Guild Wars 2

If Jormag and Primordus are each other’s weakness, and Mordremoth can be attacked through his mind, what’s Zhaitan’s weakness? Giant lasers?

Airship cannon lasers. Yep.

Teamwork!!

The only realistic weakness he had that we saw was how vulnerable he was after we took out his eyes and mouth. That significantly hurt his ability to draw on more magic to sustain him and was the (I believe stated?) reason why we could take him down so easily.
Whether that counts as a weakness is improbable, but I;m not sure the other Dragons had such clear vulnerabilities we could/can attack independently and have a noticeable effect.

I would say that you do not have to use a Dragon’s weakness to kill one. While Zhaitan is a good example of where we probably didn’t use his weakness to kill him, Kralkatorrik is another example. The original plan that Destiny’s Edge had to kill him was for Rytlock to drive one of Kralkatorrik’s own spines into the dragon’s heart. Yes, Glint had one.

The reason I bring it up is because Taimi makes it a big deal during this episode that we need the machine to destroy Jormag and Primordus, as they are each other's weakness.

Between halfway through HoT and all of LW3, a big deal is made about elder dragons having a weakness that can be exploited and is basically needed to defeat them. Mordremoth destroyed a Pact Fleet bigger than the one that attacked Zhaitan in at most a couple minutes.

Well, let’s take Primordus. Without pitting Jormag against him, how would you even manage to take him down? You can’t take an airship fleet where he is for certain, and good luck constructing vehicles that will both be able to withstand the lava and carry enough firepower to bring him down.

In this case, I would say Taimi’s assessment was correct and that Primordus cannot be brought down without using Jormag’s energy against him.

Anyone else wondering why there was no Bubbles’ (water dragon) creature along with the other test subjects?
I was hoping to see it aswell but nope..

Hesacon.8735:

If Jormag and Primordus are each other’s weakness, and Mordremoth can be attacked through his mind, what’s Zhaitan’s weakness? Giant lasers?

I’d always assumed it was the laser, as the Mega-LIT cannon is the first thing we see do major damage to Zhaitan, although it’s not clear cut given the number of other fronts he was attacked on. Light dispelling shadow, his second sphere.

That, combined with how Mordremoth died made me think that the dragons’ weaknesses are via their secondary sphere of influence. Not knowing Primordus’ or Jormag’s, it could be possible that it was their secondary spheres that cancelled each other out, and not the fire & ice. If we can find out what their second spheres are, it might give us a clue.

Or, like how they create their minions, the form of the their weakness could vary from dragon to dragon.

Alga.6498:

Anyone else wondering why there was no Bubbles’ (water dragon) creature along with the other test subjects?
I was hoping to see it aswell but nope..

I suspect that was intended to tease us about his name… again. This was the same LS team that teased us with Taimi trying to remember the name a few episodes back.

Also, as far as we know, we don’t currently have any contact with Bubbles or any of his minions to have caught one.

bfg

the oposite of death is life, mordremorth uses plants as a sphere of influence, and mind exists in living species.

I really want to see Zaithan again, he is the undead dragon, will death stop him?

Conqueror.3682:

the oposite of death is life, mordremorth uses plants as a sphere of influence, and mind exists in living species.

I really want to see Zaithan again, he is the undead dragon, will death stop him?

Couldn’t he corrupt himself and rise again?

I think Zhaitan’s weakness is that he was the weakest out of all the dragons, but his raising of the dead thing made him have an incredible difficult army to fight against.

Retroactively looking for Zhaitan’s “weakness” is futile IMO because the whole concept was one of HoT’s worst kitten pulls, overshadowed only by Mordremoth’s weakness being one of its own domains. That’s like saying we can kill Jormag by throwing snowballs at it, or Primordus by holding a lit match to its tail.

I know the vanilla story gets flak here, but IMO it beats the pants off anything that came afterwards in terms of actually feeling like a massive concerted effort instead of “go wherever and do whatever some gasbag brat who singlehandedly knows everything and has absolutely unlimited resources and contacts tells you to”. Zhaitan didn’t have a single simplistic killswitch, defeating it required a multi-pronged approach of tackling its supply of corpses and magic, its eyes and mouth, and the corrupted Source of Orr, and that was information from multiple sources that we actively participated in acquiring.

Taimi told me he has a weakness though!

Chadramar.8156:

Retroactively looking for Zhaitan’s “weakness” is futile IMO because the whole concept was one of HoT’s worst kitten pulls, overshadowed only by Mordremoth’s weakness being one of its own domains. That’s like saying we can kill Jormag by throwing snowballs at it, or Primordus by holding a lit match to its tail.

I know the vanilla story gets flak here, but IMO it beats the pants off anything that came afterwards in terms of actually feeling like a massive concerted effort instead of “go wherever and do whatever some gasbag brat who singlehandedly knows everything and has absolutely unlimited resources and contacts tells you to”. Zhaitan didn’t have a single simplistic killswitch, defeating it required a multi-pronged approach of tackling its supply of corpses and magic, its eyes and mouth, and the corrupted Source of Orr, and that was information from multiple sources that we actively participated in acquiring.

Yes! For all of it’s faults, the personal story got this right – the campaign against Zhaitan felt like a campaign. There was build up, multiple fronts of attack, and for all the flak it got, I like that we killed him with an airship instead of walking up to him to give him a beatdown sword and board style, as it felt like the final push of an army, not a handful of dudes. (Yeah, I know there were only a handful of dudes on the airship, butI could easily imagine the presence of more on the ship, or on other nearby ships helping)

no, we took in his own magic, tuned it, and fired it back at him. We essentially killed him with greed and gluttony

Moonyeti.3296:

Chadramar.8156:

Retroactively looking for Zhaitan’s “weakness” is futile IMO because the whole concept was one of HoT’s worst kitten pulls, overshadowed only by Mordremoth’s weakness being one of its own domains. That’s like saying we can kill Jormag by throwing snowballs at it, or Primordus by holding a lit match to its tail.

I know the vanilla story gets flak here, but IMO it beats the pants off anything that came afterwards in terms of actually feeling like a massive concerted effort instead of “go wherever and do whatever some gasbag brat who singlehandedly knows everything and has absolutely unlimited resources and contacts tells you to”. Zhaitan didn’t have a single simplistic killswitch, defeating it required a multi-pronged approach of tackling its supply of corpses and magic, its eyes and mouth, and the corrupted Source of Orr, and that was information from multiple sources that we actively participated in acquiring.

Yes! For all of it’s faults, the personal story got this right – the campaign against Zhaitan felt like a campaign. There was build up, multiple fronts of attack, and for all the flak it got, I like that we killed him with an airship instead of walking up to him to give him a beatdown sword and board style, as it felt like the final push of an army, not a handful of dudes. (Yeah, I know there were only a handful of dudes on the airship, butI could easily imagine the presence of more on the ship, or on other nearby ships helping)

If you consider the HoT metas as part of the story, the attack on Mordremoth involved a lot of fighting outside. The story missions even reference the battle going on outside during the meta. The characters admit to the meta battle being essential for going into the Mind of Mordremoth.

I don’t think you can consider the HoT story without also considering the metas as part of the story. In VB we had to reorganize after Mordremoth kitten slapped the Pact Fleet, AB we didn’t do much, TD we had to punch kitten into DS, and in DS we had to occupy Mordremoth’s attention to allow the Pact Commander to attack his mind.

Taking that into consideration, the campaign against Mordremoth was probably bigger, since he blew up Lion’s Arch in LW1 and a couple forts in LW2 before his main Modrem forces were stalled in the Silverwastes.

Zhaitan may have had more offensive success taking Claw Island before the Pact was organized.

It’s still possible to explore more Zhaitan battles and aftermath via Fractals… hopefully some day.

I think his weakness was aerial assault — per the whole deal with Caladbolg, he seemed to draw strength from the land of Orr. Maybe forcing him to fight airborne deprived him of whatever was left of that power than hadn’t already been wrecked by Mordremoth’s (sorry, the Pale Tree’s) energies.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

I would say that you do not have to use a Dragon’s weakness to kill one. While Zhaitan is a good example of where we probably didn’t use his weakness to kill him, Kralkatorrik is another example. The original plan that Destiny’s Edge had to kill him was for Rytlock to drive one of Kralkatorrik’s own spines into the dragon’s heart. Yes, Glint had one.

One could argue that Kralkatorrik’s own weakness is his own hardened body but that’s just continuing the trend used throughout Edge of Destiny of “the enemy kills itself” / “using the enemy against itself is how to win”.

But basically, your first sentence is correct. You do not have to use an Elder Dragon’s weakness to kill it – it’s just the “easiest method”.

I don’t think the “weakness” thing is innately a problem, but it’s been applied so oddly.

For Zhaitan, we didn’t exploit a weakness. We starved him over a long period of time, and then used anti-dragon technology against him. It was all thoroughly explained over the campaign, logical, and was really hard-earned in a way that was appropriate for a first kill that we might refine in the future. I’d like to imagine that he had a weakness that would have made things a lot easier, but we managed to take him down without it.

For Mordremoth, he destroyed our anti-dragon stuff in the airship fleet, presumably along with a good chunk of the manpower that built and maintained it. Without such a universal solution, we discovered the concept of weaknesses, and while we exploit it awfully fast after learning about it, it was his mistake for letting someone in on his secrets before fully corrupting him. It even made some sense that, being a lot more expansive and infest-y than other dragons, that you’d have to kill the “hive mind” itself rather than a body that could spread anywhere.

For Primordus and Jormag, I always assumed that pitting them against each other was less “this is literally their weakness” and more “hey, their powers are opposed to each other, why even bother finding an individual weakness when we can just have them take care of each other.” Saying that a civil war is their weakness just seems a little odd, as if the weaknesses are literally the only way to defeat them, even though we took down one dragon and nearly another before even knowing about the weaknesses.

I mean, I imagine that pitting Primordus and Mordremoth against each other would have been pretty effective too, since burning the whole place down would have been an effective way to get rid of Mordremoth’s infestation no matter where he tried to migrate his mind to, but obviously that wasn’t his “weakness.”

Moonyeti.3296:

Yes! For all of it’s faults, the personal story got this right – the campaign against Zhaitan felt like a campaign. There was build up, multiple fronts of attack, and for all the flak it got, I like that we killed him with an airship instead of walking up to him to give him a beatdown sword and board style, as it felt like the final push of an army, not a handful of dudes.

Likewise. Not every threat has to be dumbed down into a typical MMO bossbattle. Let the world-devouring threats be too overwhelming for a bunch of fragile little mortals to YOLO up close and personal. There’s plenty of room for typical MMO bossbattles in a proper and complex campaign to prepare for taking out said world-devouring threat in a different manner.

Hesacon.8735:

If you consider the HoT metas as part of the story, the attack on Mordremoth involved a lot of fighting outside.

Fighting, but no planning, and especially no planning that we get to be part of as the now defacto leader of the Pact. The beginning of Heart of Thorns was actually quite gripping for me because there’s a lot of potential in losing everything and being faced with the prospect of a battle against an Elder Dragon while internal strife rages and, if you’re sylvari, the dragon tries to crush your own mind to boot and your people wonder when you will break. But it lost steam very quickly because that plot thread gets abandoned halfway through VB.

And absolutely nothing can change the colossal facepalm that is “Kill the dragon of Mind by attacking its mind!”. If we had attacked it through the Dream, with the Pale Tree (aware of her own culpability in the whole debacle by not warning us in time), mustering all of her fading strength to act as a conduit and protector from afar, and maybe even with an desperate alliance of convenience with the Nightmare Court who strike back in their own twisted way … I could have bought something like that, possibly, and it would have picked up the two loose threads of Mama Tree and the Court as a bonus. But its mind, directly? Ugh. The “weakness” notion is poison for this game’s story.

and in DS we had to occupy Mordremoth’s attention to allow the Pact Commander to attack his mind.

Which makes the DS meta a bit weird because we are the Pact Commander. :p I could overlook that if the actual story finale wasn’t such a fustercluck of nonsense, though.

I thought Zhaitan’s weakness, that we accidentally exploited, was his complete dependence on his minions. Zhaitan itself was very weak, to the point where it could not even seen or feed itself without its servants. It’s strength was that it essentially made more servants by fighting with those it had (Anything that died came back as another servant). We beat that by making heavy use of mechanization and tech to shift the casualty balance negative, and took out its backup food supply by cleansing Orr itself too. We got lucky that conventional “cut the supply lines” thinking happened to work in that case, unlike when we tried the same thing against Mordremoth.