Gordias - Cuff of the Father - what's a kill order

I've run this thing so many times as tank now and I'm just seriously totally baffled by the kill order people seem to fall on in DF.

What's the logic behind killing Jagd Dolls before Hardhelms/minds that are buffing them or Gobwalkers that are debuffing the tank? The kill order in DF seems to be:

1. JAGD DOLLS OMG SCARY
2. Gobwalker? Maybe?
3. Everything else
4. Hardhelm/Hardmind

And it completely blows my mind. Do people just willfully ignore the mechanics of each mob or do they seriously think that the Jagd Dolls are the scariest mobs in the encounter at all times?

This post is a long time in the making but it's coming on the heels of a DF A2 I just ran where I was PLD Off-Tank.

Second-to-last wave, I had a Doll and Walker. They killed Doll first, forcing me to pop most of my good CDs to survive 5-vuln Doll cleaves. Then last phase I had 2 Dolls+Helm on me and they decided to blow up the Dolls through the defense buff (and my MT didn't take a doll from me despite me standing right next to him with them).

After the healer hit 0 MP from healing me through all of that bullshit, I ended up dying. Said healer then blamed me for having such low health (just shy of 14000), as if more maximum health would have let his MP not hit 0 due to poor kill order.

The dolls hit like trucks. That's why.

You don't want the tank holding both dolls and hardhelm/mind. You also don't want one tank taking both dolls.

To reiterate: The dolls hit like fracking trucks.

And the guy in the gobwalker can put something on those mobs that make them melt.

Your problem is exclusively idiots and not kill order.

The Gobbie mans job is to pull the bombs, stun the goblins and add vulnerability stacks to key targets so they melt fast.

I think the kill order is pretty much the same as in Savage. Goblin pack->stun->aoe nuke everything and make sure Hardhelms/Minds die before the stun wears off at least. After that the order is Gobbie(vulns)->Doll(hits like a truck and cleaves)->Widows(don't do a crap in normal :D).

As I'ver heard from others, stun and vulnerability are not available in normal mode.

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Originally Posted by KarstenS

As I'ver heard from others, stun and vulnerability are not available in normal mode.

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You can't stun, but you can put vulnerability stacks in nm.

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Originally Posted by Meimi_chan

You can't stun, but you can put vulnerability stacks in nm.

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You CAN stun with the clown car. You can put a debuff on the hardhelms/minds with the tank called Temporary Insanity, it locks them down entirely for roughly 30 seconds. Use that and they can't buff the jagds, then with the tank put the vulnerability on the jagds and they melt in seconds with the hardhelms/minds safely locked down.

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Originally Posted by Khalithar

You CAN stun with the clown car. You can put a debuff on the hardhelms/minds with the tank called Temporary Insanity, it locks them down entirely for roughly 30 seconds. Use that and they can't buff the jagds, then with the tank put the vulnerability on the jagds and they melt in seconds with the hardhelms/minds safely locked down.

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I know in Savage mode, but in NM too? Because I think that I once tried to stun but it said that "it has no effect".

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Originally Posted by Meimi_chan

I know in Savage mode, but in NM too? Because I think that I once tried to stun but it said that "it has no effect".

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Yes in NM. I've done it myself in normal mode and I never had an issue putting the debuff on the Helms/Minds. Now I'm not sure if can apply the debuff a second time, I've never personally had to do that debuff more than once.

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Originally Posted by Nadirah

The dolls hit like trucks. That's why.

And the guy in the gobwalker can put something on those mobs that make them melt.

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I ride the gobwalker in Savage A2. I know how it works. I also know that my Royal Authority in Shield Oath does 1100 damage normally and that every 1 stack of Vulnerability is +10% damage dealt to that mob and that a Jagd Doll with the Hardhelm buff plus 5 stacks of Vulnerability took 850 from my Shield Oath Royal Authority.

That's not melting. At all.

The kill order I was more referring to was Doll > Walker, which is absolutely ludicrous. 5-stack Doll cleaves are stupid strong. If you burn the Walker down first, the tank won't even get to 5 stacks...


Also yes. In normal A2, you have the exact same skills as you do in Savage. The difference:
Stun in Savage is 250 energy; Normal it's 150.
Heavy in Savage is 200 energy; Normal it's 100.*
Vuln stacks are 10 energy in both.

You can't blow up your walkers in Normal and you only have 2 (not 3) to play with.

*Nobody uses the Heavy because it wears off when the mob is hit for the first time and no group is smart enough without active coordination to use it properly.

It barely matter in normal, the trash is harder than the end mobs.

The point of this thread was to find out if people seriously believe Dolls should be priority 1 in A2 and to attempt to convince them that that's really not the case. In normal mode, the kill order should almost always follow:

1. Helm/Mind (if not stunned)
2. Gobwalker
2+. Helm/Mind (if stunned)
3. Doll
4. Soldier/Sniper
5. Widow

And it kinda does matter, because doing the kill order in a silly way leads to deaths and potential wipes, rather than smooth, easy kills.

Problem with helms/minds in normal is they seem to stop to cast their aoe the second they get within range of any other mob, vs in savage where it seems like it's a set time from when they spawn, so if you want to group up, stun and aoe down the mobs they already have the debuff by the time you can stun them.

So essentially you can stun them for debuff for first 15 seconds+10 seconds of stun no damage reduction, or you can just turn up the damage on the jagds, also their vuln down in normal is like 10% damage reduction versus like 90% on savage.

Edit: as a DRK I hate when people stun in normal mode because the debuff is almost always up already and I just lost all my blood price mp, combined with the lack of stun consistency whereas in savage I know when stuns are coming so I can time BP around them.

I haven't seen the defense/magic resist buff they throw up in Savage, so I can't comment on that, but the one in Normal is 50% damage reduction. Unless the 5 stacks of vuln are less than 10% per stack in Normal (which wouldn't make much sense), the math checks out on 50%. My Royal Authority in Shield Oath does ~1100 damage. With defense buff + 5 stacks, I did ~850. Assuming 50% damage boost thanks to Vuln, that would make the damage dealt 850/1.5 = ~560 which is around about half of my normal damage. If it were 10%, sure, I could see burning the dolls first. But since it's 50%, you're essentially forcing your team to kill ~4 dolls and ~2 helms instead of ~2 dolls and ~2 helms by prioritizing dolls. Since helms have less health, you're adding a LOT of time during which the tank is taking doll cleaves.

Also you can stun the helm/mind when they spawn and drag them into the group for AoE, then just maintain the stun in Normal. I just don't see the point of being so fancy when you could (normally) just hold the helm/mind AWAY from the other mobs and kill them separately, AFTER killing the unbuffed Jagd Doll(s). But that would be asking a lot of a df group who yell at me to stack the hardhelm/mind with the rest of the group so they can aoe everything down half as quickly.

That's the problem right there, you shouldn't always stack things up, kill jagds first but keep helm/mind away until it dies then burn the rest, helm/mind likely already have each others buffs. Usually gobwalker is prioritized over jagds in most of the dfs I've been in, on that last wave the "south" tank should really only pick up the jagds and north should pick up the goblin with widow so jagds can die quicker but that never happens and if south doesn't grab it runs all over.

I had another thought I wanted to add to this thread though it will get a little psychological but bear with me on this.


When Alexander first came out and people were in their 170-180 gear and learning the fights, we had to figure out the various strategies from scratch. Thus going in to A2 the first time, it became very apparent that the Jagd dolls did massive damage and it was tough to keep up with them and the bomb damage (hell I was in Alexander when it first came out and we didn't realize you could use the tanks to move the bombs) so the solution was burn the Jagd enemies first.

We didn't know where their buffs were coming from at the time so it just became common sense to kill them first before they killed your tank, I know in my 170-180 gear it was really tough surviving the double jagd pair, surviving even one of them was difficult. As a result, burning them down first and dpsing through the buffs became the only way to beat it.

But now that we've had more time with it and learned the fight we know where the various buffs are coming from and now that a lot of players are more geared it's much easier to survive the Jagd twins and all the other adds, however the strategy hasn't changed despite people having better gear. The "established" strategy (i.e. kill the dolls first) has become comfortable and safe for the playerbase and the thought of deviating from that is really uncomfortable for a lot of people.

Hell, using fractal as an example, groups I have (even with really good melee dps) still get confused when I pop an add to skip the disorienting groan phase to keep the boss still longer so they can kill him even faster, nevermind the fact that a group will have 2 extra adds left so why not use them? I know for a lot of people change can be difficult, especially in boss fights with an established strategy.

I imagine that if players started deviating from some of those strategies, there would be a lot of resistance at first until you could prove definitely whether one strategy is better than another.

I don't even know the kill order to be honest I just hit what is dying the fastest :)

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Originally Posted by Dante_V

It barely matter in normal, the trash is harder than the end mobs.

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My general rule of thumb is that if I can hold the entire hallway mob with the two Goblin Snipers and not die, than it doesn't make a difference one way or another what order things die in. Healers are solid enough to keep me up, so as long as the Dps are killing things quickly I couldn't care less.

That being said, if the Dps are slow enough that extra mobs are spawning in the final room before the current mob is down... than the Dps and I have to have some words...