Gondrakar the Berserk
Giant sized mob that uses the barbarian race graphic
Approximately the height of the largest fire giant model.
Fight takes place in a throne room that looks like:
___________________________
|..................B.....................x|
|A..........E............F............Cx|
|.........................................x|
|
..........................
................|
.............\............/
..............\........../
...............\......../
...............|...D...|
...............|........|
Distance from A to B and B to C is approximately 100m
A - Kennel with non-interactable mob named Vark the Rabid
B - Throne where Gondrakar starts
C - Barracks with non-interactable mob named Dwurn the Mighty
D - Direction the raid enters from
E - Dwurn boundary line
F - Vark boundary line
E and F are delineated by a slight stairway. Not enough to affect line of sight, just enough to allow players to learn the boundaries.
Both Vark and Dwurn are approximately 20% smaller than Gondrakar.
PRIMARY STAGE
Initially, the raid faces only Gondrakar the Berserk.
Special Buff
All +threat effects applied to Gondrakar also apply to all fighters in the raid and the effect is doubled. Positional modifiers do not share this benefit.
Special attacks
AOE swing - moderate to high damage with knockback, frontal 120 degrees
Spinning swing - 20m range medium damage rear cone attack (does not hit frontal 60 degrees) with knockback and 5s trauma snare 70% move reduction. Think similar to wing beat.
Ground stomp - knockdown interrupt crushing attack with damage scaling by range, 40m range limit
At 90% he red texts "Gondrakar looks angry" begins to flurry.
Flurry - multi swings (max damage of around 18k versus your typical high end raid tank if all 4 swings connect).
Flurry goes off every 15s, the target is struck up into the air and deflects off the wall to land at least 30m away. Gondrakar howls with glee and rampages onto another fighter in the raid. This places that fighter into the top hate position and drops the former tank to zero hate. If fighter is not currently at Gondrakar he charges at super fast move rate to that fighter. Frontal aoe swing and ground stomp both occur immediately upon the rampage.
Beginning to tire.
At 65% he red texts "Gondrakar begins to tire and adopts a defensive posture"
Flurry and rampage effects cease, outgoing damage decreases by 25%, incoming damage is reduced by 75%, damage decreases are shown in detrimental window in primary positions right after the stun and stifle immunity icons. Regen rate doubles.
At 60% he red texts "Gondrakar shouts for reinforcements"
Vark the Rabid and Dwurn the Mighty activate and advance towards the raid.
Vark and Dwurn encounters are not linked with Gondrakar.
SECONDARY STAGE
Vark the Rabid, encounter
- extremely resistant to poison and disease
- weak to heat and cold and mental
Includes 7 giant black hounds linked with Vark
- high resistance to mental and divine
- heroic ^^^'s with a fair amount of hps
- while Vark lives, death of any hound delivers 25% heal to it's linked group.
- immune to mez/stun but can be rooted
Vark moves towards Gondrakar and aggro locks to first fighter he comes within 30m of for 10s. Hatelist acts as normal for the remainder.
- If fighter dies, he has a 4s aggro lock on the target lowest on his hate list.
- If that target survives 4s then hate can be re-established as normal. If that target dies the 4s lowest on hate list cycle repeats.
- Someone who has not engaged against him will not be a recipient of his aggro lock, however if all targets against him die then he aggro locks the lowest on Gondrakar's hate list.
When Vark first successfully strikes his fighter, he red texts: Vark shouts, "Get 'em!"
- Each hound picks a random non-fighter anywhere west of F and aggro's them. This is not aggro locked and can be picked up as normal.
Special attacks
Hounds - deal low to moderate damage and high frequency of knockdown with a 1s stun component. Non-mages should be able to tank the hounds no problem, but mages shouldn't expect to survive very long.
Vark
- deals moderate to high damage, tramples up to 4 targets in frontal 120 degree arc, and double attacks.
- single target attack that swings either right to left or left to right (random) and knockbacks the target 15m in the corresponding direction.
At 75%, 50% and 25% (+ or - 5%) shouts "Get 'em!" again and the hounds drop target and reaquire on a random non-fighter within 50m that is west of F.
Dwurn the Mighty
Dwurn moves towards Gondrakar and aggro's against the first fighter he comes within 30m of, no locking.
Staggering blows
- melee swings knock the target back 5m and he continuosly advances towards them.
Ground swing, 40s +/- 10s
- rears up and strikes the ground, anybody within 15m pbae takes low-moderate damage and knockdown interrupt. Trauma debuff for 12s that repeats the knockdown every 4s. Anybody within 50m of frontal 120 degree arc receives interrupt, no debuff.
- Stops Dwurn's movement for 10s.
If at any Dwurn's current target is not between him and Gondrakar, Dwurn turns and begins walking slowly towards Gondrakar.
Should Dwurn reach 20m away from Gondrakar he pushes Gondrakar's target to the top of his hatelist and rushes him, dealing a ground swing attack upon reaching his target.
At 80% or after 30s of spawning, Dwurn shouts "To me my kin! Your liege is in danger!"
- 3 groups of 3 heroic ^^^ mobs spawn, one group at each of the x's by his start position.
- These reinforcements are fairly easy to kill, but don't immediately crumple at the first aoe.
- Each one randomly aggro's on someone in the raid east of E.
Should any of these groups fully die, then 10s later a replacement group spawns. These respawn continuously until Dwurn is defeated. If all 3 groups die, Dwurn stops and moves 15m back towards C, at which point he stops again and begins moving back towards Gondrakar.
(Killing the same group repeatedly will not trigger this, must be 1 of each of the 3 groups.)
- Dwurn will swing at the nearest target range while he is marching towards Gondrakar, regardless of their position on his hatelist.
TERTIARY STAGE
Once Vark and Dwurn have been defeated Dwurns reinforcements stop spawning.
Once the last of the adds die, another red text message flashes, "Gondrakar scans the battlefield, and see's that he alone is left standing."
20 seconds later Gondrakar shouts, "You think you can take ME down? I think NOT!" Red text flashes "Gondrakar goes berserk!"
- Incoming damage reduction is removed
- Outgoing damage reduction is removed
- All debuffs are dispelled
- Outgoing damage increases by 25%
- All fighters are dropped from hatelist and are unable to gain first place on the hatelist until either 20s passes or 5 non-fighters die.
- Once a fighter gets back into first place on the hatelist, flurry goes back into effect and immediately fires.
Every 10s a random scout or mage is selected, that target receives +5 threat positions and Gondrakar shouts <playername>. If that target reaches first place on the hatelist as a result then Gondrakar charges their location and AOE swings.
Tertiary stage will also start if Gondrakar reaches 25% health while an add is still up. However, should this occur the incoming damage reduction is NOT removed.
Once Gondrakar reaches 5% he shouts "Noooo! This cannot be!"
Upon dying, any part of the encounter that happens to still be alive will die.
Tactics
- 3 or even 4 fighters is ideal. Only 2 fighters will find it hard to deal with his flurry over the long term due to having to repeatedly climb the hate list. It will take a damn good non-fighter to tank Dwurn though he can be somewhat kited by killing his reinforcements repeatedly.
- Dwurn's reinforcements are fully susceptible to all status effects. All mobs except Gondrakar can be aggro-locked.
- An average off tank should be able to hold Vark just fine.
- There are no auto-fail conditions on this fight, and there are a variety of methods that may be used to achieve victory.
Once secondary stage is reached, all of these are viable paths:
Vark
- Kill off Vark's hounds, then kill Vark. Longer method but dealing with aggro drop is easier the fewer there are.
- Deal with aggro drop through whatever method, burn Vark to death and then kill hounds.
Dwurn
- Kite Dwurn through watching his position and burning the adds to cause him to walk back towards his start location.
- Remove his reinforcements from fight through mez, root, stun, whatever and focus fire on Dwurn.
- Fight is more of a coordination challenge than anything else.
It would be entirely reasonable to expect a raid to burn down the hounds and then hold Vark, who has a lot of hps, while the raid moves and deals with Dwurn, then return to kill Vark.
Once one of the named adds is down, Gondrakar can be moved over into their side of the map, reducing the liklihood that a key support character is targeted by the other nameds adds random target effects.
Vark can be kept alive while Gondrakar is slow-dps'd, the fight will take a very long time as pulling the dps off Gondrakar will allow him to regen back up fairly high due to lack of incoming damage, but the tertiary stage will be of shorter duration. The raid would want to kill Vark while Gondrakar is around 30% so they can get back into position for the berserk stage.
A super high dps raid could kill hounds, hold Vark, kite Dwurn and focus fire on Gondrakar. This effectively allows a raid that is well past progression on this fight to clear it in less time due to not having to bring down either of the adds. A lesser dps raid will not be able to overcome the reduction in damage and the higher regen rate.
An uber tank could tank both Gondrakar and Dwurn, leaving only the Vark tank west of the F boundary line. This would result in the hounds only going after that tank and removing the hound mem-wiping issue from the encounter.
Overall difficulty of the encounter should be somewhere between Zarrakon and Field General, though since there is a lot going on the fight will take some duration.
Failure points
- With 3 fighters in the raid, during the secondary stage if the fighter on Gondrakar or Vark dies, the raid will probably wipe. A 4th fighter, while not really ideal, can potentially play safety and also seriously minimizes the effect of the rampage effect.
- If Dwurn reaches Gondrakar, the raid will probably wipe due to the primary tank now having both of them on him/her.
- Failing to control the hounds can easily result in key support classes either dying or being stunned long enough to cause a cascading array of deaths.
- Not dealing with Dwurn's adds can result in support classes being over run and the loss of that support should caues a wipe.
This is the kind of encounter that we used to have during EOF, one that can be taken down a variety of methods based on what is on the guild roster and where they're at in progression. ROK brought us the line of "You will do it this way or your raid will be one-shotted" and significantly limited guild options in clearing an encounter. In my opinion raid auto-fail conditions are a lazy crutch and should be very rarely used.
Re: Design-an-Encounter!
