[Help] Tanking Velidreth

pizzaow

During the fight with Velidreth which mechanics should be dodged and/or cleansed?

I understand the mechanics of the spike phase and the maze, but during the 'normal' fight I feel much squishier than other fights, which makes me think I'm missing a mechanic. The major offenders in my death recap are 'exsanguinate' which is often 50K+ damage and 'corpulence' which sometimes hits for 20-30K. I'm on a console so I can't be sure, but from what I gather exsanguinate is a dot; is there a way to cleanse/purify this or something I should look for in order to dodge?

My character is a stam dk with ~30K resistances, ~30K heath and ~30K stam. My current approach is to block, keep resistances up, avoid the balls on the floor, hit igneous if I have enough magica, then vigor if I'm in trouble. The pattern is that I'll be doing okay, then I'll get hit with something that brings me down to ~10% health, after that if the healer doesn't do something within a few seconds I'm dead. Instinctively I hate having to rely on the healer this much; is there anything I should do to be more self sufficient?.. It feels like there is something I should be dodging something instead of blocking. Alternately, is there anything I should request that the healer do?

FrostFallFox

I would also like to know this too. I ended up tanking it once with only 2 other DPS and no healer
I was just a little Nightblade Tank with a restoration staff lol.

I'm not sure what causes the dot or the part where your healing received is turned into poo, all I could do to save my self was spam Healing Springs on myself and use Bolstering Darkness. After that the only thing that could hurt me was Corpulence. A handful of wipes but we made it without a healer!

I understand that you're a Stamina Dragonknight Tank though, and you may not be able to do that but you have a healer so maybe they could just Heal tf out of you. Or hopefully someone knows how to avoid that horrible dot/healing taken debuff.

Sedrethi

I've little experience Tanking her (on Veteran anyway, Normal zips by too quickly) on my Dragonknight and Nightblade, so I cannot verify if all I say is correct. From what I recall:

• When she swipes at you rapidly for light damage in a small red cone, I believe that is what inflicts Exsanguinate.
• When she rears up a little bit and you see her lift her forelegs as she emits yellow "sparks", she's about use Corpulence.
• Also, it wasn't mentioned, but in case you didn't know: the disease spores that spawn are the highest attribute of the person whose Ultimate was eaten. Therefore, if someone who is heavily invested in Magicka is devoured, blue spores spawn.

Against Exsanguinate, typically if I get low enough, I'll use Coagulating Blood on my Dragonknight (although it helps that he's also using 2 pc. Scourge Harvester, 5 pc. Leeching Plate, and 5 pc. Bahraha's Curse). For my Nightblade, I'd just have to rely on Swallow Soul, Refreshing Path, maybe Soul Tether, and the Healer.

Hopefully either of you found some things useful out of this.

pizzaow

Thanks to both @FrostFallFox and @Sedrethi for the advice. I finally got it!
If anyone else is having trouble, what worked for me is to:

• always dodge Corpulence
• avoid the balls on the floor
• slot tri-pots

Exsanguinate seems to be pretty unavoidable, but clears each time you enter the maze phase. In order to deal with it you'll also either need a decent healer (my technique), excellent DPS or one of the above mentioned techniques.

I also found a helpful video of a 2-man of this fight. It's a tank POV:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=K46MHas0jaU

In the video the tank is intentionally bringing Velidreth to the statue... does this do anything? Also, he is purifying a lot... I didn't think exsanguinate could be purified. Am I wrong, or does this clear something else? I heard there is also a big armor debuff she puts on you- is this what's being purified?

Nax

I've played all roles throughout this dungeon and enjoy tanking it the most, aside from healing. For what it's worth, I've completed No Death, Hardmode and all of the other dungeon achievements scaled to CP 160. Here are my two cents:

pizzaow wrote: »

During the fight with Velidreth which mechanics should be dodged and/or cleansed?

...

is there a way to cleanse/purify this or something I should look for in order to dodge?

As has been stated, Velidreth will periodically swipe at you in the form of a frontal AOE cone. Simply block this, then, IMMEDIATELY after, she will charge a heavy attack-- IMMEDIATELY after the AOE cone, dodgeroll back/away from her, so you are out of her heavy attack range. Don't bother waiting for the heavy attack animation. Just dodge straight after that AOE cone. This heavy attack is what causes you to take heavy bleed damage, and makes your healer's life a nightmare, especially if you also happen to be lucky enough to pop every stat-sucking spore in the arena.

(Edit: Just remembered a few instances where the heavy attack does not occur immediately after the AOE cone, but I do not know under what circumstances this happens-- can anyone else confirm if, in their experience, these two attacks always occur one after another, or is it more random for you?)

As for the spores, it should be pretty clear what they do: Blue drains Magicka, Green drains Stamina, and Red drains Health AND puts a healing debuff on you.
Fun Fact #1: These debuffs stack; i.e., the more Green spores you bump into, the heavier the drain becomes on you.
Fun Fact #2: The spores spawn according to the max stat of the person whose ultimate was last devoured! So, as has already been said, if your Mag DD has her ulti drained, the next spores will be Blue. Neat! And also can be living hell.
Fun Fact #3: And this one actually is a bit more fun... these draining effects CAN be cleansed, so...

pizzaow wrote: »

is there anything I should request that the healer do?

If your healer is a Templar, request that they run Ritual of Retribution (or the other morph). Purify is your best, best friend during this boss fight, for all roles.

As for pots, while Tri Stats are nice, I prefer these:



In my experience, I'm usually fine with Stam and Mag so long as there are synergies to activate, and as a DK with super fast ulti regen, the Battle Roar passive helps me manage them as well. This pot simply makes my healer's life a bit easier on the chance I mess up a dodge or accidentally step into a red spore.

That's all I can think of for tanking advice for now. My Templar healing two cents, for those interested, is first to give you my skill layout:
Ritual of Retribution, Repentance, Ele Drain if needed, Orbs, BoL, Siphon Spirit, Healing Ward, Shards, Rapid Regen and Jesus Beam. If you are uncomfortable with Siphon, swap out for your Rune. For ulti, I like Aggressive Horn, and Barrier just in case of an "oh sh*t" moment. I like orbs even if there are no Magicka DDs simply because YOU, as their caster, will reap the benefits when they are popped (Tank, please! Use the synergy!).

I find that I don't really have a standard healing rotation during this fight as so much can change at the drop of a hat. I always make sure to have Ritual down for the tank, and always try to be aware of my surroundings: Green spores up? Be ready to repentance some adds and throw extra shards. Blue spores? Orbs. Red? Be ready with Ritual and Ward. Run into a spore? Throw down Ritual. And then Ritual some more.

Try to stun adds with Shards once the tank has them in position as they are super annoying and can easily screw up your run-- Encourage your tank to pull them to the boss so they die in the AOE/DOTs that should hopefully be on the ground, and encourage your DDs to actually kill them.

Always keep moving as the statue fires off a nasty, random ground AOE (in Hardmode, anyway-- in my experience this mechanic is not noticeable enough to be an issue in non-HM) that gives you very little time to react and can easily be a one-shot. Be proactive about avoiding it by making sure that you are already in motion.

During the spike phase, I like to throw down Ritual and then give everyone on my team a shard: this has saved many a life as there is usually always that unlucky someone that bumped into one too many green spores just before the phase, or for some reason sprinted their hardest through the catacombs. One shard means they have enough stamina to dodge the upcoming one-shot spike.

Things like that, that really depend on the group and on the situation.


I hope this has helped and, if you're still with me to now, thanks for reading!

code65536

As a healer, I like to run Efficient Purge in addition to ritual. With all the things that people have to avoid and dance around, it's sometimes not practical for someone to reach my ritual and use the synergy. If someone shouts that they've been hit by an orb, I'll cast Purge and not worry about whether they are able to reach my ritual for a synergy or whether they had already used that synergy recently.

A tank won't benefit as much, since they're usually standing stationary in your ritual, but it can still be useful, like if they are hit while on synergy cool down or otherwise having trouble using the synergy.

Rockndude

If you have 30k health and your resistances are close to capped, you need a better healer that is proactive using HoTs like regen and ritual and using healing springs and breath of life to bust heal when you get close to half health and feeding you shards.

A reactive healer will be too late on the burst if they don't have HoTs to keep your health regenerating until they can hit breath of life. You should not have to pop vigor unless you get hit by a heavy attack like corpulence. But even then by the time you can react to that, your healer should already have you to full health.

I am saying this as a person who has done all 3 roles on vet. My resistances are not capped on my tank and my healers in my pve guild keep me up while I permablock and don't have to dodge roll anything but the spike.

Also, there is a mechanic the tank is supposed to bash. I don't know what it is called but the boss telegraphs it. It may be the corpulence you are getting hit by.

Delimber

Nice to know about the AoE and heavy attack after. It took me a while to clue in to it, got hit for 230k as a tank near resis cap lol. (My defenses were down on that hit)

threefarms

Sedrethi wrote: »

I've little experience Tanking her (on Veteran anyway, Normal zips by too quickly) on my Dragonknight and Nightblade, so I cannot verify if all I say is correct. From what I recall:

• When she swipes at you rapidly for light damage in a small red cone, I believe that is what inflicts Exsanguinate.
• When she rears up a little bit and you see her lift her forelegs as she emits yellow "sparks", she's about use Corpulence.
• Also, it wasn't mentioned, but in case you didn't know: the disease spores that spawn are the highest attribute of the person whose Ultimate was eaten. Therefore, if someone who is heavily invested in Magicka is devoured, blue spores spawn.

Against Exsanguinate, typically if I get low enough, I'll use Coagulating Blood on my Dragonknight (although it helps that he's also using 2 pc. Scourge Harvester, 5 pc. Leeching Plate, and 5 pc. Bahraha's Curse). For my Nightblade, I'd just have to rely on Swallow Soul, Refreshing Path, maybe Soul Tether, and the Healer.

Hopefully either of you found some things useful out of this.

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