CT's Bone Dragon and managing "Evil Eye"/"Chaos Breath"

[Traek]

I've never tried a Holmgang on it TBH, so I'm not sure. I think I've had better luck with healers then you for this fight. Lol Any mechanic HG gets you killed, Holmgang does as well from my experience. Haven't tested personally on this one though, so can't be positive of course.

I guess technically ToB is still going to be a *one up* for warrior, since you can pop it directly after the attack for some extra HP. HG can work similarly if people are concerned though of course. I'll be interested if anyone else has found something we haven't with this fight though.

[Maelwys]

Update:

Warrior provoking off a Paladin during Chaos Breath, makes the WAR and PLD BOTH take damage from the breath - exactly 70% of their max HP each (with food and defiance). The damage appears to be reduced by Galvanize. (it should be noted that as the PLD I actually moved BEHIND the mob and broke line of sight after the provoke and still took damage!)

Didn't get to test Holmgang, the healers were too awake sadly

[Traek]

Haha, wow, wasn't expecting that. Have you tried it stacked yet with the marked Tank still having threat? That would be my next thing question, split damage or not. Looks like its going to be MT is screwed unless healers aren't bad type of fight. Lol Thanks for testing it out though. Not sure if I'll have the time to do this with a tank friend today.

[Brannigan]

If you are a Paladin you can Shield Swipe when you know Chaos Breath is coming and prevent it entirely. You need to land it between the time when you get marked and when he uses the breath. It's been a while since the last time I did CT, but I think you wait like 3 seconds after being marked and then swipe and it'll prevent the breath. You can use Bulwark for a chance to extend your swipe uptime to 10s.

[Ladon]

Hysteria (or lunacy) I forgot what it's actually called seems bugged. I've tanked the bone dragon 20 something times now and more than half the time I will get hit by the Hysteria debuff and I'll just stand in place stunned for the duration of the effect rather than walk around. Only once did my character actually move around with hysteria on.

One thing I do though is keep my back against the arena wall and I kind of recall being higher up the one time hysteria made me actually run around, so maybe being close to the zone boundary screws with the effects path-finding calculations.

[Maelwys]

If you are a Paladin you can Shield Swipe when you know Chaos Breath is coming and prevent it entirely. You need to land it between the time when you get marked and when he uses the breath. It's been a while since the last time I did CT, but I think you wait like 3 seconds after being marked and then swipe and it'll prevent the breath. You can use Bulwark for a chance to extend your swipe uptime to 10s.

That makes sense... it looks like it's either the 'Chaos Breath' or 'Apocalypse' abilities that actually inflict the damage, and if the boss is unable to use abilities then these shouldn't trigger.

I've actually successfully used Shield Bash (the PLD 6-second stun) once or twice to prevent Chaos Breath as well, but sadly it's not very reliable - there are typically multiple people using stuns on the boss which makes him build up an immunity... so when you need to stun him it won't kick in.

There's a few issues with relying on Shield Swipe though -
+ Firstly you can only use it in a short period immediately after a successful block, which means relying on randomness (even with an Onion Shield I'll not be certain of always having it available on slow-hitting enemies like the Bone Dragon) or using Bulwark. Bulwark is on a 180s cooldown, and Chaos Breath is every 30 seconds in the last phase. On a typical CT I'll usually see two of them before we kill the boss.
+ Secondly, Shield Swipe works by triggering pacification for 6 seconds, which prevents the mob from being able to use abilities. This is helpful in the case of Chaos Breath, but the Bone Dragon also regularly uses targeted ranged AoE attacks on random players (you can notice the ground indicators). If he's pacified then he can't use this ability, and instead decides to run over to whoever he has targeted and whack them with a melee attack. This creates the illusion that the MT just lost hate, and if the boss decides to target someone who's halfway across the arena then it can really mess things up.

Hysteria (or lunacy) I forgot what it's actually called seems bugged. I've tanked the bone dragon 20 something times now and more than half the time I will get hit by the Hysteria debuff and I'll just stand in place stunned for the duration of the effect rather than walk around. Only once did my character actually move around with hysteria on.

Yeah, Hysteria seems really random.
I usually try to dodge it completely, but the few times that I've been hit with it I've noticed a similar effect (or "run on the spot" for half the duration and randomly wander around for the remainder).

Well at least we've got a few ideas now: use a Stun or Pacify (PLD) at exactly the right moment, or keep your HP bar above 70%. Jury is still out on Holmgang...
(SCH "Galvanize" shields appear to count towards the 70% damage, IIRC Stoneskin doesn't but it wouldn't hurt for a PLD to self-buff with it - if nothing else it'll help mitigate the attacks immediately after Chaos Breath!!)

Cheers all!

[MythToken]

I just zone out and pop cooldowns, maybe its because i have 10k hp, I dunno. I have never worried or come close to death on this fight.

Get more gear?

[Maelwys]

I just zone out and pop cooldowns, maybe its because i have 10k hp, I dunno. I have never worried or come close to death on this fight.

As mentioned and demonstrated above, the Chaos Breath attack inflicts 70% of your maximum HP, regardless of how much HP you have.
This means it will do 7k damage to your 10k HP. If you've been able to zone out enough to never be surprised by that, your healers were doing an exceptional job.

Get more gear?

Unfortunately this is not really an option, both given the scaling HP damage inflicted and the fact that as mentioned in the OP:

I tend to run in full i90

[KitanaiKoneko]

Interesting thing that happened to me a few weeks ago:
Was running CT as a BLM, during 3rd phase of Bone Dragon the MT went down and he ran over to me as #2 target. I got the marker for chaos breath so I popped Manawall on a delay hoping that it was physical damage. I didn't see my hp drop from the attack (but didn't think to check the logs to see what happened, didn't know there was anything special to the attack other than giant red mark of doom). Another tank then provoked off of me and we killed him a bit later. Would be fun to set up a situation to test this again and see what happens. Also interesting that a BLM may be able to block the damage but HG or Holmgang can't.

[Traek]

I just zone out and pop cooldowns, maybe its because i have 10k hp, I dunno. I have never worried or come close to death on this fight.

Get more gear?

Oh the ignorance.

Well at least we've got a few ideas now: use a Stun or Pacify (PLD) at exactly the right moment, or keep your HP bar above 70%. Jury is still out on Holmgang...
(SCH "Galvanize" shields appear to count towards the 70% damage, IIRC Stoneskin doesn't but it wouldn't hurt for a PLD to self-buff with it - if nothing else it'll help mitigate the attacks immediately after Chaos Breath!!)

Cheers all!

Ya, the best option seems to be popping Bulwark sometime after the mark goes out, and using shield swipe. As you said Stun is almost *always* on DR by the point Chaos Breath actually goes out. I'd be incredibly surprised if it wasn't, as all DD and OTs are unloading at that point, not to mention if one smart person is in the alliance, a stun will probably be used on Evil Eye. Better to be silenced obviously, but who is going to trust those dirty brds? ;o

I agree that the *glitch* with the Dragon will do more harm then good from this however. I'd rather eat it if I know I'll survive and healers aren't terrible. To be honest, even at that point if you go down there are other tanks itching to pick it up and be a hero anyways. I usually feel out my healers on trash a little, if they are bad just don't volunteer to MT lol.

Also interesting that a BLM may be able to block the damage but HG or Holmgang can't.

Interesting. Not practical obviously but would be cool if Manawall worked. lol New Bone Dragon tank strat, BLM powah!