First and foremost, you should be aware that unlike the original fight, in the Mote Master fight the dragon regenerates health. Berserker’s gear is recommended, but if you don’t have that, Soldier’s isn’t far behind. Condition builds are very unsuitable for the fight as the dragon goes entirely invulnerable within less than 10 seconds – you’ll never have enough time to build up to your max dps point. Bomb/grenade engis are easymode for this particular fight.
Reason for this is that while you cannot crit the dragonhead, you can crit the roots, and you’ll need to clear roots as fast as possible in order to get the dragon attackable before it reaches the next HP phase.
Make sure you have a ranged weapon. Also, as far as possible make sure you have access to Blind. This becomes critical if a vine gets so close you must melee it.
It has 4 HP phases – 100%, 75%, 50% and 25%. You must dps it down to the phase boundary (the multiples of 25) to clear a phase, otherwise the phase repeats until you get to the boundary. Also, you’re only allowed one grace boundary.
In other words:
Phase 1: 100-HP-75: Can DPS to 75.
Phase 2: 100-HP-50: Can DPS to 50.
Phase 3: 75-HP-25: Can DPS to 25.
Phase 4: 50-HP-0: Can DPS to 0.
If the upper boundary is crossed a phase is reset – for instance if in phase 3 you take so long to hit the dragon that it recovers back to 76% HP, you’re reset to phase 2.
At the beginning of phase 3 (first time only) a wolf is spawned. At the beginning of phase 4 (first time only) a thrasher is spawned. This may be somewhat different in parties – I cleared it solo, so someone else will have to fill you in on the spawn characteristics in a party. If soloing, save any summoning elites (hounds of balthazar, thieves’ guild, warband etc) for phase 4 as the thrasher can hit ridiculously hard with its vines-from-ground attack, and there is no AoE circle on the ground to warn you of this.
To make things easier stand at a spot not easily accessible to vine ranged attacks, unlikely to allow a vine to melee range and which is outside the dragon’s AoE patterns. The attached screenshot depicts the spot I used.
A Immobilise debuff will appear on you 3 seconds before you’re stuck in a trap. Dodge to get rid of this debuff. This is pretty much the only thing that can kill you in the fight if you’re not sleeping on the job.
Finally, when the entire ground glows pink then white, a stomp is underway. For the achievement, jump over all of these stomps. On my ping, it requires waiting for 3-3.5 seconds from when the colour first appears before jumping. If you’re located closer to the US server, chances are you may need to wait for 4 seconds. You only need to do this 3-4 times if the other parts are handled well.
Note that you’ll want to range the vines at long range to give yourself max time to react to its attacks – and to stay out of range of the dragon’s AoEs. If you have to fight in melee range, drop a blind field on the vine and burst it down before the blind can wear off. I also had to range the dragonhead since melee didn’t work reliably, but if you can get a melee spot reliably every time, that will be better.
Range the tallest vine first. That’s the only one capable of using ranged attacks. The other two are pushovers if they’re not in melee range.
It is entirely possible to get all three achievements solo in one run. If not prioritise Mote Master, and get the other 2 in a later non-challenge run to make things easier on yourself, if you didn’t unlock them together.
This should make it easier for you to get the achievements, if you’re still stuck.
If the thread helps you bump it so it doesn’t get lost somewhere in page 9.
