Draigoch the Red

The Draigoch raid was added with the Rise of Isengard expansion, and it has become fairly popular. I've attempted this fight 4 times and completed it twice.

Originally, the instance was intended to be released with the May 2011 update (Update 3: Lost Legends of Eriador), but was pushed back because of technical issues.

The back story for the raid is that Draigoch is one of the remaining Great Dragons of Middle Earth, and he's worshiped by the Dunlending tribes.

Although the raid is related to the Rise of Isengard, Draigoch's lair is actually located in Enedwaith. It's in the far east, beyond the Serpent Halls in Thror's Combe (the landscape beyond the Mysterious Relic has changed: there was previously a wall, which has been removed. There is now a valley in the Misty Mountains, with an entrance into the lair. Be forewarned: the area is patrolled by level 75 Dunlendings, so players who are on-level with Enedwaith should exercise caution.

The raid becomes available at level 75, but requires a prerequisite quest that starts in Galtrev. Once you've discovered the lair, you can enter and attempt to defeat the dragon.

The raid can be completed on Tier 1 or Tier 2. Tier 2 is available if the raid has 13-24 players, and Tier 1 is available if the raid has 12 or fewer players. The game automatically sets the tier, and there is no difference in the fight. Completing T2 grants the title "Born From Ashes". Completing T1 grants the title, "Bathed in Fire"

There is also a challenge. There are a series of 12 special Fellowship Maneuvers that do special damage to the dragon. The challenge is to complete all 12 in the raid; for this reason, the group should include a Burglar, who can reliably trip the FMs. Completing the challenge grants the title "Manoeuvre Master".

The idea of the raid is to start with 24 people to learn the mechanics and gradually whittle the group to 12. However, most people just jump in with 12. It is possible to complete the three deeds (T1, T2, and Challenge) in one raid. Completing the three deeds grants the title "The Red".

Now, for a discussion of the fight.

When you first enter the lair, you run down a passage. Draigoch senses your intrusion, and flies up, looking through openings in the walls. If he spots you, he breathes fire through the opening - and you're instantly dead. At the end of the passage, there's an opening covered with a thin bit of rock. Once enough people stand on this capstone, it breaks (stopping Draigoch from firing on other folks in the opening passage) and the groups falls into Draigoch's Lair proper.

The group splits into two parts: a DPS group and a tank group. The tank group contains a tank and a healer. The DPS group contains everyone else. You don't fight Draigoch as a whole, but deal with his individual parts: head, paws, and body. Since the raid is split into 2 groups of six, there will be 4 members who are strictly DPS; the other six includes a burglar, and should handle the Fellowship Maneuvers.

The tank manages the dragon's head, and the DPS group deals with the four paws. There are 3 phases to the fight. Phase 1 and 2 are similar, with the group running around a series of corridors on the outskirts of the dragon's horde. He periodically switches position, and the group has to follow along. The tank usually calls out the direction the group must take.

Once the paws are defeated, Draigoch falls to the floor, and his body become vulnerable. This is when the burglar can trip the FMs. Once he recovers, the group must run back to the safety of the corridors and the fight repeats itself.

Phase 2 adds additional mechanics, but it mostly affects the tank group. The DPS group repeats their efforts from Phase 1. Obviously, I've never tanked the fight, so I'm not sure what the mechanics are.

In Phase 3, the group moves onto the treasure horde. Again, it's a repeat: the DPS group takes on each paw, until he falls to the floor. Because of certain bugs, it is generally not a good idea to trip FMs during this phase. This phase can be chaotic, and being out of position can mean death. The gold is on fire, and Draigoch periodically leaps up, and the group has to stand on a certain spot. There's also a lot of distributed damage, so the group must be standing on top of one another (this is true during the entire fight - it is a good idea to mark your DPS lead, and then everyone can move on top of the marked individual. The more tightly grouped the DPS folks are, the less likely anyone will die).

I found the fight to be fairly choreographed. With the right group leader, it's fairly easy to complete, but it is an endurance fight. You're only out of combat for around 30 seconds at a time - there are no breaks long enough to allow you to grab food or to go to the bathroom. The key is to listen, move when you're told to move, and stay as close together as possible.

The rewards, however, are worth it. There's an amazing cloak, not to mention a Worn Symbol or Celebrimbor (in addition to one for completing the deed).

Epic Conclusions

I've mostly been tinkering around with the Summer Festival: completing the daily quests to get tokens that I've been spending on the new consumables deeds. Tonight, I completed the "Too Much Drinking, Too Much Running" deed when Signar won the Keg Race.

I haven't had much luck with the Hobbit Eating Contest, and everything was on cooldown, so I went back to Enedwaith to do the repeatables for reputation with the Grey Company (I should be kindred later today).

While working on the Uniformity quest (gathering uniforms from the Shieldbreakers), someone on Unite started asking for a group for the Nar's Peak repeatables. I needed the gold tokens, so I joined up. These are actually fairly easy runs; they are just time consuming. After turning in those quests, I finished off the reputation quests.

At that point, I figured the cooldown on race quests had expired; thus, I ran to Thorin's Hall and Hobbiton to pick up more race tokens. While I was en route, I got a message from a player with whom I've run several instance: his kin was going to run the The Rift of Nûrz Ghâshu, but they needed a Lore-Master. At first, I was reluctant - it's a bit too long a run, and it was already 9:30PM. In the end, I decided to run it, because I really want to get kindred with every faction.

The run went exceptionally well, except for the second boss, Zurm. We wiped, mostly because I was expecting the last wave to enter in the wrong place and didn't get the stuns off in time. The second attempt went much better, and we downed him without much incident.

Even Thrang, a fight I normally dread, went really well. The mechanics of the fight finally sunk into my head, and we were able to defeat him fairly easily. That left only Thaurlach, the Balrog.

I haven't had much luck with Thaurlach. I got credit for defeating him once, but I was defeated early, and spent much of the fight watching the group take him down. I've faced him a couple of times since, but after 3-4 wipes, the group usually disbands. This fight is easily one of the most difficult in the game.

We wiped on the first attempt. I'm not sure what happened, but we regrouped and went for it again. The second time, things were going much better. We took out the Ever-Seer, all the adds, and even burned Thaurlach down to around 30K. Suddenly, though, people started dying.

Without prelude, there were suddenly just four of us left: a champion, a minstrel, a burg, and - surprisingly - yours truly. We all had massive dread, little health, and little power, but were so close to having him down. I was sure it was going to be another wipe, especially considering that we were in the AoE stage of the fight. Even Glathlírel, the NPC that we escort in this fight, was nearly dead.

From my perspective, I realized I had to power everyone up, spot heal to help out the mini, apply stun immunity on the champ, and start dealing damage. The remaining four buckled down, and before I knew it, we had Thaurlach down!

It was truly an epic moment.

A Tale of Two Balrogs

Thursday night, I joined up with the Vilya Alliance to do the Would Wing in Ost Dunhoth. Afterwards, we decided to attempt the Fear Wing, and came face-to-face with Durin's Bane.



Saturday, we went on a rampage in The Rift of Nûrz Ghâshu, and came face-to-face with Thaurlach.


Unfortunately, in neither case did we take down the Balrog, but both were still good fights.

PuGs: The Ugly & The Good

A PuG, or pick-up group, is a group formed on-the-fly with members you don't necessarily know or run with regularly. PuGs are popular for 3- and 6-person instances. However, running a raid with a pick-up group can be a risky proposition; many raids require a coordination that far exceeds what you get from most PuGs, and the strengths or weaknesses of your fellows can only be learned through repeatedly running with them.

Pugs are perfectly okay for some raids, such as the Turtle or the Watcher, which simply require a knowledge of your class role and the mechanics of the MoBs. For other raids, including the Rift and Dar Narbugud, group coordination becomes much more important. Instances such as Barad Guldur and Ost Dunhoth require even greater coordination.

Anyway, Monday night (June 16), while I was finishing up the final slayer deed in Mirkwood, someone asked for a group to run Barad Guldur (BG). I wanted to run it, but was somewhat reluctant. I've run BG a few times with a regular group, but we've never gotten passed Durchest, the first boss. Trying it with a group of people I don't know gave me pause.

In the end, I decided to join, if only for more experience. Unfortunately, the group was every bit as uncoordinated as I feared. during The Gauntlet (a running fight to the first boss), individual members repeatedly died, and we finally wiped. The second time, we successful reached the Durchest.

The fight against Durchest was a disaster: the tanks couldn't maintain aggro and allowed Durchest to run all over the room. As a result, his attacks were all over the place based on who was attacking him at the moment. One of the tanks repeatedly died, which is a bad, bad thing, since Durchest earns a healing buff each time someone dies; he can stack the buffs and use them when he's low on health. Obviously, the more buffs he stacks, the longer the fight will last. Also, our healer wasn't doing a very good job with healing. She was doing big heals and eating through power so fast I couldn't keep her charged. I finally had to stop trying and leave her to her own devices (earning some choice words).

After two attempts, the instance reset itself, and we left.

Then, Tuesday night, I joined a group to run Halls of Crafting, an instance in Moria that is part of the Lothlorien cluster. After the first fight against a group of trash MoBs, I was questioning the wisdom of this decision. It seemed like it would be a repeat of the Barad Guldur run: Tanks who can't hold aggro, a healer who doesn't heal adequately, and group members who run around aggroing willy-nilly. Because of this seeming lack of coordination, I died several times.

Luckily, by the third trash fight, things got much better, with everyone falling into step. We started dealing with the trash MoBs easily and reached the first boss quite quickly. Unfortunately, one of the group members went link dead at this moment. We waited, but after 15 minutes, it was obvious that he was coming back, and the group leader recruited another person to take his place.

At that point, things truly fell into place. We took down the first boss quickly and easily, then moved on to the second boss, who seemed to die even before the doors closed. The final boss didn't die that quickly, but he went down easily.

The group leader also wanted to pick up some items from Sammath Gûl, one of the instances in the Dol Guldur cluster. We went into the dungeon, and successfully fought our way through the first boss, who went down without issue. At the second boss, our group leader went link dead. We waited around for awhile, but it became obvious that he wasn't coming back. At that point, we recruited a Guardian to take his place.

We took down the remaining bosses fairly easily - even completing hard mode for extra medallions.

After completing this instance, we decided to take on the Grand Stairs, mostly because the Guardian needed a few medallions in order to complete his Moria armour set.

Now, I have learned to despise GS: the instance is farmed for medallions, so it gets run all the time. With the wrong group, it can be a nightmare, and I seem to always be a part of the wrong group: GS has rarely gone easily.

Luckily, we had fallen into sync, and this run became perhaps the best I've ever participated in. We were burning everything down quickly and easily - even Igash fell within 3 minutes. It was quite amazing (we also went back and took out a troll because our Mini needed one for a deed).

I hope that this particular group can join up more often. I'd love to do some other instances with them.

Hint-A-Week: Raid Locks

A Raid Lock is an important concept to become familiar with, especially when you start grouping - and even more especially when you start raiding. The game does not allow players to run dungeons/instances endlessly. Instead, raid-locks will be instituted once you complete an instance or a stage of an instance.

Raid locks accomplish two things:

1. Allow the group to disband and re-group later to complete the instance. As a result, the group can restart an instance, especially the long instances such as The Rift of Nûrz Ghâshu, as needed, without repeating all the stages.

It is not necessary to restart with the exact same group configuration. In general, however, no member of the raid should have a lock that the raid leader does not share. For example, a group completes stages 1-3 of The Rift before disbanding. All but one person later reconvenes, and a new person who has completed staqes 1-4 joins the group. Unless this new member is made raid leader, the group wil not be able to enter - and, once they do, they will be marked as having completed stage 4.

Any locks are permanently inherented.

2. Prevents player from re-running an instance endlessly. Once a player completes all stages of an instance, s/he will not be able to re-enter it until the raid lock expires.

All raid locks expire at 6:00am Eastern Standard Time. In most cases, locks expire twice weekly: on Mondays and Thursdays. Some locks expire once a week on Thursdays. The locks on Carn Dûm expire on Mondays and Fridays.

You can view your raid locks in two ways:
1. Type /raid locks in the chat window. The locks appear in the chat window.
2. Open the social panel, click on the Group Stage Information tab.