Nidhogg (Hard) dragons: grouped or separate?

After not playing my NIN in months (am a caster by heart) I decide to roll it and get reacquainted, and I do my trial roulette and get Nidhogg. I never meleed it and knew it would be tricky, because I actually have to pay attention to the aoes under him and when to get in and out for Trick Attack. I've done it 10 or so times as SMN, so I wasn't really that worried.

Of course, I died to a couple of AoEs being so close, so I fine tune that. The dragon wave comes and we fail because a DPS goes down. We try again, and then I notice that the dragons were being clumped together. Someone goes down, gets rezzed, we still manage to pass the dps check, but then ultimately wipe during his final stage.

We try again, and get to the dragoons, and I'm trying to DPS the shadow dragon, and again, the other two dragons are stacked together and WHAM! I get sandwiched and died and then at that point, I say that the dragons need to be separated, because people are getting hit.


Then the ridicule begins. I don't know what I'm talking about. The dragons need to be grouped together for AoE. Then I'm told constantly to watch a video. I'm trying to tell them every time I cleared, the dragons were separated, the runs go smoothly, but no, I'm wrong and told to watch a video again. I was blamed for not paying attention.

Ok, sure, if I'm in between three dragons, sure, I need to pay more attention to make sure I'm not facing one of them and getting cleaved, but then... why put anyone in a situation that puts them more at risk? Every time I did this trial since 3.3, they were separated, so since when did grouping them become the preferred the strat?

The dragons can be close together, but if they cleave (I know they do in extreme, not sure about hard), the tanks need to have the dragons they are tanking facing them at different angles so they both aren't getting cleaved by each other's mob. Also, the third one will just randomly roam around attacking people. You can't hold hate on it, so everyone needs to be watching for its random attacks (this one cleaves). This is probably why they were telling you to pay attention.

Yes, clumping the dragons together helps with dps, but it's not really that necessary. It could go either way.

I've only ever seen them be separate.

It can be done for AOEs, but both the Shadow and snakey one have hard hitting, wide cleaves that will wreck anyone not a tank.

In essense, I think grouping them is harder as you need to visually watch for telegraphs, but a powerful team could do it that way.

So, you weren't wrong.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ryuko

Yes, clumping the dragons together helps with dps, but it's not really that necessary. It could go either way.

---

I'm pretty sure I wasn't cleaved by the shadow dragon. I had my eyes on him the entire time. I was hit by other dragons. I can't remember what my hp was, or if I got hit by both. And yeah, being grouped together can help with the DPS, but then if someone gets caught in the cross fire and goes down, that's a guaranteed failed DPS check, so it's not even worth it to do it that way, in my opinion.

Its possible to group them if the tank knows what he is doing. one should be pulled over when he isn't cleaving, normally I'd pull him straight after he cleaves so when he walks to me I won't cleave the people around. Then position it in a way both mobs won't cleave neither of us.

Grouping them together is a pretty big dps gain for casters and AOE in general so you want to do that. However stacking them on top of each other leaves only a small area for melees where they can attack without getting cleaved. Thats normally fine unless the third dragon arrives and covers that area with his cleave, which either results in massive melee dps loss or massive melee death.

Due to that the best overall way to do it is to tank them next to each other close enough for AOEs to hit both but leaving a gap between them so that melees can still savely attack flank and rear from multiple angles in case the third add covers one spot.

Nothing wrong with stacking them close together properly and melees positioning themselves safely. More damage with aoe skills and less travel for melee.

You could theoretically stack together for the aoe but all groups I've been in don't due to the cleave and the middle dragon roaming and destroying us if we don't move.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by JisKing98

You could theoretically stack together for the aoe but all groups I've been in don't due to the cleave and the middle dragon roaming and destroying us if we don't move.

---

Yeah, and that's what I don't like about the grouping method. The shadow dragon moves around at random and sometimes will force a melee out of the pan and into the fire. If everyone's able to do a dps check on each dragon one at a time (and I've seen it done successfully), then there's nothing really to be gained by rushing that particular phase.

Either way works really. Pros/Cons to both really.

AFAIK a lot of groups target the ripper claw/fireball dragon first anyway, and you just have to be behind him when he turns to dodge everything he does if you don't want to pay attention to discern claw (one hand) from fireball. (two hand)

After that it's just on the tanks stacking them together to not blow each other up with the cleaves. Being together makes it so you can cover both with Asylum/Soil w/e. Each tank can put their dots on both mobs and all cleave attacks/AOEs hit both targets speeding it up.

There's no mechanic associate to being close or far. So they can be close as long as they are only facing their tanks. Having separate them is safer, that's all.

Almost always better to get them close together. Tanks, watch for your mob to do its cleave, then you have a brief window of time in which it's safe to reposition.

I've had groups that could not get through the check normally but were able to once they were able to do their AoEs and AoE LB instead.

The two tanked mobs do have cleaves in regular Nidhogg. They don't hit as hard as in Ex, and don't give stacks of vulnerability, but they can still wreck any DPS and healers that get hit by too many.

If your group is skillful enough, grouping the dragons will result in a faster kill - but if your group is that skilled, chances are good that they don't NEED the faster kill; they'll finish off all three in plenty of time anyway. Groups that struggle to deal enough DPS are probably the sort that fail to dodge the Shadow Dragon's cleaves, tend to stand in aoes, and so on and so forth. These less-than-skillful individuals are highly likely to blunder into the Brob and Falak cleaves if the monsters are all packed tightly together.

With beginner groups, I recommend keeping them apart, just so the newbs have more room to maneuver and have an easier time recognizing the Dragon's cleaves and having plenty of space to get out of the way. For veteran groups, you can cluster the three mobs for funsies, but you really don't need to.

They should be put together if your tanks are halfway competent.