Brayflox - Aiatar

So, the final dragon boss in Brayflox is kicking my ASS. I have to constantly move around, left and right, so I can anticipate his Dragon Breath. This is making the lancers very happy.

He also hits me with a Salivous Snap move, which is unnoticeable and as far as I can tell has no graphic whatsoever. That doesn't take 1/2 my HP like Dragon Breath, but it puts +1 more tick of poison on me, which aint good.

Any ideas on what I can do better to prevent being nailed by Dragon's Breath so often? I never, ever had this problem in beta, but he has been ramped up quite a bit in my opinion. I might be wrong, but I would be shocked to hear he is exactly the same. I always wrecked HIM in beta, now it's been flipped.

35 PLD, btw, 1700 or so HP.

I just pull him into the corner at the right side of where he stands. And when he uses breath I move out and back in, or interrupted it with Shield Bash(our stun).

When green puddles are up, I start moving him back along the right wall(viwing from the entrence) and around. Everytime there are a puddle, I pull him out of it(remember completely out of it or he heals up) and stop -> turn him against the wall for breath.
When next puddle drops, move him again... rinse and repeat :)

Really, you're Shield Bashing Dragon's Breath? In beta, that was cake, because it was about a 4 second cast. You actually didn't need to bash it, you just ran into the dragon's belly, or to the side, whatever. In release version, it's been reduced to a 2 second cast, so unless you are literally doing nothing else and just sitting on Shield Bash, you're blowing my mind how you're doing your rotations and still have SB not on CD, and successfully stunning him, which also is not guaranteed..

Salivous Snap used to hit for about 200 max, now it hits for about 350-400 and applies a tick of poison, something it again didn't do in beta. In the long run, all it's going to be a matter of is being quick enough to get out of Dragon's Breath's way, and having a healer that is diligent with Esuna. Also, 2 DPS that are mindful of the fight and don't sap the healer's MP will help a lot.

A couple of videos showing the difference in the fight, both from a tank's perspective:

Beta: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uayoottvlrw (Aiatar starts around 24:45)
Now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QOQjiKY3pw (Aiatar fight only)

I also able to Shield Bash him don't know why but he sync perfectly with my rotation (I Shield Bash him to much that I almost run out of TP) and I tank him just like Walle close to the wall. I didn't change to PLD yet because I can't use shield oath so I rather stick with GLD with defensive buff from LNC and offensive from ARC.

This is probably the hardest boss I've tanked so far. It took four tries to get down and only the first was my fault. :p The breath is just your standard frontal rectangle so cosy up to him and just strafe. I've got 200ms-ish latency from UK so when I strafe I tend to move far further than I have to either because of latency or because or graphical matching bugs.

This fight it's pretty much up to the whole party to do their part. The tank needs to kite the boss from the poison and the dps need to position themselves so the puddles are not spread out of the place. My duty groups final try I tanked the boss around the wall with the dps and healer almost by the side so when he spat out his poison it didn't cause any problems when I had to move him when poison was directed at me. Just make sure all the dps are on one side so you can use the free side to move the boss away from poison.

That's what I learned from the kill anyway.

There was a lot of people quitting and I'm not sure if I was the only original member but it's the first fight were everyone has to do things so your going to suffer a learning curve so be patient especially with your tank or healers.

We one-shot it last night on the first attempt in a pug. I was tanking (this is my wife's account - post limits and all). I had a rough time moving in and out of breath due to lag. I give full credit for our success to the healer being on top of esuna and doing an amazing job with heals as well. This is probably obvious, but make sure to rotate your cooldowns. The one thing I did notice was that, if I kept strafing even after I was outside of the breath box, I tended to avoid getting hit more than just sidestepping the box. In retrospect, running directly into his body would probably have been wiser.

There's only so much you can do to mitigate your damage. This fight can really test a healer and the dd's situational awareness.

Tank him at the side of the room and tell the dps (if they're melee) to position themselves along the wall when they're fighting him so that if he ever spits goo on them, it'll be at the edge of the room which makes repositioning the boss a whole lot easier.

I usually just keep one finger on the left or right strafe button and just react fast when he starts the animation. He usually does it a few seconds 3-5s after he does the poison skills(what ive seen anywaise). I usually dont stun him unless i get hit by dragons breath, so that the healer have time to heal me.

I ended up doing this fight this morning on my WAR, and having the opportunity to read this thread before heading into the fight was definitely a key to my success. My PUG managed to down it first try.

Here are a few of the things I did (like others before me) that worked: Immediately pulled with Tomahawk into the far left wall. DPSed him down there until he popped the first adds. Tomahawk'd adds, and took them all back to the wall. Once he started spitting his acid/poison at the mages, I pulled him each time farther along the wall. There was really no point in time, except towards the VERY end of the fight, when he spit at me, where he was stepping in the puddles, and even then it was quite simple to pull him out.

Continued in next post, since I apparently have a 1,000 character limit..

I ended up getting hit by the breath once, surprised by the timing. After the initial cast, I ran into him each and every time, managing to avoid it completely. It really helped me to set my self up closer to him than I would "normally" engage a mob, so my reaction to the breath didn't have to come with pinpoint accuracy (note: I've been becoming more positionally aware the longer I play, and it seems to be of a great benefit, after first fighting any mob, to learn exactly WHERE and how large it's AOE attacks will be placed, and to adjust myself accordingly on each subsequent fight; having that leeway to get out of the red zone proves itself to be very, very helpful.).

Anyway, just wanted to share my thoughts, and say thank you! In the end, I thought it was a really, really enjoyable fight.