in the zone, others have had success in the NE corner. Also when someone gets trapped, kill the crystal asap, both our merc were trapped at once, and our tank died, mage pet back up tanked, and I battle ressed, since mercs are incapable of doing that.
My crew did this with sk, pal, bst, zerk, bard, cleric. All level 100 with 4k+ aa. Sk was raid geared and zerk had some raid gear and t4 voa raid weapon. We found the issue was controlling the adds you fight at once. We opened up with burns after the drakes. The 100% summon thing was causing pulling nightmares with the "fleeing" emote that appeared to aggro more mobs. We gave up on the hill and charged them in as a group and kept the adds under 6 at a time, usually 4. We wiped several times to 8+ adds but the charging thing worked for us. We got to dragon first time we did that. We beat the dragon on our first try, but it was intense. Melee output didn't seem as bad as reports but the aes were pretty big. Several of us died during the fight, but were battle rezed. Most used staunch recovery, but I think we were overhealing the ae. The crystal never spawned on the sk (mt). Crystal wasn't too big of deal if you call it out and use /tar crys. FYI zerk can decap the crystal but it died fast even if it didn't proc. once burns recycled from adds he died a lot faster but still had a lot of hp. Event would have been much more manageable either without 100% summoning or the mechanic that aggroes more adds when you were perceived as running. Once we charged to avoid the emote and aggroes them in clumps, it wasn't too bad. Common problem in RoF, loot is absolute garbage for the difficulty of the encounter. Leaves little desire to do it again.
The anti-kite mechanic is broken (in both mission and raid). The mobs decide that you are kiting them just because they aggro on you from a distance while you are fighting other mobs.
This, though I've noticed in the raid that they can be kited every now and then as long as they're above 99% (very small kite radius, but it definitely works)
Two healers (in case one gets crystal'd), tank (ideally a knight type), chanter/bard (charm the soldiers so you have less mobs to fight, mez what you can to keep mobs from ganging up), two DPS. There's your optimal group makeup. Our chanter pulled for us, granted, he's pretty exceptional, but just saying that it's not crazy impossible. We setup in NE corner, like so many others. If you need it, have the DPS burn when the captains start spawning, if you can get by without it, it's nice to save the damage for the dragon, but that's just a long fight no matter how you look at it. Everyone should stack for the dragon fight (so melee don't have to go running away from the dragon to hit the crystals). Your DPS should be scrolled out in third person during the dragon fight so they can see when crystals spawn. Hitting your toggle target key will automatically target the crystal because there is only the dragon and the crystals up at that point. They have very few HP in the group version (100K or so, if that). Everyone but the tank and healers should prioritize crystal destruction over dragon damage.
The setup we used to beat it was Chanter (non boxed), 2 cleric mercs, and me boxing mage/mage/bard, so yeah that's true we had a pretty good setup for this type of mission.
I could be wrong on the mez thing, I just know our chanter puller was stacking up a few for us, we might have just been killing fast enough, I was too busy eyeing agro to really pay too much attention other than to notice we pretty much always had a mob or two in camp with basically no downtime.
The mobs aren't mezzable, but one in every three mobs is "charmable". The "charmable" ones are named "soldier". Charming them causes them to "wake up" from the dragons control (cuz dorfs/giants wouldn't fight for dragons normally). When they wake up they go and attack the opposite mob type (i.e. dorfs attack giants, giants dorfs). The summon from 100% thing isn't that bad...just have to anticipate it as a puller. It sure would be nice if it didn't change you to be facing a random direction though. Best bet is to move everyone to the east. There is a small mountain there that you can have everyone stay on top of. If they stay away from the ledge they will avoid agro on everything in the instance. Just have your puller pull them in in groups of 1-3 and you should be fine...while they DO summon from 100%, its rare to get summoned twice on a pull. Additionally, you can use pets to pull if you want. The hard part of the mission is the crystals. It basically makes it so you need 2 of everything essential...so 2 tanks and 2 healers. Of course that means you are going to likely be light on dps...and the dragon at the end just has a TON of hitpoints. ~MrGPAC
I'm not 10000% sure, but I believe the mechanic is that it won't crystal the person at the top of the dragon's agro list, so you should only need one tank. At least I don't ever remember our tank getting crystalled, though everyone else did at some point during the fight.
It's annoying how many mobs are immune to stun/mez in these zones. Especially it seems when they are tightly packed.
The mechanic is a bit odd. I have noticed it didn't work to that effect in a few situations. 1) If you have a pet on top of the agro list. The immunity seems to be given to the pet, allowing the one actually tanking to be frozen. 2) If your MT dies. This may be related to the first, but I have had the MT die and a secondary tank take over. The secondary tank seems to get frozen rather frequently. As far as who does or does not get crystalled its really luck based. I have done this and had the healer never get crystalled, and I have done this and had the healer be the only one who gets crystalled...every time. Huge differences in difficulty in those (especially when you only have one healer). And yes...knights are much better than warriors for this due to their self healing abilities. ~MrGPAC
This thing is brutal. How are people pulling the mobs? We pull and get summoned on tag and BOOM 8 mobs.
