So, Dorudugan, how do you defeat him?

[Lampros]

14 minutes ago, thelee said:

mule kick doesn't interrupt per se. however, it will knock up dorudugan and cause it to require to stand back up again, even though normally prone (which is an interrupt) is prevented by concentration or interrupt immunity. the same thing is true for monk's knock up ability. this also works on the oracle and the memory hoarder in FS (who are interrupt immune). edit - unlike a true interrupt, knock up alone won't waste the enemy's resource when properly done during their action. however, you can mess up AI scripting a bit to buy yourself more time because enemies don't always try the same action again--they might do some other stuff for a while. 

more importantly, for a tactician, the brief window when an enemy is knocked up in the air, they are treated by the game as not being in combat. this can be bad if you have attacks or spells in mid-flight, because they'll whiff against the enemy. for a tactician, though, that brief window is enough that--if that was the only enemy around--you temporarily gain briliant. you lose brilliant as soon as the enemy lands back on the ground and re-enters combat, but a second or so of brilliant is all you need to restore a resource. in my ultimate run i would mule kick enemies if they were the only ones around, to help restore resources for the priest half of my character.

 

Would all this apply to turn-based as well?

[thelee]

4 minutes ago, Lampros said:

Would all this apply to turn-based as well?

yes. i think it'd be harder to time the mule kick properly (i don't quite know how delaying your turn works especially when it come to cast times), but you would halt any currently active action. unfortunately, in turn-based, the enemy might just rev up their action on the immediate next turn, so you'd have to keep it up.

[Lampros]

1 minute ago, thelee said:

yes. i think it'd be harder to time the mule kick properly (i don't quite know how delaying your turn works especially when it come to cast times), but you would halt any currently active action. unfortunately, in turn-based, the enemy might just rev up their action on the immediate next turn, so you'd have to keep it up.

I see; I recall the video was turn-based though. It's just that the audio was difficult to understand for me to know precisely what was going on. It seems like the biggest dilemma I am having in finalizing my party composition has to do whether I want to try to attempt the mega-bosses or not. If I do, it probably requires a tank, Priest, Cipher, etc. and ways to reduce incoming damage as much as possible. So I was curious about Mule Kick - which this guy claimed act as a virtual stun in turn-based.

[Haplok]

19 hours ago, thelee said:

yes. i think it'd be harder to time the mule kick properly (i don't quite know how delaying your turn works especially when it come to cast times), but you would halt any currently active action. unfortunately, in turn-based, the enemy might just rev up their action on the immediate next turn, so you'd have to keep it up.

Delaying actions in this mode is the most lazy and simplistic implementation possible. You simply move to the end of the turn order. Its sadly not possible to effectively use it to interrupt enemy actions.

Edited October 20, 2020 by Haplok

[Lampros]

41 minutes ago, Haplok said:

Delaying actions in this mode is the most lazy and simplistic implementation possible. You simply move to the end of the turn order. Its sadly not possible to effectively use it to interrupt enemy actions.

Wait, so if you have multiple Mule Kickers, then the AI would theoretically never do anything since he'd be trying to complete the prior turn's action?

Is that what happened here? The audio is really difficult on my end, so I could not completely make him out:

Edit: I was curious that this video had 5 downvotes and 0 upvotes. So I am wondering if those who saw the video didn't think this was the right approach?

Edited October 20, 2020 by Lampros

[thelee]

interesting - so i assumed that mule kick would act a lot like a prone in turn-based mode, which is simply an initiative delay. the video shows that the "knock up" effect lasts the entire round, so dorudugan stays down. i have a hard time figuring out what else is going on, so i don't know if the monk skyward kick is critical to stunlocking dorudugan. the big thing is that you need a generous amount of accuracy to hit dorudugan with mule kick; even with turn-based mode's more generous graze range, dorudugan has sky high fortitude defense.

i think what's happening is that both mule kick and skyward kick expire their 1 round "knock up" duration when the person who did the action gets a turn again. so if you have two characters A and B who can both knock up, you have both use it, and by the time it's A's turn, dorudugan would try to stand up, but it still has a remaining knock up duration from B. So A mule kicks again, refreshing the knock up duration, and by the time dorudugan would try to stand up on B's turn, they are still affected by A's knock up. you would definitely needs lots of accuracy and/or redundancy to ensure this works (~180 accuracy to have 100% chance of landing mule kick). I see they use morning star modal, which would help alot (-25). I think returning storm might be for the might affliction for another -10. a monk could land sickened for another -10. single-weapon style (doesn't look like the video poster used it) would give a free +12 accuracy. devotions would give another +10. you'd need brilliant to keep everything up.

turn-based mode rounding ironically would make this strategy work a bit better because dorudugan's high resolve wouldn't matter, the durations of stuff would get rounded up to a minimum of 1 round.

 

4 hours ago, Lampros said:

Edit: I was curious that this video had 5 downvotes and 0 upvotes. So I am wondering if those who saw the video didn't think this was the right approach?

probably has downvotes because the audio is so poor quality it's almost impossible to tell what's happening

Edited October 20, 2020 by thelee

[Lampros]

38 minutes ago, thelee said:

interesting - so i assumed that mule kick would act a lot like a prone in turn-based mode, which is simply an initiative delay. the video shows that the "knock up" effect lasts the entire round, so dorudugan stays down. i have a hard time figuring out what else is going on, so i don't know if the monk skyward kick is critical to stunlocking dorudugan. the big thing is that you need a generous amount of accuracy to hit dorudugan with mule kick; even with turn-based mode's more generous graze range, dorudugan has sky high fortitude defense.

i think what's happening is that both mule kick and skyward kick expire their 1 round "knock up" duration when the person who did the action gets a turn again. so if you have two characters A and B who can both knock up, you have both use it, and by the time it's A's turn, dorudugan would try to stand up, but it still has a remaining knock up duration from B. So A mule kicks again, refreshing the knock up duration, and by the time dorudugan would try to stand up on B's turn, they are still affected by A's knock up. you would definitely needs lots of accuracy and/or redundancy to ensure this works (~180 accuracy to have 100% chance of landing mule kick). I see they use morning star modal, which would help alot (-25). I think returning storm might be for the might affliction for another -10. a monk could land sickened for another -10. single-weapon style (doesn't look like the video poster used it) would give a free +12 accuracy. devotions would give another +10. you'd need brilliant to keep everything up.

turn-based mode rounding ironically would make this strategy work a bit better because dorudugan's high resolve wouldn't matter, the durations of stuff would get rounded up to a minimum of 1 round.

 

probably has downvotes because the audio is so poor quality it's almost impossible to tell what's happening

Yes, that is what I am thinking was happening, too. So you'd need 2 characters who can spam knock-up effects. In one of the turns, the mega-boss does get up and performs some sort of an AoE melee attack. So I assume that's because one of the "kickers" missed - meaning this is not a bullet-proof tactic either.

I am glad I wasn't the only person to have issues with the audio. My speakers are sort of broken, so I thought it was just an issue on my end!

Edit: By the way, how long do you imagine this tactic would take on turn-based to kill that thing? The Youtuber didn't post the whole thing.

Edited October 20, 2020 by Lampros

[saborea7]

Hello from Germany everyone,

playing this in 2022 on a PS5, so kinda late  But wanted to share my thoughts, also as a big THANK YOU to the people who previously posted in this thread. Your suggestions were incredibily helpful (especially the ones from brogenk and thelee).

Before I start: I'm and old fart end of 40 and I have played RPGs since Super Nintendo/Famicom. Dorudugan was by far the longest battle I ever fought in 30 years of playing Video Games. And I play on Normal difficulty, not Path of the Damned (NO idea how people are able to kill Duragan on this difficulty setting, really!!). Anyway, with my approach on normal difficulty it took me 2.5h to kill him. Yes, TWO and a HALF hours.

Note: I didn't want to kill Dorudugan with adding up Resonances as described previously in this thread. This feels like too much cheating to me. Playing this tactic would keep Duragan at (almost) full health until you reach 800-1000 resonances (or whatever it takes), then one touch and he drops dead. The reason why I don't like this: In this scenario Duragan would never trigger the Magnetic Overdrive (that pulls all your party members towards him and adds another layer of difficulty to the fight). This ability only triggers when he's falling below 50% health only, which would never happen if you just add up resonances. Just feels weird to me to fight a mega boss, keep him at full health all the time and then suddenly BOOM and he's dead.

So, I wanted to "really" kill him and take down his HP one by one. Here's what worked for me:

• Stay safe in the distance: Generally speaking, this was the first fight I encountered in the game where it was absolutely pointless to have any character of my party attack the boss in melee combat. Dorudugan would CRUSH them with a few strikes, no matter what gear, potions, effects etc. I got all my characters at level 20, most equipment crafted to legendary, wearing a lot of unique items (i completed almost the whole game) but still none of this won't help a bit.
• Summoning is key: Instead, this is about summoning whatever it takes, send it to Dorudugan to keep the boss surrounded and engaged and stay away in a safe distance. Thats really what it is all about I would say.
• My party: Rogue, 2 Monks, 2 Troubadours. Since I neither used monks nor chanters in my party until this point I decided (had to) start from scratch, go to the next tavern and purchase 4 adventurers (which are available only with max. Level 19 then). Btw full credit to brogenk's adivce on this thread here - much appreciated! Two of them I turned into Troubadours (GREAT tip by thelee on this thread!), two into Monks. And yes this took a lot of time too. Level them up to 19 with proper skills needed for this fight, then put on the right gear (which I needed to remove from my other party members) etc. So easily a few hours just preparing for this fight!
• 2 Troubadours: These are essential. They have brisk reciting skill and can summon quickly if you choose the right skill path. The only skill that really mattered to me: The Level 9 dragon summoning. Two of these dragons put next to each other are your lifesaver here: They have enough HP to stand Dorudugans attacks for a while. The last for like 30 seconds and I kept on summoning them every 20 seconds atleast, so they're always fresh and powerful. Once Magnetic Overdrive is being triggered, it doesn't really matter anymore. 2 of my characters were immune of being pulled (a Troubadour and my Rogue). The other 3 were pulled in, but I positioned them so the dragons would always stand between them and the boss.  When being pulled they would simply bounce off my two dragons, stand up, run away again. So Dorudugan wouldnt inflict ANY damage to them, but only hit the two dragons. I gave one of them Eccea's Arcane Blaster so between summoning the Level 9 dragon this character would shoot at Dorudugan and do some additional damage.
• 2 Monks: As described on this thread, The Dichotomous Soul skill is key. In the first half of the fight I did put my monks in the upper left and upper right corner of the map. And both of them on HIDE, without attacking Dorudugan directly. Instead I would keep them hidden throughout the fight and summon Dichotomous Souls and send these to Dorudugan. So overall 2*2=4 Souls plus 2 dragons to keep the boss busy, ALL of the time. This is the worst part though: It's just SO boring to do this for two and a half hours, boy! But it helped. Once the health of Dorudugan drops below 50% it's time to reposition the monks though, since when being pulled towards the boss they become visible to him.
• Items with immunity to push and pull: For the second half of this fight two items are crucial to make your life easier once Dorudugan starts using Magnetic Overdrive. Afaik there are two items only in the game which grant immunity of being pulled (or pushed): Horns of the Aurochs (helm) and the Upright Captains belt. My main character is a rogue, weapon equipped "Veilpiercer bow" (upgraded to mystic quality, I killed Sigilmaster Auranic before). He's wearing the "cap of the laughing stock" helm to make Dorudugan easier to hit. He's also wearing the Horns of the Aurochs so Dorudugan can't pull him and general gear that makes this character move quickly on the battle field.  The only purpose of this character throughout the fight: stay out of reach, shoot the boss, run away of any grenades when Dorudugan drops these and do this over and over and over again. Once you fail to stay out of the range of a grenade, the damage inflicted is heavy and even made my character drop dead. But there's this special ring of resurrection which only has 3 charges and will ressurect your character at full power. It can be purchased (or looted) from Captain Thaenic's ship with his deck of many things. I didnt pay attention once and auto-resurrected my Rogue using this ring. This way very helpful because my Rogue would be alone, standing in the North of the map, attacking Dorudugan with his bow. Resurrecting the Rogue with a scroll or charm through another character of the party would have messed up my settings with the other 4 party members staying at the very bottom of the map throughout the second half of the fight.
• Summary: Long story short, the way I managed to kill Dorudugan after an endless epic battle is having my Rogue shooting arrows at him from the north, while 2 monks summon four Dichotomous souls and two Troubadours summon two dragons in total.  The only risk were the grenades, which made it necessary to rearrange the positions on the map. In my fight I had Duragan pretty much at the bottom of the map though, and he barely dropped grenades at the bottom 4 characters but majority of them around him and to the north where my Rogue was standing. This was crucial, I have no idea how you would survive the fight when Dorudugan would really spread his grenades smartly and cover the whole southern area too.

Sorry for lengthy talking here but I felt it was time to say THANKS to everyone who contributed to this thread and also user solipsa who posted a great guide for the PC version on Gamefaqs back in 2019. Someone wrote that he didnt feel any joy when he finally beat Dorudugan. I have mixed feelings: Yes this is a HORRIBLE and boring fight, I really can't remember any fight in any game coming close to the length of this battle. I had some difficulties beating Lengrath and the two dragons in Pillars of Eternity 1, but this is a different level. Anyway once I beat Dorudugan and see him drop dead made me feel proud  

Cheers from Munich,

Chris

PS: The Playing PoE2 (PS4 version) on PS5 at 1.8 speed multiple times crashed the game, especially when Dorudugan threw all of these grenades. Just too much going on I guess. Thus I played at 1.0 speed hoping the game would not crash (which added another layer of madness to this fight). Certainly will remember this battle for the rest of my life haha

[Boeroer]

Welcome, fellow old fart!  

[thelee]

Since this thread was originally established (i don't know if i mentioned it before), but another problem with the resonance (aside from possibly feeling "cheesy") is that a) if you mis-estimate it you're screwed, but the bigger deal is b) i have crashed my game several times doing this. Deadfire doesn't really enjoy having to resolve hundreds of buffs in an instant.

[Raven Darkholme]

On 11/9/2022 at 10:35 AM, saborea7 said:

Hello from Germany everyone,

playing this in 2022 on a PS5, so kinda late  But wanted to share my thoughts, also as a big THANK YOU to the people who previously posted in this thread. Your suggestions were incredibily helpful (especially the ones from brogenk and thelee).

Before I start: I'm and old fart end of 40 and I have played RPGs since Super Nintendo/Famicom. Dorudugan was by far the longest battle I ever fought in 30 years of playing Video Games. And I play on Normal difficulty, not Path of the Damned (NO idea how people are able to kill Duragan on this difficulty setting, really!!). Anyway, with my approach on normal difficulty it took me 2.5h to kill him. Yes, TWO and a HALF hours.

Note: I didn't want to kill Dorudugan with adding up Resonances as described previously in this thread. This feels like too much cheating to me. Playing this tactic would keep Duragan at (almost) full health until you reach 800-1000 resonances (or whatever it takes), then one touch and he drops dead. The reason why I don't like this: In this scenario Duragan would never trigger the Magnetic Overdrive (that pulls all your party members towards him and adds another layer of difficulty to the fight). This ability only triggers when he's falling below 50% health only, which would never happen if you just add up resonances. Just feels weird to me to fight a mega boss, keep him at full health all the time and then suddenly BOOM and he's dead.

So, I wanted to "really" kill him and take down his HP one by one. Here's what worked for me:

• Stay safe in the distance: Generally speaking, this was the first fight I encountered in the game where it was absolutely pointless to have any character of my party attack the boss in melee combat. Dorudugan would CRUSH them with a few strikes, no matter what gear, potions, effects etc. I got all my characters at level 20, most equipment crafted to legendary, wearing a lot of unique items (i completed almost the whole game) but still none of this won't help a bit.
• Summoning is key: Instead, this is about summoning whatever it takes, send it to Dorudugan to keep the boss surrounded and engaged and stay away in a safe distance. Thats really what it is all about I would say.
• My party: Rogue, 2 Monks, 2 Troubadours. Since I neither used monks nor chanters in my party until this point I decided (had to) start from scratch, go to the next tavern and purchase 4 adventurers (which are available only with max. Level 19 then). Btw full credit to brogenk's adivce on this thread here - much appreciated! Two of them I turned into Troubadours (GREAT tip by thelee on this thread!), two into Monks. And yes this took a lot of time too. Level them up to 19 with proper skills needed for this fight, then put on the right gear (which I needed to remove from my other party members) etc. So easily a few hours just preparing for this fight!
• 2 Troubadours: These are essential. They have brisk reciting skill and can summon quickly if you choose the right skill path. The only skill that really mattered to me: The Level 9 dragon summoning. Two of these dragons put next to each other are your lifesaver here: They have enough HP to stand Dorudugans attacks for a while. The last for like 30 seconds and I kept on summoning them every 20 seconds atleast, so they're always fresh and powerful. Once Magnetic Overdrive is being triggered, it doesn't really matter anymore. 2 of my characters were immune of being pulled (a Troubadour and my Rogue). The other 3 were pulled in, but I positioned them so the dragons would always stand between them and the boss.  When being pulled they would simply bounce off my two dragons, stand up, run away again. So Dorudugan wouldnt inflict ANY damage to them, but only hit the two dragons. I gave one of them Eccea's Arcane Blaster so between summoning the Level 9 dragon this character would shoot at Dorudugan and do some additional damage.
• 2 Monks: As described on this thread, The Dichotomous Soul skill is key. In the first half of the fight I did put my monks in the upper left and upper right corner of the map. And both of them on HIDE, without attacking Dorudugan directly. Instead I would keep them hidden throughout the fight and summon Dichotomous Souls and send these to Dorudugan. So overall 2*2=4 Souls plus 2 dragons to keep the boss busy, ALL of the time. This is the worst part though: It's just SO boring to do this for two and a half hours, boy! But it helped. Once the health of Dorudugan drops below 50% it's time to reposition the monks though, since when being pulled towards the boss they become visible to him.
• Items with immunity to push and pull: For the second half of this fight two items are crucial to make your life easier once Dorudugan starts using Magnetic Overdrive. Afaik there are two items only in the game which grant immunity of being pulled (or pushed): Horns of the Aurochs (helm) and the Upright Captains belt. My main character is a rogue, weapon equipped "Veilpiercer bow" (upgraded to mystic quality, I killed Sigilmaster Auranic before). He's wearing the "cap of the laughing stock" helm to make Dorudugan easier to hit. He's also wearing the Horns of the Aurochs so Dorudugan can't pull him and general gear that makes this character move quickly on the battle field.  The only purpose of this character throughout the fight: stay out of reach, shoot the boss, run away of any grenades when Dorudugan drops these and do this over and over and over again. Once you fail to stay out of the range of a grenade, the damage inflicted is heavy and even made my character drop dead. But there's this special ring of resurrection which only has 3 charges and will ressurect your character at full power. It can be purchased (or looted) from Captain Thaenic's ship with his deck of many things. I didnt pay attention once and auto-resurrected my Rogue using this ring. This way very helpful because my Rogue would be alone, standing in the North of the map, attacking Dorudugan with his bow. Resurrecting the Rogue with a scroll or charm through another character of the party would have messed up my settings with the other 4 party members staying at the very bottom of the map throughout the second half of the fight.
• Summary: Long story short, the way I managed to kill Dorudugan after an endless epic battle is having my Rogue shooting arrows at him from the north, while 2 monks summon four Dichotomous souls and two Troubadours summon two dragons in total.  The only risk were the grenades, which made it necessary to rearrange the positions on the map. In my fight I had Duragan pretty much at the bottom of the map though, and he barely dropped grenades at the bottom 4 characters but majority of them around him and to the north where my Rogue was standing. This was crucial, I have no idea how you would survive the fight when Dorudugan would really spread his grenades smartly and cover the whole southern area too.

Sorry for lengthy talking here but I felt it was time to say THANKS to everyone who contributed to this thread and also user solipsa who posted a great guide for the PC version on Gamefaqs back in 2019. Someone wrote that he didnt feel any joy when he finally beat Dorudugan. I have mixed feelings: Yes this is a HORRIBLE and boring fight, I really can't remember any fight in any game coming close to the length of this battle. I had some difficulties beating Lengrath and the two dragons in Pillars of Eternity 1, but this is a different level. Anyway once I beat Dorudugan and see him drop dead made me feel proud  

Cheers from Munich,

Chris

PS: The Playing PoE2 (PS4 version) on PS5 at 1.8 speed multiple times crashed the game, especially when Dorudugan threw all of these grenades. Just too much going on I guess. Thus I played at 1.0 speed hoping the game would not crash (which added another layer of madness to this fight). Certainly will remember this battle for the rest of my life haha

Congrats on the win (another old fart from Germany here, lol).

If you ever feel like you really wanna do this on Potd, the simplest non resonance approach is to have a character dual wield a battle axe with Scordeo's Edge, the latter upgraded with Blade cascade and Adaptive, have battle axe modal Bleeding Cut on.

If you want the fight to be real fast (might be similar or even more cheesy than resonance tho) you can have a cipher casting Ancestor's Memory on a priest, who can then spam Salvation of time on himself and the char with Scordeo's.

[thelee]

2 hours ago, Raven Darkholme said:

If you ever feel like you really wanna do this on Potd, the simplest non resonance approach is to have a character dual wield a battle axe with Scordeo's Edge, the latter upgraded with Blade cascade and Adaptive, have battle axe modal Bleeding Cut on.

this definitely also works, but has also definitely crashed my computer a couple times. at least this approach is fast enough that it's not as big a deal if the game crashes

[Kaylon]

On 11/9/2022 at 11:35 AM, saborea7 said:

I have mixed feelings: Yes this is a HORRIBLE and boring fight, I really can't remember any fight in any game coming close to the length of this battle.

A troubadour with Brisk Recitation activated, chanting Many Lives Pass By... is enough to keep Dorudugan busy (a monk summoning the Dichotomous Soul works too but is more tedious). After that, if you pick the right buffs/equipment and ranged weapons (Essence Interrupter, Eccea's Arcane Blaster, Fleetbreaker, Amaliorra,...), Dorudugan will go down pretty fast with minimal micro and without any cheese.

And, contrary to the common belief, it's also possible to tank Dorudugan at melee with some builds.

[dgray62]

12 minutes ago, Kaylon said:

And, contrary to the common belief, it's also possible to tank Dorudugan at melee with some builds.

Which builds might reliably tank Dorudugan on PotD? Arcane Knight with Rekhvu's scorched cape?

[NotDumbEnough]

A high intellect monk should be able to just use Blade Turning infinitely against him as long as Dance of Death is active.

[Elric Galad]

7 hours ago, NotDumbEnough said:

A high intellect monk should be able to just use Blade Turning infinitely against him as long as Dance of Death is active.

Is Cleave considered as a melee attack ?

[Boeroer]

Fireballs etc. won't get reflected by Blade Turning. Arcane Knight would have trouble keeping up buffs during that long fight if it weren't a Bloodmage.

You can also use Gouging Strike with Lover's Embrace, turn invisible, hide far away (Magnetic Overdrive) and come back the day later. If you're lucky.

A Bloodmage with regeneration gear and Animancer's Blade can send Phantoms over and over again from invisibility (Arkemy's Brilliant Departure) and use Wall of Many Colors and/or some debuffs from invisibility. It's pretty safe but takes ages. Also multiclasses like Assassin/Bloodmage work (without the Wall of Many Colors). With Eccea's Arcane Blaster the Phantoms will stop at range and shoot which makes Doru move too much towards the wizard. Animancer's Blade works better because of that imo.

I guess a Troubadour/Bloodmage could be cool with the combo of many lives + phantoms with Eccea's? So that Doru doesn't chase the Phantoms and they wouldn't die so soon. 

Edited November 11, 2022 by Boeroer

[Kaylon]

8 hours ago, dgray62 said:

Which builds might reliably tank Dorudugan on PotD? Arcane Knight with Rekhvu's scorched cape?

If we talk about MC without party support then :

• paladin/troubadour
• paladin/bloodmage
• paladin/forbidden fist
• forbidden fist (using BT)
• priest/anything (using BDD & SoT)

With passive help from the party there are of course more...

Pallegina can also tank him with a little help but she won't be able to attack since without Rekvu's helm she will be interrupted most of the time. 

 

[Raven Darkholme]

1 hour ago, Kaylon said:

If we talk about MC without party support then :

• paladin/troubadour
• paladin/bloodmage
• paladin/forbidden fist
• forbidden fist (using BT)
• priest/anything (using BDD & SoT)

With passive help from the party there are of course more...

Pallegina can also tank him with a little help but she won't be able to attack since without Rekvu's helm she will be interrupted most of the time. 

 

Bloodmage/Tactician or even better Priest/Tactician can also infinitely tank him via extending Unbending.

(even tho there is kind of no point for priest who could also just extend BDD).

[Kaylon]

9 minutes ago, Raven Darkholme said:

Bloodmage/Tactician or even better Priest/Tactician can also infinitely tank him via extending Unbending.

(even tho there is kind of no point for priest who could also just extend BDD).

Yes, I forgot about Wall of Draining... But if I remember well it's more tedious because you have to spawn a Fire Blight before the fight...

[Elric Galad]

7 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Fireballs etc. won't get reflected by Blade Turning. Arcane Knight would have trouble keeping up buffs during that long fight if it weren't a Bloodmage.

You can also use Gouging Strike with Lover's Embrace, turn invisible, hide far away (Magnetic Overdrive) and come back the day later. If you're lucky.

A Bloodmage with regeneration gear and Animancer's Blade can send Phantoms over and over again from invisibility (Arkemy's Brilliant Departure) and use Wall of Many Colors and/or some debuffs from invisibility. It's pretty safe but takes ages. Also multiclasses like Assassin/Bloodmage work (without the Wall of Many Colors). With Eccea's Arcane Blaster the Phantoms will stop at range and shoot which makes Doru move too much towards the wizard. Animancer's Blade works better because of that imo.

I guess a Troubadour/Bloodmage could be cool with the combo of many lives + phantoms with Eccea's? So that Doru doesn't chase the Phantoms and they wouldn't die so soon. 

All Dorudugan fire based attacks can be avoided, including Magnetic Overdrive with the right equipment. That's why I'm specifically asking about Cleave because it's not avoidable if one goes melee.

[Constentin Lévine]

1 hour ago, Elric Galad said:

All Dorudugan fire based attacks can be avoided, including Magnetic Overdrive with the right equipment. That's why I'm specifically asking about Cleave because it's not avoidable if one goes melee.

Brutal Cleave is not melee.

The small shield Shimmer Scale can be good in this fight, with the bonus def to fire! 

For me the principal difficulty with Doru is his high resolve. With every bosses, I like to find the best way (and the best party/equimpment) to control them (like puppets) so it is important to lower their defenses. My best with him is to use many skelies / Frostfall tactic when he is paralysed / downed. At this point, his health pool doest really matter anymore, when the survivability is turned to "infinite", even if the fight last for 1h, for Dorudugan it is like all the damages are done in one instant (relativity).

So I estimate I win the fight when I kill enought skellies with Frostfall-set to make him unable to take any action for sure (10 or 15 skellies with summoning, then it is safe, so periodic (3 or 6s) many live Frostfall kill is enought for the rest of the fight).

[thelee]

1 hour ago, Constentin Lévine said:

The small shield Shimmer Scale can be good in this fight, with the bonus def to fire! 

all you need to do is to get that cloak that converts fire damage to health restored when you have a wound (Rekvu's?). Easy-peasy, now you only need to worry about tanking Dorudugan's direct hits! (only helps one person if you're playing with a party though)

1 hour ago, Constentin Lévine said:

For me the principal difficulty with Doru is his high resolve.

yeah i agree. this thread is pretty old, but in a slightly more recent thread I discovered that having a wizard  who can cast illusion magic is basically great tech for a less cheesy approach to the fight. get weyc's wand, because when soulbound to a wizard and maxed out, you get 100% miss to graze conversion on empowered attacks.

open up a fight with an empowered arkemyr's wondrous torment (better than miasma due to higher base duration), then follow up with normal castings to refresh the debuff duration. with resource recurrence on that wizard (if brilliant is too cheesy for your tastes, just leave the wizard on auto-attack and have a troubadour doing the tier 9 invocation to restore 1 class resource, should recur fast enough to do the same thing), i feel like many other possible strategies against dorudugan become easier/have greater margins for error because going from 35 to 25 resolve does wonders for debuff durations due to how resolve normally has increasing returns. (edit: i vaguely remember some more ways to passively debuff resolve that'll stack with wondrous torment, but don't remember the specifics. edit 2: don't forget club modal! with only 25 resolve, the will debuff on a mod/high character lasts a decent chunk of time, for extra will-weak dorudugan)

 

of course, you can just summon a dragon and have it face tank dorudugan while you plink away at it with ranged weapons. that chanter dragon is a megaboss wonder

Edited November 11, 2022 by thelee

[Boeroer]

2 hours ago, thelee said:

that chanter dragon is a megaboss wonder

If you have an Ancient in the party try Wild Growth on that chanter dragon. It's cool!  

[Elric Galad]

1 minute ago, Boeroer said:

If you have an Ancient in the party try Wild Growth on that chanter dragon. It's cool!  

Theoretically yes, but the dragon hp is so high that I doubt anything can kill the dragon before the end of its duration.