The ICE dragon! This is pretty straight forward for the tanks but the group must maintain focus and awareness of what is going on around them.

The main tank can chose to either tank close or far (ranged taught) but they must make sure the FACE of the dragon is aimed away from the group!

Basically the group can sit to the right and the tank can sit to the left (or vica versa) that way no one gets bitten when they shouldn’t

The reason it makes sense however to have main or off tank at the back of the room is so that they can  spot when the ice winds arrive (explained below). Not to mention of course a ranged tank doesn’t have to get bitten so can hide away and reflect/block ranged attacks instead. It is a matter of preference but either way, turn it from the group, and keep ONE of your tanks at the back so you can see when the stuff behind the group appears, making it easier to call it out in the heat of the moment.

Ice spit – If you are ranged and sometimes even if you are not, you will be hit with ice ball attacks, these hit pretty hard but can be blocked and/or reflected/absorbed with specific skills. Be sure to not get hit with this with your guard down.

Bite – If close to the boss he will hit the tank with basic bite attacks, which are pretty hard hitting and can generally one shot a dps and/or healer so be careful.

Meteors – The boss will drop meteors and/or ground based aoes through the fight, try not to stand in them. If you get caught you will either die OR be low health and have to break free. They do stun!

Ice Breath – The boss will cast an ice breath cone aoe at the person with aggro at the time (should be the tank). This is a rather large cone aoe that will kill people VERY fast if they stand in it, so be sure to maintain your focus when aiming the boss’s face away from the group so no one gets caught out! You should block this as the tank and even stack damage shields if possible but be warned this can nudge you a little so don’t bar swap while doing this.

Bar swapping drops your block anyway however that little nudge will add extra milliseconds to you recovering from the dropped block and reapplying it maybe too late. So if you see it, hold block and don’t do anything stupid until it is over.

Icey Winds – During the fight the boss will spit into the air and spawn a whirl wind of ice at the back of the room. This will DEVASTATE the entire group rapidly if not controlled.
The way to do this is, a member of the group must run to it and stand in it. They then have 8 seconds to be healed to full health or DIE!

One easy way to stay on top of this especially if you are not paying attention to the dragon’s physical actions…Is to have one tank and one healer at the back of the room. Assign them BOTH to keep an eye on the winds while they are there. (remember this could be the main tank, tanking from range).

Whenever a wind spawns, shout it out and then the healer can focus that player to save them.

There is one more major issue with this. Once a player has removed the wind, they are debuffed for a minute. And these winds tend to come one after the other. You have enough time for 3 individual players to get rid of the winds before 60seconds is over. SO…Set your group up and assign 3 people to be number 1, 2 and 3. Whenever their number is called out, they go get the wind. When it is NOT, they don’t.

If they take a wind too close to another (while debuffed) they will die instantly.

Adds!! – At 80% 50% and 20% the boss will fly off into the air and spawn a massive amount of adds. There will be a mixture of Ice Atronachs and Storm Atronachs.

Your key primary focus should be on the Storm Atronachs. Once they die they will drop a lightning circle on the ground. Drag the Ice Atronachs into these and they will POP down to TINY amounts of health allowing you to finish them off.

TIPS: Make your group all together run to one side of the room and let the tanks try to stack up the adds, separating the ICE from the Storm so that no frontal cleave attacks will touch the group (don’t stand in front of the ice atros unless you are a tank, you will die).

Make the group save their ultimate’s for these phases by the way. Put full pressure on the Storm Atronach’s as efficiently as possible without standing in stupid and above all RELAX! Running around like headless chickens will kill people.

Once the dragon finally comes down, be sure to continue with any remaining adds else you will get overwhelmed.

Adds are your primary focus, but efficiency and focus is key. You don’t need a HUGE amount of damage to kill them fast, but no matter how much you do or don’t have, everyone being dead will leave you with more adds in the room at the end of the phase making it more difficult to manage with the dragon back in the room.

Lightning fly by! – During the above phase the boss will do a little fly by and breath lightning in a straight line right through the group. Avoid getting hit by this! It will remain on the floor for a few seconds so don’t stand in it on purpose, although if you need to get to the other side of the room, you CAN dodge roll through it, much like Molag Kena’s mechanic in White Gold Tower.

Ice laser beam – During the above phase also, the boss will cast a LONG ice beam. It will cut across the WHOLE room so NO ONE can avoid it. When this happens you MUST simply BLOCK! If you don’t you will die. Simple!

Once the whole phase is over, the boss will come back down and you rinse repeat as normal!

Ice ball – Much like the effects from the Fates, the boss will target one player. They will have a spreading aoe effect under their feet and when it reaches full it will explode and hit them in the face. All you need to do is separate yourself from the group and block it. If you stack up you will kill people so be careful!

HARDMODE – There are some additions/variations to the above mechanics for hard mode.

IF you fully understand the basics of this fight, hardmode is not that difficult. If you do not however and generally wing it, you will struggle badly. So be aware of the following:-

• There will be Storm/Ice Atronachs in pairs throughout the fight. So be sure to focus them even while fighting the dragon.
• The laser beam phase is the same BUT, when the beam is over each player will have a lightning AOE attached to them pulsing damage over time. You must ALL spread out and find a space and NOT overlap these, in the mean time the healers must keep everyone alive. Don’t run around the room!
• The ice winds are no longer for 3 people. You need 6 people. Instead of there being one wind per phase there are TWO! So group 1 is 2 people, group 2 is 2 people, and group 3 is 2 people. Organize that before you start the fight in order to maintain focus and less chaos
• Throughout the fight you will see Flame Atronachs. You need to kill these as fast as possible. Unlike those on the Fire Dragon boss, these CAN be brought into the group and killed if you like, but if you can kill them at range then so be it, whichever is more efficient for you and the group.

This boss is pretty scary to look at and very dramatic with it’s effects but is in my opinion not as rough as the ice boss. So long as people co-ordinate (much the same as the rest of the game really) and apply discipline withing their formations in the group, they will be fine. The tank should stay close to the boss but NOT so close that they are UNDER him, and the other tank should be at the BACK of the room.

NOTE: The back tank needs to be REALLY chunky.

The rest of the group including the healers should be on the opposite side of the dragon’s face to the main tank in TWO small groups stacking on each other. One group of 5 on the left and one group of 5 on the right, CLOSE to each other of course, but yet still two different stacks.

Fire Geyser/Explosion – This is the main reason for the two stacks. two players at once will get a fire geyser under them. The more people in their stack the more damage is shared between the group members. It will tick 5x and the last tick CAN be blocked and hits very hard. If your healers are not on point, or your group is not stacked effectively then people will die to this a lot. Stacking resistance cps and damage shields of course will help but stacking and blocking the last tick above all is the biggest saver. Not everyone will need to block the last hit but for safety sake, it doesn’t hurt to do so while you are getting used to your group’s gauge for survival.

NOTE: If people are not stacked properly individual players can get a nasty debuff which basically one shots then on the next tick. You don’t want this to happen. Focus your formation!

Charge and devour – The dragon will breath fire in a massive cone at the person with aggro. This should be the TANK! When this happens be sure to block it and maintain any resistance and/or damage shields you can manage. The ice one i personally feel hits harder but this can still be pretty nasty. Also be sure to NOT tank right up the dragon’s nose because this also has a push back if you are too close, he likes you to be within range of taunt but not in his personal space so to speak!

Fireball/Bite – Of course with this being a fire dragon he will spit fire at the tank AND he will bite the tank too. It’s pretty nasty especially the heavy attack but just be sure to maintain resources and block it and you should be fine. Remember again, don’t stay too close to him because he will nudge you and drop your block.

Fire Atronachs – DO NOT!! Bring these into the group. There are tactics out there that can make use of having these close but when you are practicing and/or just 99% of the time anyway for safety sake, do NOT bring these into the room. Whenever the tank at the back spots a Flame Atronach, they should pull them close to them and let the group know it is there. The group while staying IN their stacks should then flip 180 degrees, STOP hitting the dragon and FULLY focus on killing the Flame Atronach.

When these die they drop huge pools of lava on the floor much like the last boss in Bloodroot Forge. Standing in it will kill you. This is why you DON’T want that IN the group. It iwll get in the way, kill people, and melee types won’t reach the dragon.

Iron Atronachs aka Tank Test! – During the fight Iron Atronachs will spawn. These need to be controlled and HELD by the back tank. During the fight the longer it takes to push the dragon to his flying phase, the more of these will spawn. Some tanks can manage 2, some can manage 4! But depends on your group. The key point above all is these are not for killing, they are for controlling.

They have ONE major heavy attack which needs to be blocked. Multiples of them can kill tanks if not paying attention so timing is everything. Basically if you can tank the execute phase of hardmode bloodroot forge for a LONG time without killing them and still be alive, you can do this!

While there aren’t any real “dps checks” in this fight, it is important that you maintain survival as the back tank and just focus on the dragon as a group (unless flame atros come out) to make sure that you get as phew of these as possible.

Fire NUKE phase – At 75%, 50% and 25% the boss will fly into the air and will channel above the area with a MASSIVE fire breath. The whole group needs to get to the edge of the area in order to avoid this! In the mean time, kill any remaining flame atronachs if there are any and then start hitting the Iron Atronachs. The tank should pull these all together to the very edge of the room.

Once the HUGE dragon breath has finished (he sounds like he shouts “poop NAH!” don’t laugh if it ain’t funny lol) the Iron Atronachs will be MOLTEN! When they are like this, they take an insane amount more damage than usual and can be killed extremely fast IF you focus.

At this point the dragon will be landing again so people need to get back into position fast ready for the Gysers but of course the molten Iron Atronachs are your key focus!

ADVANCED TIP: Since they take a LOT of extra multiplied damage, ANY splash damage passives hit multiple targets. Meaning if you are heavy attacking ONE target, the other will be hit for equal damage, making for very fast aoe kills. This can be in excess of 500k-1mill dps just during that small phase…SO, if you are a well co-ordinated clever group and you can be sneaky about a risky “stack the atros on the boss” while they are molten, ANY splash damage from THEM will hit the boss a crazy amount.

This could be only 5 seconds or so of damage, but 1million damage per second perhaps over 5 seconds, is still 5 million damage you now don’t have to mess about with and can get to the next phase faster.

From here the fight is rinse repeat until execute when basically you just have to KILL IT! However, mechanics are still in place…You must manage your formation, you must kill the Flame Atronachs, and you MUST focus as the back tank on keeping the Iron Atronachs off the group.

Remember while low dps can be fine and succeed, you WILL get more and more atronachs which CAN put pressure on the tank. The fast you kill it the better but then also to counter that, if you have a BIG experienced beefy tank, then you have more time to relax and keep doing what you are doing.

HARDMODE – There are some small differences to hardmode apart from the much higher health. Bare in mind with the higher health that does mean it will take longer to push to each phase of the boss’s health meaning you are likely to have more atronachs to deal with the in room. So be careful focus! Rez games, end in tears.

• Flame Atronachs MUST be killed fast. Before you just had to make sure you kill them or you get overwhelmed, NOW if you don’t kill them in due time they will enrage and glow BLUE (like the Planar Inhibitor in White Gold Tower). When this happens they will charge at the group and explode. Kill them fast!
•  Time Stop effects will happen inside the group near the dragon aimed at players. This is to throw you off. You will have to step OUT of these or be stunned. While you can simply break free the issue is if the healers get stunned no one will survive the Geysers. So you must get out quickly and get back in again so you are ready to stay stacked as your 2 groups. You can make other’s stay in it and just make the healers get out but that is up to you and your group. However, constantly breaking free will mess with resources unless you are equipped as a group for huge resource gains, so can be tricky.
  Try not to make this one too complex. It stuns, deal with it in a way that suits you and your group where they DON’T run around panicking. There is no need.

Much like the other bosses this one has very copy and paste rinse repeat mechanics. What i mean by that is, once you can do ONE phase, you can do the rest, they don’t REALLY change all that much.

However, maintaining consistency within your group mechanics wise and people not trying to change things up for no reason is where it gets tricky. Repetition and focus is key!

This boss should be tanked pretty much the same as the rest. Main tank to one side, Off tank being aware of extra mechanics and ready to pick up where things go wrong, and the group should be stacked together on the OTHER side of the dragon’s head.

Maintain a taunt, don’t drop it unless you are dead or marked (Explained below).

To start with you will have a room full of adds you must deal with. As per the rest of the trial, the Fate MUST be dealt with as fast as possible and focused. The rest must be controlled by the tank while the group stays BEHIND them. It will take practice as there is a lot gong on but remember not to panic. You have plenty of time. Once the adds are dead you will have the first Fire phase teaching you what you need to know about the rest of the fight. This phase does get repeated throughout.

Hide/Fire Phase – Once the adds are down the boss will start spitting fire into the middle of the room. The group should go CLOSE to a statue but also remain spread out. Multiple pops of fire will aim for multiple players and you don’t want those to overlap.

The boss will cause 3 major bursts of fire aoe in the MIDDLE of the room. The final one will be the size of the whole room and when THIS one happens, the group must all stack and hide together behind a statue to avoid it.

During this phase there will be flame atronachs and they MUST be killed as soon as possible. The final pop will spawn 3 of them! Pull them in, take them down, and be ready for the dragon to land and start the fight.

This phase will happen every time the dragon goes into the air AFTER the adds are dealt with.

Be ready for the adds by moving away from the dragon making room for the tanks to grab them when the dragon flies at 80%, 60% and 40%!

LAKE TOWN! – During the add phases Navi will fly across the area breathing fire in a HUGE straight line resembling the Lake Town attack from Smaug in The Hobbit. Don’t STAND in it!

Bite – The boss will bite the tank causing heavy damage, this must be blocked!

Breath – The boss will aim a fire breath at the tank which can and should be blocked!

Group Breath! – Yup a breath mechanic for the WHOLE group! This is simple, the dragon will breathe from one side to the next in a constant channel. All you have to do is BLOCK and you will be fine. If you don’t you will die.

Headbutt/Neck swing – The boss will punch the ground and raise his head in the air. When he does this, a BIG 180degree Neck swinging headbutt is coming for the group. BLOCK it or be knocked back and possibly killed. Pretty simple.

NOTE: IF you are very far away, you will not be hit because it will not reach. Handy to know for RANGED groups.

Flame Atronachs – Unlike the fire boss, these CAN be dragged into the group and should be. These need to be killed fast because they EXPLODE and kill people. Be sure to not stand in their aoe once they die and also be sure to kill them fast and prioritize the so they don’t nuke everyone. If a Flame Atronach is still alive you are doing something wrong.

Timestop – These will stun players, so you want to avoid them HOWEVER you will want one person occasionally do deliberately stand in them when the Portal phase is happening (explained below) because THIS will actually send a much needed buff  into the portal for the group!

Portals/Eternal Servant – At 10% health before the flying phases, so at 90%. 70% and 50% there will be 3 portals appearing at the back of the room. 3 people need to take these and go IN.

Inside there will be an eternal servant who has around 3.6mil health. The 3 dps players need to KILL this at the same time as surviving and fighting with the mechanics!

• • The Servant will cast many abilities.
  • Lightning splashes must be avoided so move rout feet and do NOT stack!
  • BIG lighting aoe circle will be on the ground also, don’t stand in it because it will hurt a lot AND negate your magicka abilities!
  • A Cone based AOE will be aimed at ONE member of the group, they need to maintain their position and block this (also dodgeable with very specific timing). Above all no one should run in this and the player should not be running around either, you don’t want to hit other people with it (much like the poison in VAS).
  • A large bursting aoe will affect one player and then explode, you should take this TO the boss and let it pop nice and close so the meteor (like the fate’s abilities) lands ON the boss dropping the whirlwind on him.
  • When the boss is praying you MUST interrupt him else you will all get knock backed and stunned!
  • Players individually will be pinned to the ground, much like the fight with Ozara in Sanctum Ophidia. These players must be helped by running over and activating a synergy to release them!
  • Finally, if someone stands in time stop UPSTAIRS, you will get a small green circle DOWNSTAIRS! Pick this up, it will increase your damage for a short period of time and make the fight a LOT easier!

NOTE: While downstairs you have 90 seconds to kill the servant. If you fail he will enter the fight upstairs, completely immortal and kill the group.
90 Seconds with 3 people over 3.5/3.6million health means you need to  be sure each player is capable of following the mechanics AND pulling off around 12.6 -13.3k dps (some will fluctuate so allowing for execute power etc. Doing the above is the bare minimum required to successfully achieve a kill. SO there is a DPS check but it is extremely low so long as you follow those mechanics and don’t have deaths or wipe.

Heal or die! – There is a debuff that will be applied to players where they will look like they have a damage shield on their bar but their health will be low. Basically they must out heal this and fill their bar back up or die. Much like the hoavar mechanics in Moongrave Fane.

Marked for death! – The boss will hit the tank with a spit type attack marking it for death, there will be a debuff to show this. If the player is hit by it again while this is on them they will die. SO the trick to this is simple. Swap tanks each time someone is marked for death and everything will be fine because the debuff timer will run off without having to be nuked…OR if you are VERY experienced tank, you can dodge roll it and then avoid it completely. BUT that will take some practice.

On normal you can actually survive it but on vet unless you dodgeroll/swap tanks, you will not

Execute – Under 31% the dragon will shout into the air and the screen will change hue slightly and now he will start targeting players in 3s! Basically stack and burn while following the basics but IF you are targeted with an aoe you must run to the side/back of the room and PLACE it on the ground before it falls off you. If it falls off in the group you are in trouble because people cannot stand in it, but if you drop it off at the sides and come back in, there will be no issues.

HARDMODE! – There are not many MAJOR differences in hardmode but there is already a lot going on so adding more spice can be tricky, but the changes are important!

• Statues come to LIFE! These need to be killed and are easier to manage off the side or to the back AWAY from the dragon. That way most of the attacks will miss apart from the breath. These statues have a VERY specific mechanic.

  They are immune to ALL damage until they start channeling. When they start channeling every single second will do more and more damage to the whole group. This is your chance to do damage. If you want to STOP the channel, interrupt it and it will go immune again for ages before doing so again. Rinse repeat.
  The problem is if people are bash weaving or running skills which apply an interrupt, you will NEVER kill it. SO be sure NO ONE is using crushing shock or any interrutpt based skills. ONLY interrupt when your group agrees to and not just because it is pulsing with the red splashes. Once it is dead it is removed from the room and you can no longer hide behind it (note you have enough to hide behind for the whole fight).

  Depending on downstairs portal people, you can skip the phase entirely but that is not what we are here to talk about. KNOW your mechanics 

• Downstairs portal has a twist. EVERYTHING about the mechanics are exactly the same, HOWEVER…The Servant now has 11.3 Million health!

  Meaning EACH player that goes down need to be capable of pumping out 41.8k dps WHILE maintaining mechanics. Yes of course one person can have 50 while the other has 30 whatever, BUT essentially downstairs needs to be 125k dps between THREE people. So split it however you like but THAT’S the requirement.

  So you don’t NEED 90k-100k per PERSON! That would be 270-300k dps between you and you don’t even need HALF of that to complete it #fact!

  There IS a dps check for this fight, but almost 42k each in THIS current state of the game? is not hard to reach at all, especially if you already got to this boss so far in the first place!

  Know your mechanics, don’t fail the basics and even a player good with mechanics with NO cp can hit those numbers. Don’t panic about dummy humping. Focus on applying yourself and not being dead! 

• During execute the Meteors on the floor do NOT fade away and you will have to make very good use of your space, especially if the group has lower dps. Sill 100% doable, but make sure you sue as much of the room as possible.
• When the Portal spawns you will get two regular adds upstairs to deal with. You can put these ON the boss and fight them OR take them to one side and leave the dragon to it and come back after.