Made it to Vet Darksharde Caverns Boss... WUT? (possible spoilers)

dylanslcruchelowb14a_ESO

So ive cleared every vet dungeon except for darkshade caverns, I can get the gold keys somewhat easily (1-5 attempts). the only one ive yet to clear is darkshade caverns. it took my group many attempts to down that damn netch boss, which was insanely hard but not seemingly impossible. I actually enjoyed the challenge, so then we downed the next encounter then made it to the final boss room.... and man did it *** on us. im not sure what the problem was, we tried staying in the middle of the room and got wrecked by fire and lightning phases. It seemed redundantly hard. I didn't even see how you are supposed to dps the boss with all the environmental effects. the fight seemed incredibly harder than anything ive experienced yet. (DSA bosses included) we died probably 15 times and never did more than 10% of the bosses max hp before adds/ aoe overwhelmed us. I thought the poisen phase was when u were supposed to run in and dps, however melee players were instantly toasted by a nice stream of fire coming from a poison phased boss. (maybe a glitch?) so I was curious, is there some simple mechanic im missing? Do we just suck? are any other players frustrated as I am with it? I play on PS4 if that matters.

Elvishbarbecue

This fight is easily done if you focus adds. I play a healer and I have no trouble keeping the group up if they take out the spheres. DPS the boss only if there are no spheres up, stay out of the fire and let the healer keep you up through the poison and heal the players who do get hit by the fire.

Its a longer boss fight, but easily done if you do this.

P.S. Line of sighting the spheres is the best strat for taking them out as they cant use their range. They will have to come in close. Also, have you done city of ash vet? That is way harder then darkshade.

dylanslcruchelowb14a_ESO

actually city of ash is the only other one I haven't done now that I think about it, im interested to try it. people told me banished cells was the hardest and I think my group wiped maybe 5 times total? seemed like a cake walk compared to darkshade

Elvishbarbecue

City of ash is the only one I have not beaten yet. We spent a few hours in it and simply did not have the DPS needed to finish off the last boss.

In my opinion City of ash is the hardest and Darkshade is the second hardest (though is is much easier then ash)

Dagoth_Rac

Never go in the middle. Stay moving in a circle around the outer edges. 3 DPS and 1 healer. Tank may not be the best DPS, but 2.5 DPS is better than 2 DPS and 1 Tank in this fight. Stick close together near healer. Ranged only on boss, and only DPS boss if no adds are up (you can melee the adds, but don't run off too far from healer). If boss is moving towards you, back away. If boss is moving away from you, follow him. Always stay about 20 meters away. Close enough for ranged attacks, but not so close that he can kill you.

1). Fire phase. Stay out of red circles. That is more important than DPS. Only DPS boss if clearly out of red circles and no adds.

2). Lightning phase. Stick close together, but circle away from boss to break line of sight of lightning attack. This is phase that spawns adds. Find them and chain them in and DPS them down ASAP. Or hide behind pillars. They will zoom over to you if they cannot see you, making it easier to get them bunched together to AoE down. Watch out for the ground attack they do. A line of dirt travels over the ground and hits extremely hard.

3). Poison phase. Stay stacked on healer so they can keep everyone alive during poison cloud. Wander out of range of their healing springs and you will probably die. If any adds up, ignore boss and take down adds. If no adds, just move with healer, staying in range of boss, and kill him with bow or destro staff or ranged class skills. This is best DPS phase, provided no adds. Don't feel compelled to attack boss just because it is poison phase and that is when you are "supposed" to kill the boss. Culling adds is always first priority.

Phases seem to be random, and if you get the bad luck of a lot of lightning phases, you can end up with a huge number of adds.

Don't ever hit the levers in middle. It does not make it easier. It just gets you to the next lightning phase faster and thus gets you adds faster.

Don't get excited when he gets to low health. I have seen many a group be very slow, steady, and methodical for bulk of fight, then get overly excited and get too greedy with the DPS at end. Doesn't matter if boss has 1% health left. If he switches to fire phase, prioritize staying out of red circles. If adds come up, focus on adds. Always focus on staying near healer. This fight can go downhill fast. So if you get tunnel vision and are only looking at that last sliver of health on boss bar, you will miss something and get killed.