Tales from Duty Finder: Some make you laugh, some make you cry. Let's vent.

[Packetdancer]

Healers know the skeletons are coming. Get your shields up and medica 2s going. When they spawn, melee are in range to kill them if dragon is tanked in middle.
Really wish we could stop this tactic. It gets on my nerves

I mean, I think you've giving folks a lot of credit here. And I don't mean this in a bad way, but... tanking the dragon at the edge of the arena has been done (at least in Primal) for years and years; there are many players -- maybe even most players -- who've never seen it done any other way. And it's not like people are generally going to go "gosh, I think I'll look up guides on mechanics in Labyrinth of the Ancients, to see what those fights were like when we didn't just steamroller everything in there."

I saw one person actually tank the dragon in the center and so few people knew what would happen that the party wiped.

I dislike the dragon being pulled to the edge, don't get me wrong, but I think "healers know the skeletons are coming" is not necessarily true -- or at least, they don't always know what can happen if the skeletons go boom.

[WrenElessedil]

I wish more people would call this out. To my understanding, goblin server started it. I first only seen it when I transferred to balmung from faerie. It wasn’t a thing on aether. But dragging the dragon I find chaotic, time consuming and sloppy. Healers know the skeletons are coming. Get your shields up and medica 2s going. When they spawn, melee are in range to kill them if dragon is tanked in middle.
Really wish we could stop this tactic. It gets on my nerves

Pulling it back was how it was originally done, at least in my experience when it first released. It wasn't made trivial by overgearing back then, so it was important. Now, not so much, but there was a reason for it.

[Skivvy]

Pulling it back was how it was originally done, at least in my experience when it first released. It wasn't made trivial by overgearing back then, so it was important. Now, not so much, but there was a reason for it.

Way back when it was new, the dragon would be tanked in the middle and the skeles would be pulled all the way to the ends of the lanes and killed there. That way when they respawned it would give time to kill them as they headed towards the center. Moving the dragon to the end of a lane is sort of the same idea, just reversed.

[Cubsbane]

Who made it cool to pull the dragon all the way back in Labyrinth of the Ancients
Who made it cool to pull the dragon all the way back in Labyrinth of the Ancients
Who made it cool to pull the dragon all the way back in Labyrinth of the Ancients
Who who who who who

Its way more chaotic every time and when i get to tank it in the middle, everything is fine. I learned it that way all the way back in Heavensward, pulling it back didnt happen for a LONG LONG time and suddenly, everybody INSISTS on pulling the dragon all the way in the back to the point you get flamed by saying that isn't needed. Why?

Because of the skeletons? Just aoe them down!

Because Stat Squish has made any skeletons getting to the dragon take off a lot more HP. It's a very noticeable difference. It's gone from fairly easy to solo heal in the middle to nearly impossible if your team lets too many live (and you have 0 shields). And in Lab, you'll always have people who don't know how important it is to kill them, or don't care, and 1-2 healers who don't know what's coming. And people standing in that one AOE. That's the biggest issue, sometimes.

Perhaps you have good luck, but I haven't had a pull with it in the middle post-EW that hasn't gone very poorly. It ends up saving a lot of time and hassle for it to be pulled to the end (doesn't need to be pulled all the way to the end, though).

[Mirhd]

Can't speak for other DCs, but every time I've ended up in Lab since EW launch we still just fight the dragon in the middle; healing through it is more than doable and the stat squash hasn't changed much. I'd love for more mechanics to matter in that series of raids, but I don't see that happening when you can just brute force it.

[MaxCarnage]

Who made it cool to pull the dragon all the way back in Labyrinth of the Ancients
Who made it cool to pull the dragon all the way back in Labyrinth of the Ancients
Who made it cool to pull the dragon all the way back in Labyrinth of the Ancients
Who who who who who

Its way more chaotic every time and when i get to tank it in the middle, everything is fine. I learned it that way all the way back in Heavensward, pulling it back didnt happen for a LONG LONG time and suddenly, everybody INSISTS on pulling the dragon all the way in the back to the point you get flamed by saying that isn't needed. Why?

Because of the skeletons? Just aoe them down!

I got LOtA the other day as a GNB. I tanked the dragon in the middle. To my surprise no one tried to provoke it off me or yell at me to pull it back. And not a single skeleton went off. It was the smoothest I have seen that fight go in over a year.

[Kolaina]

Pulling it back was how it was originally done, at least in my experience when it first released. It wasn't made trivial by overgearing back then, so it was important. Now, not so much, but there was a reason for it.

In many fights the arena design gives a hint to how some mechanics are to be handled. The multiple branching paths in that fight would suggest multiple targets being pulled to the end platforms, like for example, the skeletons. Originally, that’s how the fight was intended. Pull the skeletons to the end. Kill them when they respawn before they reached dragon in the middle. So when you started doing it, it wasn’t being done as intended.

[MaxCarnage]

In many fights the arena design gives a hint to how some mechanics are to be handled. The multiple branching paths in that fight would suggest multiple targets being pulled to the end platforms, like for example, the skeletons. Originally, that’s how the fight was intended. Pull the skeletons to the end. Kill them when they respawn before they reached dragon in the middle. So when you started doing it, it wasn’t being done as intended.

Funny how there are as many branches as there are skeletons... almost like they correlate or something>.>

[Driavna]

In many fights the arena design gives a hint to how some mechanics are to be handled. The multiple branching paths in that fight would suggest multiple targets being pulled to the end platforms, like for example, the skeletons. Originally, that’s how the fight was intended. Pull the skeletons to the end. Kill them when they respawn before they reached dragon in the middle. So when you started doing it, it wasn’t being done as intended.

Good to mention that before we had 6 tanks in total (2 per alliance).

[Kolaina]

Good to mention that before we had 6 tanks in total (2 per alliance).

Anyone could pull the skeletons. I did it as bard. Made no difference to who handled the mechanic. Only how