Monday, December 8, 2008

The Oculus

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First post. Hope people enjoy these guides and use them to reduce wipes in dungeons.

Recommended Crowd Control:
Sleep, Sap, Sheep, Repentance, Banish, Fear, Freezing Trap.

When you zone in you will see several Azure Ley-Whelps. They Cast Arcane Bolt which does roughly 1K per whelp. I suggest pulling them and running away and make them all run up to the same spot. This will make tanking and AoEing easier. Occasionally there will be an Azure Inquisitor or Azure Spellbinder mixed in with them. I suggest killing the whelps first. There will be a pull of 3 mobs before the portal to the first boss containing a mix of Inquisitors and Spellbinders. CC and Kill them and portal up to the first boss.

Drakos the Interrogator ~400k HP
This boss if easy for everyone but the healer. Tank him in the center. Avoid the orbs once they stop as they will exlode shortly after. He also casts Magic Pull which brings all players up to him. Run back to a safe location after this as he will spawn several orbs after pulling your group to him. The tank will occasionally be tossed into the air by Thundering Stomp bit it is nothing to worry about. Keep dancing the dance and he'll be dead in no time.

After this boss dies 3 NPC will be freed from the cages on the same platfrom as Drakos. The one on the left will give you a Emerald Drake. The one on the right will give the Amber Drake. The center NPC gives the Ruby Drake. The Emerald Drake is your healer later on, the Amber is your DPS, and the Ruby is your tank. I suggest 1 Ruby, and 2 each of the others.

Ruby Abilities:
Searing Wrath: Your only damage attack and only way to generate threat. It is a chain lightening that increases in damage per new target it chains into.
Evasive Maneuvers: As you take damage you gain Evasive Charges. You may avoid 1 attack per Evasive Charge when you cast Evasive Maneuvers until no charges remain. I find taking 3-4 attacks then using this is the best way to optimize the use of your charges.
Martyr (After Mage-Lord Urom dies):Protect everyone in your party from incoming spell and redirects them to you. Keeps healing focused on you more than your teammates. I used it constantly. And I always had Evasive Charges this way.

Emerald Abilities:
Leeching Poison: Stack it 3 times and keep it that way! Heals you for the damage it deals. Your only self heal.
Touch the Nightmare: Takes 30% of your Drakes max HP and uses it to do 25000 damage to the target. It also reduces the targets damage by 25% for 30 seconds.
Dream Funnel(After Mage-Lord Urom dies): Channeled. Transfer 5% of your max HP to the target. Lasts 10 seconds. Combined with your Leeching Poison you are an HP battery!

Amber Drake:
Shock Lance: Deals damage. Deals additional damage per Shock Charge on the target. (Read the next one to learn what these charges are.)
Stop Time: Stops time for 10 seconds and applies 5 Shock Charges. One minute cooldown. Useful in oh so many ways. Spam it constantly on trash.
Temporal Rift(After Mage-Lord Urom dies): For each 15000 damage the target takes while under this a shock charge is placed on it. This spell also increases the damage they take by 100%. Only problem is it is channeled. Communicate with your teammates to use it efficiently.

If you want the achievements for not using a color I have some theoretical strategies for this.
Use 5 Amber drakes for 2 achievements @ once. Rotate time stop every 12 seconds. That means 10 seconds of every minute will be damage. Barely enough time for damage to be done. Use the time dodging the orbs to take out the smaller whelps.
If you want the achievement for not using amber substitute them for an additional ruby and emerald drake (2 ruby 3 emerald).

Varos Cloudstrider: Probably the hardest boss in the duengon. He has 3 main abilities.

Amplify Magic: Increases magic damage taken by 1800 and healing taken by 3600. A double-edged sword. I suggest removing it from everyone but your tank. As he shouldn't be in the majority of lightening.
Call Azure Ring Captain: Summons an Azure Ring Captain that occasionally channels a blue laser that follows a random party member for 8-12 seconds. Run away from it and try not to lead it into your teammate.
Energize Cores: This is the biggest ability to watch out for. Imagine his platform is a tasty pie. This pie is cut into 3 slices.
One of the three slices will be filled with thin violet lightening. This is telling you that you need to get out of that area. After a few seconds it will be electrocuting everyone in this area with thicker lightening that does a very large amount of damage. It moves counter- clockwise (to the left) so if the bottom slice was the dangerous one, move to the left, you will only have to dodge once every three casts. as you wont be moving into the next danger area.
Continue dodging lightening and lasers and you will shock this boss to death in no time!

Fly up and to your left and you will see the third boss, Mage-Lord Urom, evocating. Attack him from 30+ yards. He will spawn 5~ mobs or different races. If he spawns Humanoids kill ogres first as they can stun. Then kill the naga as they net and cast Water Tomb. If he spawns Elementals kill the fire elementals first as they cast blaze which puts fire on the ground that damages those who stand in it. If you don't notice it you can die fairly quickly. Then the air elementals to keep them from cycloning your healer.Finally kill the the water elementals. If he spawns Beasts kill the serpents first, their chain lightening can be annoying. Then the mammoth and finally the wolf. After confronting him he will teleport to the next chunk of island and spawn one of the two groups he hadn't spawned yet. This will happen one more time until you have fought all 3 types of his minions. After the 3rd pet show he will portal to the blue ring a little below you. This is where the boss fight will take place!

Mage-Lord Urom:
Abilities
Time Bomb: Does damage to you then explodes hurting your teammates for damage equal to the hp you have lost (I.E. you have 10k and your at 8k. Your teammates in range take 2k.) Try to spread out.
Frostbomb: Tosses a bomb at the feet of your main tank that deals damage every 3 seconds to anyone in the area of the snow it creates. It also slows anyone in it.
Teleport: Teleports to the center of the circle and begins casting Empowered Arcane Explosion. There are 3 pillars you can hide behind. If you don't you will probably die. Don't tempt fate.
The fight is fairly easy. The tank will face the boss and everyone will be fairly far behind the tank. The tank will walk backwards as nessecary to avoid frostbombs and the dps/healer will back up as well. When he teleports everyone hides until the AE finishes. He will re-teleport to your tank after this. Continue to circle the platform until he breathes his last breath. After he dies fly up and find the loot chest on one of the highest platforms and wait for your party to assemble. The last fight is entirely on your drake vehicle.

Ley-Guardian Eregos:

Abilities:
Enraged Assault: When he casts this have an Amber drake cast time stop. If you have no Amber drake then just take the extra damage or use Evasive Manuvers.
Arcane Volley: I believe it is his main ability. Just arcane damage, nothing fancy.
Arcane Barrage: Another Arcane attack. I think this is the one that hits people other than the tank at random.
Planar Shift: He will become immune to all damage during this phase. He will also spawn Planar Anomalies which are large orbs that follow your party and explode for high damage. I suggest flying as far away as you can with your party to guarantee you don't get hit by it.
Whelps will spawn throughout the fight in groups of 4-5. The Ruby drake will take care of them with its main attack.

The fight is a long one so stay on your toes. Emerald drakes should keep their poison stacked and heal as necessary. If they are comfortable with their HP they can use their nightmare ability as well. Amber drakes DPS as normal. Ruby drakes tank as normal but stay in melee range to keep the whelps from getting past you. When whelps spawn target a whelp instead of the boss. This will boost the damage you do overall to the boss and can speed the encounter up quite a bit. When he shifts and spawns orbs run as a group extremely far away. It feels like a long fight and having people die does not guarantee a wipe. (My last group did the last 25% with only 2 emerald and a ruby drake.) Succeed and you are rewarded with Badges and phat lootz!

I hope you get some use out of this, it took me a decent amount of time to write. I'd love any constructive criticism you have or advice. I hope to do this for every heroic by the end of January.