and some *** variety wouldnt *** hurt. all it's been today is bloody ice dragons. no change at all.

it's possible but so far today they've only been ice dragons, and the aoe just kills so quickly

Indigogo wrote: »

I'd take them over the fire boi who spawns the damn bone colossus'.

You can drag adds out of the area and they disappear.

Unfortunately, most people still don't seem to know this and often drag them back, before they do, which can be fairly problematic, if there are only 2 or 3 of you.

daemonios wrote: »

I haven't even logged in in a week so there could be some freak stuff going on, but seriously people die to the revamped dragons in totally unnecessary ways.

Yes, they put a lot of dots on you - slot a purge, shield or self-heal and use them. Avoid AoE like the plague. Learn to position yourself - in my experience it's best to take it head-on so you never have to deal with wing or tail swipes, but you need to either stay at range or dodge very quickly out of the bite. If there are too many adds and too few players, don't run around aggroing everything; instead, focus one add and kill it, then move on to the next.

Bonus just for the giggles: if you find yourself taking full aggro despite a bunch of sword and boarders running around not taunting the dragon, and nobody throws you one miserable heal to help you out, you can play the "make the dragon face the leechers" game and see how many you can take down when they fail to block its breath attack

To be fair though, the latter isn't necessarily based on leeching. The tanks just tend to fight over aggro and with no proper communication, dragons end up continously overtaunted very fast.

That said, yeah, if you're dying that fast then you need to prepare yourself with a shield or heal; and if you're getting hit by everything, it sounds more like you're having performance related issues. The dragons do have plenty of telegraphs for their attacks. I actually find that the telegraphs on dragons are purposefully drawn out to help make the dragons feel bigger with the feeling of 'slow' movement.

As stated above, one of the keys is to find a position that works for you and stick to it. I think a lot of people get overhwelmed by running around a lot and continously encountering more different sources of incoming damage. If you pick a position to stay with, you'll cut down on the different things to avoid and can focus on those.

That said, the dragons are nowhere near OP. They are still reasonably easy to kill and with a bit of learning curve there's very few things in a dragon fight that can actually kill you (it'd mostly be you getting aggro, or really bad luck in getting his with a lot of things at once). It's nice that there's overland content that requires people to group up. And while you do sometimes end up with very small groups at a dragon, requiring more care, generally I think it's handled quite gracefully in a way where yes, you may die, but you have time to rez while others stay alive! It really feels like a proper group fight, as far as overland content goes.

Is the ice AOE you mean the giant ring? It's been a while, but that's the only big ice one I remember. I do think that's one of the higher sources of damages as far as dragon fights go, but yeah. Shielding and getting out of there fast are how to beat it. It is possible that you're just in a tough spot resistance-wise with your character. I.E. a level 40 character kind of has a small low as far as stats go, and being freshly low CP also means you're gonna have to put more focus on survivability. There's certain tight spots like that.

In the end though, I think half the issues people have with dragon fights unfortunately end up coming down to performance, whether it's lag, latency or just full-on desync.

There are many things that are right about dragons in Southern Elsweyr.

- They are fun to do

- Dragons v2 are a massive improvement over the dragons v1 we saw in Elsweyr, they have largely replaced the klunky, badly scripted dragons with a greater variety of better scripted and animated ones.

- Southern Elsweyr dragons spawn regularly and they are easy to get to from weyshrines.

- as a result they are still popular and there are always sufficient numbers to bring them down (eventually). Again not something you can say about their Elsweyr counterparts who can sit there, turd like, stinking out the place for hours.

- they are the massive group play threats that people want in the game and are fun and rewarding enough that you will see players rushing through the zone to get to them

- players res at the fight location, so death is not only not the end, but it’s not a total catastrophe.

That said, they are a challenge, especially for newer, less well equipped players. I agree that the ice one is the most challenging/one I hate most. There are still mechanics that are not indicated or telegraphed appropriately. I still consider it a good fight when I survive the whole thing.

You do benefit from having specific skills (or access to synergies), eg purges. And many players will have no idea that these exist or how to get/use them.

It would be super helpful if there were an explanatory NPC who could provide dragon fighting advice rather than players having to figure it out themselves or go online to find out, or just get so frustrated they stop doing dragons entirely.

daemonios wrote: »

FierceSam wrote: »

It would be super helpful if there were an explanatory NPC who could provide dragon fighting advice rather than players having to figure it out themselves or go online to find out, or just get so frustrated they stop doing dragons entirely.

Honestly, I don't really like that mechanics need to be expressly spelled out. It's bad enough in DLC dungeons that you get NPCs shouting "do this, now do that" to explain stuff that would otherwise be next to impossible to find out.

ESO started out with a good idea: provide visual feedback of what's happening to allow players to react accordingly. Hence the painted-over AoE areas, the sparkles above baddies charging up a heavy attack, etc. The problem is that ZOS aren't consistent with the telegraphs. Fighting dragons, you often need to react to different cues such as a slight movement of the tail or raising of the wing denoting incoming tail or wing swipe. In the case of ice dragons' outer storm ring, there is no AoE telegraph telling you to stay well inside or well outside the damage area, or where its limits are. Same with the fire breath.

Mind you, it's still possible to learn how to avoid every attack, and I find most of them exceedingly easy. The only ones that sometimes get me are the bite, when I find myself at less than full health and unable to dodge out, and certainly the channelled straight-on breath attack (as opposed to the sideways breath that is easily blocked) because my light armour wearing DD sometimes can't blockcast spam shield fast enough to counter the massive damage. But the fact remains that there is less and less consistency in the game when it comes to telegraphing enemy attacks.

I agree, all mechanics should be clearly and consistently indicated and give the skilled player enough time to react to counter them and the inexperienced player enough clear information that they understand both what went wrong and how to avoid that happening again.

Examples of bad dragon mechanics are

- unindicated wing swipes that do not make clear the area of effect

- pale or non-existent AoE indicators of ground effects

- unavoidable or unblockable/undodgeable attacks

- tedious one shot mechanics that cannot be bypassed (eg the ice dragon’s unindicated wing swipe that puts players into ice AoE that stuns them so they cannot get out and die)

- the purgeable soul steal attack

The last of these is an attack that is not recognisable (until someone has explained it to you). It’s in no tutorial and your death recap doesn’t say what it is, what caused it or how to prevent it in future. Newer/low level players do not have the skills to purge, so it is, in effect an instakill for them.

I also agree that the use of chatty NPCs in combat is an indication of poor combat design. If you have to have to tell me what needs to be done during a fight, then the fight is badly designed. Eg in Scalecaller Peak when the NPC has to explain the need to keep the two ogres separate or they will enrage. The same NPC calling out the ingredients they need during the penultimate boss fight is an example where it does work as the NPC is an active part of the fight mechanic.

However, sometimes players need a pre-fight briefing if they are guaranteed to be facing something they have never seen before (eg the purgeable soul steal attack). It would be helpful for there to be an NPC in, say the Dragonhold, who could give advice to players if they chose to interact with them.

You should die fast. It's a dragon

dazee wrote: »

I think actually this large amount of aoe damage over time makes skills like Barrier and Purge more useful which is something I can appreciate, since my main for vet content is a healer, and I prefer preventing damage over healing it when possible.

It is one of the cool things about dragon fights - they genuinely challenge healers and make other players aware of how valuable they are. It makes being a questing storyline healer actually a viable choice, which is great.

I just wish there was some way other than ‘osmosis’ where newer players could have things like the soul steal/purge mechanic explained to them.

There are some mechanics that dragons are teaching new players that don’t have to be explained, but are learnt through practice, like don’t stand in the Electric AoE and move out of its way as it moves, don’t stand in the icicles and move if they appear beneath you etc. But some (like the soul tear) are more complex and players would benefit from an explanation.

dazee wrote: »

I heard the reason people prefer S Elsweyr dragon hunting is the dragons are closer together.

Very true. The long spawn times and inaccessible locations of the Northern Elsweyr dragons are a major inconvenience, especially for new players who may not even have a mount, let alone a fully speed trained one or have rapids. As a result many players don’t even bother with the middle of the map dragons and camp out at Star Haven, where the spawn times are long, but at least you can get there in time.

ZOS appear to have learnt from this when placing the Southern Elsweyr dragons. They spawn more regularly and land nearer to accessible weyshrines so it’s practical for players on foot to follow them and still arrive in time for the fight.

Granicus wrote: »

Perhaps using Iceheart could hel ... Oh, I nearly forgot.

On sale at the Golden... this weekend only (#nerfSorcs) lol

Lord_Hypnos wrote: »

Well you could always Gitgud and/or make a char that has decent resistance and gear.

Yes, and it would be handy if there was some NPC somewhere (maybe in the Fighters or Mages Guilds) who could explain to new players how they might accomplish this.

To gitgud you need to know what needs to be done and then practice it. I would imagine that most of the players being totalled by dragons have no idea about resistance and little or no idea about gear.