Veteran DLC dungeons

Ravena

Need to unwind a bit. Been stuck in the final boss of Cradle of Shadows for five hours now. PUG heaven. By now I've gotten every mechanic of hers down but it's so difficult with constantly shifting team mates who give up too easily.

Someone please end my life. Okay, thanks for coming.

alexkdd99

You have more patience than me. No way I could stay in a single dungeon that long.

Ravena

alexkdd99 wrote: »

You have more patience than me. No way I could stay in a single dungeon that long.

It is so frustrating I just can't give up. I'm in 4 guilds but not one seems to want to help with that final boss. So PUG it is.

Browiseth

Just give up, dude. You're not beating it tonight. I'm sorry, it sucks but you've gotta accept it.

You've got all the sympathies the limitations of my carbon based cellular makeup can feasibly create, but it's the harsh reality.

Vaoh

Which role do you play? What's your build and skills slotted? Give some info on that stuff and we might be able to help you so it's much easier on your part the next time and you can even carry your team in some parts!

I've soloed Velidreth on Vet. I can tell you that what I mainly learned (and it takes times to realize it) is that everything happening around you is quite simple. Yeah it looks hectic, but it actually isn't.

Your priority is to kill the adds, especially the Shadow Weavers. CC and burn them down asap, as they will fire off high damage projectiles and cause dark moving circles on the ground that CC you and deal high damage.

Velidreth needs to be tanked. She will do a handful of things:
- Drain your Magicka via her Dark Flurry-like attack. Dropping block here is actually a good idea as it deals almost no damage whatsoever on its own (but will rapidly drain Stamina when blocked)
- Heavy Attack. Dodge or block this. It is also a cone AoE and will CC/deal some damage to those who are close behind the aggroed target
- Light attack. It looks like a tiny dark blade but isn't too dangerous
- Armor Debuff. She lunges forward a bit when it happens
- Poison you, applying a dangerous but purgeable DoT
- Her Ult drain attack targets randomly and drains more Ult depending on how much you have

Stand still and watch her when she climbs to the ceiling, then dodge roll as soon as she descends.

Navigate your way through the catacombs. Don't forget to bring Atronach lights.

Orbs around you will increase when she falls below 65% and 35% health. Hitting them is dangerous but their debuffs are purgeable.

Hope this helped for your next time attempting this fight! It is definitely a tough one

Ravena

I am a healer. I've got all of her mechanics down during there hours spent trying and trying and trying. But the group members keep changing.

Last 5 wipes happened because the other duo did not take a light from the atronachs before the dark phase despite me constantly reminding them, even taking the time to type out as I'm healing and seeing the other atronach down. Other times, it's usually tanks getting one hit.

Doctordarkspawn

Having beaten both of the dungeons vet for both DLC's I can safely say the only ones worth repeating are the IC ones.

Shadows of the hist was garbage. Since your running a healer there isn't even a reason to do COS again unless you need Gossamer.

Trust me when I say not only should you never pug these, but I have never seen a group that can do vet hardmode under the best of circumstances.

Ravena

I want to at least beat it once.

WhitePawPrints

CoS is very difficult and requires skill from every player. Even if you're at last boss, it's best to give up and try again later.

When players who know the dungeons enter and find the dungeon mostly complete, that player will know there is a reason why it has not been completed. Very few will stay if they see a portal at the beginning of the dungeon because they know it's better to queue again, with the chances of getting a good group.

Honestly, it is almost as if the longer you stay in that dungeon to look for new players, the lower your chances are of completing it.

It is wasted time to go through the dungeon and spend a lot of hours, only to give up. I learned that the hard way with a trial, but it is better to give up and try again later.

Ravena

I gave up and feel like squashing a spider right now. Been at the same boss from 7pm to 2am. Soooooooooo frustrating.

And I heard this was supposedly the easiest Vet DLC dungeon. There is just no way a PUG can do this.

Vaoh

Ravena wrote: »

I gave up and feel like squashing a spider right now. Been at the same boss from 7pm to 2am. Soooooooooo frustrating.

And I heard this was supposedly the easiest Vet DLC dungeon. There is just no way a PUG can do this.

I'd say that vWGT is generally puggable. vICP and vCoS are usually not. vRoM is almost never puggable.

Not the easiest dungeon, but truthfully still tough enough to make most PUGs quit.

Dubhliam

If this is your first time in vCoS, let this be a lesson to you.

If you have already been in vCoS, and still decided to PUG it on veteran mode, it is your own fault.

raglau

alexkdd99 wrote: »

You have more patience than me. No way I could stay in a single dungeon that long.

Agree with you, life's too short. As soon as it becomes clear I'm with a group that has no hope (and that's very different to a team that can learn and pull it off with some time invested), I politely leave and take the Finder penalty.

I just did this on Vet Direfrost. Went really well until Drodda when the tank hit the Hard Mode scroll. Why on earth people do hard mode in a PUG I do not know, it rarely ends well. Hard Mode is for teams with good comms and who know each other, and who know the aggregated DPS is high enough to pull it off in a timely fashion. With randoms there's a significant chance of at least one weak link in the team, which makes HM just a chore.

Anyway, at Drodda, the team, apart from the tank and I, failed repeatedly to break Drodda's drain, so she kept healing to max. After about the 6th time of this and many exasperated messages in group chat, one guy says, "how do I break free?". I just thought, 'yeah time to get some breakfast', and politely left.

I mean, play as you like, but for goodness sake at least master the basic key presses before asking for Vet dungeons. The guy was 400CP odd too. Unreal.

Asardes

Never PUG veteran dungeons, especially DLC ones. SotH are an almost guaranteed failure even on normal, because people don't know the mechanics, don't bother to research them beforehand or even listen to what a more experienced member is telling them on the group chat. Since One Tamriel I have never used Group Finder for pledges and when I group with someone who dares to open it to find other people I simply wish him a good day and move on. A few times I grouped from zone chat and trade guilds, but at least I could see who I was grouping with. Most times I only group with guild mates and people from my friends list though. A few days ago I went along as healer with a group in VCOA2 with a PuG-ed tank and it was horrible. We even wiped at trash because he wouldn't taunt. And being only CP150 was no excuse. I've beaten that dungeon as a tank at VR4, with less than CP100, and at that time was as hard as it is now, long before the DB nerf. The DDs were also under par. Next I grouped with 3DDs from my guild and completed the dungeon on HM. It wasn't a smooth run, because nobody was aggroing but at least the trash mobs died quick enough not to pose a real threat. We died a few times and we only beat HM on 2nd attempt, but the total run time was less than it took with the previous group to reach the 1st boss.

Long story short, I don't have time to waste and I find a failed run very tiresome. Running all 3 pledges on 2 characters and questing on the 3rd, with the daily writ on those and inventory management routines on the remaining 6 are very time consuming and require a pretty tight schedule to complete each day. Pledges should take ~90 minutes all in all for one character. Every minute past that I find a waste of precious time.

akl77

Pug is like ESO loot, mostly crap you get.

Junipus

Ravena wrote: »

I am a healer. I've got all of her mechanics down during there hours spent trying and trying and trying. But the group members keep changing.

Last 5 wipes happened because the other duo did not take a light from the atronachs before the dark phase despite me constantly reminding them, even taking the time to type out as I'm healing and seeing the other atronach down. Other times, it's usually tanks getting one hit.

Might I suggest that if 4 guilds of people don't want to do it, there might be some meaning there?

Also, for practical advice, you always take the atronach lights as a healer. Normally the tank and healer take the lights so the DPS can continue to focus on the boss and it means upon going down there's a DPS for each of the assassins without the chance of there being 2 DPS and a tank/healer combo.

Lastly, as mentioned, the debuff is purgeable so save a magicka pot for when you're hit and use the alliance war purge (if you don't have it, templar purge) so you can continue to provide synergies and/or debuffs on the boss and adds so the dps can maintain their resources even if they don't purge themselves.

Also, platform and server?

xRIVALENx

What platform do you play on Ravena? Run vCoS quite often here on my tank and dps, you would be more than welcome to join in the fun.

KingYogi415

As long as tank is good and both sides have a purge, you in the clear.

Peekachu99

Btw if you're a vamp (or party of them), you can totally cheese Velindreth's labyrinth by just mist forming (speed morph) through it with a HoT on, or Vigor to pop before you remist.

xRIVALENx

Always use retreating maneuver myself for the labyrinth portion.

Asardes

xRIVALENx wrote: »

Always use retreating maneuver myself for the labyrinth portion.

Unfortunately that's not an option for a magicka character with 9.5-10K stamina pool, as the skill costs ~7.5K and you also get CCd by the NB adds and you need to break free. It suffices that the stamina builds slot it and also pick the lights so they give CC purge and extra speed to the others running with them, while assuring they are not put together.

xRIVALENx

Yeah magicka characters have it rough in there for sure, break free is enough of a stamina drain.

DPShiro

I honestly really like vCoS, it's one of my favorite dungeons in the game!
Love the mechanics, and the fact that you can't simply burn her too fast. Really well done dungeon in my opinion, hope we get more of those.
The only bad thing about the SotH dungeons is that the loot is crap, and that's a huge reason why no one wants to run them.

But I would never, ever, PUG it.

That's almost as bad as the guy spamming in a trade guild last night (Xbox EU), trying to get a group of randoms to do vMoL, mic wasn't even required.

Junipus

xRIVALENx wrote: »

Yeah magicka characters have it rough in there for sure, break free is enough of a stamina drain.

Normally you have a dps with the healer and one with the tank. The tank taunts the assassin and has the stam to CC break. The healer throws shards so the DPS can pick them up when staying ahead of the healer to maintain stamina. The healer can also use repentance to maintain their stamina too.

It's a *** as a magicka user, but with the right setup it's only an inconvenience rather than a death sentence.

Ravena

xRIVALENx wrote: »

What platform do you play on Ravena? Run vCoS quite often here on my tank and dps, you would be more than welcome to join in the fun.

PC , NA.

xRIVALENx

Ravena wrote: »

xRIVALENx wrote: »

What platform do you play on Ravena? Run vCoS quite often here on my tank and dps, you would be more than welcome to join in the fun.

PC , NA.

Right on! I play on PC NA as well, shoot me a friend request at @xRIVALENx and join in the CoS fun. After enough runs you will be able to do this dungeon with your eyes closed.

idk

Ravena wrote: »

alexkdd99 wrote: »

You have more patience than me. No way I could stay in a single dungeon that long.

It is so frustrating I just can't give up. I'm in 4 guilds but not one seems to want to help with that final boss. So PUG it is.

@Ravena It is time to look for a new guild then.