Tanking Bone Dragon at the Edge

[Machazareel]

The disadvantages at tanking at the edge FAR out weigh any perceived advantages.

For one, the skeletons take a direct path to the dragon.. which means they spend a lot of time in the poison areas... in addition, there is 6 skeletons and when placing them on the far side platforms.. you cause the angle of the room to change which can cause them to cross paths and get the speed buff. In addition the melee have much farther to run to dps the skeletons

Another is the melee have the problem of trying to dps the dragon and ranged an healers have limited areas to stand on

The center is how the encounter was designed and it was designed well.... pull the skels to the outside.. the path to the center leave areas to dps, good angles to avoid skels bunching, lots of spots for dps to stand on

So much this.

If someone gets hit by his conal aoe, they're terrible anyway, and it doesn't matter where he's tanked.

[OPneedNerfs]

Face Dragon North, A pulls West, B Pulls South, C pulls East.

Nobody has reason to be hit by breath. Not to mention the breath argument is kinda redundant since it only happens on the last phase where the other tanks only need to tank the eyes away from everyone else.

So unless your Alliance is full of bads who like standing in front of the boss while they're not the MT, Dragon in the center is way better in terms of eating less damage from the purple water.

[Crimson-Falcon]

i did tanking to edge 2 times myself

and i can say tanking the dragon on edge guarantees no skeletons reach the dragon even with rangers alone DPS them

plus it make avoiding his horror AOE target MT only so no one catch that out like in middle

[Moirear]

It's both ways to do this indeed, and both work just as well.

The biggest issue I run into in CT is hero tanks that don't communicate and do whatever they like.
Which usually ends up in a very annoying but at the same time hilarious skeleton ping pong.

Which is not just on Bone Dragon, but symptomatic for all of CT.

[mindful]

Main reason many groups tank it to the far north edge is , there is a spawn were 2 skeletons spawn in the center and boom if not enough players are on there A game. It can wipe out a entire alliance group faster. So many main tanks drag it to the north edge and it is also a way to start to find out who the main tank and healer going to be in the later battles. Just less drama if a tank drag it to the north edge it faster and easier and less chance of having mistakes wiping out a lot of players. Think of it as a training run on that fight.

[Oscillate_Wildly]

This is so weird. On the Aether data center most if not all tank the Dragon in the center. I would say the one in ten we get that tank it on the edge do allow for more error in the skeletons. And it also relinquishes the center platform for all the healers to stand on for max range on everyone. >
Tanking him deliberately in the middle allows for more people to gather around. Since the breathe phase only happens at the end it seems, there's no real benefit to it since everyone shouldn't be there in the first place and should be gathered with their own alliance so they can get healed.

To do the middle way effectively, designating each alliance's tanks cardinal directions is a must since no skeletons can over lap. But I mean, if your tanks are slap fighting over who gets to voke the skeletons in whichever direction, its probably best to tank him as far away from the center as possible. Way more margin for error.

[flamds1]

In all of my CT runs, I have never seen anyone tank it at the edge always in the center...I've also only had 2 wipes on that boss and it was the first week the instance was released.
I've actually never even heard of this till reading this thread

It must be a data cluster thing or something. Ive only seen dragon tanked at edge once or twice almost always in middle. Never really had any problem with tanking him in the middle. Not sure why people are crying about tanking him in the middle. Unless you're using lightning fate weapons, you have plenty of time for the dps to kill the skeletons if they're killed on the end platforms.

[Aegis]

Didn't expect this to be as controversial as it appears to be, lol.

My own $0.02 is that the middle makes it easier for melee as they don't have to run the entire length of the arena between adds and dragon, making a faster kill.

I haven't had a wipe to skellies reaching the centre since patch week since people know this fight inside out by now.

My opinion may be coloured by the fact that this is the way my entire data centre does it, I've never known anything else and I fear change.

[Kaelah]

Never been in a group that tanked him in the middle. A tank tried to once and the /a chat started raging at him to move north.

[EasymodeX]

I've seen 1 tank in about 20 CT runs attempt to tank the dragon at the edge of the arena. He was shouted down for being a complete dumbass and trying to troll the raid.

The other runs went smoothly.

Stop being scrubby.