Vengeance

http://vnboards.ign.com/message.asp?topic=50245360&replies=11

Guy claims to have talked to a dev at E3:

<<Dragons:

ALL dragons are killable in the same manner. Easy now Hibs, I was assured this was true by the guy who claimed to have actually coded the AI for all three lizzies. The less players you take the better your chances. If you show up with over 100 peeps you will nearly always fail.
The optimum number is near 50 from what I gathered. Seems the dragon has a percent chance to spawn his fire weapon based upon how many peeps are there and so if 100 or more show up you're getting that breath 100% of the time or close to it. So, in order to kill a dragon you must get all your peeps (casters included) to sit inside the dragons polys and beat it to death one whack at a time. When I pointed out that taking 35-50 toons to the dragons lair only to sit inside it's polys and whack it to death seemed a tad less than epic, he replied "It's called using tactics..." Heh, had to laugh at that.

Asked about respecs and why they don't grant them and got a sidestep pretty much. Seems the devs think killing dragons is easy and therefor should be done more often. Gee, I guess everyone who doesn't know that 100+ peeps = almost certain failure and vicotry = 35 peeps inside the dragon whacking away is a total noob. Perhaps Mythic will remove the word 'Epic' from it's description of the dragons as really, who are they trying to fool here?

Anyway, that's about it for the convo. I must say that the guys I spoke to were very nice and really did love the game they created and believe it or not play. I wont tell you what realm they all played in as I wouldn't want to promote favoritism threads but it's initials starts with H. Oops.>>

Heh, what a load.  

We've tried with only a few (50-60)--same result, blasted by fire.  

I don't think the developers know their own game. Remember when we used to be able to kill our dragon?  He would occassionally hit for 0 damage with his breath weapon.  Well, they fixed tht, so now he hits for 3k.  The frequency has never once changed, just that we are getting hit by it.  That raid I went on with 40 people, we still got whacked with that 0 damage breathe weapon.  Back then, the dragon only did damage on its breath weapon when it hit 75%, 50% and 25% life.

Plus, I'm pretty sure it only counts the individuals as "attacking it" if they are in the lair. So the wave strategy Cep was using should have worked and we would have only had about a 30% chance of the breath weapon going off. Though if you take 50 people, put them all in the lair and swing away at the guy, even if he does it just once you know that the whole raid's over.

It was worth a shot though, and I'll go again if we can get 50 people together and a good strategy.  I hear 3 groups of archers works well and i know we have them shelved somewhere.  Just bring 500 arrows each :)

On the other successful raids Where we had a lot of Scouts the Dragon died quicker. The Casters spells almost never land, Melee only does a couple points of damage but, arrows waqs doing 20+ not including damage add.

Gather a raid together and bring all the realms scouts. The Dragon will probably die. But, i saw 1 thread where this was said. You know what some of the archers responses where? I will quote as best as memory serves... " So for 50 levels of PvE and in RvR you all don't want us in your groups, but now you need us to help you kill the dragon, Kiss off"

Thats the mentality that you may go up against:(

I got hit for 3859 by the breath weapon.  My fire resist is...well pretty good.  That would have been enough to kill me three times.

I did evade the dragon once, which pwned.  I wasn't even dex or qui buffed.  He evaded me once, as well.

So Gueuze = Golestandt.

IIRC ice pbae lands for somewhere in the 50s per cast, and with all the new ice wizards we got that would add up in a hurry. At least til all the juice ran out.

I tanked the dragon for 13 rounds twisting AF/damage, I think... memory fuzzy, it was a long time ago. I even got to land a brutalize on him.

jeez, nerf axecleaver

Ive tried Ice PBAOE which didnt nothing, this may have changed but the AOE which did work was of course GT AOE which we of course have very few of.

I was hit by the dragon breath for 5004.  Of course, he was pissed and aimed right for me.

I do about 4-5 damage without any adds or buffs.  

Fully self-buffed I was doing 30-70 damage per swing on the last successful raid (pre patch). I've also evaded the dragon at least 3 consecutive times, and I managed to pull the Counter Evade -> Friar's Fury chain on him at least once.

It just seemed to me that it takes a little bit longer for archers to build up aggro while they shooting. So if you have about 12 of them there shooting at the dragon the damage really builds up. Last few raids i was on not many Scouts was there. Last successful one we had about 10 there.

Evade 2.  No buffs.  To put this in perspective, I don't even evade GREENS.

NERF MINSTRELS!

hehe, no kidding.  At that rate, we ought to just send in the minstrel SWAT team to take out the dragon.