Azureblight Cancroid stranglers spawn info

Chrysa1is · May 2020

What is the deal with the stranglers on this boss? Do they spawn more based on boss %, do they spawn when other stranglers die?

Its seems as though when you kill one, another three spawn and it is really annoying because theu are endless and inpossible to kill and have none around. Are they bugged, or are they all supposed to respawn at a stupidly quick rate? We are doing Vet Maarselok. Anyone got any tips to help?

DraconicFalcon · May 2020

Unfortunately, the best way to beat this fight is to try and to finish it off within 3 cycles or less (Ideally the latter) before the stranglers even start spawning. If you need to, and if the tank could handle it, get replace your healer with a 3rd DPS, or get the healer in a DPS loadout.

Honestly, on the strangler spawns I have no clue despite running it a lot of times, it seems rather inconsistent on how and where they spawn.

codierussell · May 2020

They are percentage based. If you do no damage to the boss the first seed they still don't spawn. The lower the percentage the more spawn. It is not worth killing the stranglers imo.

xaraan · May 2020

They spawn (maybe some automatically based on time, but extra ones...) based on whether or not people step into the blue circle that the golem thing puts around him. Try and stay out of that and you shouldn't get extra.

Chrysa1is · May 2020

They seriously need to change the stranglers. They are ridiculously OP.

Chrysa1is · May 2020

@ZOS_GinaBruno please review the stranglers in this boss.

tsaescishoeshiner · May 2020

In my experience, they seem to spawn faster the more are currently alive, but do only spawn at certain both percentages. Even killing the boss in 3 cycles can be too slow

Here's the winning strategy for this boss (The Conga Method):

The tank pulls the Lurcher in circle, following the DPS and healer. That way DPS can cleave the stranglers when they come up.

DPS & healer HAVE to be FIRST in the conga line!! That way, when the Lurcher creates a death circle, no one gets split up, and everyone can just walk backwards.

Here's how it looks:

<--- Order of movement in a circle <--- Healer & DPS <--- Tank <--- Lurcher <--- Lurcher's death AoE

Despite being a really simple strategy, it makes a huge difference in your efficiency as you can cleave the stranglers safely. You have to go faster than the tank is used to

I guarantee your group will probably not understand this at first if you don't have voice. Tanks also aren't used to moving bosses this quickly. It turns this boss into a really easy one, but people have trouble understanding it the first time around. Sorry I don't have a picture lol.

Edit: TL;DR kite the boss in a circle quickly so you can AoE the stranglers, and stay ahead the tank to not get split up

John_Falstaff · May 2020

I wasn't looking at the logs in detail, but I don't think the stranglers are the biggest danger. It would seem that they're putting a stacking dot on you (I think both are 'spit' on death recap), some 1k/s/stack, and I think it should be purgeable, so if you have a lot of stacks on you, you wipe. If group damage isn't too high, maybe you could try purging lots.

The tidbit from @xaraan about AoE is interesting, I'll definitely check it when I have time. Might be very useful.

Chrysa1is · May 2020

My group have had to quit the dungeon, been on it for hours and im really annoyed. Death by stranglers every time. Strangler spit hitting at over 9000 damage X the 5 or 6 that have spawned, youre talking 45k - 54k damage if they all target you, you've got no chance. Sometimes the stranglers even spawn inside eachother, so youve got 2 stacked into eachother and more spawning around the boss room. It definitely seems to me that they are broken because it is impossible to kill them and break away. We tried our hardest to avoid the AoE rings the boss dropped, we melted the core when we dropped its shield, we melted stranglers when they appeared, but more and more spawned in their place, it gets to a point where you can't stay on top of them all and you get overwhelmed and die. I don't know what else to do, now im standing in Daggerfall scratching my balls annoyed because i've wasted my time in a hopeless, in vain attempt to try and beat this boss.

alcoraptor · May 2020

Our group struggled with this boss for ages before we realised that the stranglers' spit is a DoT that stacks - you can see the number of stacks on your debuff bar. The more times you get hit with the spit, the more stacks you have on you.
At one stack you take about 1k/s damage, but you can very quickly get 4/5/6 stacks on you and start taking over 9k/s damage and it becomes unsurvivable.

However, the stacks can be purged - which resets the stack count back down to 1, and it stops doing ridiculous damage.
We got our healer to slot Efficient Purge, and stick with the DDs while hitting purge every time their stacks got over 2.
That way you can pretty much ignore the stranglers and focus on getting the boss down. We killed any stranglers that happened to be stacked on the boss, but the main focus was on the lurcher.
Once you get that rotation down, you should be able to take the boss down in 3 cycles pretty easily

Grega · May 2020

Chrysa1is wrote: »

What is the deal with the stranglers on this boss? Do they spawn more based on boss %, do they spawn when other stranglers die?

Its seems as though when you kill one, another three spawn and it is really annoying because theu are endless and inpossible to kill and have none around. Are they bugged, or are they all supposed to respawn at a stupidly quick rate? We are doing Vet Maarselok. Anyone got any tips to help?

To my knowledge, which is fairly accurate since I did all the mini achievements on that boss, they way the strangler spawns work are directly related to shouting. Every time the dragon shouts, for every player that does not block that (player goes flying in the air if they don’t block). 1-2 more stranglers spawn.

So if people aren’t blocking shouts, you could be in that fight literally forever as dragon only lands when all stranglers are exterminated.

code65536 · May 2020

Post #10 has the correct solution: Ignore the stranglers and make sure the supports have Efficient Purge. Strangler spawn rate is too fast for a kill-strangler approach to be viable. You're sealing your own doom by wasting precious damage and time on the stranglers.

I'm going to repost what I wrote last year...

code65536 wrote: »

Strategies for this fight:
Hold the Infestor just outside of the center blue area. This minimizes the area denied by the Infestor's Blighted Ground since half of it will be in an area that is already off-limits. It also reduces the distance the seed carrier needs to traverse.

Save ultimates for when the Cancroid's shield is brought down.

The tank usually should not be the seed carrier since they must quickly taunt the new Infestor, which spawns immediately when the old Infestor dies.

The tank should stack the new Infestor on the Cancroid when its shield is taken down, so that the Infestor could be cleaved.

The Spit from the Azureblight Stranglers applies a damage-over-time effect. The damage from this effect is typically inconsequential, but it can stack if a player is being hit multiple times, and at high stacks, this effect is lethal. Having someone slot Efficient Purge is recommended if you are encountering a lot of stranglers. For players on PC, the Purge Tracker addon will light up if someone gets 4 or more stacks of the Spit effect.

https://youtu.be/YFHDSXfXbk8

notyuu wrote: »

the stranglers that basically make it impossible for anybody with less than top tier meta dps to clear..ya know..the annoying things that spawn in and shoot you for 10K a pop

The Spit projectiles don't hit that hard. The Spit DoT, on the other hand, if it stacks up too high, can tick for ridiculous amounts. I've seen it tick for as high as 11K when it went up to 12 stacks. Purging the effect not only stops the damage, but it also resets the stacks. Having someone run Efficient Purge can save a group from being overrun by stranglers.

Furthermore, since this fight is about doing as much burst DPS as possible whenever the boss's shield is deactivated, you should treat it like the vHoF Archcustodian. Specifically, it can help to build for burst damage (e.g., using Balorgh for this fight) and players should just apply one round of DoTs on the boss at the start of the damage phase and only use spammables until the shield comes back up--any DoTs that you reapply towards the end of the damage phase will be wasted because much of the DoT's time will be cut short.

Elwendryll · May 2020

Exactly what Code said. Ignore the stranglers, keep everything you have to burst the cancroid when the shield is down.

It should be reasonably easy in 3 phases for most decent groups. 2 phases for good groups, and it is possible in only 1 phase by cheesing a bit.

If you have a lower dps it's fine. Just purge, but in any case, killing the stranglers is not a good idea.

Chrysa1is · May 2020

Purging works but the stranglers dont stop respawning, kill 1, then 3 more appear, kill 1 of those 3, 3 more appear. You end up casting purge every 5 seconds and then you have no magicka left and everyone died. Its a joke!!!!!! Please f❤❤❤❤❤❤ review their damage output or review the stranglers because their numbers are dumb!!!!!!!!!!!! Tried this again with the same team just now and ive given up because the stranglers are OP. I'll wait til Maarselok Helm appears at golden merchant. Never trying this dungeon on vet again.

We have literally done everything in this list and we die from stranglers.

code65536 · May 2020

Chrysa1is wrote: »

Purging works but the stranglers dont stop respawning, kill 1, then 3 more appear, kill 1 of those 3, 3 more appear. You end up casting purge every 5 seconds and then you have no magicka left and everyone died. Its a joke!!!!!! Please f❤❤❤❤❤❤ review their damage output or review the stranglers because their numbers are dumb!!!!!!!!!!!! Tried this again with the same team just now and ive given up because the stranglers are OP. I'll wait til Maarselok Helm appears at golden merchant. Never trying this dungeon on vet again.

We have literally done everything in this list and we die from stranglers.

Stop killing the stranglers!

You CANNOT afford to waste precious time and damage on the stranglers. This fight is effectively a DPS race. You must kill the boss before you get overwhelmed by stranglers. And if your DPS is low enough that you are encountering stranglers, then you're just making things worse by wasting what DPS you have on stranglers. What Purge does is that it buys you more time. But you can't waste that time that you bought by hitting stranglers instead of the real priority targets.

alcoraptor · May 2020

As other posters have said, killing the stranglers is a waste of time - the respawn rate is too high to make this viable.
You need to keep your dds and healer together at all times so you can all get purge and heals together. If there's stranglers in your path (and on the boss) then kill them, but don't go out of your way.
Get the lurcher down asap as a group, run the seed and ulti-dump the tree, rinse and repeat. Your healer will need to use purge every 10sec or so, so they'll need to have fairly decent mag recovery

Chrysa1is · May 2020

We've tried killing them, we've tried not killing them. They spawn way too quickly. Sad mode