We have to kill THAT?!
Until it's mastered, the Draigoch fight is nothing if not long. Before the fight even starts you have a bit of an obstacle course to get down to him. Once there, the fight is a cycle of a tank holding agro on Draigoch's head while the majority of the raid defeats his claws (2 in tier 1, 4 in tier 2). Once his claws are defeated, Draigoch will tumble into the middle of the cave.
You'll have roughly 90 seconds to start chipping away at his 9-million morale before he'll recover and the cycle restarts. To aid in this process there are 12 new unique fellowship maneuvers that only work on Draigoch that will debuff him if you complete them. Challenge mode for this instance is to complete all 12 FMs.
Fellowship Composition & Roles
You take the high road and we'll take the low road
First off, do not think you can walk into Draigoch's lair with quest reward gear and beat him. You don't have to have the most optimal character ever but if you walk in covered in yellows you're not going to be pulling your weight.
Jewelry from the reputation vendors, level 75 instances/skirmishes, or crafted should suit you fine. On the armor side of things teal crafted armor is a good start but the raid armor is pretty easy to get with a little time investment. At the very least the boots and gloves can give you a solid boost to your primary stats.
LIs should be level 75. Your second age 65 sword may be pretty pimped out on legacies, but the DPS on a level 75 will put it to shame. Especially for DPS classes, upgrading your weaponry is required.
As far as virtues go, 90% of all damage in Draigoch's Lair is actually common damage, even the fire. There are virtually no debuffs that require you to trait resistances so buff your physical mitigation as much as possible.
Recommended minimums for Draigoch are:
- 2 true tanks (main tank and secondary tank)
- 1 class able to off tank
- 3 healers
- 1 captain
For the majority of the fight, the raid will be divided into two groups:
- Tank Group: The main tank, a captain, and a healer
- DPS Group: Everyone else
If the raid is short on burglars it's recommended that any class that can trait to start Fellowship Maneuvers should do so. It's not a bad idea to have one or two people do this anyway as a backup.
All three members of the Tank Group need to be in a fellowship to aid in healing/buffing. In addition, that fellowship also needs to contain the off-tank, although the off-tank will begin the fight with the DPS group.
Splitting the DPS group between fellowships can be done according to taste, but if the raid is short on burglars it's a good idea to put any conditional FM-starters (a second captain, guardians, loremasters) in a fellowship with any minstrels you may have. This allows the minstrels to use Song of Aid to open up the skills used to kickstart FMs when needed.
Legendary Defenses
Teamwork required
Draigoch' raid is set up to mimic a dragon's thick armored hide but instead of just giving him huge mitigations (which would result in insanely low floating damage numbers and I assume be demoralizing to players), Draigoch instead has a massive morale pool. It's possible to just dps him down normally, but if you don't have the 8 hours required to do that you're going to have to rely on fellowship maneuvers to start breaking his armor.
There are three sets of FMs, and they can only be done to Draigoch's body once his claws have been defeated. They will have no affect if used on his claws. Each set must be used in order, even though you can do the four FMs inside of a given set in any order. It's easiest just to start at the top and work your way down.
You'll need one person in the DPS group responsible for calling these out in order, preferably in raid chat.
Set 1: Increases damage done to Draigoch's claws. Each FM will affect one of his four claws. This doesn't affect his body, but makes the fight faster by making it easier to kill his claws (see below). The effect is: +100% Incoming Melee Damage, +50% Incoming Ranged/Tactical Damage. Each conjunction affects one claw.
- RYYYYR - Just a Flesh Wound
- YYYYYR - First Blood
- YYRRYY - Surgical Strike
- YRYYRY - A Slight Sting
Set 2: These increase the damage done to Draigoch's body. Each one completed gives: +25% Incoming Melee Damage, +12.5% Incoming Ranged/Tactical damage. These effects stack, so by the end of this set the debuffs on Draigoch's body are +100/+50 respectively.
- RYRYRY - Exposed
- YRYRYR - A Snail Out of It's Shell
- RRYRYY - Deep Wound
- YYRYRR - A Chink in Their Armour
Set 3: Each of these FM completed deals damage to Draigoch equal to 5% of his maximum morale. This is where the fight really accelerates.
- RRYYRR - The Sound of Inevitability
- YRRRRY - Twisting the Dagger
- RYRRYR - Sudden Death
- RRYRRY - Stroke of Midnight
The easiest way to work through the FMs is to assign each player in the group that will be doing them to a position (1 through 6) in the series, and they stay at that position throughout the fight. Meanwhile someone should be designated to paste each FM into raid chat as the group gets ready to perform it.
After the raid has completed all 12 FMs, you can continue to use named FMs to knock off 100k morale from the dragon per hit. So it's worth while to keep performing FMs even once you've done the 12 ones unique to him.
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