Dragonstar 8th arena murdered my friends

orangeman57ub17_ESO · September 2014

So the basis of my question is, what does it take to beat the dragonstar arena on the normal difficulty? So far our 4 man group has conquered all of the vet dungeons (very near completing all the speed and death challenges) but have hit a brick wall with the 8th arena (centurians). We are running with:

Templar healer, fully decked out in light, dual restos, 2400 magicka
Nightblade tank, heavy armor, sword and board/resto
Sorcerer DPS, dual wield / destro staff (700 dps both ways)
4th member varies but well instructed on vet content

I could go into specifics of what we run in terms of armor/skills, but my concern is that were going to have to run cookie cutter builds to tackle the Dstar Arena. We are all VR 12+ and have built very good sets of legendary armor and weapons. We stormed the dragonstar arena and conquered all the way to the 8th arena, but fell short of completion on the 4th round. We start by destroying the mage on the west side asap and getting to the east side just before more adds spawn. at this point we are overwhelmed by damage from the centurians, mages, and spheres that just spew damage. weve tried tanking the centurians (dont seem to hold aggro) and tried tanking the adds (destroy tank). We get hit by a reflecting attack from the sphere that we cannot visibly see for about 1800 damage on top of the other damage from other sources. Once a member goes down, its a downhill cycle of death.

Has anyone ran the D Star arena with any builds besides cookie cutter builds using the top gear from trials? We tried the fight about 20 times with no progress. We are very well away that all the arenas have some kind of mechanic that changes your style of play, but we cant seem to trump this one. Enemies hit too hard to mitigate, adds spawn too fast, and if you get caught by the blue centurian when the red centurian comes along you are toast.

I am not complaining that the content is too hard, but seeking a strategy for this arena. I think the dragonstar arena is the greatest challenge to befall us and glad it exists. I know ppl are going to say "use staves and robes" but is it possible to do it otherwise? Troll responses are welcome as long as they are funny.

schroed360 · September 2014

Ok so I can tell you how we have done this...at least from what I remember.
Our key point was that one DD was always kitting the red centurion.If possible the one with the lower dps and I m not sure if hé was taunting him or not( but I think he did). Me as a tank was taking the blue one plus the if I remember well a guy with a 2handed weapon (first priority because he cast a snaring and damaging zone) and also the sphere dwemer( caster if possible too).As a tank I had 2500+ armor(+600 armor on jewelry and 2 reduce cost of block) Going over the softcap sound to make a difference of course also take the skill absorb/reflect magic for his mitigation passive.

Did not have to use it but if the tank cannot mitigate enought damage(I m DK so it may be harder for nightblade) the DD who is actually dpsing can cast bone wall and healer using it synergy ...may help.

Also a lot of mob can be CCed. The DD kitting the red centurion will not use that much magica since running so he may help CCing the lesser threat .

Finaly last universal PVE advice in éso: volcanic rune !! everybody can have this skill and the time to "breathe" that it bring is just enormous ie free heavy attack for everybody.Of course usually we do not use it anymore because of dps build based on scalding rune but a 1500(3000back and forth ) morph respec is not that much.

Also don't dps the boss while there is still add. I m not sure of this but it sound to us that the add pop are related to the life boss%.

Hope this will help you to become a champion of the arena.

TehMagnus · September 2014

A DK tank makes all of it extremely easy

.

Taunt the blue guy with inner beast, and taunt the red guy EXCLUSIVELY with chains. If you use inner beast it wont work and you wont be able to take agro with the chains. Other than that it's pretty easy, take out battlemage first, then casters and keep moving to avoid casters spells. Healer needs only to be extra carefull with the tank if he gets the blue AOE while aggroing the red guy since it's hard to run away from. Tank can still rolldodge away a couple of times but he could need shards for stamina reg.

Blue mob agro isn't lost if you use innerbeast and you cant still complete the level pretty easily if the red isn't being agro by the boss, just keep running away from him.

Teiji · September 2014

Ah, I remember stage eight now!

It was with the Dwarven automatons, right?

Tank just held aggro on everything he could, we took the red then the blue one out. A few people found it extremely hard to dodge the ice projectiles and then dodge-roll out of them, leading to several deaths.

The fight, remembering back seems like a game of positioning, well against ice magicka and so on, that much is obvious.

Position well, consistently, do damage, take minimal damage, elemental drain is love.

None of the group I was apart of was anything "fully decked out" in trials gear and so on. Which I find is good and pushes us to itemise our gear better and do hard-mode with the goal of having fun. As the arena was fun.

We just destroyed the round with adds -> red automaton -> blue automaton -> adds -> boss.

I hate relying on others to interrupt abilities, so I make sure to always use crushing shock for interrupt-duty to negate that issue, It helps. Loads of mobs and bosses have strong abilities that can be interrupted, obviously

pppontus · September 2014

We went in with a couple VR12s and a VR10 healer, nothing special in terms of gear and barely had any strategy apart from killing the Ice centurions fast. That worked though ^^

MarisGolding · September 2014

My group runs two nbs a Templar and a sorc. One kites the red centurion, dps burns down the blue, when adds pop up we drop a negate and veil on the first bunch and crush the sphere. Once the sphere is down we burn the mages first and blue centurion second. Lastly, when the second mob spawns we drop another veil down and burn the second sphere. Usually we have the blue and red centurion as the last two things standing and it's easy peasy. Just keep the centurions apart and always kill the sphere first and don't let two spheres on the map at the same time.

Shunravi · September 2014

magnusnet wrote: »

A DK tank makes all of it extremely easy .
Taunt the blue guy with inner beast, and taunt the red guy EXCLUSIVELY with chains. If you use inner beast it wont work and you wont be able to take agro with the chains. Other than that it's pretty easy, take out battlemage first, then casters and keep moving to avoid casters spells. Healer needs only to be extra carefull with the tank if he gets the blue AOE while aggroing the red guy since it's hard to run away from. Tank can still rolldodge away a couple of times but he could need shards for stamina reg.
Blue mob agro isn't lost if you use innerbeast and you cant still complete the level pretty easily if the red isn't being agro by the boss, just keep running away from him.

My teams nightblade tank fairs just as well, if not better, than our DK (he's a nightblade dodge tank, he has amazing resource management, and doesn't actually take hits half the time). We did a run last night with NB tank and caster, DK 2h, and templar healer. We have also done it with dual weilders and bow users. It's not impossible.

The biggest thing I would say about this fight is keeping controll of the red guy while burning down the blue guy. However you do this deepends on your group dynamic, but the important things are to take out enemies that can slow and root you. Keep moving.

If it helps... When we do this, our healer and tank stay in the middle while the dps run around the outside, but in range of heals. Each dps makes an attempt to draw the agro of a centurion, while the tank handles the mobs. Each dps should be able to handle one of them, as long as they can avoid the adds. Our tank keeps calthrops on the ground for agro and cc. (I think it's to show off how good his resource management is.) We also try to keep VoB on the tanks location for the mitigation.

Lizelle · September 2014

I'd need to know what's killing you to tell you how to win. Look at your death recaps before res'ing.

Other than that, the basic thing for that fight, as others have said. Kite the red spinning guy (whomever has aggro) and avoid kiting near the person that gets the blue circle on them. If someone is unlucky and gets both blue and red on them, use Nova on the centurions and heal as much as possible to keep them alive. They should hold down block while this is happening too to reduce the damage.