Build for soloing Elsweyr dragons

Sleeping_OwI · August 20

So i need a lot of dragons and their specific adds for my achievements, and it's hard to get people together for it, especially in North elsweyr and in quieter hours.

So i wanna bite the bullet and do some of em myself. Anyone got a good build for this? Tanky enough with still some damage. Any class is fine, preferrably *not* heavy attack build, but if it works well, I'm open to that too.

propertyOfUndefined · August 20

Not what you asked for, but have you tried group finder? It's worked wonders for me when it comes to farming leads, etc.

Elsonso · August 20

Is doing a dragon solo that common of a task, now?

tsaescishoeshiner · August 22

Every time I've soloed a dragon, at least one person has joined before it got to around 50% health--takes a long time! Might as well say "South dragon at 70%, need help" in zone chat when they fly up.

I would run it as a DPS with DoTs and some movement speed and add survivability as you need--otherwise your damage will be too low. My way to "tank" them is to run in a circle around them while casting my abilities (so no Snipe/Fatecarver because they slow you down). This does cause their animations to bug out sometimes lol.

You need a purge for the "mi cwassont" shout (or crazy self-heals-over-time) and enough healing and AoE to deal with the adds, which gave me issues on some builds when they all start heavy attacking you while there are also dragon mechanics happening. : p I'd bet a damage shield would help. I usually roll dodge all the heavy attacks, but I think I've survived blocking some?

SeaGtGruff · August 22

Elsonso wrote: »

Is doing a dragon solo that common of a task, now?

I've seen a few posts where people mention soloing dragons. I certainly can't do it, but I find that if I start soloing one and can manage to stay alive for a couple of minutes-- long enough for the dragon to show on the map as being in a fight-- then if I'm lucky another player or three will show up to join in. I think there are still a lot of players in the zone who want to kill dragons but can't solo them, so they check the map every so often to see if there's a fight they can join. I sometimes have to rez and try soloing several times before anyone notices the map and can reach the fight.

robpr · August 22

Heavy armor DK in pvp build for flat damage will work, but its extremely slow (we are talking about 15-20min+) and any single mistake will have you to do everything from scratch. Other classes will also work, but DK has panikk button ultimate while restoring resources.

Dragon's Appetite, Draugrkin Grip, Master DW front, S&B back, pale order ring

Skills whatever, with exception of you have to have both minor and major resolve sources. Defensive Stance slotted on backbar recommended.

Always dodge heavy Chomps (blocking them with both resolves results in about 15% hp remaining). Breath ticks can be dodged and when dragon is vomiting you can dodge to the side of its wing for the breath to completely miss you. Catching the flying breath is instakill. Dragon breath when sitting on a fence is also very hard hitting.
The major problem are adds. If not killed, they will swarm you and CC to death.

With this you should nibble it to death, but people will show up when they notice dragon icon under attack for longer time.

BXR_Lonestar · August 22

Sleeping_OwI wrote: »

So i need a lot of dragons and their specific adds for my achievements, and it's hard to get people together for it, especially in North elsweyr and in quieter hours.

So i wanna bite the bullet and do some of em myself. Anyone got a good build for this? Tanky enough with still some damage. Any class is fine, preferrably *not* heavy attack build, but if it works well, I'm open to that too.

I would say it would be easier to join a guild and get people rounded up to go farm them than it would be to try to make an efficient build for soloing them. I think it is the ice dragons that are the most brutal, and you may as well not even try to solo them. But the bottom line is you need to have a great amount of survivability in your build, and too much survivability takes away from your DPS.

TybaltKaine · August 22

I use my Sergeants Mail and War Maiden HA Frost Staff build on my Nightblade. It works pretty well, but I built for magic damage (adept stone, all Magic damage skills) and know the mechs, so I can avoid the one-shot bite and burn the adds fairly quickly.

I use the scribed Elemental Explosion with Frost damage, slot Merciless Resolve and pop it when I need a burst heal, and I use Swallow Soul as a spammable for healing and damaging. Gets me a consistent 20 k damage with my set up so I can't complain. Used to use Concealed Weapon for the Shadow passives, but switched that out for Shadow Image/Refreshing Path (depending on how comfortable I feel with the fight).

For ultimate I use Ice Comet or Eye of The Storm. I also slot something from FG to boost damage if I notice I'm not doing enough damage to burn adds quickly. Reason I leave my 5th slot as a flex.

I tried with Companions, but it can get hectic have to recall them all the time, so I just pure solo now.

Usually take about 20 minutes or so if no one joins in.

Necrotech_Master · August 22

when ive tried to solo a dragon ive usually just used a tanky build with a ranged dps companion

problem is it shows the dragons status on the map so usually at least 1 other person will show up between 40 and 70% hp remaining

a purge is helpful to remove the soul tear debuff as that is a debuff (-heal) + a dot (not super strong since it can be outhealed, but the healing debuff also makes it more difficult especially when your taking dmg from other sources like the dragon aoes or the dragon itself)

Quethrosar · August 22

just parse high

BananaBender · September 11

A bit of a late response, but I thought I would share my build since it worked well for me today when soloing some dragons for achievements.

Note, this build wont make soloing dragons easy! It's not the tankiest build, so if you aren't comfortable with DK or the combat in general, this build might not perform too well.

↓ Overview of the setup in the spoiler ↓

I have 64 points into magicka and I'm using Thief mundus. There are bunch of changes you can make to the build, it's far from optimized, especially if you aren't fully solo. Elemental Susceptibility can be dropped if there is someone else providing Major Breach. Potions are pretty much mandatory for you to be able to sustain. Other classes will likely perform better, but this is the only character I have chance to drop Dragon Rheum, so that's why I went with DK personally.

How to survive:
You can shield through the DoT mechanic, and just trust your Pale Order to handle the healing.
The breath is by far the hardest hitting skill and you can't really face tank it. How I handled it was by dodge rolling under the dragon. You will take some damage from the AoE under the dragon, but it's A LOT easier to deal with than the damage from the breath.